Yet another day where I think, "This is great! I can't believe how lucky I am!" Cameron & Monica have both been over working on the house - Monica is a field assistant for the mining companies and is waiting for her next call out, so she's joined the work team here at Rancho Loco. It's great to have company as we plaster & paint & joke around. The house is basically a mess now but we're getting there. I poured 4 bottles of sulphuric acid down the drains and FINALLY it seems to have eaten through the dead grandpa or whatever they stuffed down there.
Gary's got track building work coming out of his ears, he's off to Peak Hill tomorrow and I go up on Wednesday afternoon in the bus with all the pets (not the chooks, but I am tempted...). There's no phone or internet reception, but he's drawn me a mud map and the back up plan is that if I'm not there by 5:00 pm he'll start backtracking to come and find me. It's a reasonably well travelled road anyway, it's just the two creek crossings which could hold me up. More adventures for Smokey!
So for a tiny feral town in the middle of nowhere, I am busy beyond all imagining. I feel like I'm running a farm, cooking for the workers, fencing off the animals, herding chooks. The hostel keeps screaming for more shifts and I give them what I can. We seem to be constantly busy doing things at Paddy's, fixing things at the house, doing washing and chores, swapping vehicles & trucks around, god knows what. I'm also becoming the Town Googler - got two shirts sent out for Chris, and now researching how to value an old comic book collection for Lynette, who may well have discovered a gold mine of old Phantom comics in a closet. Raelene wants help googling home loans, and Cameron has me googling Ebay for a conference table. Google this! Google that! I had no idea it was a skill, but it is.
On top of all that there's cleaning rooms at Paddy's for the mine workers, which is good fun - I get little inside tips and it's interesting to be tidying up things like drilling sample bags ("any spare gold lying around that you don't want..?"). The guys are funny, they tell me "Oh it's okay love I've made me own bed" and when I look, it's like a chimpanzee had a go at it, so I re-do it with that all-important "woman's touch" (placing the sheets so that they are actually covering the bed).
Rain holding off for now but sounds like there is more to come. Hope we don't get trapped at Peak Hill!
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