Population 10
Wednesday last week turned out to be a snake killing day. We had a dugart (one of the world’s top ten deadly snakes) in the homestead. It was in the children's playroom before they cornered it with a shovel. I somehow ended up with the job of mopping up the snake blood. Oh, the life of a governess, making the playroom safe so the children don't slip in poisonous snake blood. I tend to wander around the homestead in the dark with flip-flops on my feet. Maybe I should be more careful.
The same day I was sitting in my room, reading a book, when the mother started calling my name. She had spotted another snake outside, but near the house. She needed to keep an eye on it so it wouldn’t disappear. I went running down the beach to find the father, found him working on the barge and we came roaring back in the jeep with the shovel. All very dramatic. Turned out to be a diamond python and totally harmless but still we didn't want it around the house.
But that wasn’t the end of the decapitation. There must have been something in the air this week!! Will was riding his motorbike down the beach before school and didn’t see the rope that attached the barge to the post. He went straight into it and it caught him on the neck and flung him backwards off his bike. He hit his head hard on the sand (thankfully wearing a helmet) and the rope burned an enormous graze on his neck. But with the resilience of youth, he still made it to school and had forgotten the whole incident by the next day.
It was my 40th birthday yesterday. The father was taking the boys into town to run some errands and I joined them for a ride on the boat and a trip to the shop. There isn’t much to recommend the local town - except, the SHOP!!!! Not quite a supermarket. More of a corner store with groceries and everything is three times the normal price because it has to be shipped to the middle of nowhere. But a SHOP all the same. I went wandering and found a sign that pointed to “Town Centre”. I wandered in that direction for a couple of blocks and then found another sign saying “Town Centre” pointing the opposite direction. I must have blinked and missed it. Two cafes, a couple of small food stores, a tiny shop that crammed the bank agent, post office, surf shop and internet café under one tiny roof and a few lost tourists spread out along the beach waiting for the next boat out onto the Bay. But I hadn’t been off the island in three weeks, so it seemed like “the big smoke” to me.
The family made me a wonderful lamb roast dinner for my birthday. We managed to organize a couple of bottles of champagne and a traditional chocolate cake. The boys made me a card and blew up some balloons. A couple of German volunteers had arrived on the island this week as well as the Grandfather, so we had a proper little gathering on a very hot night with a thunder storm brewing outside the door. The flies and mosquitoes were out in force before the storm, otherwise we would have had the party outside overlooking the beach. Instead we all hunkered down in the family house so the mozzies wouldn’t make a meal out of us.
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