things start to go up!

7.10.2009
This week has been too much. The hail yesterday was at totally the wrong time. Karl, the vet and I were trying to treat Edd’s horse who has a slight nasal discharge and Steve and Johno were struggling to set the scaffolding in place by the machinery shed frame. We have declared a day of recovery today and licked our wounds.

At the weekend Patsy rang us from Alice Springs to tell us that a lady who we first met at her out station in 1990 has died. She was one of the people that one feels privileged to have known and was our neighbour when we lived in Yuendumu. Edd and I have been feeling that it was time to visit our friends in The NT and this has given us a reason. Last night we booked air tickets we hope will get us there for the funeral. Now all we have to do is find someone willing to take over here.

5.10.2009
This is really scary stuff! Just out side of the donga there is an enormous crane lifting the massive steel skeletons of the sheds into position. Steve, Edd and Johno have the job of bolting them to their footings and then bracing them with wood so they stay upright. It seems to me an exercise where there is so much that could go wrong.

Firstly the bolts are set into the concrete footings so if they are even slightly out of place there is no way the rigid steel could fit on. Secondly they are all enormous and extremely heavy. Then, they also go up way above reaching height so even getting the chain of the crane unhooked is ghastly. I am being a total coward and have hidden in the donga with the dog.

My attempt to be useful consists of baking bread and pizzas but even this is challenging. It is the first time I have used my new equipment. I have lost all the old scoops and measures that I used for years and I have never cooked bread in a gas oven before. This is the big test. It is too hot to use a wood oven here in summer and Al tells me that electric ovens use too much power. Some how I have to adapt to gas or be totally unethical!