Bonfires and Meteorites: now with 57% extra visual stimulation!

Well, I must admit, after posting my last post I immediately changed the fact that ‘nothing happened this week’. 1^st of all I tagged along with the Notre Dame crew to the art center before going out to the pound for sunset. So it happened, Mary, KP and Warrick arrived shortly after us and Mary offered to take us out to the ‘Jesus cave’ a hidden cave only accessible by going down a body sized hole on a ladder. Apparently some old nuns who lived in Balgo occasionally held mass services down there and you can still see an altar and some sports used for candles.

The ladder down to the Jesus Cave

The Jesus Cave



Warrick and Sophie



It was also an awesome view of the sunset which was made even cooler with a plane flying right near the sun leaving a big jet stream behind it.

Pretty cool hey.

The way out

Two of my favourite Notre Damians

Pondering on top of the troopie with Soph

Friday night we had another ‘Blue Light’ disco at the store, this time with DJ Ale-J playing the music with his iPod. Twas another fun night full of the usual MTV dancing.

Saturday morning I went to do the Mirli Mirli (church bulletin) and then headed up to school to fill in the rest of my day. Up there seeing Sophie reminded me how she gave me the idea a few days before to cook some decent sized hamburgers. Basically she was craving a pub style meal and it hit me that it really shouldn’t have been too hard to do it our self. I was planning on doing them or a sort of open fire BBQ we’ve got and I suddenly thought of also holding a bit of a bonfire. It was about 1:30 at this point so I knew I would have to act fast.

Firstly I carried a punch of rocks from the empty yard near our house to make the fire pit, then whipper-snippered the grass around the pit originally for comfort purposed but as later pointed out, could have also prevented the flame extending a wee  bit out of the pit. It was then a case of gathering the wood for the night which 1^st meant carrying 3 pallets from school, then using the school troopie to gather wood from behind the school and out in the bush before heading back to school one last time to collect a massive pile of empty cardboard boxes which completely filled the troopie.

Then after mass, we had the Notre Damians, Rick and Ant over to ours to start up the blaze. Once the fire was going we headed inside where Jarred and I started to make the patties. Basically I was head mince masseuse and suggesting ingredients as Jarred put in a little bit of everything. There was a bit of confusion and drama while cooking but they all turned out amazingly! We didn’t have very many chairs but we all found it to be much more comfortable to just use a cardboard box to sit on around the fire. Ale unfortunately decided to stick to his plan for the night and watch Star Wars but the rest of us enjoyed the fire very much. Fairly early on I said how I was seriously considering sleeping outside and everyone thought it would be a good idea… the clock struck about 12:30 and the last of our guests left as I started to realize that they didn’t quite take my suggestion as seriously as it was intended. It didn’t really bother me because I still had a fair bit of wood and ended up getting an awesome sleep on my cardboard box, woken only 3 times, 1^st by Angel attempting to join me, then by a mosquito buzzing about 5mm away from my ear and then finally by the sun as it began to rise at 5am. I then went for a walk where I saw the sun come over the horizon before going back with a dead gumtree branch I found to reignite the fire which I kept going while eating cereal and playing guitar. With a few more wood hunts to ensure the fire stayed alive until 9am I was able to chill out outside and enjoy the morning.

The Fire Pit

Discovered the easiest way to start a fire :)

Going Strong

Preparing the patties

Some amaznigly well cooked sausages

Working in shifts to avoid facial burns

Hows that for teamwork!

The next morning.

Don't know why this is sidways but 10 points for spotting the deamon head!

Again, my words were slightly misunderstood when I said that I could do that every Saturday night, the others took it as a locked in Saturday ritual but I don’t think they quite understand the amount of wood we’d need to collect each week.

  

At 9, Sophie, Jarred and Warrick met at our house to head out on our journey to Wolfe Creek! It ended up being about a 2 hour drive because the roads were really good and Warrick wasn’t afraid to push the speed a little. When we got there, we had a quick lunch of leftover rissoles before heading up the steep hill up to the top of the meteorite crater. When we got up the top, it was an amazing sight! There was a weird organization about it with majority of it covered in spinifex grass, then a circle of green trees and then finally some really white sand. I originally thought the inner circle was salt but after a quick taste, it definitely wasn’t.

