The Swamp people - Louisiana and Mississippi

We drove up through Baton Rouge and through the bayous of Louisiana to Lafayette. Henderson is a little town just outside of Lafayette set right in the swamp. This is Cajun country where gators rule the bayous and the washboard and piano accordion meld in zydeco music.

There are a about half a dozen little shacks set along the Henderson swamp that serve up beer and big old plates of boiled crawfish, and act as landings for air boats and motor boats.

It was easy to spend a couple of hours sitting on the porch at McGee’s Landing looking over the water and chatting with the locals, all of whom are fascinated to meet a real ‘Oss-stray-lin’. Upon learning where we were from, one guy said he’d had a friend who went to Australia.

“Really liked it, too. He was shootin’ heaps of stuff and sendin’ me pictures ‘n all,” he said.

Shaun is doing all the driving, and getting used to the right-hand drive, though as this photo depicts, sometimes we still get it a bit wrong. Like that Sesame Street song, “One of these things is not like the others…”

We travelled inland along Hwy 61, the Blues Highway, crossing the border to Mississippi and heading to Natchez.

The change from Louisiana to Mississippi was remarkable. Across the border we encountered a much lusher, greener state, American flags hung from every surface and picture-perfect wooden churches dotted along the way.

The grand, column-fronted antebellum (pre-civil war) homes dotted around this area make me want to don a hoop skirt, sit on a rocking chair on the veranda and drink a mint julep. They are straight out of Gone With the Wind.

We spent an hilarious evening at the Natchez Saloon Under the Hill, which sits up on the hill by the Mississippi River where the majestic old steamboats used to pull up and deliver their goods to the merchants. The Saloon is managed by a cheeky old man called JD and live music most nights which even the local mutts enjoy.

Here’s me hamming it up with JD behind the bar. He looks like a little leprechaun.

In Natchez we stayed in a cabin in the State Park, right on the lake. It was like the Griswald’s summer vacation. We saw deer, armadillo, vultures and fireflies.

Special mention goes to the 'Family Dollar' and 'Piggly Wiggly', two entertainingly named, American be-flagged supermarket chains that sell not a lot of fresh anything, and a whole lot of pre-packaged everything to keep us fuelled.

They do sell about a thousand varieties of grits, though!

Big thumbs down to the ‘Imitation cheese slices’ that we picked up, having been blinded by the $1.50 price tag. Those nasty plastic slices were left to die a slow death of 2000 years in the fridge in the cabin.

Big thumbs up to this souped up Caddy that we spotted in the Family Dollar car park. Can you believe those tyres? The family who were driving it couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

I bought the most beautiful, hand-crocheted dress from a vintage shop in Natchez. The woman found it in the attic of an antebellum home in Touloula. It was found with a cream tuxedo jacket and pants, and satin shoes and they suspect that the two garments were worn by a bride and groom sometime in the 1920’s.