Lock Down

THE OFFICAL POOL OPENING

After being used since about March last year, the pool was finally officially opened. We lined all the kids up on the edge to jump in together.  

The gentleman in the water was a cameraman from ABC Kimberley. It was his idea to line the kids up to jump in together.  He was then surprised that his camera got wet......very wet..ha ha!!

The ribbon was cut by one of the Elders of the community and the local parliamentarian.

Jeff and I enjoy a dip which always involves being set upon by the kids, which we enjoy. We also go lap swimming a couple of mornings a week.

Jeff has found a new volunteer job of cooking the Saturday night sausage sizzle at the pool.  The dogs know that he is a soft touch.  Needless to say, they go home with happy tummies!!!

OUT AND ABOUT IN THE COMMUNITY

The walk to the airstrip was a bit much for this little cutie.

Dion enjoyed showing Jeff a Thorny Devil that he found wandering around the community.

Jeff, Rusty and I like to go for a walk in the cool (?) of the evening. If we head toward the airstrip we end up with lots of company. They are lovely company and they enjoy taking it in turns holding Rusty's lead.  The 3 girls in the picture are in my grade. They are so happy and fun to walk with.  Each of our walks take us into the desert, whether North, South, East or West.

Jeff couldn't resist taking a photo of these cuties, enjoying their ice creams outside the shop. Ice cream doesn't stay frozen for very long up here, so most of it ends up on them or on the ground.

Meet Bob!!  Bob belongs to one of our staff.  He is being brought home to our place for some surgery.  He had a chest wound!  Unfortunately we had more break ins and Bob was injured.  The boys broke into 4 of our houses and made a terrible mess.  We were not one of the houses fortunately.

This picture is now normal for Jeff.  His job involves trying to convince the residents to get on a plane to be flown out to Broome or Kununurra for specialist appointments. He doesn't always have success as some of the residents just won't go, even after all the bookings have been made. He often has to drive around the community looking for them when the plane arrives. Of course now only emergency cases will be flown out due to the shut down of our community.

Sky and dirt and not much more!!!

AROUND SCHOOL

Some bright spark thought that making every door in the school a different key was a good idea.  I think they thought that when there were break-ins, less rooms will be affected. …..but what happened is that I have a bunch of keys that would take me to the bottom of the pool if I fell in with them.  Now that we are in lock down, the locksmith can't come back to fix all the doors.  Some have been put back the way they were but others have a special key. Frustration is an understatement!!!!

I again tricked Jeff into coming into my classroom for a 'little' bit of work.  I had him making alphabet flip cards.  He is certainly getting multiskilled this year.

This lovely lady is my helper for the term.  The school has 5 volunteers from Lasallian schools, a mixture of Australians and New Zealanders. They are amazing young people who spend a gap year up here helping our school. In this picture Amy is trying to get one of our students to put a stool together for the library. The student is hiding in the box!!!  This student has many problems and hands on activities are often successful.

BEFORE SCHOOL CLUBS

Our school day begins at 7.40 with breakfast followed at 8.00 by an hour of clubs.  This program is to encourage the children to come to school.  On Tuesday's my club is Table Tennis.  The kids are getting better every week. As you can see, the table is set up in the library. These little ones try so hard and are keen to learn. 

Well, this is not something you see every day!!!!  This little foal is looking through the library window. Many of the wild horses brought into the community walk around freely.  After the big rains we have lots of green grass at school. This particular horse has been mistreated and is very aggressive. One of our teachers was chased by this foal, so we were careful to shoo it away.

I'm getting ready for the AFL season with my lovely locally painted artwork.

THANK YOU CYCLONE ESTHER!!

Our staff were in Halls Creek for a PD called 'Safer Schools'. We knew that cyclone Esther was going to dump a lot of rain on the Kimberley.  Some of our staff went to Broome for the long weekend after the PD...of course they then got stranded and had to be flown back to Balgo as the road was closed for a couple of weeks.  A couple of us drove back to Balgo before the rain and were treated to 150 mm of rain in Balgo. It was amazing to see rain after last year where there was none. The desert has gone green!

This is a road that turned into a small waterfall.  The community and the furry animals are very happy about the large falls.

Due to the big rains, Jeff missed his Halls Creek weekend.  We then headed out a couple of weeks later.  Unfortunately our roof rack came off.  Our second spare tyre was on the roof rack and that came rolling down the road after us.  We were lucky that no one was driving behind us.  Ours is a new car and the roof rack was put on when we got it.  We were not very impressed to say the least.

Having to now carry the 2nd spare in the back of the car is not ideal.  Hopefully we can get another roof rack when we are next in a big town.

With the roof rack disaster behind us (pardon the pun), we enjoyed a beer at the Halls Creek Hotel.  Living in a dry community means that we enjoy a rare drink at Halls Creek when we make the 3 hour trip. Yes, this beer looks big.... it is a pint!!

THE BALGO SHOP

Despite the recent problems in much of Australia with buying groceries, we are so lucky that no one is panic buying up here.  If anyone needs toilet paper we can post you some!!!

Our food truck will still come in every 2 weeks with some items unavailable but essentially we should be fine in our lock down.

We are not allowed to leave the community so it will be a Staycation this holidays!  Not our ideal holiday but we totally understand what can happen if the virus gets into our community.  There are lots of measures put in place for the elderly and vulnerable if it does come.

We went for a drive to Mulan, a community 40 km away.  The road was badly damaged after the big rains.  One of our tyres blew out and shredded. Tyres up here don't just go down, they shred!!

The picture doesn't do justice to the heat and flies while we changed the tyre.

We can't get tyres fixed in community so we have to take it to Halls Creek to get a new tyre.

I know what this looks like, but what is actually happening is that Jeff is shaving Rusty to help him keep a bit cooler in this hot climate.  Rusty does spend a lot of his day inside under the air conditioner but is mostly outside while we are at work.