Monday, November 28, 2011

A ship, a plane, a helicopter and minus 5 days

Another busy day.  Concordia Bay our coastal shipping vessel/ferry arrived at about 9 am.  We did not have a lot of cargo to come off here.  Shaun worked the boat first at Speedwell.  There was a lot of cargo for Speedwell with Tanya and Shaun having carpets, Christopher had fencing, I had a bed, plus diesel, petrol and kero.  He also had to load the 16 bales of hogget wool.  Last night we had a ring saying they were going to work Speedwell at 8:30 pm.  Shaun rolled all the bales out onto the jetty ready.  An hour later he got a phone call to say they were delayed and would not be working Speedwell until the morning.  This meant he had to roll them all back into the bale shed as the wool is not allowed to get wet and we have had a few rain showers around the last few days.  At last we have our new double glazed windows, 3 for the bedrooms, 1 for the sitting room and 1 for the back porch.  This only leave 3 small windows and a bathroom window to be purchased this year and the whole house will have double glazing. 
Oh and in case you have been wondering our vehicles have still not been delivered.  There is a never ending trail of paperwork and bull****.  I doubt that it will ever happen.  There are a lot of people with good intentions who would willingly get the job done but beaurocray and red tape means the good intentions never materialise into action.  Our latest date is the end of November.  Well its the 28th today so I guess that day is going to come and go too.
At 10 am we had a helicopter deliver a patrol of 9 from the resident infantry patrol.  They are here until tomorrow afternoon.  While they are here they will do patrols around the island.  Tonight they are camped down in our shearing shed.  Most of the men are Scottish with broad scottish accents and if that isn't bad enough to try to understand there are  three Fijians with scottish accents. Shaun and Tanya also have a patrol of  9 on Speedwell so we are all well protected tonight.
At 2:45 the islander aircraft arrived to take Simon and Neil back to MPA.  They were both nice guys and I think they enjoyed their weekend on the island. 
I had ordered margarine etc for our catering for the tourist boat to come on the plane they flew out on because we had run out of some essentials.  Normally I would be in no hurry for my air freight but today just because I really needed it the plane could not carry it all. I now have eggs but no margarine.  This is a bit of a bummer and we have now had to order another plane for tomorrow just to bring my little box of groceries in.  I alwasy try to avoid getting the plane in solely for freight as it is very expensive for FIGAS which is a subsidised service and it seems a waste of money to drop of a box of groceries which I will only pay a couple of pounds airfreight for but which will cost £100's of pounds to deliver.  I can normally tie getting freight in and my mail out with someone flying in or out from the island.
Today mum and I made mince tarts for the tourist boat and also put a  filling in our yoyo's and iced our bite sized biscuits.  Come to think of it, it doesnt look like I have done much today.
Christopher has been repairing fences, worked the boat and the plane and stored the new windows away.  It looks like we have not been very busy today but I think it has just been disruptive with people coming and going.
Concordia Bay

Helicopter dropping of infantry on George Island

Island aircraft
Tiphanie has just rang.  She is back from her trip as observer.  The boat had to come in as one of the crew had an accident so it was decided to bring her off at the same time.  She really enjoyed her trip.

1 comment:

  1. So much for blesséd isolation. :)

    The double glazed windows will make a big difference.

    ReplyDelete