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Further Adventures of The Sandhills
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Going to The Solomons
Mood:
 happy
Well, this is the night before the holiday begins! We are here in Darwin, at a mate's place just filling in time before the plane goes at 1.35pm on Thursday. The last week has been taken up fully with spending money like we won lotto. The purpose of this was to buy and fit out the new Landcruiser we chose to replace the F Word. The new car is only 4 years old, and still like brand new, with only 40,000ks on the clock. It truly was just driven by a little old lady to church every Sunday, well, not quite...it was an executive's car, and he never took it off the black top, and hardly ever drove it either!! Heck, it even still SMELLS new! We took it on a dirt road to view a block of land at Bynoe Harbour the other day and it nearly made Easy cry to get it dirty!!! So far, we have fitted new seat covers, upgraded the suspension, bought a set of Black Widow drawers to fit to it, and fitted a new larger exhaust system and also fitted a Steinbauer chip to make it go better. It is pure pleasure to drive, and really nice to be able to just park in any space at the supermarkets after having to find a truck sized space for the F Word every time we went any where. Now, we are having our long awaited holiday in the Solomon Islands for the next week, and wouldn't you know it...the weather forcast is for rain the entire week!!!! I can't take a trick...I booked it now thinking that the weather would be beautiful in the middle of the dry season!!! We have bought snorkel sets to go and look at all the pretty fish, and HEAPS of fishing gear to catch all the big fish.....the diet is going to be fish and cray fish all week....how will we cope????? I'll tell ya next time I add to the web log folks! Cheers until then.......
Posted by rockgoc
at 7:32 AM EDT
Sunday, 21 June 2009
A Lot Can Happen In A Month!
Mood:
 incredulous
Well, there we were at the Cattleman's rodeo in Kununurra on Saturday night. Me...being responsible was drinking water all night and the other half was having a lovely time catching up with people he knows from all over the place...beers and talking .....you know the drill. At the end of the rodeo events Jan decides "Time to go home." and we join the queue of vehicles all trundling down a VERY dusty road out of the place. So dusty that you are hard pressed to see more than a car length in front of you! They should have watered the road....it's really dangerous.....and a vehicle in front of ours is barely moving in the gloom doing oh, say 15kmph. Jan gets a look up the road as the dust clears for a second, and she sees a long stretch of clear road to the tail lights of the next vehicle, so she decides after sticking behind the slow vehicle for maybe 5 minutes, to just slide on around him. No harm in that.....we are only travelling at about 40kmp tops, and there is a clear stretch ahead, so carefully, around we go. And that's where it all goes horribly pear shaped folks...... Easy yells out "There's a corner!" and, because Jan has never travelled this road before, and the lights are struggling with the gloom,she can't possibly know about the corner, especially as there is NO road signs whatsoever to warn us about it! OK , you all know what to do in a slide right? Yep, you keep a little bit of power on and steer into the slide. Sure.....in theory it should work, and this is precisely what Jan does...until the left rear tyre blows under the weight of 3 tonnes of truck sliding on it, and in a blink, we go o-v-e-r and up side down! Wow! So THIS is what it's like to roll a vehicle? All very surreal, but the real bit is the moment Jan's head connects with the descending roof, and it's just all wrong, and upside down and we are hanging by our seatbelts and Jan's head is behaving like a leaking tap.....and bless it, the F-Word is still running....UPSIDE DOWN!! Hmmmm, that's interesting! So it gets turned off, we both are asking if each other is ok not quite beleiveing we are still alive, and then Easy starts kicking the back window out because he can't get out his side it's so squashed, and asking me if I can get out too as someone outside is yelling there's fuel leaking all over the place. Hey, lucky I have lost a bit of weight lately!!!! I eel my way out of the driver's side window....just, and collect a shirtful of spear grass prickles on the way. There are people and vehicles all over the place and we are very quickly and professionally taken care of by a very nice lady who wraps Jan's head in .....a nappy!!! Yeah it was clean!!! Did the job. Easy escaped with a couple of scratches and would you believe this......of course you will......his bloody HAT and TOOTHPICK were still in place!!!!! What a legend!!!! The ambos and the police all did their jobs and we went to hospital and I got ex rayed and 7 staples in my poor bruised and dented scone, and we eventually got home around 12.30am. I am so sore today I feel like I have been beaten to a pulp, and wish I could sleep!! The old brain is in so much overdrive with all the stuff we will have to do with insurance and making new plans etc, that I just can't sleep. I'll definitely be seeing the chiropractor next week with my neck, even though it's not showing any damage via ex ray, there is some stuff going on with it. I reckon half the trouble is from the damn collar they whack on you in case of spinal injury. Sooo tight and restrictive as they kept telling me it has to be, that it created it's own bruising! Now we have to wait and see what the insurance people come up with......there are going to be some issues with that I think. And do you know THE most disturbing part of all this is the fact that even though our friends stripped the whole vehicle of anything we thought might get stolen overnight, including all the wheels, thieves STILL managed to strip even more stuff from inside the ruined interior and they even had started to remove the bloody shock absorbers from under it!!! We lost the uhf radio, the DVD/Stereo player/GPS system (they did leave the screen for this unit...what use it could possibly be with out that I don't know!) the two Lightforce