We're on Weipa time

While we’re still busy relaxing at Weipa, waiting for our new driver’s window to make its way from Melbourne, here are a couple of things we’ve learnt about this place:

1.     The Weipa currency is a carton of beer. That what a mine worker uses to repay someone who swaps a shift (though the only day that is allowed is on Christmas Day), along with any other favours. In fact, we saw a T-shirt in the newsagency that read: Weipa is a small drinking town with a fishing problem. Says it all, really.

2.     There’s such a thing as ‘Weipa time’. It’s ‘about an hour’. That’s a bit of a worry because that’s what the smash repairs bloke quoted John as the time needed to fit the new window . . . when it arrives.

3.     And then there’s ‘Weipa size’. Everything’s big, mate.

Once again, the campground has emptied out as people go south or north. We still have a couple of neighbours. They are all blokes having fishing holidays.

Our view when the campground thins out each
morning.

Three are from the Canberra area and their leader, a big bloke who lives at Bungendore and who used to have a trucking business in Queanbeyan, tells us he’s the ‘Kenny of Canberra’, obviously supplying all the portable loos needed on building sites and for public functions.

The other neighbours are two blokes and a dog. They arrived in an open-sided ute with a boat on top, dragged out a couple of small transparent tents. One man and a dog went into one, and the other had his tent to himself.

In the middle of the night, there developed what John termed the ‘toad’s chorus’ as all five (who had wandered up to the local bowling club and sank a few) started snoring.

Speaking of toads, we haven’t seen a single cane toad in all our travels. We’d heard they were all over the Gulf and the Cape but we haven’t spotted one yet. We DID hear them at Leichhardt River falls and I think I spotted some of their tadpoles in rock pools there.

One of the interesting ute-top campers in the park. The ute
just backs in under it, the legs swing up and attach somehow,
the top folds in neatly and off he goes.

When we were on the Tablelands and it was drizzling rain I was sure we'd see a few at night but the score remained at zero.

This afternoon, we’ve put our names down for a fish fry on the foreshore so we’ll take along our drinks and chairs and let someone else do the cooking.

Later:

The fish fry was excellent. We met a few other travellers and thoroughly enjoyed the local mackerel, battered and served with chips and salad. One youngish fellow was sitting on his own, didn’t even have a portable chair, like the rest of us, and was perched on one of the huge steel pipes laid horizontally to define the edge of the foreshore grass.

So we invited him to join us, sitting on the grass. It turned out he’s an ambulance paramedic from Brisbane who does an 8-day shift in Weipa, then flies home for his time off, then comes back for another 8 days. He was living in one of the cabins in the caravan park.

When he heard we were from Lismore he asked if we knew the Boyles. ‘As in Boyle Road, Goolmangar Boyles?’ I said.

And of course it was. Len and Carmel Boyle are my neighbours across the creek and this fellow, Scott Wilson, is married to Carmel’s niece. Small world!

Monday morning:

Great excitement in the camp today as this is when the weekly barge arrives from Cairns, laden with provisions for all the shops, particularly the supermarket. Since Friday it’s had no salad at all, its bread is all in the freezer and lots of other things are either missing from the shelves or low in numbers.

So we’ll go across and re-provision, keeping our fingers crossed that the window arrives by air from Cairns tomorrow and we can be on our way north by Wednesday at the latest.