Black Dog

When walking around Williams, you tend to get an escort from at least one stray dog. I've moved onto the Pelgaic today, and we've decided to go for a walk. Today our escort is a black dog, who seems to have some history with every other dog in town. In every encounter, he's either starting trouble or is on the receiving end.

A couple of hours into our walk I 'm getting the impression that neither I nor the dog had been party to the discussion of the details of the walk.

After eighteen kilometres, (by GPS reckoning,) of gravel road & roadside walking with stops for mushroom picking, we come to our destination. It's the site of an old Yagan Indian settlement. There's not much there now, just the landscape they fashioned from a seemingly insatiable taste for mussels. I'm told they'd sit around, eat these things all day, throwing the shells over their shoulder - this reminds me of a fight that Stu and I almost got into in a chicken shop. The shells have piled up and have now become circular mounds dotted all around the fields where their fires once were.

On the site, as usual, black dog decides it would be great fun to chase cows around. It turns out cows can get up to an impressive gallop, given the right motivation. This commotion has woken the locals. Two Chilean chaps approach us with their dog. The first guy seems quite friendly, but, most noticably, he's carrying a mace-like length of thick chain. The second older guy had a short back and forth with the Spanish speaking members of my new crew. I gather it roughly translated to "Get aarf my land". And so began an eighteen kilometre stroll back to town.