A Random Lifestyle

Meekatharra is the perfect cure for OCD production management obsesssion - you can't schedule a thing, stuff happens sort of by osmosis or something, and you never know what's going to happen next. A year ago it would have given me a complete nervous breakdown, but now I'm getting the hang of it and loving it. Gary and Cam are a total godsend; they get all embarrassed when I tell them how much I appreciate their help and friendship. I am so used to doing stuff on my own that I find it challenging to accept all their generosity, but to them it's the right thing to do; I lavish them with food, cold drinks and their favourite booze and do my best to be a good outback sheila.

Gary is an absolute gem; he buys all the groceries and drinks and just assumes it's his job to drive me to the shops or anywhere I want to go - I'm not used to it! But he doesn't treat me like I'm some little housewife or anything - when we went out to the stockyards he just assumed I'd be capable of driving the big tipper truck (which I did), and showed me how to operate the monster bulldozer (awesome). He's been showing me all the secret back roads and tracks around town, filling me in on who's who, and helping me understand how things work out here. Tomorrow we're going to the tip to rummage up stuff with which to make a chook pen, then he's bringing the bobcat around to get the yard levelled out.

Everyone is so used to solving problems themselves; I still tend to resort to "who can I hire" and "where can I buy...", when the outback answer is "what can we build from things from the tip", "who do we know who has some stuff lying around in their yard" and "how can we do this ourselves". It's all slow paced - you lean against the back of the ute and talk it through for half an hour or so, wander around the house, go to the pub and enlist whoever you might run into, swapping a carton of beer or a few bags of cement in exchange for whatever you need.

The heat slows things down. It's good. At night we sit next to each other and do our blogs, facebook and computer stuff, sharing music off iTunes and complaining about the hot slathering dogs under our feet. By two am it's usually cool enough to try and sleep. During the day, you just take it slow and do what you need to do, stick your head in the pool and go to the pub when it's too hot to work. It's easy.