The treck up to the edge

Wolfe Creek Crater




Wolfe Creek Crater

 For some reason, no one wanted to actually go into the crater besides me and Sophie so we had a good walk right into the middle exploring the place while they just sat at the top taking in the view and ‘processing the memory’ as Warrick called it. It was stinking hot down there because there was no wind but was still a really nice walk.



The Lone Hitchhikers



Working on my aspirations to be a photographer



The Murderer came back for seconds... He is currently beng treated in Broome Hospital for signs of near fatal 'staring down'



The treck back to the top



Mr. Wolfe's creek



The Tanamai



We then piled back into the troopie and made our way back home. Overall, not a bad weekend at all!



Plays of the Week

So really hasn't been the most eventful of weeks so I was sort of holding out for something bigger to write about but nothing really came. So lets look at the top 10 events of the week.

1 - The spontaneous singing that occurs in primary C! The best one this week was when out of nowhere while doing handwriting, Shonielle says, "Listen up y'all coz this is it..." and immediately someone on the other side of the row of desks finishes it off with "... Coz the beat that I'm bangin is delicious" which of course is the first line of Fergie's (from the Black Eyded Peas) song 'Fergalicious'. Only about 5 seconds had passed before Antonio continues by singing out loud, "Fergalicious de. Fergalicious de. De de de de de."
Honourable mentions must also go to Julian's rendition of 'Get Low' and Sharelle's 'My Humps' accompanied by her own dance moves.

2 - The first drama at the pool and I was nowhere to be seen! So we have a new girl in primary C who is extremely shy. Actually a dead ringer for Asbel Kiprop for anyone who knows him but anyway, Jenny asked me to get some boards from the shed and while walking away, I heard her asking Sherry if she could swim. Apparently she said she could, jumped in and sank like a rock. Luckily Jenny jumped in to grab her so I came out to see a soaking Jenny holding a terrified Sherry. There was a lot of running around and panic but I didn't exactly know what was going on. Just thinking back now, I think most of the panic and running around was to save jenny's iPhone which had gone for a dip with her owner.
But worry you not my friends, Sherry is slowly building confidence and today was putting her face into the water :)

3 - I'm already over the basketball. I don't think I've written since Anthony and I had our rematch against Ale and Jarred which we fiercely won in a very intense game. But after having to forcefully pop something back into my knee twice during that game and in that game as well as others against Adrian and Dallas, twisting both ankles numerous times, I think its time to give it a bit of a rest. But I'm slowly gaining interest in a touch footy game. No one wants to play rugby because their all soft in WA and Melbourne but a few are coming around to the less physical form of the game.

4 - Sophie and Jarred are proving to be good company with a good movie collection which is quite nice. Not to mention Jarrad being a qualified masseuse which means that my back has now been properly cracked for the first time since we've been here, which is something I've dearly missed! They had their prac teaching assessments today so hopefully that all went very well for them!

5 - Had a practice with the full Balgo band! With Ant on drums, Steve on the other guitar and Mindy belting out AC/DC and Led Zeppelin tracks like its elementary stuff on vocals. Was good fun but after Steve saying how we will probably be the only rock band over all the local reggae stuff, I am now very tempted to just form a reggae band!

So as you can tell, nothing overly breathtaking but another good week at Luurnpa Catholic School.

Disco tonight so we're all excited to have a few cordials and get our booty shaking on :)

An All-Star Week

I think in the past I have mentioned the star we planned on making as part of the 360th anniversary of St John Baptist De La Salle. If not, there is a program going around asking all Lasallian organisations to make a star and send in the photo online to put on a world map. If so, ignore what you just read.
Well basically, what I'm getting at is that on Friday, Luurnpa Catholic School did their bit to take place in the event and the whole day was a great success!

