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Published: November 16th 2015
Man Vs Machine
The Catarpliiar Skid SteerToday we had a working Bee at the Black Cockatoo Society at Kaarakin, as 28 clubs who are in the Western Australian 4 wheel drive association use their facilities free of charge the only reparation we have to do is a couple of working bee’s throughout the year, so everyone is happy.
The weather is ramping up Friday was a pretty warm 33 degree’s and Saturday was forecast to be a whopping 38 degree’s, not bad for Spring.
We were late to bed last night, as you have read in our last blog with Floretta’s 60th Birthday, we fell into bed at 11.45 absolutely knackered and we had promised ourselves we would be up at 6.00am to go and have a run, in the cool of the morning.
When we were driving home last night the internal temperature gauge was telling us it was 27 degrees and through out the night it only dropped 1 degree, when we woke at 6.20 am it was pretty warm, so much for the run then.
Our plan was to be on our way at 7.15am as we had a 45 minute journey
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41 Mtrs of rock work when the temperature was baking, talk about hard work and we wanted a coffee on route. We were pulling out from where we live at 6.55 and just had to stop on the way in to Cockburn to fuel up, and lately the diesel prices have started to drop as the cost was $1.20 per litre (60p) UK price, so I was originally only going to fill the front tank, as we are not using Jack much at the moment, but on reflection we decided to fill front and rear tanks full to 180 litres as we are away next week in Beverley, for the Toyota Landcruiser Club End of Year wind up, so we will be hooking Roobie up for a fun packed weekend.
So back to this mini adventure, we filled up then went to check the post box, we have a Post Office box in Cockburn where we have our mail sent to, we usually get up there once a week to empty most of the crap out of it, junk mail always still seems to find us.
From the Post Box, we drove across the traffic lights to Macca’s and went in, Caroline had a breakfast wrap but I
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Emu Feet, not what you would call Dainty!! am not afforded such luxuries, not when I have worked so hard on losing 22 Kilo’s, so it was only a skinny flat white coffee for me.
We were finally on our way, down the Tonkin Highway to Mill Point road east, then a beautiful climb up in to the Perth Hills until we arrived at Kaarakin, it was exactly 07.45 when we arrived. I reversed Jack in to a parking space and booted up the HF radio as I wanted to call in on the HF radio sked this morning as our good friend Jack was rostered on as radio operator and I wanted to say hi.
When our radio locked on to the required frequency, I called up with our selcall number 1136 and Jack announced he had received our message, I told him had just arrived at Kaarakin and he said he and Sue would be there in half and hour as they too were members of our 4 wheel drive club and were also helping out on the working Bee.
We were Three quarters of an hour early so I used the time to do a bit
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A pure Bred Dingo, No Babies were hurt in the taking of this shot !(There is a joke in there somewhere) of pottering and tidy up the back of the Landcruiser as I wanted everything ready to go by Sunday night, and as we were getting bits and pieces together, some of our other members were beginning to turn up, as we were not aware who was on the trip sheet we only hoped it would be a better turn out than last year as only Caroline, Myself and Andy actually turned up, which was a bit poor, still you can’t force people to come along.
With all our members finally mustered, we all went in to the meeting room for our jobs which were being handed out, I had a face time call from my Cousin Kim who was in Adelaide, with her Australian Husband and they said we would hopefully see them at Christmas time which would be nice, the way its going we are going to be really busy this Christmas.
Caroline and Sue’s job was to go and water the veggie garden and three of us where shown a job which was to rake back the mulch to a certain place then put rocks down as when it rains here it
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Pulling the rocks out really rains with a force and it washes the mulch away, so the rocks would act like a small dam wall.
This all sounded pretty simple and we got stuck in to the job in hand, the only thing was it was only 9.00am, it was already heading fast toward 38 degree’s and that is pretty warm soon we were drinking/sweating and drinking some more, plenty of fluids were the order of the day.
We had soon finished our first pile of rocks that had been left for us and the Bobcat driver “Bill” came down the track with another bucket load of rocks for us to lay.
