Stranded in Lockhart

More pics at http://picasaweb.google.com.au/shellyw39/StrandedAtLockhart

Beaming out to the girls and their laptops from the front railing

The weekend began on Friday with the plane not landing. It was too rough apparently to come in. It was rather gray to the ground and windy, but you know.......... So, we get to stay in Lockhart for a few days until the weather clears which seems unlikely and we get to delay the trip to Pormpuraaw.So this has been the view for the weekend. The cabins we are staying in are at the airport and with no plane on the tarmac, it looks a bit dismal. Mind you, some small charters arrived and went but the SkyTrans big bird was not game enough to come in.

The view

So we are camped in, with the wonderful cook Hannah off for the weekend. Which leaves us to camp cook for ourselves. She did supply some food and we have rationed out and pooled what we can. Tonight is rissoles and potato in gravy, followed by locally picked pineapple and coconut. Annie gave Michelle Coconut husking lessons, so there is dessert for dinner.

There is Paul, Michelle, Annie and Vicki passing the time until the weather clears, making the best of it.

New best friends Michelle and Annie

Today we went for an "outing", up to Portland Roads and Chilli Beach. It was a gray old day though and not a lot of photography opportunities. Portland road has six houses and a hall. It is supposed to have a cafe but it was closed for the weekend too. Would have been good to have coffee, not that we knew about the cafe before we went. Not a lot to say about Portland Roads really. There was a few tourists about - 6 I think, not counting us.

Portland Roads

Chilli Beach is my favourite spot in the world, but today it was very gray and quite dirty. Lots of rubbish on the beach at the moment which is a pity. It was right in the middle of coral spawning too which made for a bit of a smell, but it was good to see. The wind was quite strong and so we did not dally long on the beach. The rainforest was beautiful but and we all got to see and smell the good bits.

Chilli Beach in the gray

I hope Paul gets to see Chilli Beach in the sun one day. Tis an amazing combination of blues and sand colours against the reefs when it is fine and calm. I guess we woulod not be stranded by weather and have a good beach day. The thong trees are still there and a new toothbrush forest amused the last 500 tourists. Very clever.

Annie doing email - what is under that towel?

The journey back was lots of bad jokes and an odd good one, along with the odd exciting ride over cattle grids to keep Annie happy. Vibrations work!

Toothbrush Forest

So the weekend is about amusing ourselves, communal cooking and keeping up the online comms. Paul has the wireless network beaming out and Annie uses a cable to connect from the steps. Vicki is connected on one of the workshop laptops over the other side and we teckies do our usual social networking. (which is we all sit together the silently type away talking to the rest of the world)



Internet access is better than phone access. Paul found Qantas a bit slow when we were trying to rearrange the flight schedules for next week, so took a chair up to the back of the ute. He wanted me to drive him round till he found access......

Well folks - more adventures tomorrow - waterfalls and bush road are the agenda.