Venom becomes active again during rest

Day: 188 Stage three / total expedition days 579

Sunrise:
05:28

Sunset:
18:45

As the crow flies:
23,5

Daily kilometers:
34

Total kilometers:
5832 km

Temperature - Day (maximum):
36° degrees, sun approx. 56°

Temperature - Night:
18° degrees

Latitude:
22°56'48.3"

Longitude:
144°37'11.7"

Aramac Creek Camp – 11/20/2002

“Oh dear! Denis! We overslept!” Tanja’s voice wakes me from a deep sleep. ‘Oh no,’ I reply, glancing at my watch. Without wasting much time complaining, we start our routine work. As the sun rises as early as 05:28, I work up a considerable sweat during loading.

Tanja has just brought Istan. “What does his wound look like?” I ask. “I don’t know. The best thing is to see them for yourself,” she replies. When I see the wound caused by the poisonous mulga wood, it almost hits me. “This can’t be true. It’s at least the size of two palms and completely encrusted,’ I moan. “She still looked good yesterday,” Tanja replies. “Then it must have burst open again overnight and the pus has dried all over the skin. It’s strange, but during a longer rest the poison seems to become active again. It’s probably the blood circulation that keeps the wound small while running. However, we have to treat him immediately.” “And how are you going to do that? You don’t want to let him kick you, do you?” “I’ll put the saddle on his legs while you hold him by the halter at the front. If I stand behind the saddle and he tries to kick me, he can’t hit me. If he kicks out, he’ll kick the saddle,” I suggest. “Hm, that’s a good idea. I’ll bribe him with a piece of bread while you’re rubbing the ointment on him. That will also distract him.” “Okay,” I reply, putting on a disposable glove and opening the can of cream. I now lean carefully over the saddle and touch his stomach with my left hand. Istan remains calm and nibbles on the pieces of bread like an addict. I slowly run my right hand along his lower stomach until I reach the inflamed area next to his penis. Pus seeps out of three small holes. I gently rub the anti-inflammatory cream onto the wound and loosen a few dried clumps of pus. Istan doesn’t make a sound. “Well done, my boy,” I say with relief, taking off my glove. “Hopefully that will help,” I say, while Tanja shoos him off.

Unfortunately, Jafar’s wound on his hip is also slightly infected again. I immediately treat them too. From the looks of it, the poison of the mulga wood is incredibly strong. We heard from a nurse that the stab wound must be scraped out immediately in the event of a mulga wood injury. Unfortunately, in Istan’s case, scraping out the wound would be tantamount to a real operation. We hope that the effects of the poison will eventually wear off. It has now been working for over five months. Sometimes the injury even looks really good and a few days later everything starts all over again. We are starting to worry because when we get to the east coast, Istan won’t have to walk every day. However, as I have already described, running is the best way to keep the blood circulation and lymphatic system active. Well, we’ll see. Perhaps Istan’s injury will be a thing of the past in six or seven weeks.

It’s 07:00 when our caravan heads north-east again. As soon as we are on the track, a jeep stops. “I thought you were already on the east coast,” the driver greets us. “I read about you in the newspaper. Apparently you had a longer stay on Bimbah?” “Yes, we needed to recover a little. “Which station are you from?” “From Camoola Park.” “Do you have poisonous dingo bait?” “I’m interested. “Yes, you have to take good care of your dog. I once lost one of my best working dogs myself. We thought he was safe as we hadn’t put out any bait for over a year. Also it had been raining quite a lot and as you probably know rain washes off the 1080 poison and neutralizes it. But it was still enough for our dog. Even if you drive a car over a poisoned dingo bait and a dog licks the car tire later, it dies. Many dogs in Australia have died this way. It’s a terrible poison,” he says thoughtfully. ” We will pay even more attention to our Rufus. He’s wearing a muzzle again now, but that doesn’t make him one hundred percent safe. Even if we chain him to a tree in the camp, a small inconspicuous lure like that could be lying around and kill him. In addition to our attention, he needs a mighty guardian angel,’ I say. “Are you walking from here to Muttaburra?” the farmer now wants to know. “No, we’ll follow the track along Aramac Creek to Aramac and then head north-east again from there.” “Hm, so you want to take the old post road. I’m not sure if it still exists? As far as I know, it hasn’t been used for decades.” “We’ll find it and if not we’ll have to make our way across country,” I reply and say goodbye to the friendly man.

10 kilometers further on we leave the track and turn east. We now follow a narrow dirt track that leads us to Aramac Creek. Again very tired but in a good mood, we settle down in the partial shade of some eucalyptus trees. As in previous weeks, we immediately chain Rufus to a shady spot under the tree. Of course, not before we have carefully examined the bottom for suspicious-looking bait.