Copping a Heidi-ing

The day before I was due to go home last swing, I weed on a frog.

It was an accident, of course - urinating on harmless amphibians is not a hobby of mine – but I still felt quite bad. Fortunately, as you do around here, I had drunk lots of water that day so it was at least... er... diluted.

The Kermit in question must have made his way ‘to the light’ of my loo via the Spinifex camp sewerage system and, upon (too late) discovering him there, I wondered what to do. My first thought was to try and catch him and let him go outside; but for the last two weeks it had been super dry and dusty with a daily temp of at least 45C and I couldn’t think of a single frog friendly place to put him. He would have fried in seconds.

So I said “God speed, little froggie” and flushed him back from whence he came.

“I found a frog in my bed once,” nodded one of the guys on the bus when I later confessed my crime. “You do sometimes get them around here.”

Well, that was an understatement. Fast forward to this swing (now 4 days old) and a seemingly unstoppable deluge has been unleashed on the Pilbara courtesy of Cyclone Heidi. In other words - and with a nod to the  experience of my flushed froggie friend -  it has been PISSING down. Conditions were so bad on my return that they had to close the airport, divert our plane to Newman and slowly bus us all in through the storm and tempest. Why they didn’t just tell us to stay in Perth until the cyclone was over, I’ll never know.

Anyway, with everything now flooded – the ubiquitous orange dust replaced by ubiquitous orange mud – there are frogs everywhere! Big frogs, little frogs, frogs that go “WAAARK” and frogs that wail like a siren. Where do they all come from? It’s hard to believe that they can survive buried in all that heat and dust until times such as these. At night the ground is alive with them.

Two nights ago, at around midnight and while it was still howling outside, I stretched out in bed in a semi-conscious dream. My foot hit something cold. Waking in a fright, I sat up and threw off the covers expecting to find another frog. Instead, a cascade of orange water poured on my head. Niagara Falls had entered through the ceiling light fitting and the end of my bed (and now me) was soaked. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do other than spend the night attempting to catch it in my little waste paper bin. It filled to the brim every half an hour, so not much sleep there.

Various maintenance reports and buggerising around later, I have been temporarily moved to a new and thankfully dry donga. I hope they can fix my old one though. It’s all location, location, location, dah-lingks, and I like it much better.

These pics don't do it justice, but this is outside my (original) room before and after Cyclone Heidi.

I've got river views! 

In other news – and cross my heart I kid you not! - a contractor has arrived who, for those who know him, looks exactly like the KingofAnkh! His name is Arnold – or at least that is what I call him. That is because he is a big beefy Austrian version of the King who speaks exactly like Arnold Schwartzenegger. It has been hilarious having him around – especially because of the ribbing he gets. The banter is priceless. If you have heard that Luke Million mix of Arnold Schwartzenegger doing a fitness video you will understand. With Arnold in da house it is currently a popular tune.

“Dowwwn. Up. Dowwwn. Up. Come on. More energy.”  -  I think there's something in that for all of us, don’t you? :D