Two Hits

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DAY 405



Today we had two hits, Caroline and I hit the shops for Christmas and the Temperature Hit 42.3 Degree’s as recorded at Woodstock on the verandah.

So today was going to be another busy day and we had a late night last night so I am feeling a little tired, but Andy brings me a cup of tea, I get up, shower and dress as today is Belly Button Day!

After breakfast we are heading into Wagga to see the specialist about Andy’s umbilical hernia, we are hopeful that this goes well, but we have heard on the grapevine that all elective surgery at the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital in January has been cancelled so that is not good news.

Andy helps Jason briefly while he welds something out in one of the paddocks, Jason needs someone to watch just in case he starts a fire while welding, he said only 5 minutes but 20 minutes later Andy reappears.

We head off with our list of things to do, on the way into Wagga we drive over the now familiar road with the surrounding hills, there is one particular hill that we drive up to a crest where the road drops away in front of you and the scenery just rolls itself out to the hills in the distance, far away in the distance I hasten to add, the view is nothing short of spectacular and always gives me that “wow” moment when we drive over the top, no matter what time of day or what the weather is doing (usually sunny) the view just stuns me.

We don’t have time to do anything else but drive straight to the specialist, where we wait to see Dr Cheung. He appears shortly after 10.00 and introduces himself as Bernard, Andy goes through the whole story, but Dr Cheung seems more interested in his large scar on his chest, from his Fallots Tetrology rather than the actual hernia, but only for the right reasons as he wants to make sure that Andy is “repaired” enough to cope with more surgery.

So the upshot is that Andy will have to wait 3 months, however Dr Cheung warns us that it will be more likely 6 months, but this is far better than the 12 months that we were originally told. We have a coffee and fill out the Hospital Admissions form and then drive a short hop down the road and hand the form in at the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital and now we wait.

So next we pick up our dry cleaning (sleeping bags) and then sort out a few more bits and pieces but we needed also to get a Christmas present for Helen, we have not had any success so far, so we head to Myers.

We look at a few things and make a decision to go and get some lunch and then we can decide what to get. However before we get some lunch we pop into the shearing shed to get Andy’s hair sheared, it has got rather long and although he has been enjoying the unkempt look it has got out of control. We find that there is a long queue in front so the lady gives Andy a time to come back, time for lunch first, in fact the queue for the hairdresser is so long that people are sitting on the seats outside in the mall to wait.

An hour later the lady is shearing Andy’s hair into something more practical, it falls away to the floor to be brushed away.

In the meantime we decided what to get Helen for Christmas so we head off to pick that up, walking back down the high street we feel the heat, the wind is hot, really hot, we walk in the shade but there feels little point the wind feels as hot as the heat from the sun, I am glad that I remembered to “slip slop slap today!”

Then we are done, I pop into Woolworths get some fresh milk, ice cream and some frozen vegetables to pack into the cool bag around the ice cream and we head back to Nangus.

It is still hot, we are thankful for the air conditioning in the Patrol, the temperatures today have been expected to get into the 40’s, it has been windy in Wagga so I have no doubt that the wind will be causing havoc back at Woodstock.

As soon as we get back, I put the ice cream in the freezer, the wind is still hot as it whips out across the veranda, we find that the temperature actually reached 42.3, we find out that there are more fires but thankfully not so close to us, we find out that these fires are devastating for some having lost their homes, this hot wind does nothing to help.

Whilst away in Wagga, Helen has had to take Trixie to the vets to see if her wound to her belly needs attention, they were both back by the time we got back to Woodstock, the good news is that her belly is healing nicely so no concerns there.

I chose to do some Wii Fit, I need to keep up the good work that I have been doing, but while doing so I could see in the distance outside a huge orange cloud that was slowly edging its way toward Woodstock, Helen said we have a dust storm coming so we hurriedly went round to close windows and doors, it would not take long for the dust to come over and basically dump dust over everything and I mean over everything, even the garage doors had to be shut. The amazing thing is that although everything is shut up for this phenomena you still find a layer of dust on things once it has gone through.

While Caroline did her Wii fit I had afternoon Siesta, but before we knew it, it was teatime and Helen cooked Chicken Satay sausages, which were delicious.

We sat down after our full day to watch some TV, the film Die Hard was on, with Bruce Willis, but whilst watching Caroline got a call from Jason and he asked her if she would pop down to Merryville to have a look at his computer, which was the one we had picked up earlier today but it seemed not to be working properly.

Caroline was unable to fix the computer, suspecting that the virus software was causing the problem, however the computer kept freezing as soon as you tried to do anything so it was impossible to uninstall the software. This computer needed to go back to the shop to be sorted out.

Caroline came back and we continued to watch the film, but by 11.00 we were both so tired and could not be bothered to stay up any longer so we retired to our bed.

Until tomorrow.

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Photos

Clouds loom over Woodstock
The dust storm was blowing over 100 kph