On Thursday afternoon, Ale, Rick and Warrick (no Steph because of a communication breakdown, my bad!) went up to the top of the lookout while I drove down into the pound with a set of markers and witches hats to mark out the star. I'll just like to stop you all there to repeat, I drove the manual troopie through possible the roughest road in Balgo without a worry, even though my past experience consists of driving Raquel's paddock basher while she told me how bad I was and one brief lesson around our street. Anywho, when we got out there, we realised there wasn't any phone reception so yelling was our best form of communication. I set out marking out what I thought was a star which took a lot longer than you'd think. After me yelling, "How's that?!?" and Ale replying, "That looks nothing like a star!!!", I took a step back and realised I'd created some weird half star, half arrow shape so I got to fixing that up. It wasn’t long before I fixed that up with some assistance from up top until it was a perfect star. There was then a few minutes where they chatted amongst themselves while I entertained myself by throwing rocks and looking at ants before Rick yells out, "Henry!... I'm really sorry!... But we have to move the star about 300 meters that way!". I sort of stood there processing what he had just said and after clarifying that he wasn't joking (because that’s definitely something he would do), I had a little cry to myself and packed the cones up. The second attempt at making the star was a lot more successful and faster and helped that we now had phone reception to communicate although yelling was still the preferred option. So after warping the star so that it looked good from the angle we were taking it, we filled up the witches hats on the corners with rocks and left them there for the night. Steph unfortunately caught a bad bug that’s going around so she wasn't able to be part of the big day.





Pacticing the star take #1




Practicing the star take #2


The next day, Ale, Ant and I both headed out to re-place the cones and make sure the star was in tip top shape. It was then the long and lonely wait down in the pound waiting for the rest of the school to arrive. I found a bit of entertainment in holding the school banner up as a sail and trying to walk against it which was a real struggle with the gusts blowing but eventually, the others arrived. It was actually an awesome sight to see the convoy of 9 troopies and 4x4s come out into the pound and then see the 60 odd kids pile out of them as excited as anything. Rick handed the reigns over to me to organise the people down below while I got orders from the boys up top. Jenny came to me asking if there was any means of communication between us and the guys on top of the cliff but I don't think she was overly impressed when I told her there was and when she told me the message she wanted me to relay, I just shouted it but it got the job done.

Trying to hold the sign up and failing.
Wind: 1 - Henry: 0



Thinking standing in the back of the ute would help pass the time.



The convoy



So everyone was in place, SNAP goes the camera and Bob's your uncle, misson complete! As you can see below, it turned out really well and before heading off myself, I decided to add my own star to the collection.



THE STAR!!!



MY STAR!!!

Also during the week, inspired by the current NBA basketball playoffs happening, Ale, Ant, Jarred and I decided to have a little game of 2 on 2 basketball. This was no joking matter, we came to play. We arrived for warm ups, took the team photos and then it was ready for tip off. Quarters were 2 songs long on the iPod speakers and fouls were somewhat mutually agreed apon. It was a tight game until a slight 18 point slide on our behalf let Ale and Jarred walk away with the victory but I am proud of my teams efforts and very humbled to be awarded the 'AND1 Ruthless Warrior' of the game.



Alejandro 'D-Wade' Barrientos & Jarred 'Hasn't decided on a basketballer' Stenfors




Anthony 'Rondo' Cormick & Henry 'Kobe' Jones




Rondo is all business




Kobe is in the zone

 Word has now spread, interest has increased and we may have a series of it with a few more players.

I realised I was being a little singy with the photos so I've made them bigger and better (better because they are bigger)
Enjoy :)

To Broome and Back

Hi there :)

So since my last post, I've been to Broome for a week and had about a week back in Balgo.
I guess filling you in on the happenings of Broome first would be the logical thing to do so lets go with that.

