Gary's going to be the new fire & rescue brigade captain! Naturally this has led to endless bad taste jokes between us & general sniggering juvenile comedy. We had some sort of information session last night with Max, who is the Executive Something Or Other from a dark obscure administrative branch of the state fire & emergency services. There were lots of flow charts and phrases like "refer to your sub sector regional infrastructure officer" so we just quietly went into a Homer Simpson blank state until it was time to have a beer in the social club.
Max asked if we had a media liaison officer; there was a brief comatose silence, then Gary proudly pointed at me. "Anna's written a really good article about us for the Dust." Max was pleased. "It's vital to promote the values and accessibility of the brigades to the public," he commented. Clearly Max is unfamiliar with my writing style. We'll just let him drive happily off into the outback none the wiser, shall we?
Tonight I trained Tracey up in how to use the two ways and talk in official fire & rescue language. It's very formal and hard to get the knack of at first, so I sat her down opposite me and practiced with light globe boxes as pretend handsets. The exercise we had to follow requires one person to play Sector Commander and three others to be the various vehicles out in the field, which was really confusing until I hit on the idea of me playing all three vehicle operators in different voices ("American Truck Driver", "Nasal Aussie Sheila" and "Nervous New Guy With Frightened High Pitched Voice") while Tracey played Sector Commander. She got the hang of it and I managed to amuse myself.
In other exciting news, I finished levelling & planting the front strip of the yard and am now terracing the main front area, mainly as a means of avoiding doing boringboringboring plastering work in the lounge or having to confront the cockroach assault which will take place when I get round to gutting the kitchen. But it will be satisfying to see the bougainvillea and Indian bean trees growing up along the fence line; one day they will provide shade and privacy across the front of the house.
By then, however, we will probably be living in cheerful squalor at the bush compound. Latest update is that it's on Sherwood Station land but is technically crown land (as is the case with many stations - they all operate on 99 year leases etc). So we'll have to get the OK from the shire, which shouldn't be a problem - the place has been there, tenanted, for several generations. Gary is looking forward to tinkering with his motorcycles and I am looking forward to sleeping under my big mozzie net under the jacarandas with the pet pigs.
Lots of my aboriginal neighbours stopping to chat about my landscaping; individually, they are often really lovely; then they go home and go berserk. Jeffrey from Wiluna (one of the chronic fence clingers) stopped to chat and asked me if I was married ("Yes, he's just out the back practising with his police truncheon"), then asked if we had any grog ("No, we're Mormons").
I love it here.
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