WEDNESDAY 8 JUNE     PUNGALINA

The campers left. Their comments in the Visitors’ Book were: “Outstanding place. We will be back” and “Magnificent week. We will return.”

It was our day off, but John had to do the usual watering up at the house. I’d had to use the camp fridge on Monday and Tuesday – so the generator had been on for a while on both days. This morning I took the oddments that were left up to the house fridge, and cleaned out the camp fridge.

Spent the rest of the day mostly relaxing at the van. I did some reading.

We did go out for a while to do some bird surveys at a couple of locations.

Egrets

Jabiru flying away

Woollybut in flower

MONDAY 6 JUNE     PUNGALINA

John changed the oil in the camp generator.

This lived in an interesting structure, not far from our van. The walls – about shoulder height – were constructed from mud brick. The roof was a tarp. The door had been fashioned from bark slabs, attached to a frame.

John was somewhat disconcerted to find the shed skin of a snake on the floor beside the genset. He hoped it was a temporary resident at the time of the skin shedding. But obviously, we would now need to be aware, whenever dealing with the genset.

Generator house

O had asked if I could put on a lunch at the camp, before friend left again.

I set up the lunch table outside on the grass, in the shade.

I served gazpacho soup – chilled soup was so suitable for the warm days there. After that were plates of salad, hard boiled eggs, tinned ham. Then a platter of paw paw, and some cheese. We all ate together. She was very pleasant and easy to talk with. I think we all enjoyed the meal.

Later in the afternoon, I faxed the next truck orders to Mt Isa. These were big orders. Just after that truck delivery, we were expecting boss A’s arrival, with a full party of guests, so these orders would be the supplies for them. I was conscious of the need to make a great impression with them.

The Woolworths order ran to two pages on the computer spreadsheet that John had set up! It included items like dips, assorted cheese varieties, smoked salmon, 6 tubs of butter, 4 loaves of bread, after dinner mints, assorted dry biscuit packets, various types of Twinings tea bags, 18 bake-at-home dinner rolls, various tins of fruit.

The green grocery order was substantial, including 3 pineapples, 3 rockmelons, 2 honeydew melons, 6 dozen eggs, 5 kilos of onions, 10 kilos potatoes, 4 kilos tomatoes, ditto zucchini, 10 capsicums, 24 oranges, and so on.

After all that, went back to the camp and cleaned up after the lunch.

John had finished making a sign for the little beach area he’d named Red Claw Beach, due to the remnants of water monitor meals, and had put up the sign. it looked good.

SATURDAY 4 JUNE     PUNGALINA

Usual morning activities: gardens watering, checking that all seemed well about the place.

I took our washing up to do at the house, whilst there was no one there to be disturbed by it.

John went off to set yabby nets at the Squeaky Trees camp area on Karns Creek. He took the little old Daihatsu and our hand held CB radio, just in case we needed to contact each other, especially given that I was then on my own at the house.

Did my washing, hung it out and spent some time using the computer, whilst I waited for it to dry.

Eventually, I realized that John had been gone for a long time, even allowing for him to have been side tracked by something or other. I tried calling him on the CB radio – no response. Decided he probably had the thing turned off! I waited a while longer and tried the radio calls a few more times, by which time I was feeling a mix of frustrated, cross and anxious!

Decided I had better take Truck and see if I could find my way to the Squeaky Trees area, and look for him. I took the track across the camp creek, near the house and followed the most used-looking track. I hadn’t gone too far, when I saw John, trudging towards me. At least he was alive and, apparently, uninjured.

Bush by track. Vegetation still quite lush.

The story was that he had bogged the Daihatsu, when backing to turn it around. There were a lot of sandy patches at that camp area. He was cross because he had been calling me, on the CB, for ages, to come and help. After some “discussion” about whether I had been monitoring the radio, and whether he had been listening out for his, it was found that he did not have his hand piece correctly turned on!

We drove on to Squeaky Trees. John had walked quite a long way – several kms. I was not feeling sympathetic! We used our Truck winch to pull the Daihatsu out of the deep sand. Had to be careful not to bog Truck too.

We decided that was one little “adventure” that O did not need to know about.

Daihatsu and ding. They spent a lot of time sitting on the roof of this.

O and friend returned in the late afternoon from the coast. Don’t know why they did not stay the two nights there, that had been planned. He brought back some fish in the cooler – it was a good replenishment of our fish supply.

THURSDAY 2 JUNE     PUNGALINA

I faxed the order of goods required, to Curreys. Had previously had some email discussion with A, and refined the list somewhat. It was becoming quite urgent, because A would soon have his first tour group here, and things needed to be functioning properly. I emphasized on the order that it must reach Mt Isa in time for the truck that would be packed on 13 June.

The order included a dozen dinner and bread and butter plates, soup and dessert bowls – essentially a 12 piece dinner set; wine and water glasses; wooden salad bowls, salt and pepper grinders, and other such basic items. The order totalled $773.59.

John took photos of the fittings on our small portable gas bottle, which I had been using outside the van to do most of our cooking. He also photoed the fittings on the large gas bottles at house and camp. He wanted to see if any of those were compatible and if he could somehow fill our camp bottle from a larger one, if he could find or order an appropriate fitting. Otherwise, the only way to get our  gas bottles filled would be to send them back to Mt Isa on a supply truck, then wait two or four weeks till the next truck brought back the filled bottles. Then we would have to try to find someone in Mt Isa to collect and fill the bottles for us. It would also be a rather expensive exercise. John concluded that he would probably be able to fill the small bottle from one of the big ones.

O eventually arrived back in his plane. With L, who seemed very nice and clearly besotted with O. Apparently, the plane into Doomadgee had been very late, so plans had to be amended, and O flew them for that night to Hells Gate – not far from Doomadgee. He was able to “drive” the plane virtually right to their door!

In the absence of company at the house, the dings had spent most of their time at our camp.

This critter was on the shade cloth of our annexe