The next morning we walked across the creek to the store. Football was in town that weekend and it was the most amazing sight I was ever seen. First Impressions of Fregon The store was a huge shed where products were sold. You could usually buy one type of thing e.g. Tinned spaghetti would be one size and of the one brand. Only very basic foods were sold, you could buy frozen bread or frozen meat, apples, bananas all of which were very expensive and there were never any specials. Saturday mornings were an important part of the social life of anyone living in Fregon as the supply truck arrived during the morning. If you wanted to get any of the special treats which survive the pounding of the corrugations on the roads, then you had to be at the store when the produce gets onto the shelves or you miss out and have to wait until the next week.(Once we paid $20 for a rock mellon it was the only one to survive the journey and we hadn't had fresh fruit for a month). Being at the store on a Saturday morning was a great way to catching up with everyone and gossiping and although you see most people all week you still manage to spend 3 hours talking.

With football being in town the population swells from 100 people to about 500 people all of which seemed to be in the store on that morning, along with their dogs, flies and children. Chaos!! This was not like the sterile quiet hum of air-conditioned Coles where no one speaks to anyone else including the people on the tills. The noise was amazing, most of which we couldn't understand as it was in Pitjatjatjajara and the women all had what I thought to be mouth cancer. Of course they didn't what they had in the corner of their mouths was a native tobacco called Minklpa, that is dried mixed with flour, ash and spit. It is then rolled into a ball and placed in the corner of the mouth and left there. Women and old men have it and it has a calming effect. It leaves a green stain on the lips and the smell is quite different from anything that we had experienced. (Horrible was my first impressions however it is amazing how you become accustomed to it as I didn't notice any of it after a while). The whole experience attacked my senses, some people cannot cope and have to leave the town. It is so outside our sterile white world where there is no challenge to see what is really being offered and that was an unique opportunity for my family and I to experience a culture that so totally different from the one that we were used to.