driving lights, and they even went right through the upside down glovebox and took manuals, and small stuff like leatherman tools and a stubby cooler!!! Unbelievable. I hope they choke on their new toys. We are just so grateful to our friends who spent a considerable amount of time cleaning out the vehicle and transporting all the stuff (HEAPS of STUFF!) to a secure shed for us while we were at the hospital. They are priceless. So, Lyndal and Trevor, Dub and Butt Butt, Meg and Raluff......guess we will see you when we see you...... We still intend to go on our trip to the Solomons, as it will be the last holiday we take for a loooong time I reckon. Easy is going to see if he can get his old job back in Newman and I guess I will have to stay put for a bit...we will just have to see what is available here. Can't go anywhere with out a tug vehicle. We are blessed to have the unlimited use of a mate's vehicle until we get another one. THAT was at the end of the month of May! Since that awful night, a heck of a lot has happened in this camp, and I will try to keep it interesting. The insurance company came through and wrote the truck completely off. The pay out was a real surprise...a nice one... and we are only out of pocket by a couple of thousand. They had quite a bit of trouble finding something to compare the vehicle with as far as pricing it. Well, lets face it, the old FWord really was unique! We were lucky when looking for another vehicle, to find a near new 2005 Toyota GXL Turbo Diesel Landcruiser in Darwin. This vehicle has "only been driven on Sundays by a little old business man" so is in immaculate condition, and never been off the bitumen. Downsizing is the sensible thing to do here because we never did upsize the caravan like we had planned , so there is no longer the need for the huge F Truck to haul it. We are flying to Darwin in early July, picking up the new vehicle, and then beginning the process of fitting it out with a drawer system, plus upgrading the suspension. This is necessary to pull heavy caravans like our Bushtracker, and as we are on the road full time, you can imagine all the "stuff"...read...boystoys...."we" have accumulated over the last 7 years of travelling. We will have to cull a lot of it now though as there is no way we can fit all of what was in the back of the F Truck, into a mere Landcruiser! The other bit of news is that we have decided to return to our old jobs at Newman in order to amass some serious money. The bank balance has taken a bit of a hammering since we have been in Kununurra....the wages are pretty scungey compared with what we earnt in the Pilbara, and because Jan was not working for much of the 8 months we have been here, SHE NEEDS TO!! Easy has his old job back, but Jan's work has no vacancy at the moment, but she is confident there will be something by the time we get back there in mid August. As strange as it seems, it will be good to go back there...to see the old friends. We are not looking forward to the red dirt. And before we go back there, we have one more nice thing to look forward to...we have a week's holiday in the Solomon Islands in July. That was booked months ago, and we decided that we needed to have this holiday even after the accident, in fact probably more so. Jan's daughter and husband are coming with us so it will be a great reunion and a chance to catch up with all their news face to face. They are going to be 1st time parents in December or January next year! Can't wait to see them!!  A trip to Tassie for a combined 50th birthday (Easy's) and the arrival of baby Scott is a definate happening, so we are going to be busy having fun then!!!! And on the way back to Newman, we are going to relax and be tourists and see all the things and places we missed on the way up to here. Fishing is big on the agenda, even though we will have been ruined for that activity over in the capitol of fishing...Solomons. So, there you have it. Back to the dust for at least 2 years, although Easy is talking only 12 months. We will see. The need to have a base to return to is becoming obvious. We both feel like we need to be somewhere of our own on a block of dirt, and now the question is where?? Better end this or I will run out of web space! Ciao for now......Jan O & Easy | |
Posted by rockgoc
at 5:33 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, 22 June 2009 9:14 PM EDT
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Back in the Big Smoke
Mood:
 a-ok
Well, here I am back in the big smoke of Perth having had my eyes lasered for the second time in 9 months. This time they did each eye differently, so I have one eye for reading and the other one for long distance. Hope it stays good this time! Actually they are not nearly as sore and dry as last time because I reckon there was not as much correction to do. I am going to keep my reading glasses just in case I need to have them again in the future and I will still have the frames. They are nice "Versace" frames...no I did not get these on purpose, it just happened that way. Have done as little shopping as I could get away with this time as I don't do shopping very well. I am finding that I am pining to get back to the fishing!!!! Oh and Easy as well!!! Last month, I lost my brand new rod and reel when I cast it into the Ord River just beside the diversion dam wall. Was not something I did on impulse either. I had a large bait fish on and the line got a tangle and of course as I cast, the weight of the fish just whipped the whole lot out of my grip and into the drink! Was I pissed off or what!? I'd used this rod twice! It was to be the one I take to the Solomon Islands on holidays.....not any more. The water is very fast flowing and full of saltwater crocs at this part of the river, so I had no hope whatsoever of getting the rod back out. Any way, good old Easy has now chosen me another one with a different sort of reel and I am much more happy with this one. It casts better and gets no tangles either. The rod is nicer too, and the whole lot is cheaper. Well, you can't keep chucking $450.00 worth of gear in the drink can ya? Can't wait to get back to Kununurra so I can go fishing!! I will be down at the water on Thursday morning I reckon.... Saw the