Monday 2nd August

A few more pics of Franks statues

It was a deadly dull weekend, the only bit of excitement was taking David out to Tongs Motors on Saturday to pick up the old truck after they had finally got the suspension bushes and oil and fuel filters replaced. We still haven’t got the speedo working, I think the gear in the gearbox that drives it is either stripped or the shear pin is gone. Either way, Tongs said it would mean removing the gearbox to fix. I can’t see that myself, I’ll find a manual somewhere and have a look, but I’m sure it can be replaced in situ, without having to do a major removal.

Kukum market is still thriving, some prices are falling, some still high at this part of the season. What I call flowering brocolli, well it looks like brocolli leaves, with a small yellow cruciform flower, has dropped to $5 a bundle down from $10, bok choy is still $10 but bigger bundles, bananas from $6 to $15 a hand, depending on the size of the hand. Pineapples are still dear at $25 - $40 each, I’ll wait a few weeks till they drop to mid season prices around $15 - $25. There haven’t been any chillies available for a while, I’m pleased I stocked up when I did and filled jars with chilli and vinegar, and a bowl of dried as well.

I had a big spend up today, and ordered shade cloth, clips, for the shade house and layout area, and timber for the propagation house. The shade cloth came to AUD$1820 from Tropigro Brisbane, nice people to deal with even if their website needs some work. In Solomon $ it works out to $12,740.00, you eventually get blasé about the amounts here, I haven’t yet. It always sounds horrendously expensive till you realise just how little the SBD is actually worth. Even the plastic fold clips to fix the shade cloth to the wires come in at SBD$3.50 each, from AUD$0.50

There is a high Police and RAMSI presence around town this week, all alcohol sales have been banned for tomorrow and Wednesday, including the sly grog shops, which sounds as funny as it is. They’re illegal to start with, how telling them to stay shut is going to work I don’t know. The police are out in force to keep it quiet this time, after all the security warnings etc, it will probably be a fairly peaceful election, but you can never tell here. Much the same happened in 2006, and the police and RAMSI were caught totally unaware when everything blew up.

Half the work crew have vanished for the week, gone home to vote, so things are a bit more chaotic than normal, trying to keep the minimum amount done to keep the town looking reasonably tidy and clean.

We’re struggling to get enough chicken manure now, it is either feast or famine here, now we have sawdust coming out our butts, we can’t get manure to break it down. It was the other way round a month or so ago. Eventually we’ll get it right. Once I have one bin filled and rotting down I won’t worry so much, it will take us a while to use 100 cu m of mix.