SATURDAY 21 MAY     PUNGALINA

John mowed the camp lawns. It took him half a day to do that and rake fallen leaves away first. He had measured the mowing distance at 9kms of walking! It was a pity there was not a ride-on mower.

He had learned to focus very carefully on the mowing. The last time he did the lawns, at an edge by the longer grass, an irate snake appeared and struck out at the mower! It all happened too quickly for him to identify the type of snake, but now he was very cautious near the bushy edges.

As the weather started to cool down, some of the trees up here shed their leaves. As the lawns must be kept pristine, this meant an increasingly bigger raking task for John.

O became very busy cleaning up the house and the old works caravan that housed the office room, a bedroom, and the bathroom/toilet. Over recent months a relationship had developed with a lady he had known, through friends, for some time. He was in love! L was coming here for her first ever visit. Much improvement was happening, fast. There were plans to fashion a wooden headboard for his bed, and a walking stick, for walking in the bush. He had plans for them to go camping out and exploring some of the property.

John discovered that cleaning up the office seemed to have meant throwing out everything in the way of untidy papers. When O was not there, John quietly rescued things like the operating manuals for the fax and printer from the burning heap.