SATURDAY 9 SEPTEMBER     HOWARD SPRINGS

We had to go to the Darwin company office, in the morning, to see R. When things moved, it seemed they did so quickly!

Apparently, it had been getting environmental and aboriginal heritage approvals that had been holding up the project. These things were not up to the company – it was Fortescue that must negotiate and sort out the approvals, and then hand the site over to the company for the construction work.

I was still trying to get my head around the delineations and processes and who was doing what.

It was arranged that we were to turn up at 8am on Monday, for “work” – induction and so on. We would be paid for our time.

There would be three options for getting us to the site:  1. Drive ourselves there.  2. Drive to Alice Springs, so some training at Head Office, then drive the Tanami Track to WA. But the Tanami was very rough at this time.  3. Fly to Alice for training, fly back to Darwin, then drive ourselves.

R was not yet sure which of these it would be. Just one of a number of uncertainties, it seemed to me.

Back at camp, I made John go and tell J we would not be doing the mango work after all. I felt really bad that we had let her down, and hoped John was embarrassed.

Occasionally I saw, in my walks around the area, Rainbow Bee-eaters – really colourful little birds, with the distinctive longer tail feather. In some light angles, they appeared irridescent.