Some pics from 2000

Howdy,

I was just doing a bit of a tidy up on my laptop and thought I would share this sunset. All photos in this post are of the same sunset and are taken about 5 to 10 minutes apart. They were taken at Menindee Lakes in NSW about 100km from Broken Hill. It was an amazing place, the water was the colour of milk and is probably why the reflections came out so well.

Anyway, enjoy!

Fun and games

Howdy all.

Been having a bit of fun over the last couple of months.

Firstly, we finished up at Cannington in December and moved all the gear back to the office in Brisbane. The vehicles went back to 4WD Hire after 12 months of rental.

I then went home for a break but flew back to Brisbane for the work Christmas party. Unfortunately I came down with a stomach bug about 3 hours before dinner arrived. The worst part is it was an open bar with James Squire on tap and I couldn't even finish one beer :(

Went home again for some more break, Christmas and New Years etc.
Saw Mental as Anything at Sawtell RSL for New Year's Eve.

13th of January I flew back to Brisbane to get the gear ready for mobilising to South Australia. Unfortunately the newest member of the crew needed to do a defensive driving course before being allowed on the road so Pete and I headed off to Andamooka, South Australia to get camp set up.
Four days of driving later we arrived at camp, Les and Les (the newbie) arrived a couple of days later.
We had some of the gear out on Andamooka Island where we will be doing the survey, Andamooka Island is an island on the "dry" salt lake, Lake Torrens. Then some rain came... 13 inches in 2 days... The "dry" lake was no longer dry, there was water everywhere, the flood came within metres of the homestead we were staying at.

Andamooka Homestead

Andamooka outbuilding

We were flooded in for a couple of days while we waited for the water levels to go down. The road out was underwater so we tried to get out a back way but after travelling a couple of hours to go 5km we gave up and went back to the homestead.


We tried again the next day but out the road this time.

The road out

We drove 40km in 12 hours. Slipping and sliding through mud and boggy sand, driving over sand dunes to avoid the worst spots, lucky we had 3 vehicles to pull each other out when we got stuck. We were 5km from the bitumen road when we came to a little bit of a problem.

End of the road

A rapidly flowing river that was over 6ft deep, no chance of going through, way too far to go around.

Tried to go around the river. It stayed there.

We got someone from the other side to come with a boat and we ferried our gear across using that, however the boat didn't have a motor... or oars for that matter... we had to pull it back and forwards across the river with ropes. We got all the gear and personnel across, left our trucks on the side of the road and got a lift into Roxby Downs for some pizza, beer and a sleep. We flew home the next day.

View of all the water from the air. Lake Torrens in the background.

Well, some of us flew home, I got to Sydney and had to wait 8 hours for my lift home, the freeway from Sydney to Newcastle was closed because of a bushfire. I ended up staying the night in Sydney and went home the next day.

After 3 weeks at home on standby we got the call to say the lake had dried out sufficiently for us to go do some work...

To be continued.

Coming up....

Gee, I've been slack. Well, here's some pics from the flight over from Townsville to Cloncurry.

Taken about 80km west of Clonkers.





Very dry as you can see. but that will change in a month or so as the wet season is on it's way. We will be packing up here in a couple of days and heading out (probably thurs). We are taking all the gear back to Brisbane for maintenance over the xmas break before we head off on the 8th of Jan to Andamooka Island on Lake Torrens, South Australia. We will be there for a couple of months before heading back here to Cannington.

Pics from last break

November is here and Cicadas are emerging from underground.

I spotted this one drying it's wings on my water tank.









This one was on the wall of the house.







The patterns on it's back are amazing. It would make a great design for a tattoo...

Back from break

Just got back from break yesterday. Had a stopover in Townsville on the way out to do an industry general induction course that didn't finish until almost 8pm (I got up at 2:30am to get to the airport on time)

Apart from being too long, the course didn't provide any food other than International Roast coffee and some biscuits.

Was damn starving by 8pm and we went for a couple of beers (then a couple too many) and found all the eateries nearby had closed so ended up having a liquid dinner!!

Steve Irwin - dangerous photo

Crikey that was dangerous Steve.

Many people don't know this but kangaroos have a poisonous spine or barb.

The aboriginals believed it was an aphrodisiac and would eat it.

You probably have eaten it yourself...


Surely you've had Roo-barb before?


Sheesh, that was bad.

We had apple and rhubarb crumble for desert last night and I got a mental image of Steve Irwin with a roo-barb stuck in him.

No offence meant. Steve was a great guy.

A single piece of paper

Amazing what can done with a single piece of paper and plenty of spare time...