Wilsons on the road: Tuesday 19 March 2013

Tuesday 19 March 2013 - Mittiebah Station

We’re really enjoying station life! The cook here has been kind enough to cater for us as well as the staff, so we only really have to prepare meals for the girls. They get to sleep in air conditioned rooms for every daytime nap (which meant Sienna had nearly 4 hours yesterday afternoon!) and there’s lots of friendly, interesting people around to chat to.

The weekend was fairly uneventful as all the staff (except for the cook) headed off on Saturday afternoon for a session at the Camooweal Hotel and didn’t return until Sunday arvo. It was very quiet and relaxing, the girls played with the boys and and I pottered around chatting to Danielle and reading a book. Glenn did a few electrical jobs, enjoying a break from the girls whilst doing so.

It’s been great learning about station life, both from watching what goes on and also asking lots of questions. At the moment, being the end of the wet, things are pretty quiet, but once muster starts, we’re told the days get pretty long and hard for everyone. All of the staff here are quite young (except for cook, who’s in her twilight years and of course Danielle and Marty, who manage the place) but it wasn’t till we started talking last night about age that we realised there’s no one born in the same decade as Glenn (the 70s) and only one girl who’s at the other end of my birth decade, the 80s!

It’s still hot, but today started out a lot cooler and took longer for the mercury to creep up (pretty sure it’s over 38 degrees now at 3pm). I’ve gone for a couple of runs and have even written a little fitness program for Danielle, which I’ve started doing with her in the mornings too. And yesterday I went and watched Tom do an on-air Distance Ed yesterday in the schoolroom, which was pretty cool. I’d love to spend longer in there, but when I have both or even just one of the girls with me, they distract the boys from their work too much and we have to adjourn again.

The other thing I learnt, this time from the boys’ governess, is that there’s an e-kindy program available. So I jumped on the website and enrolled Yasmin and hopefully she’ll be getting a fun box of resources soon! Although I’m not quite sure where I’ll put them...

We’re currently trying to work out what our next plan of action will be. There are a few other stations around here that Danielle said we might be able to visit and we definitely want to have a look at Lake Nash, where Di, the other lady I met in Mount Isa manages. But apart from that we’re not sure if we’ll keep heading towards Darwin as we intended, or stick around here and then I’ll fly out of Mount Isa on Anzac Day instead, when I head to Brisbane for Anita’s wedding. We don’t want to be freeloaders and in anyone’s way, but if there’s electrical work to be done then we’re happy to help out. I think it’s still too hot to head out towards the Savannah Way, but we might be able to do some of it.