Excessive Leisure Shows on Feet

My feet are looking very leisured. Just the other day I had my first ever pedicure, which resulted in blood-red shiny Dracula-style toenails, and then this morning after aqua aerobics class I stood in the sun too long yapping with the other ladies; I came home to find I have a new flip flop tan line across each foot.

More news as it happens ..

Warm again in Townsville today. Warm enough for me to apply cooling peppermint foot lotion all over my arms and legs as well. It worked a treat.

Not altogether sorry to be leaving work

Yesterday was quite warm in Queensland’s North West, and as I showered in preparation for flying home in the afternoon, it got so warm as to be a verging on unpleasant in the tiny airless caravan bathroom. I was not very pleased when I turned on the cold tap and boiling warm water gushed out. The pipe that supplies the camp with water from the bores is laid above ground, which means that it really is impossible to have a cool shower after a hot day. But anyway, when I drew the shower curtain across I found I was sharing with this little frog! Such a cutie, and very clearly as surprised to see me as I was to see her (it must have been a she-frog in the girls showers, no?).

It is hard to permanently dampen my spirits on fly-home day. It is extremely lovely to be home now, and when I arrived I was greeted by so much bounty: for one, our flat seems like a spacious palace compared to the donger I stay in on site, and for another, Hayden has stocked up on all sorts of things I like to eat, plus many extra and extravagant birthday gifts.

Third, we have bounty in our tiny balcony garden: a fat green tomato, three lemons nearly the size of lemon-shaped golf balls, an enormous jalapeno chilli, basil enough to supply the world with pesto and a mysterious something growing keenly out of the compost pot. I have my suspicions about what it is, but I’m going to try to make sure before I tell.

Contrast & Irony

You'll agree it's ironic that the thing most appealing to me about working out at the mine is its surrounding landscape - of course, the landscape is the thing that is most altered by the activity of mining. I've been assuming that you got that.

It did strike me rather bluntly though, this morning as I was clearing all my old photo's off the work computer.

Desert Header

Race Day

I’m not fussed about the Melbourne Cup. I only went to see it once when I was in Melbourne, and only then because I was already living in Flemington – it seemed rude not to slap on my hat and waddle 100m down to the track to watch it in person.

I did catch it on the radio today. I had driven around to the other side of the pit from where the office is, to the West side where the truck drivers sit around in between times, smoking and flicking through FHM. There’s not much over there, just dirt and flies and huge machinery and picnic tables in the 40° sun, so I went directly into the crib hut to see a bloke about the whatsaname, and when I came out, my car was full of miners! About five of them had zoomed in there like flies; they were sitting in silence with the aircon and the race turned up on full. I sat in there and listened with them, but without much interest as I hadn’t even entered the sweep. It cost $50 to enter – and who’s got $50 to throw away on some horse that runs slow? Oh, miners do. People who get paid sh*tloads to work out in the middle of nowhere, that’s who.

Smoky Sunrise

I think I mentioned ages ago that my job at the mine site is finishing up. So why am I sending you a picture of the sun coming up from behind a pile of dirt? Because there has been another bushfire at our door, and it has been making for the most beautiful sunrises.

Like many temp jobs, this one is stretching out just a little longer than anyone anticipated. I think I said at the start that it was only going to be two months..