This certainly has been a very eventful week. The most major
news being that I went to town for the first time in two months. When I write
it down it doesn’t sound like it is that long of a time but it feels like it is
forever since I have seen more than ten people in one place at a time. Also
seeing buildings, and streets and having to obey things like speed limits and
staying on a particular side of the road are foreign to me now. Especially the
driving on the left side of the road. We came to a big intersection and I
really had no idea what was going on. Also we came to a roundabout and had I
been driving I definitely would have killed us. Not only do you have to stay on
the left side of the road but you go around the circle clockwise. Craziness.
BUT! I got myself an Akubra hat! For those of you that do not know I have a
small but formidable hat collection and I get a hat everywhere I go in the
world. Also others have brought me back hats from different places. But my
world hat collection would never be complete if I didn’t get an Akubra. Akubra
is a hat company in Australia and I have to say they are QUALITY hats. Very
nice. A bit pricy but worth every penny, you really do need a good hat out here
to keep away the elements. Plus my while most hats have a feather on the side,
my hat has a real tiger shark tooth on the headband. And a feather of a bird
that we hit with the ute.
BUT TOWN. It was weird being in real stores that have real
inventory and more than ten kinds of products. Also it was a bit strange to
actually need and use money again. There isn’t a lot of economic stimulus
happening at Delmore . . . . well
for the staff anyway.
OH AND BEER. I bought a whole case of beer which like
everything else in Australia besides kiwi fruit, is really really expensive.
But it was worth it, after oh so many days of hard work it is nice to finally
crack open a cold one.
Also while we were in town we climbed up one of the sides of
“THE GAP” which is where the Stuart highway crosses through a small mountain at
the south end of Alice Springs. The view from up there was awesome, I will put
up some pictures if I can. Also we saw some wallabies hopping around near the
top of the hill, but we couldn’t get that close to them before the jumped away.
We then drove over to meet Tom’s friend Greg who happens to
be an amateur radio. . . guy. I don’t really know the right name for it but he
has a giant radio antenna in his back yard that he can use to talk to people
all over the world. Pretty awesome.
Then it was off to the gas station where we hogged up two
diesel pumps and made off with 800 liters of fuel and two free meat pies from
the manager who is very appreciative of our business.
OH AND I ALMOST FORGOT, I crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. I
didn’t notice it the first time that I came out but the line is just north of
Alice Springs. It was funny because the park was full of old people and camper
vans on vacation and two filthy oil stained young guys with a beat up old ute
and four oil drums on the back. I was standing next to the monument, and one
guy comes up wearing slippers drinking some tea, looks at me wit my dusty hat,
petrol and paint stained shirt and cow manure encrusted boots, looks back at
the line of camper vans and says “So which one are you in?” Good times.
Back at Delmore when I opened the shop the next morning I
found an interesting sight. On the floor of the shop were three boxes of
blankets, and four boxes of tire tubes. The tiny mail plane would never carry
that much stuff and I doubt that a Fedex truck could handle the road conditions
here. So we decided that we had all been very good this year and that the
magical tire tube fairy had paid a visit to Delmore. Which actually was really
helpful because we were badly in need of some spare tires for the utes. It is
very dangerous to go out with out two spares on the back. Yes two.
Then two nights ago we decided that we were fed up with the
same dinner we’ve been having every night of essentially bacon meat and pasta
with some canned veggies and we decided to make a PIZZA. Keep in mind that
while I can stir fry stuff, none of us here have any sort of real cooking
ability, certainly not BAKING ability. Which as it turns out is much needed for
making pizza. Also keep in mind that there was a bit of drinking involved in
the process…… but we found a recipie online and went for it. It was one
particularly that didn’t involve yeast which we didn’t have but all the reviews
said it was good. We decided to make three pizzas because the pizza doughs that
we made didn’t look very big, so I started cutting up and cooking sausage and
vegetables for what I thought was three pizzas ……….. which turned out to be a lot. Oh, and did I mention that we
don’t have tomato sauce? In place of that we just cut up tomatoes and laid them
around with the other toppings. DESPITE all of the various ingredients that we
were lacking, we weren’t short of determination or beer, and the first two
turned out….pretty good. I don’t really know if you could actually call them
pizzas but they tasted good whatever they were. It was more like a lot of pizza
toppings on a thin piece of crusty bread. But if the first two were “kind of
pizzas” then they got all of the pizza genes that were to be had in that family
because the third one was definitely NOT a pizza. The first two we made on the
baking pans that we cooked them on, but then we ran out of pans so we made the
third one (which was the one with the most potential) on a cutting board. But
when we tried to move it to the baking sheet. DISASTER. The dough started
coming apart left and right. So we decided to be inventive and make what I
called a PIZZA-RITTO. A pizza rolled up like a burrito, but alas, it was not to
be. You know when you are trying to make an omelet and then you give up and
just make scrambled eggs? It was kind of like that except four times bigger and
it was definitely a NON HOMOGENOUS mixture. COMPLETE STRUCTURAL FAILURE. There
were parts of the dough that cooked and there were parts that had a good amount
of vegetables but then there were huge lumps of uncooked dough with a bit of
onion right in the middle. NO GOOD. At least we were full from the first two
pizzas which turned out to be exactly the right amount of food. And we know
better for next time.
Also today I got to try one of the bush plums that Kathleen’s
paintings are supposedly about. Freddie Jones is one of the big shot leaders of
the local aboriginal community and as I was fueling up his car he pulled a
weird branch out of the back of the ute and said “plum, bush tucker” Kaja, I
think was his word for it but he pulled one off and ate it. They are pretty
good I have to say. Kind of sour, but good. However, much like the pizza we
made, they are nothing like what you might call a plums. They are tart yellow
berries that grow on what looks like a short bush. But they are good, and now I
know what Kathleen is talking about when she talks about her paintings.
Lastly and most surprisingly, this morning I broke a socket
wrench IN HALF. I was tightening the bolts that hold on the shovel part of the
Grader (a giant bulldozer sort of thing that they use to make roads out here)
and one of the nuts really would not come loose so I just leaned into it and lo
and behold the circular part that fits around the nut just snapped clean in
half. Sometimes I guess you don’t know your own strength.
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