Advertisement
Published: August 30th 2010
Well, Jasper and I began our return trip to the Northern Territory on Saturday as we headed for Dunsborough for Jasper to see his friend Callum. We stayed there for 2 nights. On the first day I lost my wallet at Old Dunsborough Beach. We went back to look for it (including retracing the 4km walk we had done earlier), but it was not there. Wondering how we were going to get on a plane without any ID, money, car keys or cards was not a fun prospect. Fortunately we received word via Pemberton people (Cheryl, Amanda, Marj, Michele) on Emily’s (Callum’s mum) mobile saying that a guy in Busselton had found it, the first hurdle cleared!
Monday and it was off to Australind to visit Nornie and Pop Art for the night.
Tuesday we drove to Perth and went straight to Leederville for an interview at SIDE to get Jasper enrolled in distance education. Upon arrival I couldn’t help viewing the 3 A3 boxes with dismay, how on earth were we going to fit an extra 30kg of equipment into our already bulging bags? After much culling it was down to 13kg (thanks for the extra bag Nornie!) worth of counters, blocks, workbooks, tutor books, paper, CDs etc They even provided 500ml bottles of paint in every colour (which we didn’t bring)!
Another hour and we were in Armadale visiting Sito (my mum). She then drove us over to South Perth so that we could stay at Dad’s for the night. We went out for Thai food.
The next morning……. Oh dear, the next morning!
I woke up at 4.30am and spent 3 hours in the bathroom, unable to leave for more than 10 minutes as I had gastro and was violently ill. After 7.30am all I could manage (between trips to the bathroom) was laying on the floor. Luckily Dad gave me some tablets and took us to the airport. I don’t know how I could have got there or carried the bags without him! By this stage Jasper was looking a little pale, however fortunately he wasn’t sick.
We made it onto the plane relatively in tact, however I was still feeling nauseous and queasy, barely able to breathe, let alone stand up. As the plane was preparing to taxi Jasper vomited….. not once, but three times, expelling the cereal and toast he’d had for breakfast all over himself, the seat, his hat, my skirt, the window ……. We were told we could not do anything until we were in the air, great! Then once in the air were told that we would have to wait until after the serving cart had gone through to get cleaned up. After a while they must have taken pity on us because they let us get changed and move up to row three. Jasper proceeded to vomit another 8 /9 times throughout the flight, so in between laying down I was rubbing his back, patting his head etc etc.
Somehow we managed to get our 5 items of luggage (including a massive swag) and hopped in a taxi to go to the Value Inn in the middle of Darwin. Upon arrival Jasper promptly fell into bed (approx 3.30pm Perth time) and slept until 8.30am the next morning. Even though that was all I wanted to do I had to do the washing and keep trying to get a hold of Kevin (I had received a message that we were to meet him off the Greyhound bus in Katherine, not Matarranka as originally planned) however he was nowhere to be found.
Fortunately I managed to talk to him half an hour before our bus left to find out the new arrangements. It was pretty tricky trying to get all our luggage from our accommodation to the bus terminal as I was still struggling to remain upright and Jasper had to sit at every opportunity. Yet as one does, we managed.
Finally on the bus and in the cool we were both able to read and sit, if not comfortably, at least in the one place. Jasper was still extremely pale, listless and lethargic, however throughout the whole journey there had not been one complaint, one whinge or cry, he was incredibly stoic and as helpful as he could be - absolutely amazing!
Upon arrival in Katherine at our motel Jasper slept again for 3 hours until Kevin arrived where he found 2 people feeling very sorry for themselves.
The following day (Friday) Kevin did the shopping for the next month while we lay in our room (until we were kicked out at 10am) and then outside. Then, finally we were on our final bus leg - a 5 hour trip to Ngukurr.
Jasper was sick for the whole of the weekend after we got here and had further bouts of gastro, but I was OK from Sunday.
Today (Monday) Jasper is beginning to eat more and recover some of his energy which is a good sign.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.068s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0422s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
anonymous
non-member comment
Good to hear from you. I've sent a separate email. Love Nornie