i moved. kosovo is deep in the past. now i live in more house like structure, with 3x more space and everything else is bigger too - sweet. i even can get wifi connection when i put trashbin on my bed and my laptop on top of it.
and obviously there are more roos around here, though it might just be coincidence :)
it takes time to get used to work 14 day shifts with 12h per day then 2 days off and back to work and so on... looks like it takes more time than i have here, as now over a month is done and just 1 week left but i still wouldnt consider myself being used to it.
in one of my free day i went to mount Isa where I got to see civilization once again - supermarket.
our aerodrome is tiny its more like a busstop (and if u look from right angle it is very much like a busstop)
As there are regular flights from Phosphate to mnt isa i could get flight there and back on
company's expenses. plane was cute small beechcraft king air with propellers and everything and I sat just behing pilot and i could take pictures not only from clouds.
another novelty: plane's aircon was fucked up so instead of usual chillyness in flights this ones were bloody hot. so that after stepping out from plane the usual >35C weather felt refreshingly cool.
i got lift from airport straight to the event of the month - mining expo. way to go, first time in my life. machines are big there thats for sure.
mount isa with population of 25000 is small town but its administrative center for huge area ~42000 km2 - thats almost as big as Estonia (~45000km2). isa is hardcore mining town with mine sites sitting just next to city centre.
museum and local people told me there used to be estonians and big finnish community with saunas and everything. They immigrated here before/during/after IIWW but probably got lost for now as i didnt meet them myself.
there were fossiles in museum.
there were no fossiles in mount bruce.
mount bruce is obviously mountain, small but still biggest around here so i went to top of it
nice nice nice. now i know where all this aboriginal patterns come from but i didnt meet any fossiles that should be up there (not that i know much about them anyway)
did i tell already we have wonderful food here. every month there is seafood night and as i'm always here i experienced it. it is strange to have heaps of lobsters and oysters and shrimps and whatnot to eat whatever and as much as you want for free. somehow i dont have photo of this :(
another writeworthy happening in mess was capture of snake. Once during breakfast ~5am a snake was discovered wandering under dining tables. no worries mate, soon came brave man with snakepole and big black bag and after short pursuit snake was in the bag and out of the building no much excitment whatsoever.
im dissapointed in snakes, although i've been walking, running and biking around quite much i've not really met more snakes here.
at least one day while biking i met big (~ 1.5m) dragon lizard / varanus on my way. very cool fella indeed calm as a buddhist monk and just slowly-slowly toddled he off from the road.
there are birds too. just when i biked back from mount Bruce i noticed that hawks (or eagles or whatever they are named in the books) had noticed me. maybe its cause of hitchcock but having 20+ of them flying around my head while im biking in the middle of remote outback did make me feel chancy.
we have a car. with nice flaggy. sometimes. as we have to work on unregular times sometimes and carry stuff around. so i have had my share of switching on wipers instead of turning indicators but its no biggie. cars are biggies though all have 4+liter V8 engines... why not.
and there is observatory. for observing big things in the sky that are very small from our viewpoint. its real thing with special dome and all. telescope is called Meade LX200 with 305mm aperture, 3m focal length (f/10) and bunch of different size eyepieces.
fancy apparatus with builtin gps and database so it always knows itself where any interesting skything is and it takes just selection from remote to move it there. then again its not hubble, so you dont see stunningly bright and sharp and colorful pictures of distant galaxies but still i saw rings of saturn and nice star clusters and more. right now its not best time anyway, atmosphere is too warm...
there are other things in night that look much bigger
