Australian Friday

    I'm not sure where the week went but Friday is here again in central Australia. It's been busy at work, that much is true. The pace at work is busy busy busy...it's not that I didn't remember that busyness from when I last worked front line child protection investigations, but I wasn't expecting to be the only social worker on my team which means I get ALL of the cases, regardless of what I'm in the middle of, and since we usually only take cases that could lead to criminal charges we often have to respond that day. They're also short staffed on the main child protection team, I often take on several from their caseload, which never turn out to be short and sweet...so the week flies by, and before I know it, the weekend is here again!

Palm Valley

     The weather has been stellar all week, with last week's rain a distant memory. There are still fireworks most every night somewhere in my neighborhood...I've been told it will continue until about 2 months before next year's show day, when people generally run out of fireworks. Great. KaPOW!
     I bought my 4WD recovery kit yesterday, finally. They had them on sale at Supercheap Auto, so I picked up the whole kit for $103. It included a towing strap, shackles, a shovel, a tarp, tire gauge, and a weighted reflective bag that can be used to put over strap joins. I am hoping never to need it, but I'm taking my rig on it's first real 4WD track tomorrow. I've been on other 4WD roads with it, but they just had water crossings, and no real rough road or sand pits. Tomorrow we are finally heading to Palm Valley to camp. The last 15kms or so is just riverbed, so rough, rocky, sandy, and requires a bit of clearance, so cars cannot make the journey. I've driven on rough 4WD roads here before, but in the Troopie, which does an awesome job. I think there will be four of us heading out, and I think we will all have tents, no swags this time. I shall try not to think about huge hairy spiders crawling over my tent...
     Dundee is settling in nicely, and has turned out to be a great kitty. He is still very much a kitten though, and so has lots of energy. We have almost worked out our nighttime sleeping, but since I toss and turn a lot at night, he wakes up each time, and then it's often GO TIME for him. He is very affectionate and has a constant purr which can be both cute and damned annoying (at 3am). I reckon he will grow out of that soon enough. He's already 6 months old.
     I haven't met many other Canadians yet, just 3 I think. I don't think there are many here in Alice, at least I haven't met them yet, and I have met hundreds of people so far. Alice is quite multicultural with people here from all over the world. I met a Sudanese man the other day who had tribal scars on his forehead, which looked pretty cool. There are of course, many Aboriginals here as well as this is the nearest town for services for hundreds of kms. I saw one Aboriginal woman yesterday walking down the street while breastfeeding, full boob out, holding the baby in her arms as she went. I don't find it offensive at all, and thought to myself, wow, that takes some coordination!
     So I'll have some new photos after this weekend's journey to Palm Valley...stay tuned!