TANUNDA TO KAPUNDA
26th January 2016
Australia Day....what better way to celebrate living in such a beautiful country than to be riding out with nature on our bikes. It's customary to celebrate Australia Day with a BBQ, beer, cricket at the beach and a time to have fun with your friends. For us this day has more meaning than a day off to play. It is a day that we reflect on what happened to the Aboriginal people. The stealing of their land, the killing of their people, the abuse that white man inflicted on the true custodians of this country. We celebrate Australia Day for its beauty of vast untamed land and nature and are thankful for our freedom. We acknowledge the truth of white mans invasion and take over of the Aboriginals lands, their home, their country. Let us never forget our History.Our ride started in the Main Street of Tanunda with a second breakfast of coffee and croissants at a café that lucky for us was open on a public holiday. From the Main Street we were able to quickly access the local bike track that was close to 10km long that led us out of town.
Our ride was over rolling hills across the beautiful valley. Just before the township of Kapunda we rode past St John's Cemetery. We stopped outside the gate to have a quick snack and proceeded to have a little explore of this old cemetery. As my dad often said "you can learn a lot about the history of the area just from visiting a cemetery". Here we found a lot of old grave stones with very Irish names. Many had made the long voyage over to this country from their homeland in Ireland by sea. Many young women's names were on the grave stones and a few named babies and toddlers. What really shocked us was a plaque that had been recently erected near the gate to the entrance. It stated that many unnamed babies were buried along the fence line of the cemetery and that they would never be forgotten. Apparently if your baby died before he or she was baptised the church would not allow the baby to be buried inside the cemetery, the baby would be buried on the outside on the fence line and the baby would be buried unnamed. How awful is that. How traumatic for that mother to have lost her baby and then not have her baby recognised. How heartbreaking for both the mother and father to know they had a baby but in their churches eyes this baby didn't actually exist.We had a disaster when we came to the cemetery. When I opened my handle bar bag I found my banana had exploded all over the video camera, my sunglasses and absolutely everywhere. Yuk, yuk, yuk stinking banana everywhere. All we could do was a quick clean up and a big job getting the banana off everything once we got home.
Once back in the car I realised I had lost my good sunglasses. I didn't realise before as I had my riding ones on. With a bit of thought we were pretty sure I must have left them at the cemetery after taking them out of the handle bar bag after the exploding banana incident. We drove back to the cemetery and there they were sitting on a post right near the gate to the entrance. Lucky day I say.
