Journal: 088

At the end of May I was flat out for a week running backwards and forwards from Perth to mines north of Kalgoorlie – and then reading about them and the early days of WA’s Eastern Goldfields in KSP’s The Roaring Nineties.
A few days at home turned into 20 before I realised I risked not doing any work at all in June. Dragan had a load to Melbourne. He told me to come in Sat morning (18/06) to load, but then Friday night rang me back and asked me to do a load to Mt Isa instead. I didn’t mind, it would keep me occupied and, bonus, I would get to see (son) Lou in Tennant Creek.
Loading was straightforward, 26 x 2 tonne bulker bags of lead pellets already in Dragan’s depot. There was a small hold up because Sam, Dragan’s dad, who was going to take one of my trailers over the hill to the roadtrain assembly, wanted to spend Sat night at home, but Sunday morning, grey and wet, we were away.
Day/night followed day/night. Every now and then I would stop and put another $2,500 of fuel in the tanks – all my credit cards will be maxxed by the time I get home – Weds morning I had breakfast with Lou before he wandered off to monitor school sports; Weds afternoon I was in Mt Isa and soon unloaded.
Dragan of course had said he would have no worries loading me out of North Qld. I took an early 24 hour break, did some shopping, waited to hear back from him. “Head down to Biloela” (east of Rolleston on the map above). I got down to Emerald mid Friday. Sat. Waited. Biloela had fallen through. No worries, there was a load next week out of Mackay (on the coast a bit north). No I couldn’t have it, they’d have another truck in North Qld by then. Well, how about Brisbane? You’d sit for a week with no guarantee of a load. It was getting too late to phone around.
Ever reliable Homer, called from Melbourne. Come on down AND I’ll pay you an extra $1,000 (on top of the extra I got in April!). So I spent the weekend running empty to Melbourne. From north of Hillston, central NSW, I crossed Wilandra Creek, the Lachlan River, ran down through Hay to Echuca – Joseph Furphy country!
And now here I am. It’s Weds (29/06), I took all Mon as a 24 hour break – in the east I must have one at least once a week. In the West I can work up to 12 days.
I got my James Baldwin post done. Tues I loaded and ran two trailers up to Charlton, which is my road train assembly point over here. Today there is a hold up and so I am writing. Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll be on my way. Just 4,000 kms – no, 3,500, I’ve already done the dog run – for a total of 12,000 for the fortnight. Might need another break.
I listened to Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence early in the trip. It’s well worth reading but too much time has passed for me to write it up. I don’t remember what dross filled in the time till Just Above My Head. Last night I had a Jodi Picault on, about a hostage situation in an abortion clinic, strangely chiming with all the (justified) end of Roe v Wade outrage on Twitter.
A week or so after I get home Milly is going up to Darwin to be with (daughter) Psyche, who needs some pretty intensive medical treatment. Milly’s work is accommodating about her ‘working from home’; her little dog has her airline ticket; she might be gone a while. I might have to find some more work ‘up north’.
[Friday morning: Port Augusta. I got in late last night. Breakfast, shower, fuel, on my way 6am WST, due home tomorrow evening.]
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Recent audiobooks
Caroline Linden (F, USA), Love and Other Scandals (2013) – Hist.Romance
Louise Erdrich (F, USA), The Sentence (2021) – Crime
Colm Tobin (M, Ire), The Magician (2021)
Jodi Picault (F, USA), A Spark of Light (2018) – Crime
Currently Reading
Aaron Fa’Aoso with Michelle Scott Tucker (Aus), So Far, So Good (2022) – Memoir
Claire G Coleman (F, Aus/WA), Lies Damned Lies (2021) – Memoir
Yoko Ogawa (F, Jap), The Memory Police (1994) – SF
AWWC June 2022
Date | Contributor | Title |
Wed 01 | Elizabeth Lhuede | Hiding in Plain Sight: Mrs T C Cloud |
Fri 03 | Stories FTA | Lindsay Duncan, Mr Coulson’s Queer Client |
Wed 08 | Book around the Corner | Catherine Helen Spence, Mr Hogarth’s Will |
Fri 10 | Stories FTA | Catherine Helen Spence, The Literary Calling |
Wed 15 | Bill Holloway | Brent of Bin Bin |
Fri 17 | Stories FTA | “H J”, Modern Heroes and Heroines: What Women Writers Think |
Wed 22 | Jessica White | Georgiana Molloy: Collector of Seeds and Words |
Fri 24 | Stories FTA | Hannah Villiers Boyd, Letters on Education |
Wed 29 | Whispering Gums | Mary Grant Bruce’s juvenilia |
All the Friday posts are stories, or extracts from stories, written by the authors mentioned.