EGGSELENT LIFT

He had on a back pack and was carrying a large chainsaw along the dusty dirt road towards us; where he was heading with it in the middle of nowhere was a mystery, but what a good place to start if writing a bad horror movie script. Tal came with me on our daily afternoon drive to get Jarra asleep, we saw the bearded fellow and covered him in our dust, exchanging a nod of the head as we passed eachother. We reached the driveway down the road with the cow skull on the old timber gatepost and as Jarra’s eyelids were drooping and almost closed we turned around and headed back towards home. It wasn’t far from there that the chainsaw wielder used his spare hand to stick out his finger……decisions, decisions, Jarra not quite asleep yet …. but I don’t like to drive past hitchers, so we pulled over and offered him a lift, explaining that we were not going too far. He was happy to go any distance at all as he had stacked his ute the week before and had borrowed the chainsaw from 10 km up the road to cut some firewood and was on his way to return it. Jarra woke right up as the hairy fellow squeezed into the back seat next to him, chainsaw in his lap, and so still was not asleep when passing our driveway. “I will take you to where you need to go”, I explained after Jarra fell asleep. “Cool, have you got any chooks?” he replied. When I answered to the negative he offered me a dozen fresh eggs as a way of thanks, we needed eggs at the time and they tasted even better when I poached them this morning knowing how we acquired them. On the way back to the house I saw a brown snake crossing the road, it reared up and had a strike at the car as we went past. Tal missed it as his head was stuck in his book (as usual) and it had disappeared into the long grass by the time we reversed up to have a look. We moved back into the bus yesterday, had a spring clean (in winter) at the same time and left Bowraville this morning, is nice to be back on the road again. I left my mark at Phil’s place, converting his plain green milk bottle letterbox into a crazy sort of spiky animal. It is definitely a male…(mail)!! We went to the horse races on Sunday, the Bowraville Cup, it was a funny old day at the country racecourse, there was a good jazz band and some face painting for the kids, although the wrong horses kept on winning…… I am the world’s second worse gambler and had a shocker. So we made it to Coffs Harbour this afternoon, home of the not so big banana, a big fibreglass tourist attraction that we expected to be much bigger than what is actually there. I made a piece of artwork for Bluescope Steel in Coffs in exchange for the material they gave me to work with while at Bowraville, and dropped it in on the way. The manager I was dealing with was very happy with it. I created nine pieces while up on the hill, they are not framed yet but are wrapped up in bubble wrap and stored in the boot for a later time. We are staying at the showgrounds here, next to a footy oval where Tal and I had a kick when we arrived, we had to do a few things here this arvo and will head off tomorrow on our next adventure. Had our first pizza for a month this evening, must be some kind of record for our family!! My work on the dust proofing seems to have worked a treat.