I Bet It Takes A While To Paint the B*st*rd

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DAY 301


I have no idea what time I got out of bed this morning, except that Andy was out before me and I did have a cup of tea brought to me. The weather had improved on yesterday, that is to say that today has not started with rain.

Our, what by now is becoming, a usual morning routine is complete, but one thing is on my mind today and is very pressing.

A while ago when we were in Katherine, well it all seems such a while ago now anyway, I spent the afternoon burning discs, I know, how exciting I can hear you all say, but at that point with some 11,000 photographs we were getting desperate to ensure that all of these photos were backed up, we should have done it earlier and perhaps gradually to lessen the pain of it.

Nonetheless I sat one afternoon and burnt about 9 DVD’s and when we arrived in Darwin Andy and I packaged them up, placed them carefully in a suitable box, took them to the Post Office and sent them to my Mum and Dad in England for safe keeping, however to date they have never arrived. I did also find the receipt the other day, which confirms that we sent them via airmail.

We are sure that the real reason for their non arrival is that they have been scrutinised by Australian customs, they are after all DVD’s and I guess they may look through to ensure that unsuitable material is not flagrantly being distributed from Australia.

In the meantime we are once again without back up of 9 months of our memories, so my main task of the day is to sit down and burn them all over again and include the recent additions since leaving Darwin, so now we have over 13,000 photographs.

I get down to business, but before I burn the discs I do something that I did not really have time to do last time, but I went through every single photograph to make sure that it was in the right orientation, i.e. those that are portrait style. I also took the opportunity to delete some photographs that I did not feel were particularly good and where I had taken several photos of the same thing, picking out the best shot that kind of stuff really.

So I was glued to the chair pretty much all afternoon, but it was fun going through all of the pictures and reliving those memories of what we have seen, done, who we have met etc.

All I really need to do now is get them back to England safely, but I am sceptical about sending them again, I don’t want to lose another lot of discs.

Andy enjoys a relaxing afternoon, but the time came to do our walk up to the top of the road, which in all honesty does get easier but it does tell on our calf muscles about half way up.

We see ash in the air it lands near us, so we think that there must be fire on the mountain somewhere although we cannot see smoke, not like we did yesterday when it was billowing off the mountain.

Tonight we have an easy dinner as we are going out to the cinema; we wanted to see the new Paul Hogan film, Charlie and Boots. Basically about a Father and Son that go on a fishing trip, the film takes you on their journey from Victoria right up to Cape York, which in fact takes in some of the places that we have been to, it was great to relive some of those places while watching the film.

If you remember Paul Hogan is a famous Australian Comedian made world wide fame when we was Crocodile Dundee, in fact something that some of you may not know that before Paul Hogan found fame, he used to paint the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

We both enjoyed the film, we went to the Earlville cinema which is closest to us, on the way out of the cinema we got chatting to Tia, she works there, but in talking to her that we find out that she is due to leave for Canada on 18th October with her partner on their own adventure, they have a 2 year working visa and will travel around Canada. We told Tia about our trip, she has seen a lot of Australia but has not done the year out thing yet, she is excited and nervous, and boy do we know how that feels!

We explain to Tia that she should blog even if only for her own memories as things can so easily be forgotten over time. Although Andy and I did not blog on any of our other adventures I do have handwritten journals, which make great reading from time to time.

Back at home it is time for bed, I am sure I can hear the familiar sound of tiny footsteps out on the veranda but I am too tired to worry about it. We drift off to sleep amongst the patter of feet and the sound of things dropping on the roof from the trees above.

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Comments

[Darryl and Sarah]

DHL them!
Hi guys, I have the same task to do shortly - burning DVDs of photographs! What a pleasant thought when the pool is just there and it's nearing 40 degrees!!! I've been told to use DHL in the past, very reliable and alot less agro apparently than other methods of postage from Australia (if you get my drift!). Hope all is going well, very much looking forward to our trip into Arnhem land later this week, should be fab. Speak to you soon WW x x x x

[Gary]

Tia & Canada
I am sure that Tia and her partner have researched their trip to Canada. But you might want to remind her that she will be heading into winter where temperatures can be anywhere from minus 10 to minus 30C. I won't even mention the possibility of -40C. Oops, I did mention it!!!! We also tend to still use pounds and inches for measurements. Although litres and Kilometres for petrol (gas/gasoline here) and highway 'mileage'. Never figured out if kilometreage would replace mileage. Take care