Whoops!

So I just realised that in between the Kununurra athletics trip and holidays, I forgot to report about the Jump Rope for Heart wrap up!!! This will throw out the chronologicality of le blog but I'm sure most of you will forgive me :)

Basically throughout the term while I took classes for skipping, I wrote down 3 people's names and gave them 1, 2 or 3 points and then at the end of the term, whoever had the most points won prizes!
Pressure was on when I was handed over all responsibility organising the schedule, prizes and MCing duties.

We started with each class showing off some of their new skills they'd learnt with a 'So Fresh' CD pumping in the background. I think the kids knew the songs better than us...

Ah, the ol' spinning around the arm trick aye? (No seriously, thats one of the tricks..)

Anyway, we then held a series of mini competitions to give out some minor prizes. There was a lot of improvising going on (cheers Miss Tidemann! J) because although I'd roughly picked who was going to be in each game, it was late in the term so there was not many kids there so while I was talking I was trying to spot someone who wasn't having a go. First we had a students vs. Rick skip off which all the kids loved watching and Rick was very satisfied with his efforts!

Look at that elevation!

We then had a competition to see which class as a whole could skip the longest in a big rope which was great to see the kindy kids not embarrassed by their excellent efforts! But we all witnessed something extremely rare and that was the secondary class actually working together and they gave it a real go and just won!

Ready To Rope!

Excellent Teamwork From PRMB

DAMN IT ROBYN!!!

The last event was a teachers vs. students long rope challenge. It was an extremely tight result with it coming down to Freena and Sister Nola but Freena took out the win for the students!

Nola - The Athlete!

Finally we gave out the prizes. Again like picking for the games, there were a lot on on the spot decisions but luckily for the 8 prizes given, I made a list of about 22 so if someone wasn't there the next person won it. In the end, the 20th person on the list got a basketball prize and the top 3 weren't even there on the day so 3 lucky kids went home on a brand new Razor Scooter!

Robyn With Her New Scooter

Have You Ever Seen Someone More Proud?!? GO DELWYN!!!

I swear I've already written about all of this... oh well. I have to say, I was extremely chuffed with the compliments I got from the staff about my running of the day and especially from Mr Kim Dallard who works with the CEO but has seen a lot of teachers and really knows his stuff so I was pretty happy about it. Plus I got a free T-shirt! Score! J

"Hey, let's catch up some time!" "How's right now for you?" "Perfect!" "Cool."

Hey Hey!

So a quick rap up of the last few weeks.

Father John was out for a while, taking a quiet holiday with his mother to North Korea. I know, good choice huh! Not exactly everyone's first choice for holiday destinations but he loved it. No mobile phones allowed to be brought in. No videos may be taken. Photos may be taken but only with permission and supervision. Also he said that there a beautiful coast line with a road right against it, unfortunately there is a massive barb wire fence along the entirety of it so it cannot be accessed by anyone. Now I only today realised that this blog has been read in Malaysia, Denmark, UK, USA, Austria, South Africa and a few more countries around the world so to anyone from North Korea who happens to be listening in, hello and I have heard great things about your country! I'm sure it’s a very nice fence you made.

Anywho, Mamakgu (John) did not return alone. From Bililuna, he adopted a lovely young dingo pup which he named Jaru because it was from Jaru country. He's a lovely dog with a lot of energy and he likes to show affection by biting. He's usually very gentle but can get a little over excited but don't we all. It was hilarious at a mass we went to for 'All Saints Day' the whole time we could hear Jaru howling from the parish house. A bit of a side track but I decided to start off Movember with a bang and shape myself an outrageous Frenchman’s moustache but the combination of the howling dingo and my lovely curls, John told me after mass that he was really struggling not to laugh when I went to get Eucharist.

Don't you just love it!

