Day 275 - Narembeen. To the left is Alfred Barnett Facey's old homestead at Wickepin in Western Australia. Bert as he was called wrote an autobiography called A Fortunate Life, it became a best-seller and won the prestigious NSW Premier's Literary Award for non-fiction and the National Book Council Prize. During the final six months of his life, Albert Facey became a national celebrity and was nominated for the Australian Of The Year Award in 1981. It documents his experiences growing up in Western Australia, his time at Gallipoli and his extraordinary life of hardship, loss, friendship and love. If you haven't read the book you should be deeply ashamed of yourself.

So you come around a corner, in front of you is a long climb up a hill. Coming down the hill is a road train doing 90 kmh and overtaking the road train (53.5 metres in length) is a Winnebago towing a Suzuki 4WD doing 91 kmh. The Winnebago is struggling; it's obvious he ain't going to make it before I arrive. Here we go again, on the brakes and off the road and I let him go through still next to the truck he was trying to overtake. This was my third close call for the trip, the first involved a car coming out of a property, I saw him look but he didn't see me, I was onto the brakes and started heading bush when he saw me and braked we must have missed each other by a metre or so. The second was a car that turned right at a T intersection straight into my lane (he was coming straight at me) I was onto the brakes heading for the bush when he saw me and got back into his lane. So far I haven't lost my nerve!

So, when I left for my trip one of the things I took with me was Peter Slater's "Field Guide to Australian Birds", both the Passerine and Non-Passerines volumes, 1971 & 1974. The general feeling was that although a little dated they would serve the purpose, as we haven't found many new birds since then. There is however one small problem that surprised me, some birds have new names and their ranges have changed. So I have birds that I have identified using the books but can't put them on my website as I don't know what their correct names are. Some friendly twitchers have given me the names of some modern books that should serve the purpose.

So, wing mirrors on cars seem to have an endless fascination for some birds when I am camped. They obviously see themselves in the mirror and think there is another bird invading their personal space. You should see them hanging off the mirror trying to get to that other bird they think is there. It might not sound like a lot of fun but when you are sitting around your tent looking for something to do their antics provide an entertaining distraction.