back in the plains of despair.........

Hello my precious petal.
I'm back in the bush. Queensland in fact. Hmmmnnn..... nice and green.

I was supposed to go back on Thursday the 25th of August, but the rig was moving so I was put on standby. I knew that if I didn't get a phone call by Friday morning, I would be home for the weekend. Yay!

Friday morning came, friday morning went. Yippeeeeeee! So, I proceeded to arrange my social life for the fabulous weekend I was going to have.
Come 4pm Friday, "ring ring". Oh shit!
I was put on a waiting list for the Saturday morning flight.
Saturday morning came and a mate took me all the way to the airport (one hour from home), only to find out there was no way I was getting a seat on that plane. So she brought me all the way home again.

Went out that night with the girls and got a little pickled. I was supposed to be watching my special "friend" that night in a production of "allo allo" put on at the maitland theatre. But after he said I was allowed to come to the pub afterwards, but "Don't be offended if I don't talk to you", I decided not to go.
Prick.
He even sent me a text message "hows your dinner" (he assumed we drove all the way to Maitland and had tea at the pub before the show). Then after his performance he sent me "how did you like the show?" The bastard didn't even realise I wasn't in the audience. Now I'm not talking a festival theatre audience. I've performed in the Maitland theatre and I reckon it sits about 150 people max.
Needless to say I have not txt or spoken to him since.

I went to the Gawler Show sunday afternoon. I took my girlfriends 7 year old daughter on the
zipper, or whipper or the "lets dangle upside down in the air for 10 minutes". The 7 year old was fine - after all of my "look at me, this is fun isn't it?" distractions and "oh yay, let's dangle upside down again. Here we go, wheeee".
After I talked the 7 year old thru it, I had to recover myself. I should have had my dagwood dog, ice coffee and six hot cinnamin doughnuts after I went on the ride, not before. The 7 year old's mother was not too happy being dragged on the ride, neither was her mate.
Well, that was how we ended our day at the show, all feeling a little sick and totally exhausted. And that's how a day at a show should be ended.

Monday morning was a crack of dawn flight.
Arrived in Moomba only to discover I shouldn't be on the next flight from moomba to Ballera cos the car we had ordered was in moomba, not ballera. If I flew to Ballera, I'd have no way to get to the rig.
So, pick up the car - one hour of stuffing around, install radio in car - 2 hours, find maps + spare tyre + water bottles etc - 1.5 hours, have lunch in moomba 1/2 hour.
Six hours later we are on the road, looking forward to a 4 hour drive to the rig.
4 hours later we arrive on the rig, have dinner, and have to start rigging up. Arrrggghhhh.....
Ok, so far I have been awake for about 13 hours. I was not a happy camper when the company man was getting up us to hurry up, cos the rig was waiting on us.
Eventually my offsider cracked the shits. So at 10.30pm we got to go to bed, to start again at 5am.

Joy.

Now I am doing a 24 day hitch cos there is no one to replace us.

This is the life of a mudlogger back in the plains of despair.........