The Birds of Oz

Time for a quick update on our comings and goings over the past two weeks. It’s been raining quite frequently which has made July’s field work particularly interesting. The drive to work has been reasonably uneventful although I did hit a few good bumps which jostled the roo bars and skewed the high beams. Oh! And I saw a flock of pelicans on my way to site one morning. Very cool.

I’ve been doing a lot of field work and have had to make a few adjustments to get myself used to being a field hand once again. Today I was surprised to discover that emus are very inquisitive, friendly albeit strange creatures. While doing my groundwater sampling I was surrounded by a group of no less than 18 emus. Unreal.

Phil has successfully played rugby without injury for the past two weekends. We were in Orange on Saturday for a game and I stayed home on Sunday while Phil went to Cowra to play soccer.  The week nights and weekends have been especially quiet this month as I have been working a lot of late nights and want to do nothing but sleep when I get home. I’m looking forward to the sporting season being over so we can start to do tourist stuff on our days off. It’s been a bit of an adjustment for both of us now that Phil is back to work.

Nothing overly exciting planned for the next couple weeks. Hoping to catch up on some reading, knitting and music listening. I’ve been discovering lots of great Aussie music and also rediscovering some great Canadian bands this month.

Rugby Injuries, New Jobs and Car Shopping

Ten days ago Phil and coworker Greg suffered injuries during a big rugby match against Dubbo. Phil received a concussion and swollen jaw while Greg wrecked his knee. The combined effect of these two separate injuries made for a very interesting week. While in Brissy Phil was offered a job working at Northparkes Mine doing IT support on a temporary basis. He started work two days after being concussed. Not only was he still suffering from the injury, unable to eat and on medication, he hasn’t worked since October 2007 and had to get back into the habit of waking up early and absorbing all sorts of new information. With only one vehicle between us, we also had to find a way to get both of us to mine sites in opposite directions from Forbes. I spent most of my week begging and borrowing rides from everyone I knew while Phil utilized the truck. To make matters worse, Greg’s injury forced him to take time off work which meant that I was working double duty. With month-end, quarterly reporting and a variety of other tasks already keeping me busy, taking on all of the monitoring tasks for July was not at the top of my list of things to do. Between nursing Phil back to health, trying to find ways to get to work and doing two jobs at once I was thoroughly exhausted once the weekend rolled around.

On Sunday Phil and I went used car shopping in Orange. We found him a sweet little red 1988 Ford Telstar that was in great shape. It was a steal of a deal and we went home very happy on Sunday afternoon knowing that Phil had a way to get to work on Monday. Here are a few pics of the man with his wad of cash just before purchasing the car. Who knew the bank machine had so many fifty dollar bills in it?

This week hasn’t been much better. Greg is still off work and to make matters worse it has been raining non-stop for the past two days. That means most environmental monitoring is on hold until things dry up. The month is flying by and I have so much left to do. The drive to work has been slow and messy. This is what the roads look like after a mere 8mm of rain:

And here’s what the vehicle looks like after driving on said roads for a day:

Looks like another car wash is in order!

Speaking of messy roads… Last week I snapped a couple of pictures of the aftermath of the Land Cruiser/Grader bogging combo. It looked much more impressive when the vehicles were in place, but you should be able to grasp the magnitude of the situation from these shots.

Tunnel erosion anyone? One of many massive holes I tried to avoid:

Where the Land Cruiser subsequently slid down the bank:

The mess the grader left behind:

On a lighter note, I saw this group of kangaroos on my way home from work this afternoon. They watched me very quietly from afar for a while but as soon as I got out of the car to take their picture they hopped away rather frantically. I was just happy they ran in the other direction!