latest Hugh Jackman movie today.....:X-Men Wolverine the Origin" BOY is he yummy! This was a double treat for me as I love going to the movies and the last chance I got was 5 years ago! We are actually in our last months of living in Kununurra now. In The very last week of June, after a visit from his Mum and her partner, we will pack up and head for The Bungle Bungles to camp out there for a few days in our little tent. Easy has only seen the slightest little bit of this beautiful national park, and to do the place justice, you have to camp there a few days and walk. After this, we will decamp completely, and take the caravan up to a mate's block in Darwin, before we fly out to Brisbane, to join up with Christy and Tant for our week long Solomon Islands holiday. This is a much anticipated trip and the 1st time we have seen them for 3 years, since their wedding. On our return, we will make a decision as to how long we will stay around in Darwin before we head over to Queensland via the Savannah Way, a highway (dirt track) which follows the Gulf country and into areas neither of us has ever been in before. THIS is what we were meant to be doing all along...not stopping for ages and working!! Why does work always have to spoil things?? We will eventually end up behind Cairns/Innisfail on the Atherton Tablelands to visit a long time mate of Jan's and her partner, and to have a bit of a squizz around at land up that way. We will have to settle down eventually, and we are thinking that around this area may be the place for us if the land prices come down from rather lofty heights. From there, we will trundle on to Mackay to some friends Jan has known for even longer, and whom we both want to catch up with for some good old home spun friendship...we miss the real long time friends, and , family, for Jan is getting real important.....I know I know...I can hear some of you going "WHAT!?" Well, we have been over in the west near Easy's family for the last 5 years, so now it's Jan's turn. Easy's ok with all this "as long as it's not COLD" I must admit, this last week in Perth, the weather has been nice, but today is a little bit on the cool side and it is not sitting too well with me! I must be used to the tropics OH DEAR!!! I will stop here, as it is obvious that there is nothing else to talk about. Hope you are all well, as we are. Catch up with you later eh?
Posted by rockgoc
at 2:29 AM EDT
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
The Weekend
Mood:
 bright
Once again, we went out to the Keep River, to our favorite spot. It was the Anzac Day long weekend, so we expected to see quite a few out there. Wasn't too bad...just dusty with all the vehicles driving back and forth. And of course there was the few on quad bikes who had to keep going past our camp at speed, causing more dust than was comfortable. I wanted to string a wire across the road about throat height, but Easy wouldn't let me.......... We arrived about 8am on Saturday and set up camp with our little tent we bought when we 1st arrived in Kununurra. It's years since we have camped out and we haven't got much in the way of camping gear with us any more (it's all in the container in Tassie) but we managed. The tides were huge this weekend..about 7 meters, so the fishing was very much when you can get the line to stay in front of you....we timed the turn of the tide, and you get exactly 5 minutes of no movement before the water starts to rush either back out or in, and I mean RUSH! Dead low is when we did most of our fishing, but because the water is so far down the bank, it's a case of going in up to your ankles in mud or stay out and have to cast further. No prizes for guessing who did what!! We saw huge crocs for the 1st time here too. On the incoming tides they were just cruising in the shallows on the opposite bank from us, snapping up fish every now and then. We could hear them all night ,slapping the water, and the fish were making such a racket jumping out of the water that I didn't get more than an hour's sleep at the most. We took the gennie to run a light at night and the little desk fan as it was pretty warm and humid for this time if year. I appreciated the fan no end, but we had to actually turn it off at around 2am as it was too cold!! Didn't do very well in the fish department. Easy caught a nice 70cm on his hand line...by default really...the thing hooked itself unnoticed by us, and then proceeded to swim across the other 3 lines we had in on rods, before we realized that there was a fish on!! The only other fish worth noting was a smaller barra which spat the bait right at Easy's feet as he was hauling it up the bank. Fish one, Easy none... I didn't even hook one the whole weekend! While Easy was away getting firewood and live bait I had all three rods going off at the same time at one stage...as I predicted...but couldn't hook anything. I think the fish were being pretty crafty as they seemed to take the bait and hold it for a long time before spitting it out. You really need fresh live bait, and all we had was mullet we caught the day before and chilled down. We need to find the live bait spots out there, so next weekend we intend to take a day just exploring up that way. It has suddenly just hit Easy that we don't have all that much longer here. Just over 9 weeks in fact. I am returning to the Laser Eye Clinic next month to have them re-done. The doc did say I might need to do this as the corrections were pretty drastic on my eyes the first time. It's a freebie except for the airfare, so I am going to do it. What prompted me to go back was having to get a pair of reading glasses again., I have been kidding myself for ages that I could do with the little magnifying glasses you can buy at the two dollar shops, and they HAVE been ok...up until recently. When I got the prescription ones last week, I couldn't believe how bad my short sight had been... Even worse than I thought. Well, I HAD been squinting for a while. They said at the clinic that I could have one or the other corrected, and I chose to have my long sight corrected, but the both visions were really great for a while, so I didn't think any more of it. I'm hoping that things will settle down better once I have it all done again. Talk about bionic eyes!! At the beginning of last week, on the way to work, Easy spied this little freshwater croc (see videos) on the diversion dam wall as they were driving along it. According to him, there was a need to remove said croc, so he decided to do it. He enlisted the help of a fuel truck driver to "keep the sharp end busy" while he picked up it's tail, and then when he managed to grab it, he threw it over the railing into the lake. It seemed pretty lively to me, but Easy reckons it "wasn't real well, and had blood on it's snout" so maybe it had been hit by traffic before hand. By the time he had finished doing his Steve Irwin impression, there must have been 30 cars and trucks banked up waiting to pass, and some backpacker fruit pickers took the videos. Not your average traffic stopper eh? Well, that's about it for this week. Until the next exciting installment, I'll say Cheers Dears, from Jan O & Easy xx
