Day 51- Mataranka

For me this morning was rather uneventful; just a tidy up and some catching up on some forums and blogs etc and the kids watched a few nursery rhymes and Sesame Street songs on Utube.

For Tim the day was not quite as boring... he and Dad got up early to head down to the boat ramp and do some fishing in the main Roper River. Easy enough. They probably could have taken it as a warning to head back home and go back to sleep when they hit a wallaby. But i guess truck v's wallaby you can guess who is going to win so they kept going.

Now i don't have too many details cos people had the shits and it was not worth prying for information but i think the winch to get the boat off the truck had broken at some stage so they had to get it off by hand which is a bit of an effort. Dad ended up pulling a muscle or bruising his ribs or something (and this afternoon it is still very sore and he had a nap so it must have hurt). But they got the thing into the water. I have no idea how far they went but i think they got some fishing in and as expected caught nothing and had no bites and it's entirely possible that Tim (though i love him dearly) is the world's worse fisherman.

Anyway, in the river that is all nice and open and pretty much 6M deep right off the bank they managed to find the one submerged rock in the whole bloody river and put a hole in the gear box and stuffed the motor. From what Tim says the whole boat is stuffed and he's going to get rid of it.... Dad said we can get it fixed easy enough and these things happen. I'm guessing the truth is in between and we probably can fix it but it won't be cheap and i have no idea if the boat will appear on ebay sometime next week!

Oh, and they had taken the paddles out of the boat for some reason and i did not ask how they managed to get back to shore. I have created a whole new blog tag - the anti-highlights - in memory of today. Things did not get any worse but they did not get a whole lot better. A box that we have kept our shoes in on the truck must have gotten water in it at some stage and all the shoes have gone mouldy. That will require a bit of work to salvage the important pairs.

The kids had a good day though! How much fun is a sprinkler...





After lunch we gave the geocaching another go. I looked all over but Tim managed to find our very first cache. Signed the log, took a photo (that has to remain a secret) and put it back. Happy with the find we decided to try for another cache that is bigger and has swaps and trackables in it. So all in the truck and off we go. We searched in long grass in the heat getting scratched and sunburnt and covered in prickles for about 45min before we decided this geocaching is a fool's game and came back home.

Blog updates and dinner prepped. We are sooooo low on food! LOL! Sausages, mashed potato, and steamed carrots tonight. First thing we'll have to do in Katherine is grab some fresh fruit and vege and restock the basics.

After dinner Jordy wandered over to Grandpa to tell him that his eyes don't work in the dark and he needed a torch so he could go kill cane toads.