Much of the same issue occurred at the mass at the graveyard for 'All Souls Day'. There was a bit of silliness during the mass with the ladies joking around with Mamakgu so even though I purposely uncurled my new friend, the idea of it still made him laugh. Also at that mass, about half way through, a local man went up to Ale, whispered something to him and then they both walked over to a tree which was attracting a lot of attention, I eventually worked out that they were killing something, probably just a precaution but it was pretty funny watching all the locals throwing rocks from a distance while Ale just walked up and dropped a big rock on it and then stepped on the rock. When he came back I asked what it was and he said, "I just killed a Black Adder!" I said to him, "You know they are freakishly fast!?" and his response... "I'm faster."

Now this could be seen as gallant bravery but I think the plain obliviousness had a little something to do with it considering the locals who knew how dangerous it was stayed at least 2 meters away at all times.

Just before writing this, I thought I'd look it up so I didn't look like an idiot if they were actually really slow. Wikipedia informed me that they can lash out "With the quickest strike of any snake in the world. A death adder can go from a strike position, to strike and envenoming their prey, and back to strike position again, in as little as 0.13 of a second, about the duration of a blink of the eye."

I read this to Ale. His response... "I'm faster."

The Man Single Handedly Trying To Wipe Out The Australian Wildlife

Last Friday while I was doing lunch mangarri, one of the kids stole my keys which open basically every door in the school. Needless to say, this was an issue. Because the keys didn't turn up when school ended, I decided to pack an overnight bag and made camp in the foxtel room. I could give you a description and time of every entry into the school grounds by a student but I feel that may bore you. Basically, Friday and Saturday there were a lot of late night visitors hanging around the mangarri room which I kept chasing off, only able to identify 2 or 3 of them at a time. So here's the break down; got to the room at 3:30pm Friday, went to sleep at 4am, woke up at 6am, slept from 11am-12pm, slept from 4am-7am, went to sleep Sunday night at 2am because it was relatively quiet and woke up at 5:30 to find oranges and juice containers all over the ground outside the mangarri room. As you can imagine, I wasn't pleased so I went home and went to sleep. Ale then called me later in the morning and told me that the keys were back in the mangarri room. Turns out, one boy stole the keys, another boy then took them from him "to give back to me", that boy then "saw the older boys breaking into the mangarri room so when they broke the door open, he went in, put the keys there and then ran out." So I had a great weekend!

Anyway, we've been ping-ponging here and there on the table Ale made from an old blackboard but Rick and Ant recently went to Broome and while there picked up a new real table "for an absolute steal!” Last night we went in to set it up and for the first time, someone realises on the side 'Box 1 of 2'. We only had one box. Luckily we had the one box with 3 quarters of the table so we were able to at least have a real surface to play on but it was mildly humorous.

We recently had Anthony's mother and Sister Lia come and visit for a few weeks which was really nice. It was good to meet them and they were nice faces to see around the school and afterwards as well.

Pool Status: Fully functional and dearly needed! It’s getting really hot here some days so it’s great that the children and certain lifeguards have the opportunity to have a refreshing dip in the afternoons.

On Thursday morning I woke to the lovely sounds of 'Build Me Up Buttercup' (Rick's ringtone) which is actually lucky because I forgot to set my alarm but he said that there was a road train waiting for us at the turn off and Ale would be by soon to pick me up so we could go get it the delivery. So it was just a casual 25 odd minute drive out to the turn off to pick up what turned out to be a bunch of projectors, smart boards and uniforms. So we filled the car, tied the boards onto the roof and took off back to Balgo. About 15 minutes in, there was a goanna on the road which I thought actually ran between the wheels so we stopped, looked at eachother and basically at the same time said, "Let’s go back." So we got out and went to have a look. It was still there but not moving so we slowly approached it. Again, being the Australian wildlife expert that I am, told him to be careful because they can be very fast. Again, this was news to him and he then brought the car closer because he realised that the car was probably about 50m away. Again, before writing this to not look like an idiot, I looked up my quoted fact and found on an Australian Wildlife website, "Goannas can run very fast over short distances, sometimes using their hind legs only. They are very good tree climbers, and that is what they will often run for." This would have been interesting if it decided to run because we were the only tall and thin things around for probably over 100km. Luckily, well for us at least, when Ale drove up next to it, he saw its heart, possibly liver and some other internal organ lying next to it. It definitely still had some life in it which I learnt when I picked it up by the tail.