Posted by rockgoc
at 3:35 AM EDT
Monday, 13 April 2009
Happy Easter
Mood:
 celebratory
So, how was your Easter? Easy had Saturday and Sunday off work, so we went fishing....of course! The 1st day we went way out to the Keep River, which is into the NT, and up towards the coast. It is a very popular fishing spot for keen anglers who don't mind roughing things, and we were on the road by 5am with 2 other vehicles of mates from Easy's work. Takes a while to do the 81ks as it is on a station but the roads are just bush tracks, and it hasn't been open from the wet season all that long. Well, to cut a very long story short, one of the vehicles got a little bit bogged, so we all pulled up to haul him out, then it was our turn to drive through what looked like a bit of a soft patch of black sandy soil and it was actually a detour around a big slop hole. I got out to film Easy going through it, and got some excellent footage of him bogging to the diffs in the space of a couple of feet! Hmmm, not what we were expecting to happen. The F-Truck (our vehicle) is very very heavy...around 3 1/2 tonnes so it just went straight down where every one else just skipped across. Bugger!!! And the more he tried to extricate himself, the worse it got. The bog, we found out later, was really a small soak under the road, and had turned it into a quicksand, so the whole truck was held fast like it was in a suction. Three vehicles couldn't move it under tow, and at one stage there, it looked like we would be there until the next wet season! Luckily, the local RAC man happened to drive up behind us, and in no time at all he had an exhaust bag under the rear and we jammed logs under the wheels until the whole rig was high and dry, and then he snatched it out using 2 vehicles side by side. Oh man was I glad by then! We were all hot as buggery, and covered in grey mud from digging under the truck and generally groveling around trying to get the suction broken from underneath. The one benefit of this mud bath was that our skin was as smooth as a baby's bum after we pealed the dried mud off!!! Absolutely amazing! Not so great for hairy males's legs though!! You should have heard them yelping as we ripped the mud off! Hilarious!!! Naice legs boys!!! So, when I get some pics from the others I'll send one on for you to see the great effie bog! All the Toyota drivers thought it was all very funny and rubbed it in constantly. We were fortunate enough to see this huge bee hive up in a tree right near where were got bogged...but none of us felt like braving the wroth of the bees to steal any honeycombe. Too far to the Drs!! Finally we arrived at a good fishing spot, and quickly set up our lines, the whole time listening to monster fish slapping the water out in the middle of the river. It was about 10am by now and the tide was going out, and so were the fish. You should have heard the howls from the blokes each time a fish would launch itself out of the water! Trouble was, they were doing it so far out that we had no hope of getting a bait to them, so we just had to be content with a few good runs but no hookups. This place is also "very crocky".....the snapping handbags are HUGE down this way, and we did not want to be morning tea for any of them, so we had to keep a respectable distance from the water's edge. A bit hard when the bank was steep and the tide going out at a rate of knots. After a few hours of this, some of the mates decided to go home and chill out for the rest of the day, leaving 3 of us to it. Would you believe, not 5 minutes after they left, I got a fairly solid strike on a dead mullet which I had left sitting out in the water for about half an hour?! Easy went ballistic, as he does! And started running up and down like a dog in a cage, shouting instructions to me like "Well get up off your chair woman, and at least look interested!!! Steady steady, DON'T reef at it, just wind....oh have you lost it? Damn! NOOOO It's still on it's still on!!!!!! Reel it in...oh you've got a SALMON!!!" Roughly translated...means that I usually fish sitting in my director's chair and I don't even get up to wind them in...unless galvanised by my dearly beloved's frenzy. And yes it was a very nice threadfin salmon. We love threadfin salmon and it is going to be dinner tonight done in coconut cream and chilli, lemon grass, garlic, and coriander and turmeric and ginger and Easy will love it despite his protests that I will be "buggering up a good fish!" The diet's going well, so I will have one night off in case you thought I was abandoning things! We dragged our weary selves home shortly after that as it was going to be dark before we got out of there, and we had bent the bull bar upwards while trying to get a tow point to get out of the bog, so the spotlights were about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.