To start off with, it was already late when I got home from posting my last entry and although it was very clear to me that I had to be up at 6 o'clock in the morning, sleep just didn't seem that attractive to me, possibly because I knew that the following day I had 12 hours to kill driving so sleep might have been more appropriate there. As a total spur of the moment thing, I decided that I should probably clean myself up a little before heading out to Broome so at about 3am I decided to trim up the old facial growth. Now I had gotten it all to a beautiful level of stubble, I mean, it was good. But then of course, I cut the moe too short and it just looks silly so it all has to come off and basically, I looked 12 years old. The dilemmas of being a guy... girls have it so easy.
 Now I know that wasn't really a necessary part of my story but I do enjoy the fact that something I could do at home is now interesting news.

Now after that, I'll give you the short version of the trip up there. Got up at 10 to 6, hopped straight into the car with a loaf of bread, a jar of nutella and a knife and claimed the back seat where I could lie down.When we hit Sturt Creek, it was still flooded but only for about 100m and only about knee deep (another job I have claimed, 'Official Water Depth Tester') so the car had no issues going through that.
The next section of the trip was largly spent appreciating the musical genius of John Frusciante and Foals and I think sleeping judging on the length of the trip compared to the way home which I stayed awake through.
We stopped at a few small towns along the way for food and a break from driving including the nice truck stop at Willare or "We're there" as I re-named it, proving that my sense of humour was still working at full force.


What Sturt Creek was reduced to.




Sturt Creek





'Creek Crossing Filming' co-ordinater in action.




Just me being cool.



Actually a MASSIVE boab tree, the picture doesn't really do it justice.




The famous water tower of Willare



Getting artsy out the window

We weren't the most sociable travelers which was sort of understandable when we reflected and realised that our most riveting conversations were Ale and Rick's discussion about how horses pile their excrement and whether they intentionally place it on certain parts of the road and also Rick and my fascination about the mysterious blue wire running along the ground in the bush on the side of the road for a good few K's out of Fitzroy's Crossing. We eventually came to the conclusion that it was Fitzroy's power supply but never actually saw where it stopped.

Our first night in Broome was probably one of our better ones, first grabbing our 1st take away in months which was only dampened by the eagle boys guy giving me a thin crust pizza after I clearly asked for a thick. That aside, we enjoyed it by the water with Rick before heading out to the night club right next to our backpackers. It was very sad for me to for the 1st time really witness the abuse of alcohol on Aboriginals, especially coming from only seeing the great people in Balgo. Steph made a good friend early on. His name was Greg and managed to con Steph into buying him a beer after giving us a well rehearsed speech about how he used to work in Balgo (after we told him we were from Balgo) and that Steph was now his sister.
Thursday night is apparently the big night out in Broome and it was pretty packed, just a shame we were probably 6 years younger than the average age there.
We didn't go out as much as I thought we would but we did go out to dinner a fair bit in different groups which was nice.
On the first night, I met some friends which turned out to be pretty lucky because I scored an invite to Cable beach one day and again one night which was very nice. Cable beach, I'm still very much undecided about it. I mean yes, it was beautiful and the water, holy wow, it was like a resort pool, extra salty but that's it, it was like a pool so definitely lacks of the waves side of things and not to mention the epic trek from the water to where your stuff is on the sand, especially if the tide has gone out which adds a good 20m to your walk. Overall I give it a 8.3/10 on my beach rating system.



Cable Beach



One of the best bits of the trip was meeting our fellow back packers in the back BBQ area. There were a bunch of the friendliest French backpackers I have ever met (yes, they were the 1st French backpackers I've met but you get my point), one who decided to leave for Australia about a week before he came, enjoyed Sydney for a while, then moved down to Melbourne before hitch hiking all the way to Perth without any previous hitch hiking experience. There was also a girl from Ireland, one from Souff Lunden and a few Germans as well. Then of cause, The Itallion Stallion!!! Never quite got his name but never shy to speak his mind, no matter who was around or how sexist he was being but he was the coolest guy. Like in the common room, a few of us were watching 'She's The Man' (basically a girl playing soccer) and he came in loud as anything laughing his head off saying in an outrageous Itallion accent, "Ha! Girls playing the football. This is for the men!" but some how he got away with it keeping all his friends.




