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Weaving pattern around post Savo Island.jpg)
Dolphin jumping.jpg)
Boy with dugout canoe Savo Island
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Boy with coconuts Savo IslandMonday 15th June
Quiet weekend on Savo, the fishing wasn’t all that good, well, not for me anyway. I had the place to myself for Thursday. Alan wasn’t there, he was back in Honiara with the official Government function for Queens Birthday weekend here, so consequently the orchid collecting didn’t happen. Never mind, another reason to go back next month, although I’ll have to watch the budget a lot better till then.
Saturday Eileen and David arrived, retired couple from Australia, Eileen is English, David is pure Australian. Originally from Melbourne, settled just back of the Gold Coast on their farm now. Nice couple, interesting to talk to. They met in Italy 40 something years ago, in a hostel, then David arrived on Eileens doorstep in England a couple of months later, and they were married a short time later. Eileen writes travel articles, they won the trip to the Solomons from an article she wrote.
Remind me never to invite an Australian along fishing. David and I went out Friday afternoon, rather choppy sea, we travelled around the whole island, before we spotted a few frigate birds circling, dropped the lines over, and David hooked up with a good sized Bonito straightaway. It must have been the only fish out travelling that day, I never got a nibble, and David was in the same position. They went on the short volcano walk Saturday morning as well, and the boat boy decided to borrow one of the villagers from there for Sunday to be the fishing guide.
It got a bit full at the Lodge Saturday, 2 ladies from the UN Aids Council, travelling the Solomons trying to ascertain the level of involvement and what is needed here, and Woody, originally from the Ozarks, more lately from New Orleans, travelling around looking for somewhere. Nice guy, he put up with the GWB jokes, and gave as good as he got. David and I tried explaining AFL (Australian Rules) to him, till we decided he was totally confused, so we had a few more beers.
Went out again Saturday, spent 5 or 6 hours drifting the north coast, in 120 – 150 metre water. I never got a single nibble, our village guide pulled up a few red emperor, golden snapper, and coral trout, till I decided it was time to call it a day. I was a tad sunburnt by then as well, about time I got some sun on me anyway, it’s already gone to my usual dark brownish colour finally. Another few days at the beach on this side and it might last me a while.
Sunday we all had a lazy beach day, the 2 girls from the UN went to see the megapod bird nests, David, Eileen and I spent the afternoon making a bit of a space in the SolBrew bottles.
The dolphins put on a display for us early this morning. I was down by the water about 6 am with my morning coffee and cigarette, when the whole pod came close into shore and started jumping and chasing the small school fish. I got a few good pics.
Saturday night had the most terrific thunderstorm right over Savo. It was like having a train coming across in stereo, a long low rumble, then an almighty crack right over head, followed by a slow rumble fading away to the north. It was loud enough to rattle the beds and door frames. From about 1 am till 4 am. The lightning was spectacular from the top balcony over the sea and the Russel Islands.
Tuesday 16th June
I have little recollection of writing the above. I know I wrote it, but I don’t remember. I crashed asleep about 8 pm last night, gave up waiting for a shower, no water as usual in the evening till late. The guys at the prison had the garden beds all ready yesterday, so I spent most of Monday there getting them to re-dig some of the patches where they had only just scraped the soil a bit, and not broken the hardpan underneath. As they found out today when it came to planting, they had to get the iron bar out to break up the hard pan to set the plants in deep enough. Only in one bed, the one I left for them to do on Friday. Now they know what I meant about digging the soil over to start with. Still it was good, it really mixed the compost and farm soil through.
We planted the Gardenias, Hibiscus and Duranta today, all the holes were dug yesterday, and a trench made for the Duranta border, so it went quite fast for planting. David (Prison Supervisor) is really pleased with it, and the guys are more than happy with the result. David is pleased because now he can get some of the younger juvenile prisoners out on work release to the Kukum SICCHE training centre during the afternoon when it is free.
As I said to him today, we’ll end up with people trying to get into Rove Prison soon so they can go on training courses.
We’re getting a lot of secondary school kids up at the Gardens lately, midyear exams are coming up, and they are being sent up to us for information because the schools have no text books, or internet access. I’ve had questions from common weeds to propagating native plants, and geology/soil makeup, ecology, pollution effects on the gardens. I’ll have something to do when I get back to New Zealand if VSA want me to, go around to all the schools and ask for old text books to send here. The few books I bought with me are always out being used lately, the magazines Rose sent are being passed around and read by everyone, which leads to more questions about what other countries look like. Then everyone wants to go visit or work in them.
I’m pleased I put all my pics onto disc and bought them here, everyone now knows what Ireland, Australia, parts of Virginia and Alaska look like, plus a lot of New Zealand. It’s a good way of keeping everyones attention for a couple of hours.
I’ll have to start working on a set of pictures of the schools here to use for presentations.
Tiffany and I took the Japanese Grass Roots Funding application back in today. Tiffany has spent a huge amount of time on it as usual, and we’ve still got more to alter again in it. Because the building has been altered to take an office and classroom, it pushed the cost over the limit, so now it’s a matter of going through, taking out everything we can make do without, just to keep the building. We’ll go through it all tomorrow morning, and try to have it back to them by Thursday. There’s a meeting with Keithie on Friday, and she’ll be wanting us to get the UN Funding application started straightaway. As well as asking why we haven’t got the British High Commission application done and in. It would be nice if that was all we were working on, but the normal work still has to get done inbetween all the running around getting quotes and invoices.
