Had trouble with absolutely EVERYTHING this morning. I’d spoken to a few people in the caravan park about my camper – so they were all quite interested to see me pack it up & get it back on the ute. So, of course, with an audience around I couldn’t get anything to work properly. Still not sure what I did with the camper – but it just did not want to close up properly. Very, very annoying (not to mention just a little bit embarrassing!!) Luckily by the time I’d got that done, they’d gone off on their merry way – so they weren’t there to
see me suffer trying to get the thing back on the ute.
All stuff that was my own silly fault – but you know when things start going wrong – and you get that little bit flustered – and then things go from bad to worse – to ridiculous – well that’s where I ended up that morning!! At one stage I wanted to swear, forget the whole thing & go home to my doggies. Of course, to do that I had to get the stupid
@#$$%%^ camper onto the back of the bloody @#$&*% ute – so by the time I
did that I thought I may as well just go forward. I metaphorically sat myself down & gave
me a good talking to and decided that the crap was just a morning thing and as it was now 11.30 ADELAIDE time it was therefore afternoon in the real world & time for me to get over myself. Which I did.
For some strange reason Broken Hill is on Adelaide time. For some stranger reason – they all seem to follow AFL. Go figure.
So after finally getting out of Broken Hill I travelled north west through properties on what can only be described as a good track to a property called Pine View – a place my cousin Wayne (Frog) and a few of the boys from Bredbo/Cooma had stayed at when they were up this way. Got there around 3.30 (or was it 3.00 – or 4.00 ?? I don’t know ) and set up camp up near their shearers quarters. Opened up the camper to cook some dinner,
went into the quarters to get something from in there & by the time I walked back out the camper kitchen was over run by mice!!! I decided that at best I could try to keep them out – so I closed everything up tight & just had some left over chicken I’d had from the day efore for dinner. I tried sitting in the building to watch some TV & eat dinner, but the mice running around everywhere was just too much – so I sat outside & lit a fire & enjoyed the lovely moon instead. The station owner had told me that the mice were still around, but not as bad as they had been!!! In the end, even though I tried to keep the kitchen part shut as much as possible, I sacrificed a lot of food to the little rodents – so the grocery shopping was in main part wasted!!
Next day I went for a little walk around the place and then did a tour with Jenny – the station owner. She took me out to Flood’s creek – an area where Sturt and his party had camped when exploring the area – showed me a tree with a (?) blaze cut out – they use
the bark to carry berries, etc in and often – but not this time – seem to carve things in the tree under it. Jenny said that local knowledge has it that in the Flood’s creek area, Sturt has carved his initials in a tree – but they haven’t found it yet. It made me reflect though that coming out to the area, boiling the billy & bringing a camp oven out & looking around
all the trees to try to find it is a family past-time for them (Jenny & Mark have 4 children – from 12 – 23 I think – but have been doing this for years) Funny how we sometimes have to work so hard to make our fun – when the simple things can be so good – as Jenny said their family love doing it.
A quick drive to the west part of their place and I was along the “Dog Fence” – a remarkable thing that stretches something like 5,500 km from SA to Qld and is checked – every part – every day. Seems to keep most of the wild dogs out – and obviously employs a lot of people.
Back to the homestead area & helped Mark draft through some sheep – stragglers from the shearing – as you can imagine I was a great help!!! But it was fun to be in the yards for a while. Hard to imagine though that whilst the dust was flying there the rain was pouring down on the coast & people were being flooded out.
Dinner at the homestead with Jenny, Mark & Max (their 12 year old son who is doing year 6 by school of the air) and a couple of their friends was good – made better by being a NSW supporter surrounded by a heap of Qld supporters – Max & I were very happy!!
I enjoyed my time on the place – it is interesting to see a very small glimpse of life on a big place – they have 2 properties joined together with about 200,000 acres – amazing to hink of the size of it. One thing Jenny did tell me was that they have a water purifying/desalination set up for the house & garden – as all their water is bore water which is very salty & tastes horrible – even when boiled. Interesting that the system takes all the particles out of their water – including all the good nutrients – so when she uses it to water her garden she then has to put nutrients, etc into her garden to help it grow – as there’s nothing in the water. Good in the house – not so good in the garden. Amazing how
the simple things (nice, clean water) can need other things done to it to make
it work for everything. It took me about 3 ½- 4 hours ( I think) to get to Pine
View from Broken Hill (“town”). A bit different from popping up the Coles at
Chisholm when you need something!!
Pineview – 14 & 15 June
margiecrimmins 