Communing With Nature

The blog's been quiet for the last few days but I've been busy - work at the hostel got really disorganised and crazy so I put my foot down and took a week off. Too many people nicking off for aboriginal funerals and anniversaries of funerals (!!!) - leaving me & Hazel to pretty much run the place.  My uber-boss, Norm (head of the nursing dept) is shaking his head at all the goings on and has agreed to try and sort things out. Whatever!

So we've been putting in lots of work at the bush camp and it's looking great. Gary is preoccupied with security and I think we're now up to 27 different locks and keys plus new tough security doors everywhere you look. I am applying a more organic, psychological approach using available materials and prickly native plants, although both of us agree that what we'd really like is a rooftop anti-aircraft missile launch pad above our home, like those lucky, lucky people in London. Personally I think we should update the Olympics to fit in with our modern age - all the contestants can take as many performance enhancing drugs as they like, have jet-propulsion aqua suits and various high-tech prosthetics, and there should be no security - just a free-for-all survivalist frenzy. The competitors should get extra points on a scale based on whose country spent the least taxpayer money, and be allowed to carry guns to defend themselves with.

Anyway, I'm digressing. It is far more important to tell you that we have these fabulous little finches which are called "red breasted robins" - they're black and white, with blindingly vivid scarlet chest and head markings, gorgeous. The wagtail follows me everywhere! It flits along next to me as I push the wheelbarrow around, sits under my chair and goes up & tells Smokey off. We have some falcons hanging around; Ethel has moved to the shady side of the compound, under the outdoor breezeway where she is happily ravaging George's succulent garden. We went out to Karralundi today to get some more chooks but Farmer John was away so we had to settle for a visit to the giant tyre pile at Cashman's instead. This kind of excitement overwhelms our weekends!