We still officially have three weeks of work remaining, but we've just got back from a trip to East Timor so I'm gonna start updating the blog again, and hopefully a bit more regularly now.
First a few photo's from Darwin to recap the last 8 months
We started a new business while in Darwin selling fresh picked coconuts at a stall at the various markets around Darwin. This started off as a joke and a way to waste time just selling coconuts for $2 each at a local market.
But after they sold out in an hour we knew we were onto something and started to up our business. It was pretty fun trying to get up the tree's at first when we had no idea what we were doing. We were trying a pole with a loop on the end, or innefectually climbing. At one point Hyso tried tying a rope to a machete and throwing it up into the tree to wrap around the nuts. We both tried pulling the nuts off, but when we both pulled at once the knife came free and SHOT out of the tree and missed Hyso's head by about a foot (blade first). Looking back on it it does seem dangerous, but at the time neither of us even considered the possibility of that happening. By the end I was getting pretty good at getting up coconut trees, the perfect method I think is to use a bit of towel around your ankles and a loop of rope to sling around the back of the tree, then you can just worm up the tree and then get into the branches and cut nuts down at your leisure. We were getting so professional we'd even lower them down with a rope to stop them smashing in the high trees. The only problem was we couldn't get enough nuts to the markets in Rachael's station wagon. We've given it up now due to the department of environmental health being pedantic. But it was a good little earner, pulling in between $200 - $300 a weekend. Which was nice extra cash, and something to do
There's also been the usual crocodile tours and junk which everyone does in Darwin which have been fun.
We've also learned how to go mud crabbing using pot plant holder hooks from some mates in Darwin. I can't get over how easy it is to get crabs this way, you almost feel guilty pulling them from their holes or picking them up off the ground, It is way easier than potting for them and I reckon you get way more crabs. This is gonna be a great way to get some free crab dinners while we cross the top end (which is full of mangroves). It's a nice way to spend the day too walking around the mangroves. The only danger is the huge tides around top end Australia. One guy we went crabbing with on his boat said he went out too late one time and got caught in the incoming tide. The tides are pretty serious around here (up to 8m high) and completely cover huge areas of sand. He had to wait up in a mangrove tree with his friends until they could call a boat in to come pick them up.
Here is a golden tree snake, which are present in plague proportions across from the caravan park, you have to careful of these when jogging as they are a bit aggressive (one went for me when jogging once) and their bite can make you feel a bit sick
This is an olive python which I encountered outside the bus one night by stepping on it barefoot in the dark. It was the calmest wild snake I've ever encountered, it was so chilled out it let me touch it and didn't even bite me when I stepped on it, that was a very cool snake, it looked very impressive too with dark blue/black scales on it's back which didn't show up too well in the photo
As far as Lemon news is concerned I've spent the last TWO DAYS trying to find a short circuit somewhere in the wiring. For some reason the battery was flat just before our flight to Timor, I managed to dodgily hook the deep cycle batteries to the ignition circuit using a tent peg and start the motor to move the bus into storage as an emergency measure, but once we got back it was still flat despite 9 days of solar to charge it...
So the last TWO FREAKIN DAYS I have been crawling around under the bus and through the dash following the wire supplying the short to find out why we have been losing 7 amps of power. And my god I have discovered some dodgy wiring in my travels under the dashboard. I did manage to pinpoint the problem yesterday, it was a wire leading to one of Mike Savage's dodgy little side switches and not a short at all... It was a switch for a reversing spotlight he had installed which had been switched on somehow... What a waste of two days, I could have just switched the light off and the problem would have been solved... I feel pretty retarded after that. But I have since disconnected the spotlight (which I have never used) and have also tidied up the wiring under the dash, fixed a few real dodgy issues (Mike Savage has been drawing the current for half his lighting from the ignition circuit... I have no idea why he would do that)(Actually I do, he is a dickhead). And also while everything was out I've installed a new usb capable cd player and new speakers which looks sick as AIDS. So I guess some good came out of the last two days. But my god.. I never want to see another wire again.
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