('Nother story) Despite being bone weary, I could NOT sleep for thinking about my big day and I have a sneaking suspicion that I "have caught the fishing bug." So........next day, we met up with one of the fishing buddies again, and we headed off to some new spots we hadn't seen yet, just on the outside of Kununurra, down on the Ord River. We went well and truly off road down through all the flood plains of deep sand, getting the mate bogged in the process (he hadn't let his tyres down had he!?) but the F-Word (Our F-Truck) is a sand machine and just sailed through everything! Yaaayy!! After spending a few hours where we were, none of us got anything like a decent bite, but it was such a lovely spot, and I could get in and have a bit of a soak with out getting eaten...as the water was running over rapids and you can see them coming at you through rapids!! I tried to drown my phone again (3rd one I have done this to!!) but it survived!!! I must learn to take phones out of pockets before going swimming! The mate had husbandly duties to go home for as his long suffering wife had worked the whole week end and had not had any time with him at all, so we two pressed on with the task of fishing, and drove down to our favorite place under the Dunham River bridge just outside Kununurra. We had called in there in the morning and not even a catfish was stirring, so we expected it to have improved a bit by late afternoon, but nothing had changed, and the water was like a millpond. I got some great reflection photos though and hope you think so too. Some huge rain clouds came overhead and it was like some one had turned on a giant shower in a small area. None of it came where we were, so it only made things more humid and sticky...great!!! NOT!! We watched quite a few blokes come and go with all sorts of fishing gear, and not one of them got even a nibble...same as us. But we were in no hurry to leave, and left our baits in the water around the middle of the small river. Not even a cattie.....relaxing....feeling lazy, when Easy said, "Look, I'll put one more live bait on each line and then we'll call it a day hey?" I had to agree as it was getting dark, and I definitely don't like being down there after dark...mossies and a huge croc down there, and that's where I hooked the croc last time remember? So, new live bait on, nothing...nothing.. Ok we will reel lines in and and pack up, when my line started to spool......and spool......and SPOOL!!! Like I always do, I leaned over and picked it up and Easy started frothing at the mouth and insisting I stand up at least...etc etc.....ok, I probably only have a big cattie.....until this lovely great silver BARRA hurled himself up out of the water! OH JOY!! They do look great when they leap like that, and I certainly gave it my full attention then! I got him in forth with, and Easy turned into a mad Paparazzi insisting I have "just let me take another photo in case this one isn't any good...just another one!" I'm glad he did, and that he was so excited about MY fish. Poor bugger hasn't got a decent fish on either day, but I was pretty chuffed about the last two days. Now he is saying stuff like "OK We will now teach you how to gut and fillet the fish you catch." and I am saying stuff like "Uhh Uhhhh! It's like the BBQ rule...I cook inside, YOU cook on the BBQ, so I catch the dinner, YOU do all the nasty stuff with it! It's the MAN'S thing....." We now have a few huge fish scales on the floor outside...it's a badge of honour here...you wouldn't understand....... Have to go now and start getting the dinner stuff together....oh I can't WAIT to eat it! We had 1/2 hour old barra for dinner last night with a bottle of white wine...Easy really DID go all out didn't he? Wonder what he'll produce to go with tonight's? Cheers Dears, catch you all later and hope your Easter was as good as mine was! Jan O & Easy | |
Posted by rockgoc
at 2:49 AM EDT
Monday, 6 April 2009
Got my 1st Barra !!!
Mood:
 happy
At last ! Easy and I went down to the Dunham River just next to the bridge (where he got HIS 1st Kununurra barra) and I got an undersized barra. It wasn't terribly exciting but my 1st one nonetheless. As luck would have it, he was way downstream so I had to get the hook out of deep down in its' throat myself. No luck, no pliers, so the fish was looking a bit poorly by the time another fisherman came walking up the bank, and got it out for me. Easy got to the scene just as I was contemplating putting the fish on ice in the esky even though it was undersized...couldn't put a dead one back in the river!! It looked pretty well past it, so I did anyway. A few minutes later, Easy heard it flapping around in the esky, so he tried reviving it in the water. Nup, no good, but did I want a photo with it because it was my 1st one? I said no way, too small, but he went to get the camera anyway, and amazingly, the fish revived just as he got back with the camera and swam away!!! We went home for a nanna nap, and came back late in the day for another go as I was feeling the fishing bug biting (taken a while!) I got myself a nice little fish, again undersized (see photo) but bigger than the 1st one so the picture had to be taken to shut Easy up! The sun had gone down and dusk was bringing out the mossies and I was feeling a bit nervous about the snapping handbags which we have seen right where we were standing, when I had a HUGE hit on my line. It felt like I had hooked up with a tank! The line was just PEELING off the reel, and I let it go for a bit, thinking I would get a really good hookup and not lose the biggest fish I had ever seen ! Metre club here I come !!! I locked up the reel and started to haul back on the big load...................when up popped a bloody CROCODILE HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had hooked a croc!!!!!!!!!!!! "Jesus! What do I do NOW?" I shouted to Easy.....ok I actually didn't say THAT, but I can't repeat what I DID say! "Reel it in!" says he!.......WHAAATTTTT!!?? Reel a croc in? You gotta be joking. Well, I had a go at it, but it was a losing battle as the thing cruised down stream around the bridge pylon, dragging me down the bank kicking and screaming.......well, ok I wasn't quite kicking and screaming but I was pretty nervous about what I would do IF I landed it! Thank goodness the line finally snapped and he disappeared with my fish and my hook and sinker the bludger! Well THAT was a bit of fun...what's next? Nothing but catfish, and it was very dark by now and the mossies were ferocious, so we went home. Watch out next weekend! I will get a big one................... | |
Posted by rockgoc
at 2:46 AM EDT
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
I won I won!!!!!
