Wednesday, 13 September 2017

Time to move on

After nearly a week in Wandangula with no car, and no parts arriving, we moved back into Borroloola.

A friend towed the car into town for us, and we are now using Borroloola as our base.






 There are advantages and disadvantages for both places. For many days we were not sure what was the best place to be. In the end, it was the need for food that initiated our move into town. It was too hard to get in to town for food. 

Yesterday, Tuesday, we got our car back. It has half the parts we need. We are under strict orders not to drive too far, and don't tow anything heavy until the rest of the parts arrive and are installed.

I am sure many of you know what NT stands for:
Not today, not tomorrow, not Tuesday, not Thursday, next truck!

It was the same when we lived here, just like it is today!

We were sitting on the Verandah Sunday after noon and saw a huge cloud of smoke. While smoke and fires are not unusual this time of year, these was very close and very black.

Dennis went to investigate. It was a collection of buildings and caravans just on the next block. He was immediately asked to bring buckets of water. But it was all too late. Nearly everything was burned..sheds, caravans, cars.

No one was hurt, and the resident dog escaped unharmed!

Apparently the fire was deliberately lit.




 
Our work has been going slowly. At times it has been frustrating. All was going well until we lost the car.
Since then the workers we were using have gone on to other things. Our best worker had to take her young child to Katherine Hospital.

There was an historical walk on last week that involved most of the town. They walked for 5 days from an outstation called Manangoora all the way to Borroloola.  Nelita was able to participate for a couple of days and she loved it. We could not because we did not have a car.

This has finished, so we are now up and running again.

While we come here with an agenda, and a worthy cause, we cannot expect people to drop things just for us and spend huge amounts of time at the drop of a hat.

We always have to be aware they have lives with commitments. Many have full time jobs so it is hard for them to do as much as we would like.


Monday, 4 September 2017

Car-go.......car-stop

We are having a few problems here at the moment.
We wanted to spend a couple of weeks at Robinson River Station this time here. The roads are so bad we cant take the caravan out there. While it is an off-road van, it is not good to take it 2 hours plus on corrugations as bad as are here at the moment.

Then we thought we could go out for some day trips. Last week we were ready to to out for the Saturday, but something happened, and it was after 10.00 am when that problem was fixed.

Then we decided we would go the following Sunday to Robinson and share with the people there. Friday afternoon, after spending a greater part of the day translating scripts to record the following week, our car broke down.

The guard covering the fan broke and then the fan broke. After talks with insurance, we were able to get it trucked into town today.



We found out our car is imported so the parts may be hard to get.
Please pray for the parts. We are unable to get into town to work with people.  We have 3 weeks left before leaving for Tennant Creek and Alice.

While we are getting some work done we really need more done before we go