Long story short, Alejandro - 2: Australian Wildlife - 0

Ale's Faster

Crikey!

For Br. Marty's birthday, instead of a boring old cake, I decided to make the staff pancakes!!! Turns out that just putting maple syrup in the mixture doesn't have the same effect as putting it on top. Still a big success but!

This morning I woke up pretty early so decided to go for a walk around the community. It was very nice actually, a few friendly faces around and one hungry camel enjoying the return of green grass. It was funny to see that at almost exactly 9am, the community appeared from their homes for the opening of the store for the day.

That green grass bit reminds me, it’s raining almost daily again! Usually not for long but it's heavy and there is guaranteed lightning basically every night, even if it’s dry lightning.

Oh final thought to leave you with. Many would describe Balgo as being in the very south Kimberly. Some believe it is North Pilbara. You look at any Kimberly map, Balgo will not be seen. Try with the Pilbara; you'll probably have similar luck. So all in all, I am in the middle of nowhere in a place that does not exist. Cool.

School Time!

Now that school has resumed, I find myself going to school almost every day. Weird aye!

So it’s back to every day swimming which is good for the kids! I can resume my duties as head lifeguide.

Something which was planned on the drive back to Balgo from Tilmouth Well was a mass teacher water fight. I wasn’t too sure if it would actually happen in the end but believe it or not, it happened and although a lot of the staff were too cool to join in, it was still great fun! We played a 3 team capture the flag style game and I believe the reason it went so well was the thorough rule discussion the night before where we covered every aspect of the game so that there was no room for discussion.

We also recently had a pretty spectacular visitor in the form of Australian rock icon, musical legend, inspiring dancer and… oh yea federal minister for schools, Peter Garrett!!! He wasn’t at school for long but it was great to meet him! It was pretty funny because we put on a spread for him in the staff room and we were all waiting for him. I asked everyone, “So what are we meant to do when he comes in? Are we supposed to stand or something?” and naturally everyone was cracking jokes and saying how I was being silly. As soon as he walked in the door, literally everybody stood straight up. I have a gift, what can I say.

Well it is currently a long weekend in WA so while you’re all out in your fancy Halloween costumes partying, be jealous of my crazy Balgo night… J

Henry Jones, Adventure Tours

And now we come to the red bit of my story.

So during the Kununurra trip, I said to Rick that I was willing to totally organize this trip to the red centre and having the stress removed off him, he was very happy to comply. I admit, the gap between the two trips was a lot shorter than I had earlier expected and it didn’t help that after we got home from Kununurra, Ale and I played the Rugby World Cup playstation gave from about 9pm until 7:30am but In the end, food and equipment for my version of the trip was packed however people found during the trip that some ‘luxury items’ had not been packed so we had to do some further shopping to keep everyone happy.

We left fairly early morning and enjoyed the less traveled end of the Tanami. Our first stop was at Tilmouth Well which fed us pretty well and also had some very nice and cheap artwork! I was tempted but could not bring myself to betraying Wirrimanu like that.

The Boarder

We then continued on to Alice Springs to quickly grab some things from the store before making tracks further south to about half way between Alice and Uluru at a roadside camp site. Despite the ants, it was very nice and was enough for the half hour before we were in swags and going to sleep. The next morning we had a pretty late start but still got to Uluru at about midday. Seeing it in the distance for the first time was absolutely amazing! I guess it is just like it looks in pictures but there is something magical about seeing it in person. It probably wasn’t the best that while being so taken by the rock, I was also driving but we all survived.

We first went to the visitor’s centre and I tried to work out with the time we had left in the day what would be the best approach. It didn’t help that the clock that said ‘Sunset is at…’ was wrong in that the position of the hands literally weren’t even a real time. Rick was impressed with my confidence in changing it for them and the others thought it wasn’t right but I was a lovely old lady calling over her husband after getting him to look at the new and improved sunset time. I feel as though I made a difference in their lives. So seeing how much time we had left, I set a countdown timer on my watch and decided we’d go on the 4 hour base walk of the rock.

p.s. I really do apologize for the photos but take no responsibility for any neck injuries sustained from photo viewing.

