MONDAY 9 JUNE     ADELS GROVE

This had been the Queens Birthday long weekend.

I was on tents today, John on rubbish and donkey fire care, which left him with some time for other work.

John and D were working on converting the old office donga into three more accommodation rooms. They had framed up partition walls and were putting some sheets of veneer/ply that boss had around the place, onto the new walls. They needed liquid nails to do this and did not have much left.

While they were glueing a sheet into place, D braced himself against what was behind him – a window, which broke. D felt a piece of glass in his back. John held the large piece of glass, while D worked himself free from it, then the glass broke and fell and a piece sliced down the front of John’s kneecap.

The men finished the sheet they had been fixing – so as not to waste the precious liquid nails – and only then went to find the boss for wound inspection! There was much blood.

B in particular, was amazed and horrified at their priorities!

D was alright – there was only a small cut in his back. The boss was not so sure about John – thought  he might need  a Flying Doctor evacuation to Mt Isa. She rang them. They said to take him over to the Century Mine, for the paramedics there to assess him.

Boss R had to drive John there, because he had the security clearance to drive there – and knew the way!

I was oblivious to all the drama that was happening. I came up from my duties in the laundry, with a basket of the boss’ washing, to find John sitting on the step of the loading dock, looking rather pale. As it was late in the day, and knock off time for me, I got to go to the Mine, too. There was a lot of security rigmarole at the gated entrance.

When it was cleaned up a bit, there was a big flap of skin hanging off the front of the kneecap, that would not be able to be stitched, so there was much bandaging instead.

There was a great deal of teasing of the guys over the incident, for days afterwards.

I think D was grateful to John, for ensuring that his back injury was not much worse.

John would be on “light duties” for a while. He had to wrap the knee in a garbag, to shower.