This is the best picture I have found so far of the eclipse. Notice the pockets of light on both sides…
Bullie was hauling 12 tons of ice in the back of his truck when he picked me up. He had no shoes on, but he had a dandy hat, lots of confidence and a great big laugh under his blond curly locks and impressing nose. I was on my last leg of hitchhiking from Nimbin to the Eclipse 2012 Festival, and Bullie took me all the way with his frozen load – telling me that this festival was literaly going to be hotter than any party I’d ever been to.
As we got closer to the site (and further away from civilization) the road narrowed and the sunlight diminished. “My eyes are going, so from now on you gotta help me look out for cows”, Bullie said. He’d worked on cattle stations since he was a teen, and got his name from riding bulls. If anyone knew the dangers of hitting a cow with 90 km/h, I figured it’d be him, so I glued my eyes to the tarmac. We arrived, however, without sighting a single cow, which prompted Bullie to name me his guardian traffic angel.
For The Love Of A Good Party
A so-called “dust-bow” – truly an amazing sight!
The Eclipse 2012 Festival took place at the Palmer River Gold Field, a 3-hour drive from Cairns into the driest outback I’ve seen so far. “It’s a dustbowl out there”, Bullie told me, and it sure was; instead of rainbows, there were “dustbows”, and between 11 and 4 in the daytime, most people wore scarfs over their mouth if they even dared venturing out into the blistering sun. Most afternoons were spent horizontally in the shade, with temperatures reaching around 40 degrees Celsius and not a drop of rain to cool us down.
Impromptu Immigrant 