FRIDAY 17 JUNE     PUNGALINA

Mail plane day, as usual. The ordered supplies arrived with the plane.

O arrived back with the trailer full of our truck consignment. There was so much! It even included a dozen or so outdoor chairs – white and green plastic. It was all hands on deck to unload and get some order into it all.

Unpacking everything, checking things off against my copies of order lists, finding the invoices so they could be sent to A for payment, putting things away, all occupied me for much of the rest of the day.

I was pleased with the items that came. The crockery, cutlery and glassware from Curreys was not fancy, but it would work well in this general environment. At least, the table ware would match!

It was also good to have some decent saucepans and pans for cooking with. Now the saucepans, servers and other items of mine, that I had been using to date, could go back in the van and stay there! I would continue to use the cookware I brought from home to use here – slice trays, pannacotta moulds, my bread and loaf tins and the like. For next season, the owners would have to buy in this sort of item – I would make suggestions.

A’s wife had sent a consignment of “soft” gear I’d asked for: shower curtains and rings, towels, tablecloths of a sufficient length and same colour. The towels would need immediate washing before being put into the tents. I asked A to do that for me.

After lunch, M and John decided to landscape around the new tent. John decided to get some slate slabs for this. He knew where there was some suitable stone – across the river, of course! He and M went to go off with the Daihatsu ute, to get it. This vehicle had issues with gears, and was waiting for W to fix it. John had a lot of trouble selecting a gear, and tried a bit hard – the gear lever came away in his hand! After waving this around in front of a rather horrified M, they called W to the rescue, and he managed to get it back into place. Off the  rock getting party set, complete with Scunge dingo, who was always up for a ride somewhere.

They gathered a load of rock into the back of the ute and headed back, across the river. The ute was now too heavy, and got stuck in the central part of the ford. Scunge abandoned ship and swum off home. M and John offloaded some of the rock and made it to the side of the river closest to the house. The bank was just too steep. Despite all John’s efforts at revving the vehicle, it would not go up.

Apparently O heard all the noise and headed off on the quad bike – in the opposite direction! W was more generous – he appeared with a tractor and pulled the ute up the bank. He appeared quite amused by the antics.

After their “little adventure” M and John called it quits for the day. It had been a very solid day’s work done by all.

Some of the new chairs had long abrasion marks on them, in places. When they were being unloaded, we’d commented on this. O shrugged and made a vague comment about rough handling. Some time later, the real story emerged. O had been driving back, along the rough track in, with the trailer, when it suddenly tipped up, dumping the trailer contents along the track. Fortunately, my glassware and crockery boxes had been in the Troopy – more good luck than judgement! The chairs seemed to fare the worst of all. O said he’d put the spare trailer wheel onto the A frame when he was loading the trailer – in the dark – and forgotten to secure it anywhere. It had sat there until a rough and rocky patch, then fallen off and under the trailer, upending it. Could have been a disaster!