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!