Monday, September 10, 2007

Same rest stop different story.

Okay so picture the same rest stop but now it's sunrise. I walk 20 meters behind the rest stop and onto the beach. Beautiful. Tidal mangroves,sunrise,birds singing (cockies,lories and kookabarra's) and a man combing the beach. He's an older man about 70 and he is bent over with a bucket and I figure he is crabbing or something. So I go over and talk to him. Turns out he is another gypsie living at the same rest stop but behind the rest stop and right on the beach. He has an old 1978 Ford pick-up like my old one hooked up to a "trailer" he calls home. Now this "trailer" is a very small old R.V. camper, 1950's style, rounded on the back, baby blue and white, with crank out windows on the side and back. It is very delapitated; I wouldn't keep my garden tools in the thing but he is living in it full time. We talk about trucks, what is in his bucket and his life. And then as people do, he begins to show me. He say's " wait here my trailer is filthy (and it is) I don't want you to see it but I want get something to show you". He brings out a digital camera and shows me a bunch of sunset and sunrise pictures he has taken. He shows me every photo and he is proud of them. Tells me when and how he got them and how this gives him something to do. Then he shows me a Bower birds nest that is right outside his front door. He and the bird are friends and have known each other for 2 years. (The Bower bird woos the female by collecting colorful objects and putting them in front of the nest he has made.) I am so excited, I have seen these birds on film but here is a nest right in front of me! This bird has chosen green and has collected enough green glass shards to adorn his "front porch", a spot about one foot wide and two feet long. It is so cool! After awhile I leave George the lone gypsie for "brekkie" with my gypsies. Later that day when my band and I were getting ready to leave the "Big Mango" rest area for our holiday trip George came through the beach brush and asked if I could wait 15 minutes or so before we left. He dissappeared and came back with two pictures of the Bower bird's nest and the only CD of his sunset and sunrise pictures he owns. He gives them to me. Amazing. And he is a gypsie.

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