Mood:
incredulous
Hey! I just won a $650.00 stainless steel BBQ in a photo competition in the Caravan World magazine!! YIP YAAAARRR! We were a bit envious of some mates of ours here who won it in the last month's comp, and we all had a bbq with the new gear last week end!! Now WE have one to play with too!!! It's got a case of stainless steel tools to go with it too!! NOICE!!!
Posted by rockgoc
at 12:01 AM EDT
Thursday, 19 March 2009
The Dry Season's Nearly Here!
Mood:
 surprised
Yip YAAAR ! The wet is nearly over.......as you can tell, I don't enjoy humidity and mould and getting eaten alive by bugs and mossies...... Actually, the Wet was a bit of a flop. There were only 2or 3 really wet weeks, where it pelted down every day. During one of those weeks, Jan was on her usual delivery run to the small town of Wyndham, and the heavens simply refused to close up. Consequently, she spent the whole day absolutely saturated to the skin, delivering freight (which needed to be kept dry !!) but at least she was cool all day instead of being in a lather of sweat and misery. The job was VERY physical, and one Monday, after being in a freezer for most of the day shifting tonnes of stock around, Jan decided she'd had enough and started planning how she was going to resign. Well, as fate would have it, the next morning at 4.30am as she got out of bed, her back "let go" and she was bedridden for the next 3 days! It was NOT hard to say goodbye to that job. In fact I'd rate it as easily the worst one I'd had in a long time. My back is still twingey nearly 6 weeks later, and I've decided not to work again until I am in a different place. Unbeknown to me, Easy was not having much fun at HIS work either, and he decided to quit as well. He quickly got work at one of the huge fruit farms here driving the slasher and keeping the large fruit bins "up to the workers" out in the orchards. He absolutely loves it, and even though the pay is a pittance compared with what he was being paid in Newman, he is happy in his job. It's a break from sparky work, a real no brainer, but he is enjoying life again. He is also starting to catch barramundi after months of trying. They are only small ones, but at least he IS catching some now. We two have THE biggest fish jinx and regularly hear fishing buddies say how they can't understand why they are not catching fish....and this is always when we are there!!!! One of the blokes Jan worked with ,Tim, has a small cabin cruiser, and he and Easy hit it off when introduced, and as we all love fishing, it was a natural progression that we all go out on Tim's boat to try our luck. Tim and his girlfriend Mistie are younger than my kids, but we get on really well, and I think they enjoy us being on the boat with them. We have been both up and down the Ord river with them, and last week end we saw our 1st wild saltwater crocodiles. The 4 we saw were easily 16feet long, which is bigger than the boat, so we approached the bank where they were lying with great caution. One leapt into the water long before we got there, but the biggest one just sat leering at us with his huge toothy grin. Gave me the chills, and I refused to stay on the bank fishing with the others when we pulled up elsewhere a few hours later, especially after seeing the size of the slides into the water from the muddy bank. The boys caught a few small barra, but no trophy sized fish. We don't know what we are doing wrong, as we fish in the same sort of areas that we see in the fishing shows on tv.......very frustrating. I am getting some really nice photos from the boat as we cruise downstream. If you have seen the movie "Australia" then you will know the area we are in , and I have photographed the very same hills which featured. It's still too wet to drive very far along the same road I mentioned in the last post, but we have been to some of the waterfalls which were dry when we 1st arrived in Kununurra, and they are spectacular! Jan and Mistie were swimming with the aid of pool noodles in the Ord river a couple of weeks ago, and we swam right under a huge waterfall in a narrow grotto. Lots of fun! That was the weekend we all took small gas bbqs with us and we climbed up the bank to a cleared bbq area constructed by one of the eco touring companys which operate in the dry season. It was great to have a big gazebo with chairs and tables all to ourselves while we cooked our lunch. I doubt we would be able to do this once the tour company starts up again, so we were lucky. It's sort of the calm before the storm when everyone gets ready for the hoardes of rubberneckers who will arrive in about 4 weeks once its cooler. They don't know what they missed though because a lot of the waterfalls will no longer be flowing by the time they get here, and the huge rain cloud buildups and sudden drenching storms will also be long gone. We feel very privileged to have witnessed all of that, but I don't think I could live through another "build up".......which is why we are moving on at the end of June. The plan is to drive lock stock and barrel up to Darwin after Easy's Mum and her friend have returned home from their visit here, and we too will then fly off.......to Brisbane in order to start our overseas holiday. Yes folks, we are really going to leave Aussie shores and go o/s!! Easy has travelled abroad before, but Jan has never really wanted to...until now. It was a chance meeting between me and one of the directors of Bushtracker who made our caravan which sparked the decision. He had been to the Solomon Islands quite a few times on a sport fishing holiday, and loved it so much for it's unspoiled beauty, that he was on his way back for a 4th visit.....and he was chatting to me over dinner one night when his phone kept ringing. I asked why he didn't answer it and he said it was "only the tour place confirming his booking" So being a natural stickybeak, I asked all about the holiday, and he convinced me (didn't take much!) that it would be the perfect place to go. Look it up for yourself...the place is called MAVO LODGE in the Solomon Islands. It's a bit like Gilligan's Island according to those who have been there...no power after 9pm, all locals cooking your meals at the leafhaus which you live in right on the beach, and there's only room for 12 people, so