Tiwi weekends are so easy

Most of our weekends have a now familiar pattern. On either Saturday or Sunday we have a magic flight over somewhere. This weekend the flight is on Sunday. Its a long weekend here - the locals don't care what the big island in the south says. Anzac weekend is a long weekend no matter what day Anzac day is. So we fly again tomorrow. I now use Paul's old camera. It does not always behave but it is better than my old one which has a broken catch on the battery door and works only while the rubber band does not break. The dust, humidity and 35 workshops have done their damage.

After Tom and Jacinta left us, we flew over to Milikapati, which has some nice places. It is very small but is very pretty. It has a slight hill so we get some exercise. We managed to see the beach a couple of times last weekend. Tis a magic blue all along the edge of the community's beaches. The store there is pretty good - best on the Tiwi's so we had a little shop. We have left a food stash there. We fly in on a Sunday and since nothing is open, we knew we had to leave some food there or starve. So we have steak and sweet potato there. Hopefully no visitors to the guest house took a fancy to my stash. I did leave threatening notes! We did not know when we left about the Monday holiday..... so lucky on Monday night, we have a meal promised to us. The accommodation at Milikapati is pretty good actually. The guest house is a repainted old people's home, which is quite appropriate actually. It is clean, has a great stocked kitchen and does not make you sick.

We flew over to Pirlingimpi on Wednesday for another magic flight. It's only 15 mins or so in a plane but it also takes us 15-20 mins to load and another 15 mins unload our 250 kg of luggage, so it is still a big undertaking.

There are some magic beaches here. We did not really explore them much. More for next time. We are staying in a wonderful fishing lodge - no Gary we did not go out fishing. at $700-$1000 a day, it is not in the budget. Paul reckons that should be saved for the collapsable boat.... Boys and their toys. We have not used the last boat yet.

The fishing lodge is on the water's edge and has a very wonky jetty that we did fish off of one afternoon while taking in the magnificent sunset views. We also had a fish at the barge landing - no joy. I really don't know why fish would bite plastic and steel anyway. I think I am a bait and hook girl.

The lodge here really looks after you. We have meals included and the boys here really know how to cook. We have had fish every night (and for lunch today) and it has been delicious and different every time. The meals are just fantastic. We have had a wonderful time working on the myriad of reports we have to write with a pretty nice view and the off beer. We can actually have a beer here - at the resort only, so it has been a nice change. Mind you we only seem to have two and that's all we can take. I am sure this is good for us. I must admit, having a beer and watching the sun drop is a nice treat. It is very hard to believe we get paid to do this.

Speaking of work, we do some, I keep saying. This last two days went really well but soon we were made redundant. One of our participants decided to help her colleagues use a computer and so we must have done a good job. They were a good bunch and very enthusiatic. So it was a very easy time for us.