TIMEWARP POST BACKLOG!!

The internet has been particularly bad for the past week, leading to a lack of posts. These next few posts will be a back log that I have written in word and will copy on to the internet as soon as it works. Today is the 9^th of April by the way, Easter day for all you northern and western hemisphere people.

My boss’s family are here for easter and to help with the mustering which is going on right now. For those of you who don’t know the mustering is where he rounds up as many of his 10,000 head of cattle as he can, and counts, sorts, brands, tags, castrates all of them and sells the ones over a certain size. I’ve been mostly working the shop and working with the artists during this process and Kathleen has turned out some pretty good paintings. Better than the first one I was there for in my opinion. She is definitely quite the diva though. Today was supposed to be a painting day and they all showed up this morning but with Don away at the muster we had to have them come back on Wednesday which we told their driver Matthew, (who is a pretty cool guy) and they all seemed ok with it and they shopped at the store instead. Kathleen apparently didn’t get the message and kept trying to get me to give her paint. Later as I was giving Matthew some of the things that he bought from the store, Kathleen partially rolls down the window of her car and all I could see of her were her little eyes over the windows and her wagging finger as she yelled something at me in Arrente (their language) that ended in “painting”.

The other day I went for something close to a 16 or 17 mile walk. I walked down a road past the dump to where we watched the sunset the first time. It was very flat so I saw a lot of the bush but it’s still cool and it felt good to see something other than Don’s house or the shop for a while. But I have to say that I always forget how relatively few flys there are here on the homestead. I mean they are a bit annoying here but you can barely open your eyes out there with out being overrun. The back of my shirt was black being covered by them and whenever I would turn or bend over they would all fly up in this huge cloud like the bats under the bridge in Austin.

I’ve been using the exercise equipment here a bit, there is an elliptical, a stationary bike, a rowing machine and some weights. Many days there will be a big gap in time before customers show up so using that time to burn off some steam while still being around is good.