You'll all be astonished to hear that today was...crazy! I should mention right off that as I write we have a small bat flying around in the main shed right over my head, I've just pulled the fly strip curtain back so it can echo-locate the opening but it's just going round and round and round and we're getting dizzy.
Anyway, first thing this morning Gary gets up to have his cuppa and throws up wildly as he runs for the toilet because it's all suddenly exploding out the other end. Despite my entreaties he insisted on going to work, so when I got to the hostel I rang the hospital to see if he could pop in to see one of the doctors. Five minutes later I had the same nasty symptoms, so we both ended up at casualty with the nurses freaking out ("Don't touch anything! Stay on the other side of the room!"), then Doctor Diane came out and decided that we have some kind of dreaded gastro-lurgy thing that someone brought in from Perth and which is steadily decimating Meekatharra.
We were given leper certificates and told to go home immediately and not see or touch anyone for 24 hours while we force giant horse pills down our throats. Hopefully I haven't infected the entire aged care hostel. We collected our tablets from Mena, the Egyptian chemist, who pushed them to us with a stick from behind the safety of his dispensing counter, then went home to lie on the sofa eating icy poles and watching daytime TV, but this didn't happen because as soon as we walked in the door we got a fire and rescue alert call to attend a crashing plane at the airport.
It was the call we're all terrified of, but we raced to the station and everyone piled into the trucks, still pulling on our gear as we took off, frantically repeating our plane crash drill procedures to each other while Gary drove and assigned us our roles on site. It was really freaky - we could SEE the plane circling overhead, waiting for all the emergency services to assemble at the runway. It was a twin engine plane with one engine out and they didn't know if their landing gear was operational or what. We pulled balaclavas and goggles on, zipping and velcroing our uniforms up tight, really scared because your first priority is personnel rescue, and aviation fuel can just spark and explode as you're getting people out. My job was foam protection with the main hose, I had the most awful images in my mind and thought how terrifying it must be for the pilot and passengers to see us all lined up at the runway, waiting.
Anyway, the plane came in, they got the landing gear down, and the pilot landed perfectly, then got out and nearly barfed on the tarmac; the single passenger was escorted out by the ambos (shock). So thank GOD it didn't crash. We had a debriefing with the airport staff and police in the car park while the resident bungarra, Barney, strolled up to see what was going on; it doesn't get more outback than that!
At least the tablets are working and we managed to spend most of the day snoozing until it was time to take our household rubbish to the tip and fossick for treasures.
The bat is getting tired and seems about to land on my desk, so I better see what I can do to help it out. Tomorrow: chicken killin' time.
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