Jocie's Blog

It was just two weeks ago that I went camping with Beki and the Deans.   The Roper River The Deans on the Mistress Driving up to the station  I am so lucky to have met Beki, her friend Zoe and her family, when I was here a few years ago.  To really see this part of the world you do need a few friends to show you around. Heck.. to make it in the world at all you need friends. On my own I could check out the springs and lots of the tourist places.  But.. it is nice to go a bit deeper. So we did the camping trip out to Elsey Station and I had the opportunity to get out on the river a couple of weekends ago.   Then, this past weekend, I got to see the cattle station: the place they call home. The living area from the yard... These places are huge.  Clayton and Zoe manage over 400 miles of Australian landscape.       Ray Downey had asked me about the gardens here.. what they grew.. when.  It seems that...

Rex Murphy, always the voice of reason, had his little say and it got me to thinking. He believes we should all say thank you to Alberta: Most of us in Canada have been touched by the province in some way. Well, that may not be so for the bigger Eastern provinces, but it does ring true for a lot of the Maritime Provinces, Newfoundland, probably Saskatchewan and certainly for B.C.  Alberta had teaching jobs when no one else did. The best teaching year of my life was up in LaCrete. I didn’t like the weather, the harshness of the country or the vast distances, but man, the people and the support I got up there was the very best I ever saw. Can’t complain about the education those people are getting! It wasn’t just the amount of money, we didn’t have anything fancy… it was the way they spent it. We had what we needed and the best professional development. Our school days were a bit longer than most in my experience, but we had days where, as teachers, we were able to ...

Here I am in the middle of the Never Never  again, pretty much on my own, with no real understanding exactly why: other than the job, and the quiet.   It is a long way from ‘home’.. wherever that is these days.   So I was pretty happy when Kim and Anne came to visit from Darwin for the weekend.   It has been so long since I had visitors that I really have lost the art of entertaining.   And it is an art.   Not sure I was ever good at it, but creativity is in all of us, and that is what art should be. I didn’t know what to tell Kim when she asked about dinner, so I got creative and suggested we go out somewhere.   (Or was that her polite suggestion).. There isn’t a lot to do in Mataranka but the Homestead, in Elsey Park by the thermal pools, serves up decent food, cold beer and sometimes provides live entertainment.   So I figured that would be good.   But, just in case, I made up a chicken soup in the crock-pot that ...