Always Wash Your Hands!

Today was the day of the official launch of the Hand Washing Project. The hand washing project is something that EH has been running for the past year or so. In Central Australia they made a hip hop song and some adverts to reinforce the hand washing message. It was a busy day with the Director of Environmental Health coming down to launch the project. It was a very busy day but all seemed to go ahead pretty much to plan and with no major hicups. I was in charge of the audio visual stuff and so it was pretty nerve-racking to get up there in front of all the people and make sure that everything works with out a problem. There was an error message that started coming up about 5 minutes before with a loud beep. This went off every 30 seconds or so. Nothing I did could stop it going off but when the presentation started it seemed to stop. I don't know why but I was certainly very glad. Now the next big thing to organise is the Christmas lunch. Hopefully that will be a lot less stressful.

Rain

A dust storm blew in yesterday. It just dropped over the town. If you looked towards the horizon you could see the dust just settling on the town with blue sky above. In the afternoon though you could feel a change coming through. First a cooler wind started to blow and then the clouds came with it moving in from the south west. At about 6 o'clock the first few drops started to fall. It rained on and off all night. Not much falling, but enough to clear the air. When I woke this morning the sky was still cloudy and there was a cool breeze blowing. It had stopped raining and the ground was dry. Most of all, the air was clear and smelt fresh. It doesn't happen often so when it does rain, out here in the desert, it is really appreciated.

Fallen out the tree...

Yesterday I found a bird that had fallen out of a tree. I was out with Aaron returning a telly. He was returning his 68cm telly for an 80cm telly. As we were leaving the carpark I spotted the bird which was sitting under a tree at the bottom end of the carpark. I asked Aaron to get out of the car to have a look and one of the parents who was still hanging around swooped down on him. It was a magpie lark who looked as if he was almost ready to leave the nest. He had all his flight feathers but his tail feathers just hadn't grown yet. They take about 8 weeks to fully fledge and I think given another week or two he would be all set to fly away. Anyway, we left the little bird there and took the telly back.

Later in the afternoon when the shops had shut, I drove by and once again saw the bird sitting in the carpark. I climbed out of the car and walked over to him. This time the parents must have gone as I didn't have any trouble. The bird didn't resist as I picked him up and placed him in my hat. I took him home and put him in a box. I would have liked to keep him and rear him myself but as I'm going to be moving in 3 weeks I don't think I would have been able to give him the full attention that was needed. It was better all round I think.

New Phone

Yesterday I bought a new phone. It is a Nokia 6234 or something along those lines. I had a choice between this one and a 6300 which was newer but at the time I preferred the look of this other one. It is just a basic phone with a 2 mega pixel camera and Bluetooth, which means I can take photos and send them to people or copy music over from my computer to use on the phone. When I opened it up at home yesterday I was having second thoughts about whether this one was the right choice but today I think it was. It is a bit more complicated than my old Sony Erricson and hopefully it will last just as long. My old phone died after maybe 4 years of use. I think it still works but I just seem to have bought a dud battery that now doesn't work. I will probably post a few photos that I take with my new camera on this site. Just wait and see...