Balgo Living!: 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.