SATURDAY 28 OCTOBER    NORTH POINT CAMP

When I started work at 6am, the comms were back on again. But later, the comms man came out from Hedland and replaced some sort of switch in the modem, anyway.

John had two trips into Hedland today, once for supplies for the building work, and once for an airport run.

There was work on a number of fronts – on the kitchen and Pod 2 verandas, plumbing up Pod 3, digging water lines, the sewerage company working on that system. Two SPQ’s were delivered.

News came from HO that BB would be here on Monday – driving in. Then he and wife would be around the following week.

There was a major development today. The head honcho for FMG in Hedland came out to deliver the news that we could now have truck access to RV2 via the BHP road, starting Sunday. There were lots of conditions, of course, but it meant that work there could now proceed properly.

FMG had to arrange for there to be traffic controllers on duty at the corner of the RV2 track with the BHP road, because that corner was in a dip and near a bend. That was really going to cost: the traffic controllers would have to come from Hedland, daily – some 250kms each way. There would be two people sitting there through the daylight hours, waiting for trucks! Of which there may not be any; over the distance from Perth, it was impossible for exact arrival times to be known. It wasn’t as if there was even regular traffic on the BHP road, either.

So R had to hassle around, organizing for trucks to move buildings from RV1 to 2. He managed to get a message to Capricorn Roadhouse, for the truck that had just delivered SPQ’s here, to turn around and come back. There were two trucks in transit from Perth with buildings; the transport company head had to get a message to them to stop at the Marble Bar turn off and wait for instructions – definitely not to go any further without approval from R.

Any of our vehicles using that road were supposed to have orange flashing lights on the roof, which we all already had, including our Truck. But they also had to have company identification signs, numbered, on the sides. John had to get these made in Hedland – in a rush. We certainly were injecting a lot of cash into the Hedland economy with this project.

In her cleaning and setting up of Pod 1, S and M had discovered that there were many missing or broken door locks. Something like fifty sets had to be gotten from the building companies. I was not sure who would pay for that – HO could sort that one out.

The company semi driver, B, was supposed to be bringing the company semi down from Darwin, with a load of steel urgently needed for something or other. R got me to phone the Darwin office to find out if the truck had left the yard there, yet. It hadn’t. R was not pleased. When that truck got here and was unloaded, it too could be used to move buildings to RV2.

The late afternoon skies and sunsets were fascinating me – always different, but consistently beautiful. In fact, I was starting to see a quiet and unobtrusive beauty in this whole area. Sometimes I felt that it was criminal to be digging up this so ancient area and shipping it overseas. It was not too great a stretch of the imagination to feel the pain of the land.