It was an awesome walk! About half an hour in, it actually started to rain a little bit so I started singing that John Williamson classic but pretty soon after, it stopped but at least I can say I saw it raining on Uluru! The walking track up on top of the rock was closed due to high winds but I seriously do not get why it is still open. I originally thought the Anangu people didn’t climb it themselves but they were ok with visitors climbing it but on the brochures, they have a quote from a tribe leader saying that they strongly ask no one to climb it and it is extremely disrespectful to do so. I don’t get it! I think I might go climb on the roof of a church or temple and see if I get a response J but I was glad to see the signs pointing out women’s and men’s sacred sites under tjukurpa (traditional law) and asking that no pictures were taken there.

I am aware of the irony of me standing here after my last statement. However, I believe this is the equivilant of walking on the speps out the front of a church.

I was very glad that a few weeks ago I had purchased a 3L hydration backpack because it meant that I didn’t have to carry a water bottle the whole way around. About three quarters the way around there was a small waterhole which was a nice rest area deep into an inlet in the rock. Reading some of the signs, it was very interesting to note the similarities between the local language and Kukatja with things like ‘palya’ meaning good in both places and although different spelling, the word ‘marlu’ for kangaroo. I guess realistically, Wirrimanu isn’t that far from Uluru.

The hair is just so beautiful!!!

Oh and I decided to test out how well my feet had developed during my time here and they passed, they survived the shoeless walk around Australia’s best known rock!

For sunset, we went to the viewing area and it was a wonderful spot sitting on the swags on the roof of the troopie. There was a fair bit of cloud cover but you could see that the clouds stopped just before the horizon so luckily we had the sun shining through onto the rock as it was setting. Someone just as the sun began to set put on ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’ by Israel Kamakokopops which really set the tone for a nice end to the day.

"Thankyou very much"

Once the sun had set, we went back just out of the national park so we could camp and I saw a side dirt road which I followed and it turned out to be a very nice clearing! It did hold many ‘Wolfe Creek’ish qualities seeming almost too perfect but come morning, most of us were alive so I’m going to call that a success! Because I thought while here, we should see both sunset and sunrise, I set the alarm for 5am and then proceeded to walk around the campsite playing the djembe drum besides everyone’s heads for a nice tribal wake up. When we got to the sunrise viewing platform, there was a giant tree right in the way! This didn’t seem to trouble the others so I watched the sunrise from a lower spot which I still believe was the best spot which was confirmed by the large amount of tourists coming to try and steal it from me. I did however meet a lovely foreign couple. Our relationship consisted of me stepping out of the way of their photos and them either saying ‘you’re right’ or ‘thankyou’ and then a happy ‘goodbye’ at the end.

After sunrise, we made our way to the Olgas which are actually a lot more impressive than you think. Its something like 200m higher than Uluru at some points! Not bad aye! That was another 4 hour walk but this one a lot more up, down and over. Ale and I entertained the entire group (but mostly ourselves) by belting out such classics as ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, ‘Runaway’ and ‘The Pokemon Theme’. I gave one lovely couple a bit of a present by walking to the top of a hill and belting out ‘I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’. When I became aware of their presence, I considered stopping but not only was I never going to see them again in my life but also, for them, it was probably better than our ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ story, just further enhancing the romance of the view. Ant was being a bit of a saint running water to Rick, then running back and walking with us, only to a few minutes later, run back for another Rick stop. (Get it? Sounds like pit stop? Classic!)

