Term 3 well underway

Around the community

Croc alert almost 1000 kilometres from the sea!!!! One of the kids left this little critter on the street

A poor doll has lost her head, or maybe the croc got her.!!!!

One of my favourite Elders Magda, painted up these gum nuts for Jeff and I.

This is the front yard stove! Magda, the lady in the above picture, was having a cook up of a bush turkey and kangaroo tails. The kangaroo tails are on the left in the foil and the bush turkey is legless and featherless at the top of the picture. We had to keep shooing the dog away from the cooked bush turkey. There were feathers all over the yard from plucking the turkey. It is great that they still love their bush tucker.

The corellas like to play on the power lines, often tipping themselves upside down.....of course that's when they are not screeching, which they do endlessly.

The tip run..... Unfortunately the local who collects the rubbish bins sometimes doesn't !! We collected

the bins from some of the other teachers and took them to the tip where you dump it and then burn it. This was after about 3 weeks of no collection. There is no recycling in Balgo.

Jeff enjoys being able to watch the Bombers and sometimes they even have a win!!

Unfortunately this article made the Perth newspaper and the WA channel 7 news. The Youtubes are online so they have been seen and of course sensationalised. There has been a lot of fighting in the community but no one ever reports the good things that happen out here.

The men of the community came together to talk about the fighting and find common ground. It was a really good meeting and fighting has not resumed after over a week.

Out on country looking for bush tucker

While the ladies were digging for the bush potatoes, Jeff was lighting the spinifex on fire. They do this to chase out the goannas and snakes which make great bush tucker.

Magda loves her bush potatoes. She is very good at finding them even though they are buried so deep in the very dry and hard ground.

This is a bush potato which in language is called 'gundi'. Little Ralphy is showing us the biggest one that Magda found.

Jeff was doing some of the digging and was able to find a small bush potato.

Sitting with Magda, Ralphy, Helen and Bertha after a long hot day of digging.

Ralphy is such a cutie. He had just poured water in his eye from the bottle because he had a bit of dirt in it. He was so funny.😂

Around home

The weather is warming up so it was time for a hair cut for our little man. He doesn't like it but does sit nicely while Jeff does it.

School

I came into the classroom one day and found this little fellow in my sink. One day 3 of these guys popped out from different places in my classroom. They give me a fright every time as I'm not expecting to find a lizard when I'm getting paper from my storeroom or a book from a reading box!!

I try to make a cake with the kids when its their birthday. Many of the children don't know when their birthday is, but I try to make a big deal on their day.

We made a cubby house in the classroom one day. I just brought in sheets and they got creative. It was lots of fun...….. other children from other classes also came in to play when they saw it.

They even made a door and you can see one of the kids disappearing into the cubby. We left it up all day and did our work in it and around it. We had had a couple of particularly hard days with the kids and I thought a day of fun might break the cycle.

We cook each Thursday afternoon and on this one we made cupcakes and the kids used writing icing to decorate them.

Off to Perth,,,,, driving my brothers car and caravan....not nervous at all 😨

Off we go on our 3000km trip to Perth via Broome. It took us 5 days. We were driving the car and caravan home for my brother as he had broken his leg in Halls Creek (last blog). It was a really nice trip down the Northern Highway as we hadn't been along there before.

At one of the stops we went for a walk on the very flat land but found one small mound to climb. If you have good eyes you can see Jeff on the top.

On our trip we seemed to be the only silly ones heading south (to the cold). Over the 5 days we wouldn't have had half a dozen cars pass us! ,,,,,, but both on our side of the road and the other we were kept company by road trains and lots of wide loads where we had to go off the road and pull up. This truck is carrying the tray of a very big tip truck.

This is one of hundreds of trucks that passed us...... and they are big and produce lots of wind as they go by.

More blue sky and red dirt. So many lovely photo opportunities.

Here we are parked at a place called Auski, which brings to mind a ski village but nothing could be further from the truth!!!

Hello!!

We stopped for a night in Newman which is a mining town. These trucks are sooooo big!!

We arrived in Fremantle to some sunny days, but we were still happy that I brought my jeans and jumper. We are down at the Fremantle marina with the family. Poor Doug in a wheelchair because of his broken leg.

After a couple of days in Fremantle where I had a much needed hair cut, we flew back to Broome where our car was waiting. We had a couple of nights in Broome before driving the 900 km back to Balgo.