This wasn’t posted yesterday, I couldn’t get internet access all day, when I was in the office, so hopefully it will improve tomorrow morning. If you’re reading this then I had success.
Quiet weekend on Savo, the fishing wasn’t all that good, well, not for me anyway. I had the place to myself for Thursday. Alan wasn’t there, he was back in Honiara with the official Government function for Queens Birthday weekend here, so consequently the orchid collecting didn’t happen. Never mind, another reason to go back next month, although I’ll have to watch the budget a lot better till then.
Saturday Eileen and David arrived, retired couple from Australia, Eileen is English, David is pure Australian. Originally from Melbourne, settled just back of the Gold Coast on their farm now. Nice couple, interesting to talk to. They met in Italy 40 something years ago, in a hostel, then David arrived on Eileens doorstep in England a couple of months later, and they were married a short time later. Eileen writes travel articles, they won the trip to the Solomons from an article she wrote.
Remind me never to invite an Australian along fishing. David and I went out Friday afternoon, rather choppy sea, we travelled around the whole island, before we spotted a few frigate birds circling, dropped the lines over, and David hooked up with a good sized Bonito straightaway. It must have been the only fish out travelling that day, I never got a nibble, and David was in the same position. They went on the short volcano walk Saturday morning as well, and the boat boy decided to borrow one of the villagers from there for Sunday to be the fishing guide.
It got a bit full at the Lodge Saturday, 2 ladies from the UN Aids Council, travelling the Solomons trying to ascertain the level of involvement and what is needed here, and Woody, originally from the Ozarks, more lately from New Orleans, travelling around looking for somewhere. Nice guy, he put up with the GWB jokes, and gave as good as he got. David and I tried explaining AFL (Australian Rules) to him, till we decided he was totally confused, so we had a few more beers.
Went out again Saturday, spent 5 or 6 hours drifting the north coast, in 120 – 150 metre water. I never got a single nibble, our village guide pulled up a few red emperor, golden snapper, and coral trout, till I decided it was time to call it a day. I was a tad sunburnt by then as well, about time I got some sun on me anyway, it’s already gone to my usual dark brownish colour finally. Another few days at the beach on this side and it might last me a while.
Sunday we all had a lazy beach day, the 2 girls from the UN went to see the megapod bird nests, David, Eileen and I spent the afternoon making a bit of a space in the SolBrew bottles.
The dolphins put on a display for us early this morning. I was down by the water about 6 am with my morning coffee and cigarette, when the whole pod came close into shore and started jumping and chasing the small school fish. I got a few good pics.
Saturday night had the most terrific thunderstorm right over Savo. It was like having a train coming across in stereo, a long low rumble, then an almighty crack right over head, followed by a slow rumble fading away to the north. It was loud enough to rattle the beds and door frames. From about 1 am till 4 am. The lightning was spectacular from the top balcony over the sea and the Russel Islands.
Tuesday 16th June
I have little recollection of writing the above. I know I wrote it, but I don’t remember. I crashed asleep about 8 pm last night, gave up waiting for a shower, no water as usual in the evening till late. The guys at the prison had the garden beds all ready yesterday, so I spent most of Monday there getting them to re-dig some of the patches where they had only just scraped the soil a bit, and not broken the hardpan underneath. As they found out today when it came to planting, they had to get the iron bar out to break up the hard pan to set the plants in deep enough. Only in one bed, the one I left for them to do on Friday. Now they know what I meant about digging the soil over to start with. Still it was good, it really mixed the compost and farm soil through.
We planted the Gardenias, Hibiscus and Duranta today, all the holes were dug yesterday, and a trench made for the Duranta border, so it went quite fast for planting. David (Prison Supervisor) is really pleased with it, and the guys are more than happy with the result. David is pleased because now he can get some of the younger juvenile prisoners out on work release to the Kukum SICCHE training centre during the afternoon when it is free.
As I said to him today, we’ll end up with people trying to get into Rove Prison soon so they can go on training courses.
We’re getting a lot of secondary school kids up at the Gardens lately, midyear exams are coming up, and they are being sent up to us for information because the schools have no text books, or internet access. I’ve had questions from common weeds to propagating native plants, and geology/soil makeup, ecology, pollution effects on the gardens. I’ll have something to do when I get back to New Zealand if VSA want me to, go around to all the schools and ask for old text books to send here. The few books I bought with me are always out being used lately, the magazines Rose sent are being passed around and read by everyone, which leads to more questions about what other countries look like. Then everyone wants to go visit or work in them.
I’m pleased I put all my pics onto disc and bought them here, everyone now knows what Ireland, Australia, parts of Virginia and Alaska look like, plus a lot of New Zealand. It’s a good way of keeping everyones attention for a couple of hours.
I’ll have to start working on a set of pictures of the schools here to use for presentations.
Tiffany and I took the Japanese Grass Roots Funding application back in today. Tiffany has spent a huge amount of time on it as usual, and we’ve still got more to alter again in it. Because the building has been altered to take an office and classroom, it pushed the cost over the limit, so now it’s a matter of going through, taking out everything we can make do without, just to keep the building. We’ll go through it all tomorrow morning, and try to have it back to them by Thursday. There’s a meeting with Keithie on Friday, and she’ll be wanting us to get the UN Funding application started straightaway. As well as asking why we haven’t got the British High Commission application done and in. It would be nice if that was all we were working on, but the normal work still has to get done inbetween all the running around getting quotes and invoices.
This wasn’t posted yesterday, I couldn’t get internet access all day, when I was in the office, so hopefully it will improve tomorrow morning. If you’re reading this then I had success.
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