Fate

Six years ago on a reconnaissance mission through Far North Queensland we drove up the mountain range we now live on. It was a very cold, foggy morning so we were unable to see anything but the pavement just ahead of our vehicle. Oblivious to the lush green mountains and fields we passed, the area we settled into just over a year ago when we returned, we continued on. We had breakfast in a little café at the top of the range, the first place we could see outside the persistent low-lying clouds. The town was sparse, not much there at all. The landscape was bleak, brown, and dry. We kept on down the highway through an unfenced grazing property, signs warning us to beware of wandering stock. A wildfire was burning unchecked on the roadside. Who in the hell would live out here? was the question I asked myself over and over as we made our way to the next settlement, a dismal, depressing cowtown.

Now, six years later, I know the answer to that question.

We are living on the very same cattle station the wildfire burned.


There's no such thing as chance;
And what to us seems merest accident
Springs from the deepest source of destiny.

-- Johann Friedrich von Schiller

Dark Ages

If you have nothing nice to say, you should say nothing. But I will tell you a few things anyway.

I am living in the Dark Ages. We've moved into our new rental and this weekend is the first we have had to spend some time in it relaxing (or at least not schlepping boxes.) Life on the cattle station is certainly different than living in the rainforest. Yes, Dy, it is very brown, but unlike your water situation (which I'm glad to see has been, if not resolved, at least identified) we have been encouraged by the landlord to use as much water as we need to keep the yard green. Cuts down on the fire hazard. Hopefully the electric meter for the pump is not on our account. You'd think this would be easily determined. As easily determined as whether broadband Internet was available before we moved in. There is a brand new shiny cable installed out front, but so far the wonderful robots at Telstra have only been able to confirm that broadband is unavailable, we have only one dial-up line, and a second line will cost us $300. Wireless? Sorry, that 98% country coverage doesn't include us. Satellite? The government was supposed to fund the "Broadband For All" satellite subsidy back in April but nobody has heard a word since.

And to make matters worse, our phone is not working properly. All calls are presently being made with the fax's handset and its painfully short cord. And, really, making it a moot point anyway, my laptop is dead again. After the Mother's Day Eve Disaster and subsequent hard drive replacement I was cautioned that there could still be some undetectable hairline crack in some board somewhere that could one day just shut the whole thing down. That day was today.

On the positive side of life here, the kids finally have a nice horizontal surface to ride bikes on. They cruise around on the station's airstrip instead of careening down the side of a mountain. I love to watch Elle pedaling around and singing to herself. The world is hers. She could go anywhere. As long as it is on the paved surfaces, not in the grass where all the giant venomous snakes live. That's freedom. And as inconvenient as it is now to have to drive 15 minutes each way to get the kids to and from the bus stop twice a day, it always makes me smile to see the kangaroos hopping across our driveway. There are at least 20 of them. It's sort of like seeing manatees and porpoise out on our island, you might see them every day but it's still a thrill.

Highlights of our friends' visit, which I can now only mention as all photographic evidence is firmly lodged in my dead computer, included a tour of Aboriginal sacred rock art sites and a bush tucker walk. We ate green ants, the ones that tilt their big heads up at you in thoughtful consideration before they bite you. This had nothing to do with the vomiting that occurred later on. We attended a bull ride competition, not part of any big flash traveling rodeo show, but a real local one where we knew many of the riders, who included several of the kids' classmates, and a fair bit of the audience. We also took a bracing swim in beautiful Lake Eacham, a volcanic crater lake, on our way back from a cave tour out in Chillagoe. Chillagoe is where the stomach virus kicked in. We presumed it was the seafood chowder the first batch of ill travelers had eaten (causing me to secretly think of our vehicle as the Sushi Express) until a few that had passed on the chowder then got sick later on and we since discovered that the same bug had simultaneously struck nearly half the population of our little town. Anyway, a dip in the lake made everyone feel better. For a while. Those were a few of my highlights, I'm pretty sure theirs differ.

Meanwhile, Sarabelle celebrated her quinceanera yesterday. At school she has progressed from basic music lessons to being a member of the strings ensemble. They have been invited to play a gig, Sara's first public performance, at a dinner honoring a local philanthropist (and grandfather of her friend, the ensemble's cello player), in two weeks. I only just learned that the monstrosity she is lugging around mastering, the double bass, is only a 3/4-sized instrument.

Sarabelle and Grice have taken up gardening. In a show of pure stubbornness, today Grice dug up the dirt from the garden plot she would have shared with her sister and carted it over in a box on a handtruck to the other side of the yard where she will make her own. Grice also informed Sarabelle that she put a grub in her vegetable patch. Ah, sibling rivalry.

Time to plug the phone cord back into the fax so I check and see that we've received forty-two messages since I logged on. Posting will be few and far between from Ye Olde Cattle Station.


We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

-- Carl Sagan

The Trip of Lifetime

It's been a while between posts, I know. We've been all over Far North Queesnland with the Broker and his crew. There are thousands of pictures and loads of good stories, including a few that everyone will no doubt laugh over a few years from now, though I was given over to an unfortunate fit of nervous, inappropriate, uncontrollable giggles right away. One had to do with a suspected case of food poisoning. Who eats seafood in the Outback? Need I say more?

Well I will.

And I wish I had pictures to show the condition of the troop carrier when we finally pulled into town, with its twin set of chunky racing stripes.

I'm sorry, I'm giggling again.

We're in the midst of moving so while my laptop and camera are here, my USB cable is there. You'll just have to use your imagination for a little longer.


Laughter is an interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

-- Ambrose Bierce