Barunga and beyond

Well, Baruga CEC (community education centre) as a school was ok. Baruga CEC as a place to stay... well...

As I said in my last post, we were thinking that we could bunk with a teacher - who hadn't been told and unsurprisingly had a few things to say about the situation. So we stayed in the kitchen, with an industrial fridge that had a correspondingly loud industrial fan system. Oooo, and the light.
But the main problem staying there was that it seemed to be the local meeting place for all the local males between 16-25. And our toilet/shower was across the other side of the oval. So I avoided having a shower but eventually was driven across the oval for other requirements... a few comments but nothing much. Then while i was in the (bolted) receptacle, someone was hitting the ground and wall with what sounded like a metal pole and although they didn't really hang around, needless to say i didn't feel particularly great about it. So i brushed my teeth in the kitchen sink.

The day itself went pretty well. As always, the kids were loads of fun and they focused pretty well. The principal forgot that Auskick were turning up so at lunchtime the local coppers turned up and ran the kids through a few excercises, played British bulldog and a game of AFL and we expected them to come visit the Maths Squad after. Then we waited. And waited. And looked outside as another group, the Sunshine Health group, cut in on our racket.
The kids up here have to do exercises and every morning their routine involves washing hands, coughing and blowing their nose because a lot of them have severe snot issues. No, seriously. Snot everywhere on some of these kids. And unfortunatly, an excess of snot in your head can lead to conductive hearing loss, which means the kids have periodic hearing loss - so you can imagine how much that would screw with their schooling and other things.
So yay for the Sunshine Health group.

Decided to move base to Katherine, bout 45min drive away, rather than stay in Barunga. Got to drive to Beswick tommorrow morning where i'm hoping to meet someone who can tell me about the spirits that live in the sky and remove the livers of babys when they scream - i guess it's the traditional way of explaining SIDS. Saw a painting of them and the local artist lives in Beswick so will try to track him down.

Oh, and am gonna steal one of Rich's ideas and post my own little riddle...

How can you add two to eleven and get one?

Everybody's happy, just swimming in the (thermal) tub

In a belated post (which is my usual style), we visited Mataranka Primary School yesterday. The kids were ok but the teachers were great and invited us around for dinner. So we went and visited the touristy thermal pool called Rainbow Springs and then ducked out to this Queenslander just around the corner. Chickens, rabbits, horses, cane toads... this place had it all as well as about 20 kids running around and funnily enough no adults seemed game to claim them as their own darling offspring. Was great - and then we were entertained to a slide show by an up-and-coming palentologist who had a set of dinosaur slides and one of those plastic projectors - and he could name just about every single one (and they weren't your common, everyday variety of dinosaurs... no triceratops here)

Then back to Kindergarten today and the kids were great - it helped that there were only five of them. So spent an hour with them, ducked off to Bitter Springs which is the more naturalistic thermal swimming spot in Mataranka, and took videos of us swimming underwater. Have i mentioned i love my camera? Was using it to take photos of underwater handstands on Monday afternoon and everyone was looking at me odd, then someone asked if it was my camera and whether it should be in the water... And the pools were so clear. Also, they are this deep opaque blue colour because of all the limestone dissolved in it - the water is about 30 degrees and feels disturbingly like Erindale Pool (and the southsiders will know what i mean)... there were a LOT of kids at Rainbow Springs...

Well, spent the morning swimming in thermal springs and lunching at the old Mataranka Homestead so I guess it's only fair that we arrived at a school that didn't remember we were coming, hadn't organised accommodation and then procceded to upset half the staff by telling them they had to billet us... so we just said we were happy sleeping in the kitchen. It's a very big kitchen so it's not like i have to curl up on top of the stove so it should be fine. The only thing that worries me is that when we arrived there had just been big fights at the school so half the students had left and the teachers were wondering whether we should be there or not...

Am now at Barunga, the aforementioned 'confused' school. Should all be fine, not sure how tommorrow will go since today was by all accounts a bit of a shocker so will be interesting to see how many kids turn up and what happens during school. As long as no-one riots because they can't make a square with the 3 red pieces, it should be fine.

Oh, and R! the guy i'm working with keeps sneakily putting photos on his blog. I'm too busy doing real work but check his out.. and then you can all tell me how much better his is and how i never ring my mother and that i've been looking a bit pale lately and so on and so forth.And will try to get a link to the Cow-orker site...

love ya and leave ya,
Net

Katherine Kalamities

He He (apologies for the title, i think it's hangover from the last party invite I got... the people involved know what I'm talking about)

Well, finally made it to Katherine. And it wasn't a sure thing...

We left Darwin with two spare tires. Last Thursday, we literally ripped the insides out of out back tyre. Luckily, I was only doing 10km/h at the time so there was no huge problem except for the bloody flies. And the fact we couldn't find the jack handle. And my girly arms are incapable of unscrewing a bolt as thick as my finger. But we managed to fix it and get to Pigeon Hole school, which was good.
The school itself was nice and quiet, the teachers decided to have a slack day and we were left to basically run the school for 4 hours. Interesting... then we packed up, headed back down the road (this time avoiding the road we'd blown our tyre on) and made it onto the Buntine Highway. Where we punctured our front tyre. Thank god I'd booked two spare tires (the other team only has one so they would have been royally screwed at this point because there is no reception in this area).
And besides, it was the friday after the royalties from the local gold mine had been paid so all the residents of Lajamanu were heading towards the 'local pub' at Top Springs (actually about 300km away) for a big night. We stopped there for lunch and got recognised ;o) so now we are celebrities in the remote communities.

Had a nice relaxing weekend in Katherine. Staying in this great townhouse/villa BnB place, if anyone ever comes would highly reccommend it.

Could write more but feel bit bad using work modem for this. I updated/fixed the last post so will try again soon.

Net