Read Afterburning

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DAY 250

After the usual hubbub of breakfast etc, we jumped in the truck and headed off into Darwin. We wanted to go in to Darwin Camera House to see if there was any movement on Caroline’s Canon lens.

We drove in to the city and parked in the multi storey car park, $3.00 bucks for 3 hours (bargain), I’ve paid over £60.00 quid in London for that duration of time before.

We stride off in search of Camera House and wander in, the owner “Russell” is how do I explain this?? Well lets just say he is not like me, I want things done now, in my time.

We have previously been warned about (NT) Northern Territories as it stands for Not Today, Not Tomorrow, Not Tuesday and Not Thursday, and generally you do get that feeling up here.

I do especially do when in Camera House the owner “Russell” just doesn’t give me that warm fuzzy feeling, especially when he says things like “Well if we keep getting on to Canon and chase them” they will get annoyed and it won’t speed the process along any more, in fact it may even slow it up. We know looking online that Canon’s normal turnaround time is 10 days, however this may change in busy periods, Russell had said that they were running at about 3 weeks turnaround time when we originally went in.

Frankly, I do not give a sh*t about Canon getting ars*y if we phone up, If they don’t like being chased about progress then they shouldn’t be in business. Although I suspect strongly that Canon don’t mind, I think it is just Russell that doesn’t like chasing.

This morning amazingly he says he received notification from Canon that they have received the lens, although he says he will give them a ring this afternoon, and he will call me back, we both get the feeling that he is very reluctant to call them. I get the feeling he is just giving us lip service, and he will get around to it when he feels like it.

I take Caroline for some lunch we go and grab some Chinese food and sit quietly to eat our lunch. We finish up and go in to Tourist Information, I need the set the scene, I know what my faults are more than anybody, so here we go.

I walk into Tourist Information go up to the counter and say G’day to the young lad behind the counter, to which he responded, “ur, what can I do for you?” In a half ars*d slovenly way, “Oh don’t say it like that I exclaim,” the response being, “Well how else do you want me to say it?” this conversation is going to get no where.

I ask him if he knows how to get a permit in to Arnhem Land, which is Aboriginal land and is accessible by permit only. The bloke in Tourist information tells me he doesn’t know how to get a permit nor where from, (and he is in Tourist information), he then glances around at his colleagues and says loudly “don’t ask them, they don’t know either.”

I walk out, Caroline Criticises me for my approach to this guy, as far as I am concerned he is Tourist Information, not “I don’t know service,” all we ever seem to get from Tourist Information is I don’t know, I have never been there etc etc.

I stupidly thought they were supposed to be ambassadors to the places they represent, not grumpy people who can’t really be bothered to give you the information you need. This seems to be the general representation of service in general nowadays.

To take our minds off our fairly disappointing morning we go and have a game of mini golf, I think to myself that my performance will be bad as my mind is not focused but strangely enough quite the opposite, I play really well.

There is a young boy watching us play, however he sits on the side and jabbers away at us, he doesn’t realise how seriously Caroline and myself take our competition, Caroline politely tells him that he can watch but he mustn’t talk, he pays heed to this instruction and eventually he gets bored and wanders off. This poor kid does not realise how close he came to having Andy’s golf club wrapped around his neck and hanging from a tree upside down! Andy is not in a mood to be challenged this afternoon.

The overall score this afternoon is an unbelievable draw again, our score is lower than usual too, as we are getting used to the course but again it is a draw so the only thing we can do is play again to decide the winner.

We head out on our final chores to BCF (Boating camping and Fishing) we don’t call it that but it is unprintable in our blog as to what we (I) call it, as we need to pick up a new Eva Cool power pack for the fridge as Eva Cool have not yet managed to post us a replacement part in nearly 3 weeks even though they have had several goes at it.

Hurrah we have the replacement part, and all we have to do is to go and swop it with the unit that was loaned to us previously from In and Outboard Marine.

We finally give them a call to see if our replacement lamp has arrived and they say a complete unit has turned up, so instead of a $10.00 dollar lamp they have posted a complete $110.00 dollar unit which make perfect business sense.

Our old unit is handed over and the new unit is given to us, we are overjoyed, as it has cost us so much in phone calls and fuel in and out to Darwin that it was becoming a farce, but at last the circle is closed.