The 15min walk to the shops (Anna, this is the pic I tried to send you)




Sun Cinemas - The world's oldest outdoor cinemas.




Sun Cinemas (apparently this is really cool if you've seen the movie 'Australia')



On the way home, we had extended our wolf pack from 4 to 11, now including Mindy, Anthony, Steve and Donna as well as the teacher from Perth filling in for Maggie for a few weeks, Warrick and also two Notre Dame student teachers, Sophie and Jarred. We went in convoy with the bus pretty packed and the troopie which had the front seats free and the entire back filled with groceries we had all bought. It was actually a very nice ride for me considering when first getting in the bus, Warrick put his bag on the seat next to mine and then sat somewhere else which left me with two seats to myself for about a quarter of the trip because no one was wanting to rock the boat and change up seating. Then after another stop at Willare, I called shotgun and no one argued with it for the rest of the trip.
We had a few little disturbances on the trip but. First we had to continue onto Halls Creek which is about 40mins out of the way each way because we were using more fuel than initially thought, then about half an hour later, came across a young guy who had run out of petrol so Rick and Ant took him back to a cattle station where I think he might have gotten some fuel. While they were doing that, he told us to go ahead and wait at Wolfe Creek. Naturally we were all terrified while waiting there knowing the place's history and the high chance the same would happen to us as night fell but eventually Rick arrived and we were set to get home in no time. About an hour out of Balgo, we saw a lot of dust up ahead and stopped to see that a man in a broken down Ford Falcon had pretty much exploded his tire so after a bit of cufuffeling about, we sent the others home while Ale and I stayed with Rick to change this guys tire since only a few days before, Rick had taught us how to change a tire when we got a flat in Broome. After we got the job done in record speed (for us), we headed home, me getting frostbite on my left side because I was basically sitting out of the window since it was the three of us in the front of the troopie.
So there you have it, my trip to Broome :)

Now since we've been back in Balgo, its been nice. The first few days of school we had hardly any kids which was alright to get back into it but now at the start of the second week, I'm kid of hoping more kids come, the chaos makes for a more entertaining day. The weather is definitely getting a lot colder and even when its sunny, the wind can have a real chill behind it which isn't fun and doesn't look good for the longevity of the pool.

Today at the pool I realised something I always believed true but never quite showed... I believe have super powers. Today, the infamous Noah was again on the roof and had about 3 teachers yelling at him to get off the roof and he was just laughing. Then from about 50m away at the pool, I yell "NOAH! Get off the roof!!!" and he just goes, "ok" and climbs down. Sure, this could have been a fluke, but then a while later, one of the kindy kids runs away from the group lining out the front of their class and hides behind the building. Now this kid is about 80m away from me and I can't even see him clearly through some trees but I pointed at him and then at his classroom and sure enough he runs right back to class. Now I know there may be some sceptics out there but I have a gift and with that gift, I feel it is my responsibility to use it correctly. Maybe I should start a "Child Whisperer" show.

So that's pretty much all the major happenings around Balgo recently but I'll jump back on here if I think I've forgotten anything.

Oh one more thing. So back in Sydney, we have your stock standard bindiis, they stick in your feet, you stop, pull them out and continue on your way. However, the kid's feet out here is too tough for those bindiis so thanks to our good friend Charles Darwin, Balgo has developed their own super bindiis which are some vicious creatures. Luckily, Br Rick constructed a wonderful plan and did some sort of mathematical equation which he told the kids that if they each picked up 10 prickles each then together they would get rid of some big amount but that was good enough for me so I joined the kids in picking the prickles out of the grass for 10minutes after assembly at school.




I was looking out the window today and was thinking, "I should probably blog something about how we have amazing sunsets every day. Wait... this one is probably a little better than usual, maybe I should take a picture"



Hope all is well back home and I've enjoyed hearing that this blog is being enjoyed :)

Chau!