we are going with Christy (Jan's daughter, and Tant her hubby) and we think we might have the place to ourselves!!! Of course the preparations have thrown me in to an absolute tis.......had to have all sorts of injections and get passports (THAT took nearly 3 months) and I am looking up anything I can find on the place...SOOO excited I can't wait, and it will all be over in 7 days....we leave from Brisbane on July 17th. After all that is over, we will drive down to Mackay to spend a little bit of time with some very dear and long time friends, and to see what the work situation is like. If we like it, we will probably find somewhere to stop for a while, and think about where we want to settle down. Yes.....don't faint, the time has come. It took 7 years and the current economic sitation to trigger these thoughts, although, for Jan, the discontent with being so far from family and good friends had been growing for a while. We don't have the 1st clue exactly where we want to settle, but it has to be neither tropical hot, nor snow cold, for both of us to be happy. Hmmmmm that makes it easy right?? NOOOOOTTTTTT!!!!! I keep pining for Tasmania, but we all know that is just not an option, both for the fact of its' isolation from the rest of Australia (that Bass Straight is a bugger to drive across) as well as the fact that's it's too cold for Easy, and he does deserve to live his life in comfort. Same goes for Jan as far as steamy humidity goes. It's just not going to happen. This leaves us with the choice of living on top of a range somewhere........cheaply........oh boy, this is really hard. So, we will start the search, but if any of you have any well kept secret spots, let us know!!! We can't wait to grow our own everything. Yes, we will be the strange wrinkled up old couple living in the bush surrounded by millions of animals and entertaining visitors by just being us. (I promise you will never see us featured on tv !!) Time to go...I have rabbited on long enough. Take care, hope you are well, would be nice to hear from some of you who might have dropped off the face of the earth...you know who you are... Welcome to the newcomers...you know who YOU are! Cheers Dears, From Jan O & Easy
Posted by rockgoc
at 1:28 AM EDT
Saturday, 13 December 2008
Finally ...someting to talk about!
Mood:
 chatty
Seems like such a long time since I had anything to tell you about, and looking back over the dates, it has been two months. I'll cut a long story short (not at all like me!) here and just skim over the details. Got back to Kununurra and waited and waited and waited for the F-Word to be fixed. Easy had to fly back to pick it up a couple of weeks later as I refuse to set foot in Darwin again while it's hot...read FOREVER!!! I don't know how people can live in that place. Like having a hot wet blanket thrown over you. Awful. Well, he's driving F-Word home and reporting at every opportunity that he gets into phone range that all's well, until the last spot. Exactly 30 seconds after the last cheery phonecall, he calls back to tell me that the airconditioner has "just blown up". AAGGGHHHHHH!!! Fast forward a couple of months........the F-Word still goes.....the aircon is still not fixed...but will be in February when the only decent air con mechanic in Kununurra can fit the job into his extremely busy schedule. No worries, we are used to waiting. We are both working...Easy with a small electrical contracting company, and Jan part time with a small company which supplies frozen and dry goods to remote roadhouses and blackfella communities. Easy, as usual is happy doing what he does, but Jan is struggling with the heat and humidity and also having issues with a particularly disagreeable male at work. In fact she quit last Friday, but the boss got her to stay...long story, the guy has major issues with women in general...like a red rag to a bull expecting Jan to work with a tosser like that!! We had a couple of days last week in the Purnululu National park. Easy had to wire up a new generator at the ranger station, and as we hadn't been there together yet (I was there 16 years ago) I decided to get time off work and go with him. Probably not the wisest move I ever made...no airconditioning....40 degrees.....95% humidity and you all know how much I like being hot don't you? Oh well, at least we got to go for a couple of little drives after he finished work for the day and I got some good pics. It was waaay too hot to walk into the gorges, plus being too late in the evening for the light to be much good, so we'll have a go next Dry season. Easy was pretty impressed with the Bungle Bungle ranges, and we did have some fun dodging the rain which threatened to strand us way out in the back blocks of the park when we went to have a gander at another part of the ranges. Saw a really cute little dingo puppy just sitting on the side of the road. I wonder if he was so young that he didn't know what we were? And on the same drive, we witnessed a big bush turkey male strutting around with his throat all puffed up and his wings hanging down, looking very aggressive. Don't know if he was trying to impress the girls somewhere or warning off another fella.....he was certainly a big bird though. We had some good storms pass through over night, and one actually put out a huge bush fire which was burning over the horizon from us, but which we could see at night reflecting off the low clouds. Easy and I went bush this week end for a bit of a gander at the countryside. We took the "old Halls Creek Road" to Wyndham along the course of the Ord River. Saw places which will be absolutely beautiful in the Wet Season, but probably inaccessible due to the roads being cut! If you have seen the movie "Australia", then remember the scenes of the homestead with the huge hills in the background? That's about where we were. It's all very different now that there has been a bit of rain about...very green and lush, and there was a huge deluge following us all day but never quite catching up with us. One interesting observation we made while watching the film......the part where they were hearding the cattle over the river was RIGHT where we had camped when we 1st got here. Yeah......"our camping spot!" We both decided the film was a bit of a flop. Nicole's acting..........oh