The look of love

G'day.

Thought I better attempt to write a few more sentences while I have the chance. I finally managed to get some photos off my phone and onto my computer, so I shall attach those also. Some there of Melbourne when we flew in, we had a couple of hours to kill so we went into town on the bus. There is a place called "the edge" which is 88 stories up, there is a glass platform that extends out over nothingness. They flick a switch and the floor of the platform goes from being frosted to completely see through. Unfortunately, there was a "kids outing" there and about 60 screaming kids all in a queue for a ticket. As we had a very limited time frame and weren't too keen to miss our flight, we decided we would have to do that another day. We got up to the 88 story level, just not out on the platform.

Anyhow, this last week has gone pretty quickly, as per usual. I managed to get the roof racks installed on my work truck, which was one bonus. I went on a trip down to Bunderburg for a cell site repair, which was interesting given they were under water not so long ago. It catches you out really, as in a lot of places the ground looks solid as a rock but in reality it is completely water logged and you sink instantly. I made that mistake, driving up to the site there was a fair track which looked pretty rocky, and under normal conditions it would have been good as gold. As it turned out, the water had completely turned it to slush directly under the hard looking surface, and the weight of the 100 series just pushed straight through and bogged me straight up to the sills. Luckily, a bit of strategic driving managed to free me backwards out of the mud, but it was a close call.

It appeared I wasn't the only one caught out, down the road when we left an Ergon bucket truck had pulled off the bitumen road to make a phone call or something, and his left hand wheels sunk straight into the normally solid grass on the side of the road. The truck was sunk up to the axles, and was on about a 40 degree lean to the left as the right hand wheels were still on the road surface. I suspect that would have been an interesting recovery.

We spent most of yesterday cleaning up the back yard, trimming hedges and the like. I took almost 2 meters off some of them, it was quite suprising how things had grown. Originally I was planning on putting it on the back of the ute, but even when I went and got the trailer it was a tight squeeze to fit all the greenery in.
Some interesting bugs living in the hedge too, a large St Andrews Cross spider landed on my shoulder and was running around for a bit until I managed to brush him off. Apparently they are non toxic to humans, but I wasn't too keen on taking the chance. Managed to find a wasp nest too which wasn't much fun, I managed to kill most of it without getting stung. Ants were a problem, the blasted things got everywhere. I spent most of the evening killing ants which kept crawling out of my clothes. However, the garden now looks a lot tidier.

I'm back out at Moura next week, so before I know it, it will be the weekend again. We have our intercompany Christmas weekend this weekend coming, the boss books out a resort and everyone from Nixons everywhere meets up for an all expenses paid weekend. Should be pretty good I reckon.

Right, I have a tap washer to fix and a back lawn to mow, so I better get stuck into it.

TTFN

*nudge*

G'day,

It has been a while since I have written anything online I know. Time is flying by so very quickly and it is proving difficult to get the time to do this justice. I do intend to write a proper update sometime in the near future.

A fair bit of water still around the place over here, lots of places have been cut off for a while but the roads are slowly starting to open up again. You can now drive to Rocky so that's quite an achievement.

Supplies here in Gladstone are slowly building up again, there was a lot of panic buying and pretty much all of the grocery stores were pretty much empty. You could not buy milk, bread, veges, flour, or even softdrink. Some people were going a little crazy, one lady went mad when she was told she wasn't allowed to buy 16 loaves of bread so she smashed them all up saying "if I can't have them, no one can". That sort of carry on doesn't help anyone. People have been breaking into other peoples houses and stealing food from the freezer and all sorts of werid things. Luckily that seems to be more or less over, still a lot of empty shelves in the stores but better than it was.

I think McDonald's is now open again too, KFC is still shut as they ran out of chicken and other things. A large area between here and Brisbane got hit pretty hard, a lot of people are now in a pretty bad way. Complete houses washed off their concrete pads, cars tossed downstream like twigs.

People are starting to get sick now in the flood areas, water borne diseases and also the mould growing in the damp houses are causing dramas. We had a lot of the people from Theodore staying at the mining camp in Moura last week, I think most of them have returned to clean up now. At least three of them are now pretty crook in hospital due to the mould spores.

The mine at Moura is still running, although they can't use the conveyor as it is still under water, and they can't get the coal out as the train tracks are shot.
Some other mines aren't so lucky, one mine just up the road has a pit full of water, it is quite literally a huge lake, it will take weeks or even months to drain it out enough to mine.

I've spent all weekend putting the radio gear into my truck finally, it was stuck on the other side of the flood waters and they ended up flying a guy across to one of the mines and he drove my truck all the way around and back to town when he was finished. First day back in the office tomorrow, so it will be good to catch up and see what's in the game plan for the next few days. Looks like I'm out at Moura every second week for a month or so yet, so that will be interesting.

Anyhow, when I get time I'll try and upload some photos etc and write a bit more. NZ was a good trip over christmas, I caught up with most but not all of the people I was going to. Next time I think I will try and get more time over there, as there is so much to do and so little time.


TTFN.