 

We then moved a bit down the road for a shorter walk in between two giant boulders but before that, finally we were not in range of a service station or shop so everyone had to take Henry’s food options and make vegemite or honey sandwiches and fruit! Needless to say as soon as we got back the first stop was to a service station…

We then started the drive to Kings Canyon where we stayed in the caravan park. It was a very developed park with big grass fields, a pool, a shop, a pub and all sorts of other dandy facilities. We had a big game of touch footy (yes, that means touch rugby and yes, that is footy) which was really good fun but got pretty intense and on a totally unrelated note, late in the game I suddenly turned around and went straight into a low clothes line. It hurt. We continued a little longer but soon wrapped it up. Steph and Rick were pretty concerned but I thought I was ok until I started feeling sick and walking became a bit of a task so we went to the shop because Rick wanted to call someone medical and also to put something cold on my head. I got an orange juice and held that on my head but more on that later. The rest of the night was pretty chilled out, a bit weird when Rick and I were working out the next day’s travels and I was struggling to focus on a map and then realised it was upside down. I was also a bit concerned when Rick told me that we kept having the same conversations or I’d ask the same questions again so it was pretty clear it was time for bed. Apparently Rick stayed up for most of the night because we had a fair few dingo visitors throughout the night and he feared for our safety. Poor dingoes looked so hungry! Surely one bite wouldn’t have hurt.

Anyway, the next morning we headed off to Kings Canyon which Rick was weirdly excited about the ‘Pricilla’ reference. Oh before that, the orange juice!!! Well. In the morning, I ask what actually happened to my orange juice! They all claim I drank it that night but I still think they split it 4 ways without telling me. Anywhoo, the plan was the big 4hr walk in the morning, then lunch, then a smaller 2 hour walk before heading back towards Balgo. Unfortunately we got to the first walk at about 11. The beginning was an intense steep stair climb but after that, it was a very nice walk around the rim of the canyon.

In the words of Miley Cyrus, "It's the climb"

And from the top.

Ant's close up

My God I'm lasallian!

At about the half way point, there was a way down into the canyon to a little waterhole called ‘The Garden of Eden’. We were having a nice cool rest down there just chatting amongst ourselves when this Dutch couple came along to join us. The girl dropped her glasses and it was weird, we all just watched them slowly slide down into the water. I’m sure one of us would have moved earlier but they sort of slid a little bit, then stopped for half a second, and then did the same about 5 times before I jumped down to try and rescue them as they were now in the water. You could see them in the water but I thought it would be fine to lightly put my foot in the water. As soon as it touched the bottom, I completely fell into the water and immediately realised my camera I have used all year was in my pocket so as fast as I could, got it out and threw it to the guys. The lady then asked if I had her glasses and thinking back now, I found them with my foot so kind of lucky I didn’t break them! For those concerned about my camera/phone, it was put in rice for about a week and is now working fine except the screen now has a bunch of lines through it and I had a minor freak out that I could no longer take pictures with it. I later worked out that it works; just the date of the camera was set back to January 2005 so now my photos aren’t exactly in chronological order.

The last shot my dry camera took...

aaannnddd its gone.

After that, the mood of the trip suddenly switched from all fun and laughs to a more ‘let’s just get back to the car’ mentality. This wasn’t just out of concern for the phone but more of a sudden hit of fatigue and hunger. It didn’t make it any easier when Rick badly twisted his ankle with a few km to go but eventually, we got back and believe it or not, people weren’t too keen on the second 2 hour walk so we ditched that and instead headed back towards Alice.

Camera Tst

 After about an hour in Alice Springs K-Mart and Rick and Ant wandering through the aisles looking for nothing in particular but buying everything for the school which might in some way be justified, we went to Hungry Jacks for dinner and then looked for a place to spend the night. We ended up stopping just past Tilmouth Well on the side of the road so that we could go back there for 6am opening for breakfast.

While driving, there were massive controlled fires which didn’t really look that organised considering there just guys all over the place with mini flame throwers starting fires on both sides of the road and when a nice young fireman (who took quite a liking to Steph) came over to the car, his only instructions were, “Yea just go slowly, keep driving, don’t stop and stay away from the fire.” So that was really assuring advice…

The last day was a solid effort shared between young Alejandro and myself getting back in just two driving shifts getting home with plenty of the day still to go.

All in all, I’d say that the trip was a great success!!! A lot more store bought food and a lot less camp cooked food than I would have liked but I guess I can’t complain, the cans now in our cupboard have been feeding me well J