brother! She settled down in the second half of the film and acted naturally, but in the beginning it was just cringeful. The supposedly brilliant scenery shots just didn't do it for us, in fact we thought the colour was pretty dissapointing. I guess it's because we know the areas they filmed in and to see them "droving cattle into the Bungle Bungle ranges at one stage was just laughable....this is a National Park......yeah yeah, I know.....no one else knows this...but it spoiled things by knowing. But I digress........The weekend trip would have been a great photo opportunity IF I had remembered to take a camera or two! Well, it started out as just a quickie trip into the Vallentine falls to see how much water was there after recent rain, but the thought of just returning with out seeing any more countryside was not an option, so we just kept going! The storm which followed us was pretty spectacular......a huge blue grey wall of water under some amazing cloud formations. At one stage, we were on a flood plane and looking back to the storm , there were hundreds of pure white birds flying up against the purple and blue sky with bright green trees and grass in the foreground. I kicked myself over and over for not having a camera, and even more when we got to Parry Lagoon and saw so many pied magpie geese, whistle ducks , burdekin ducks and stilts all grouped together on the billabong, seemingly going "nyah nyah you haven't got a cam-e-ra ! " It has been 16 years since I was last there, and the conservation nazis have moved in on the place erecting pine log barriers and walkways everywhere, restricting where you can go.......but the one good thing is that the birds are still there, if not in as much abundance as I remember. We'll go back next week end armed to the teeth with cameras, and I promise to post some photos. By the way, if you didn't know, I have moved my photo spot to another site called Picasa 3, so if you haven't already seen it, just let me know, as I have to "invite" you to see it for the first time, and then after that you should be able to just log onto the site. Until the next exciting episode................
Posted by rockgoc
at 11:47 PM EST
Friday, 10 October 2008
Got me the F-Word Blues
Mood:
 don't ask
Oh definately NOT HAPPY JAN! We are flying home to Kununurra on Sunday with what we can cram into 2 small carry alls. The damned truck is proving too hard for the clowns at Ford here in Darwin to fix. Monday, we left it with Ford, and when we rang them late in the day (after they failed to phone us as arranged) they announced they had found the fuel leak. WHAT???? "We have found a fuel leak from the fuel filter not being tight enough." they said. "O.K. that's good, but what about the problems it was put in the workshop for....like the fault it keeps coming up with and the dissapearing transmission fluid?" asked Easy. "Oh, we put another 2 lt of tranny fluid in and there's no leaks, so we don't know how come you guys have had to put another 8 lts in.....and it has not come up with any fault code, so we think it's from the battery terminals being loose, and they can cause all sorts of codes to come up." they said back. So, all week, we had to keep ringing them to see what progress had been made in finding this mysterious fault code and, as they would never return any calls, we started fronting up to the workshop counter. One day, we found the vehicle sitting out the back with no work being done on it at all!!! (This is a MAJOR Ford dealer in a capital city we are talking about!) So, Friday comes around, we have to have the vehicle back so we can drive back to Kununurra for work commitments, and we get there after phoning to make sure the car is ready to pick up (unfixed) and being told, "Sure come and get it!" No car....... ."Oh the service guy took it for a drive and it threw a fault code and lost all power!!!! He tried to ring Easy, but had one number written down wrong, so couldn't get through to him." ....which proves they had NEVER tried to ring us at all. So, this clown who decided to have one last joy ride, has been caught out by the very problem they said wasn't there! HOOOORAAAAAAAYYYYYYY! I have NEVER been so happy to have a car break down as I was this time around! So......now they are starting to make "it's an imported model...we can't do anything" noises. I am starting to think which current affairs program I can approach 1st! SO, we fly home in a tiny little plane in which we can only have 13kg of luggage each, which is why I can't bring home all the goodies I bought while we were here! DANG! We have loaded up with all Easys weird salty plums and red ginger, and my dried mango and we bought a cute little cast iron Hibachi griller, and a really cute little 12 volt leaf blower to get rid of the heaps and heaps of leaves which fall on the roof of the van every day from the huge old mahogany trees we are camped underneath at the caravan park. All these great toys and goodies will have to stay here with Easys mate where we have been staying until the vehicle is fixed and Easy can fly back to drive it home! Good things come to those who wait I guess. Darwin is still the same...buildup weather...stinking hot and humid as anything. The greenery is nice though and we had a great storm the other night and it dumped nearly an inch on us in half an hour. We hired a small car for the week, and spent a lot of time just toodling around revisiting places we had both lived in. I had to retrace my steps on one occasion to find the old house in Wanguri as the surrounds had changed so much! Easy was faced with an empty lot where the first house he ever lived in used to be, but the playground (dirty old creek and overgrown gully) was still the same! We went and visited an old family friend who is a really dear old lady,(Aunty West) and she was so pleased to see him it was lovely. Also had dinner with her daughter at the Trailer Boat Club and spent a really nice night outside in the balmy evening air. All things have to come to an end, and we are on our way home.....I must confess it will be nice to be back in our own place again. Hopefully, the next update will be on a happier note. Cheers dears from Jan O & Easy
Posted by rockgoc
at 9:49 PM EDT
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