THE BUS ON THE HILL

We first met Phil, the guy who owns the property we are staying at, when he drove up on his four wheeled motorbike and discovered our dirty great big bus stuck in his driveway. There is quite a dip where his driveway meets the road and as the back wheels are so far towards the front, the back of the bus stuck firm on the road while the back wheels spun….. oops….. His first words were, “So, you meant a real bus…” Ha! He got his big red tractor, took Jarra and Tal for a bit of a spin on it, hooked a chain to the front of Bessie and dragged her out. Phew! The bus is now parked behind the cosy mud brick cottage, up a hill on North Arm Road, she has a wonderful view across the valley, it is a very picturesque spot, snuggled amongst lush green rolling hills where deer, cows, and many birds call home. The rolling mist in the morning is an amazing sight, sometimes tufty clouds hang around the hill tops until the sun comes out and clears them up, and other mornings we are blanketed by low cloud which collects and drips off the trees like rain, then in the evening the mist rolls in again. We have the company of many butcherbirds here, black and white, fluffy, medium sized birds which are closely related to the magpie, we heard that they hang up their food in a tree and let it decompose a bit before eating it, this is where their name comes from. They hang around the kitchen hoping for scraps and will come inside and help themselves if we leave the door open. They are very interesting, if you throw a piece of bread up in the air, they will swoop down off their branch and catch it in their beak before it hits the ground. I caught a mouse in a trap in the kitchen cupboard of the bus today, my third attempt, it managed to swipe the cheese twice without setting the trap off, clever little bugger, but not quite clever enough. Helen suggested I give it to the butcherbirds. Well, they spied me carrying the mouse straight away and were swooping me for it, I layed it on a log and it was taken immediately. They are a funny bird. They have also been keeping me company as I have been working on some artwork in the shelter that I set up off the side of the bus; it is a magnificent place to work. I went into Bluescope Steel in Coffs harbour last Friday to get some material and the manager Sally was fantastic, she had seen an article about my work in their magazine last year and was happy to give me some steel in exchange for a piece of my work for their showroom, a good deal for us both. I have done a bit of work for Phil on his house down the hill, replaced some windows, and fixed a few other little problems to help pay our way a bit, it is quite satisfying to make things work properly again. So I have been creating some nice pieces in preparation for my next exhibition, when and where it will be is not known yet, I will start to work that out when I have a decent collection of work. I have a lot of designs that I have been working on during the trip so far and I now have a chance to put some of these into practice. Tal and Rennie have fit in very well at their school, Bowraville Central, which has classes from kindergarten to year 10, about 300 kids go there. It has been quite novel for T & R to catch a school bus in the morning and afternoon, but the early starts take a bit of getting used to, the bus leaves from out the front of here at 7.30 am and arrives back about 4.30pm. Bowraville is a fairly low socio economic area and the school gets quite a few subsidies to help out. It was interesting at the Athletics day last Friday, funnily enough it was the kids second day at school, there were so many parents there supporting, which is great for the kids, but a bit sad that so many were not working. My Mum arrived here last Thursday and she has enjoyed spending some time with the children and just getting away from it all for a while. It is actually very nice to have no mobile reception, no internet connection and only one TV channel, so we get to spend some time without these distractions, except of course for the very important show Survivor. Yep, the one channel we get is channel 9, lucky eh? Tal and I went to an Auskick session this afternoon in Macksville, they have footy training on a Tuesday arvo and then play a game on Sunday. It is a small Auskick centre, there were 9 kids taking part, but it is good to see Australian Rules Footy up this way. This weeks game is an away fixture and we will travel about an hour and a half to it, Tal really enjoys it and is getting very good at fitting into new surroundings and meeting new friends. We went into Macksville for lunch on Saturday, it poured with rain all day and I had the pleasure of changing a flat tyre in the rain after lunch by the side of the road. Wet?? We are planning on staying here for another three weeks or so, that is when the school term ends, not too sure yet where we will head to from here. Will wait and see if we can get the bus out first!!