We get back to the trailer and have a sit down fed up of the constant rushing around trying to get things exchanged as they keep breaking, things just don’t seem to be up to the job any more.

After my cup of tea, I start to fiddle around with the truck, a lady walks past and we start chatting, There is a new Harley Davidson Heritage Softtail parked next to us and I ask if it is hers, “yes well my husbands.” We carry on chatting and she tells me that she is off to the camp kitchen to boil a kettle; I offer to boil the kettle for them both so she goes and gets the cups.

Jo and Laurie are from Melbourne; they have ridden 5000K’s up from where they live for a short break and said that the weather on their journey has been great.

We are sitting drinking tea and by the time we look at our watches its 7.30 we tell them tonight is cheap Tuesday and its Pizza night at Eagle Boys, we are going to phone and collect and would they like to do the same. Our order is placed and we jump in the Patrol and go and collect.

We sit and carry on chatting whilst devouring our dinner, Jo and Laurie have shipped the Harley over to the States and Canada in 2003 where they went to Milwaukee and the huge Harley Davidson event in Sturgis in South Dakota and were in fact over there for 3 months so wanted their own bike over there with them.

They have planned to go back in 2010 and are already booking fares and the like as they are flying into Anchorage whilst their bikes are been shipped to Portland (Oregon) for them to collect.

There seems to be an unanswerable situation going on here in Australia, we are very a-political and can only comment on what we see and on what we are told.

It is true to say that some of the Aboriginals have a problem with drinking, not missing their mouths or anything like that, quite the opposite, In Katherine alcohol is banned for sale on a Thursday until 1.00pm as its dole day.

It seems that soon the richest people in Australia will soon be aboriginals, why? Well lets take Kakadu for an example, Australian companies wanted to mine it for the Uranium, which some say good and some say bad, but along comes the aboriginals and put their land claim in for this region saying this is where our ancestors used to hunt and we have a rightful claim to this land, we wont let you mine this area until we come to some financial solution.

This problem is not a new one, its been around for quite a few years, but the divide between Australians and their government and the Australians and the Aboriginals seems only to get wider.

When Australians want to train at a TAFE (Technical College) they will have to pay for the course, if the Aboriginals wish to do the same course then it is free to them. Aboriginal kids get paid for attendance at school, whilst the Australian kids have to go anyway. Mostly they turn up for the register and then they go home without attending a single lesson. They have loads of dogs, apparently they get paid $6.00 per day per dog, then the dogs just roam free anyway.

Apparently the houses they are provided only get wrecked so the tradies have to come back to fix them up only to get wrecked again and the Government never ever seems to stop giving them hand outs whilst all the Aboriginals want to do is get p*ss*d all the time.

I accept this is just a broad-brush outline of a very complicated situation, but there doesn’t seem to be any reasonable solution to it, well not yet anyway.

This is not necessarily our opinion; it is only our intention to show you what we have come across on our travels.

We have forgotten to mention previously that Darwin international Airport, share its runways with RAAF Darwin (The Royal Australian Air force) it is a forward operating base for tactical fighters and is home to the following squadrons.

· No 396 Expeditionary Combat Support Wing
· No 321 Expeditionary Combat Support Squadron
· No 92 Wing Detachment Darwin - surveillance and response
· No 44 Wing Detachment Darwin - air traffic control
· No 13 (City of Darwin) Squadron - Air Force Reserve
· No 1 Airfield Operations Support Squadron Detachment Darwin - airfield engineering
· No 3 Combat Support Hospital Detachment Darwin

The Royal Australian Air Force flies F/A-18 Hornets and they constantly “Go out to play” during the day and often on night sorties.

It is great you can hear them virtually rolling down the runway with both jet engines on full afterburners and the pass over us at a couple of 1000 feet heading out over the ocean.

Tonight we hear them but they seem to be slightly louder than usual.

We had a good evening with Jo and Laurie, chatting about this and that, generally putting the world to rights but soon it is time for bed we are knackered after another busy day.

Goodnight.

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Photos

Harley Davidson
Laurie & Jo's Heritage Softtail

Laurie & Jo
Laurie & Jo are from Melbourne and have had a good run up the East Coast