Sunday 9 December 2012

Jottings from the Tropics: Caravan Park Edition

Composed on Saturday. Posted Sunday.

Just going through the last few boring stages with the house. Contents are now in storage, the cleaners are scheduled for Tuesday and settlement is on Wednesday. I think I will sleep better when that's over.

 Am currently at the local caravan park. It has rainforest. Yay! But also people. Boo! I'll be here for about a week until I shift into a friend's place, which I'll be house-sitting for a few months.

Although I now have internet access through what is rather optimistically called mobile broadband, there's no signal at the caravan park. Because I now have to go into town to do all that sort of stuff, communications will be very sporadic. (And, oh, what a wrench it was to cancel the ADSL service after such a long tussle with Telstra to get the bloody thing connected in the first place. There should be medals. Medals!)

So I am writing this at a picnic table in the caravan park. It's a clear, sunny day with a lovely cooling breeze. The kookaburras are reminding everyone that they own the place and the guinea fowl are putting up a spirited response. Still, as loud as they are, the guinea fowl are no kookaburras. (That's today's lesson in taxonomy. And, yes, there will be a test on it.) The bangalow palm in front of my cabin has parallel incisions on it that look very much like the claw marks tree kangaroos leave when they climb soft-barked trees. The marks are above head height, so I'm ruling out misguided attempts to make palm toddy or even more misguided attempts to tap latex. But you never can tell.

It's not a bad life. I'm just waiting for Wednesday, so I can relax. And face the next challenge.