Tuesday - Saturday, September 11 - 15 2012 (diary)

I tend to go more often than not to the Durack Golf Course for my daily walks these days, as I am most likely to come across at least one or more of these beautiful, elegant, sparkling white birds (herons ?). They are a true delight to the eye and I finally managed to get close enough for a descent picture of one.

My other daily activities still revolve predominantly around bridge. I have placed an advertisement about the Bees Creek classes in the local newspaper for three Saturdays, and a few of us are placing pamphlets on various notice boards and venues throughout the area.
I hope very much we get a descent turn up for this course, as I just love the venue we have managed to secure.

Suddenly my mobile phone ("handi") has given up the ghost. Telstra, our main telecom in Australia, has recently gone onto a new system here in the Darwin region, which (I am told) is hard on old mobile models. So I purchased a new phone : the rugged Telstra Tough 2 (T54), claimed to be "built tough for your next adventure", and especially recommended for rural areas. It appears to be working OK.

Sunday - Friday, September 16 - 20 2012 (diary)

Gordon and Iris left this week to return to their home in Victoria, so the caravan spot next to my cabin is empty again. They plan to return next year during the Dry season.
They had to leave before the mangos are ripe but there will be not much of a mango season this year anyway. The unusually cold month of June is being blamed for a very poor crop this year, and a lot of small, unripe green fruit has already fallen off the trees, worsening the problem.

The weather at present here is still superb: continuous sunshine, blue skies with the odd cloud here and there and relative low humidity. The nights too are pleasant and I sleep well. It certainly does not feel like a "Build up".

The program for my new Telstra mobile phone displays the actual amount of data which is being transferred while I am online which is good. I still get the occasional burst of fast background downloads (40 MB within a couple of minutes) while picking up my emails. So I have checked all programs on my laptop which allow for "automatic updates". I have found and disabled this feature on four programs so far : Windows, Norton Security, Adobe Reader and my service provider Telstra (in case you experience the same trouble check these out). Hopefully I have caught them all now.