This Adventurous Age

SATURDAY 9 JULY     PUNGALINA

Today was uneventful. No word of the camper. No communication about it from the boss. I didn’t really know whether the survey people would eventually be coming, or not. Didn’t make planning the catering any easier!

I used the day to make some stocks of camp food that would be frozen – in the house freezers. Made some loaves of bread – would be good for toast, and a couple of zucchini slices.

A grevillea?

FRIDAY 8 JULY     PUNGALINA

Decommissioned the camp again. Sent the left over food up to the house for A and W to eat.

There was no communication from anyone about our missing guest. We hoped that he had simply changed plans, not that he found the access track so bad that he abandoned the attempt. At this stage of the season, the boss needed all the guests he could get!

Sent an email to the boss informing him of the no show.

The dings were very used to our Truck being parked up at the house.

WEDNESDAY 6 JULY     PUNGALINA

John went to the little generator shed, near our van, to check the oil. He was none too happy to find a shed snake skin in there! It was clearly a nice, warm place for a reptile to go hide for a while – though it was not too long since the generator was in daily use! It was a fairly small skin, which was one consolation. It was a reminder to John to be cautious in approaching the shed.

He fired up the generator to chill the fridges. A guest was expected tomorrow afternoon. He was checking out the access track in advance of a mining helicopter survey party that was booked to come in later in the month, and stay at the safari camp for a while. They would need avgas and so needed to see if a truck with same could get in.

I got a tent checked out and finalized for the guest. Made a date loaf.

TUESDAY 5 JULY     PUNGALINA

Did the usual morning watering. That took up quite a chunk of the morning.

I worked on finalizing the next truck order, and faxed that off to Woolworths and the greengrocer. That truck would load on 11/12 July. The Woolworths order only ran to a page and a bit, this time, much of it for the house. We ordered chicken fillets, whole chickens, pork ribs, lamb chops – again! Hopefully, they would not be missed from the order, this time. Forty rolls of toilet paper was not a quantity that featured in my normal shopping at home!

The greengrocery order was a substantial one. It included seven dozen eggs, 5 kg tomatoes, 4 lettuces, 3kg carrots, 24 oranges, 28 apples, 14 grapefruit, 16 bananas, and smaller quantities of lots of fruits and vegies.

After all that was done, we kept to ourselves down at the camp, pottering about.

Our van in Cane Toad Clearing. The dead treethat John chopped down on arrival. Styrene containers in which I was trying to grow herbs.

MONDAY 4 JULY     PUNGALINA

With O away, W and A were holding the fort at the house, answering the phone and the like. We still had to do the daily watering up there, though.

Kitchen and living area at the house. Mail bag on hook.

There was still plenty of mechanical repair work to keep W busy.

I went to the office and faxed the weekly order to Tennant Creek, for the mail plane – which was due to come a day earlier this week. Most of the items were for A at the house – sliced bread, long life milk, cheese, saveloys, cornflakes, envelopes. I ordered some celery and bananas.

Late in the morning there was an email from A – some guests would be coming in early next week. So I had to fax a supplementary order for the plane: cream, tinned chick peas, fruit and salad makings.

I did some more tidying up work in the kitchen and general cleaning.

Just for interest, I checked the sunrise and sunset times: sunrise was 7.19am. Sunset was 6.28pm. So we were getting 11 hours and 9 minutes of daylight.

Some type of palm, growing in really stony ground

SATURDAY 2 JULY     PUNGALINA

More of the usual routines.

I had the tent beds all made up again, so the tents were ready for the next guests, apart from the last minute finishing touches.

Back in April, O had brought back with him, square rubber “jigsaw” mats, that I’d pieced together to use on the floors of the showers. Preferable underfoot, to mesh and corrugated iron. They had been really good to have, but after last week, they really needed a more thorough scrub than there had been time for while we had guests. Today, I did that with a stiff scrubbing brush and Ajax liquid, and they were back in pristine condition.

It was a pleasant break, not having to clean the amenities every day!

Now that we had time again to have our late afternoon happy hour, in our clearing, I was noticing that the sunsets had become absolutely brilliant. Although we talked about it, we did not have the energy to make the sunset trip to the Escarpment, as guests did. John did not fancy the drive back across the river in the dark, either!

With the guest flurry over, we did not see so much of O, for socializing. He had A to cook his meals at the house, so there was no point in asking him down to us for tea. And he had A and W for company, when he wanted same – and probably when he didn’t, too! They spent much of the time in the house with him and only went out to their camper trailer to sleep. A had brought her sewing machine and set it up in the house, so she had patchworking to occupy her in the evenings. I rather envied her that occupation – quilting was something I really wanted to try, but it was not a craft that fitted – literally – into a small caravan.

FRIDAY 1 JULY     PUNGALINA

Mail plane day. I went up and collected the grocery delivery, sorted same and took the things that were my order back to camp. Also received another box of library books – excellent.

Inside the main house. The chest freezer was for ding meat.

O arrived back around lunchtime with the truck order. That was a major job to sort out and check off, and sort into what was for the camp and me, and what was for the house. Some things had not come – presumably unavailable – bananas, mandarins, celery, honeydew melon from the greengrocers. The four 4litre bottles of kerosene I’d ordered for the flares, had turned into four 1 litre bottles. That would not last long! The six cans of chick peas were also missing from the wholesaler order. The massive Woolworths order was filled well – they do a good job. However, it seemed that all the chiller items had been missed – or not offloaded from the truck: lamb chops, butter, chicken breast fillets, sausages, a couple of whole chickens that A had wanted to roast. Those were the things that could provide us with some dietary variation from beef, so this was a disappointment all round. Also missing were the six loaves of sliced toasting bread A had wanted. It was like some perishables had been left for last minute filling into the order – and then forgotten. We did not receive the invoices – they went straight to A – so I could not check if we had been charged for any of these things.

So, at least, my supplies were replenished ready for future guests. Although, it had to be said, bookings were not too abundant, right now.

Wattle in bloom

Dealing with all that took up a goodly part of the day for me, by the time things were transported to camp, and put away.

John had patched up things as best he could, in the vegie patch. And, later in the day, O strengthened the fences.

The two rows of little paw paw trees were growing quite well. Both John and I had put a lot of time into making sure they were well watered, likewise the various patches of pumpkins and melons that were on mounds around the general garden area. I also had a sprinkler on the lime and lemon trees, regularly.

The foot traffic of the last week or so around the kitchen tent and campfire area had worn down the grass in places, and it would need sustained watering to bring it back to sound condition.