SUNDAY 6 JULY     ADELS GROVE

I was on reception/shop. John was on the rubbish run and doing the donkey fires.

M spent the day exploring around the place, some of this with John as he went about his duties. In the morning, she helped strip tent bedding and hang out the washing. She did the walk up the hill just beyond the front entrance, to the viewpoint it gave, over the area.

The search was called off, late morning. Yesterday, they’d raked the area of the now deserted camp. This morning, they found fresh “soft” tracks – meaning he was wearing socks or something similar to attempt to blur signs that he was there. So now they knew he was still alive, still in the area, and did not want to be found. It had been discovered that he had a jail record, so he might have been really scared by the search. It had cost thousands of dollars, to date – and boosted our DBB takings!

Another rumour that went around, later, was that he’d been the subject of something like a bone-pointing, at Doom, and was in hiding.

Some aboriginals from Doom came down in the afternoon, to start a search of their own. They just turned up and expected us to find  accommodation for them. So there was a fast clean and turn around of some donga rooms vacated by the official searchers – M helped with that.

Even though we had M here, by the time the after-dinner clean up was done, it was so late and we were so tired that it was pretty well straight to bed, rather than sitting around talking.