1st March

Happy Birthday Mum, my apologies again for not being there.

I’ve only been back a week, and already the frustration level is approaching high. The land at Ranandi is in dispute with Dept of Lands, they class us as agriculture, and the area is rated industrial, so they won’t let the lease go ahead. I’m going to SI Agriculture today to see if we can get a Quarantine License, and then hopefully that will sway the decision. It’s better to have a quarantine area in an industrial site than in the middle of cropland, well, in my opinion anyway. It may work, anything is worth a shot now.

Steve and I and all Steves wantok went diving Saturday, the next beach past Bonegi, the reef has been pretty well fished out, only the small fish left, but the reef did look reasonably healthy. I’ll get an underwater housing and camera next trip back to NZ, and get pictures. It’s been raining since Saturday afternoon now, heavy, steady, the road is a swamp past the house, I’ve had to put the truck over in the carpark, and I doubt it will start without a hill to roll it down.

SIWA still haven’t resolved the water issues, so it has now been a few weeks since Honiara had any water supply, SIEA are having problems with the generators again, so the power goes off without warning, all in all, nothing has really changed since I went away 6 weeks ago.

I was going to catch up on the drawings for the Governor Generals Residence yesterday, but there is so much moisture in the air all my graph and drawing paper is damp, and either rips or smears when I put a pen or pencil to it. It’s 7am, and there is a wall of water falling outside, which made having a shower this morning simple. I stood outside for 5 minutes, washed my hair, lathered up the soap, felt clean and refreshed, waddled inside and left puddles of water over the floor but it felt better than a wash out of the bucket. I doubt the little truck is going to start again this morning, it refused yesterday, so now that it is raining it will take great delight in making me walk down to the road and wait for Tiffany come past with the work truck.