The job was going as sweet as a nut we were ahead of the curve as soon as the rocks were arriving we were getting them in to position, and when there was a little lull in the rock delivery I would grab my camera and go an photograph the Emu’s or Cockatoo’s.
The Cockatoo’s are natural show offs, they squawk at you to pay them attention and when you do they go all shy on you.
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The ladies doing morning Tea I did have this one that puffed all its feathers out and looked me straight square in the eye and let me take its photo which was good, and just as we were chatting merrily to each other the Bobcat made an appearance with some more rocks so I had to leave this Cockatoo to amuse itself.
As luck would have it it was the very last rock that I trapped my finger against and boy it hurt, the Bobcat driver had not tipped the front bucket down enough and I had to pull the last rock out and it just squashed my index finger, by now it was morning tea time the day was literally baking, I was glad to have a break and get out of the heat.
We walked down to the main building and sandwiches were being made and pies warmed for our morning smoko break all put on by the ladies of the Four wheel drive association of Western Australia, again not a morsel passed my lips and I don’t think Caroline had anything either as it was just so warm. Caroline told me that she and Sue had
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The Rock breaking gang the pleasure of spraying the water from the hoses into the Cockatoo cages, they enjoyed the spray of water, as long as you don't spray it directly on them to start with, they soon fly or wander into it. Some avoided it, others looked happy to have some water to enjoy and cool of in the hot day.
Once morning tea was over, some of our members were finished up as they had completed their work, two of us, were tasked with going to sweep up the Kangaroo enclosure, which I thought was excellent, I only said to Caroline that I hadn’t seen a Kangaroo for ages, and hey presto I am just about to go in to a compound full of Roo’s.
Roger and I grabbed our brooms, all we had to do was sweep the path, Roger said he was told not to split up, but we agreed he would go one side of the loop and I would go the other.
There were some males and a lot of females who were carrying joeys, now this is seriously a dangerous mix, the mothers would be really cautious of
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Happy Kangaroo's, well they are happy because they are eating the young and the males guard their hareem of females, and there is nothing quite as dangerous of a male Kangaroo who feels someone is trying to muscle in with one of his ladies.
We were only armed with a broom, you would have no chance of out running a Boomer If I could run flat out he would only takes a could of hops and he would be on top of me, but if we were careful they would be no problems, as they would be cautious and so were we .
I saw Caroline and Krys entered to Kangaroo compound and walk over to us, of course Kangaroo’s look cute and Cuddly and we obviously had to take some photo’s for this blog and for our four wheel drive club magazine, so Caroline and Kry’s went to talk to some females roo’s and Roger and I kept sweeping the path.
There was a tiny joey, out of her mums pouch just hopping around, they didn’t like the broom and were very cautious of it, Caroline and Krys did their best to get some photo’s but mother and baby were doing their
best to make it as difficult as they could.
The message came to us that we needed to finish the clean up as quick as we could and get back and put the tools away as the clean up organiser needed to be away for mid day.
We were not going to argue as we had worked hard this morning and were just now enjoying ourselves, so we walked back to the main building again and wrapped up.
The Toyota Landcruiser club has done themselves proud by having 12 members do a working Bee and we had done what they wanted it had been great morning and we were whacked, on the way home we dropped in to see Dennis and Yvonne about a future house sit then it was home for an easy afternoon and a well earned rest, well with the exception of some much needed grocery shopping, we raced into Woolworths at 4.20, they closed at 5.00, we were at the checkout, just in the nick of time.
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SkiSet
The Ds
Go!! muscles ....
Congratulations Andy, on a job well done and, and I don't mean just the working bee and rock-laying. The loss of 22 kgs is a cause for celebration too. Well done!! But, keep this up and you'll blow away in the next stiff breeze. :) 33 deg here today after lots of rain and some lovely, more civilised, cooler temperatures this last week. Now back to the heat again (groan!). 38 deg tomorrow and 39 deg on Friday. Thanks for sending YOUR hot weather over. Roll on winter!! :) Lots of love to both. J & T xx