Paradise & a house-sitting tale of woe.

We were so pleased to have been invited back to Portland Roads & for a longer period this year. This time the owners would be away for a bit over 6 weeks but had invited us to stay on for a further period after their return as a ‘thank you’ for our services. We didn’t feel the need for the extra enticement, the opportunity to be back on the Cape during the wet season was a sufficient drawcard for us, but of course we had happily accepted the offer of extended time, (a total of a little under 10 weeks). This as it turned out may have been a mistake, but more on that later.

For now we were back in the dynamic coastal & rainforest location, a million miles from anywhere, & reconnecting with folk in the area and meeting new folk. Once again my role as the volunteer postie ensured we engaged with the few locals, & others at the airport & in the area on a regular basis. My grass cutting duties were hampered by what was a first for us – a properly wet Wet Season. The opportunities to cut the well watered grass around the township were few & far between, with need for the grass to dry sufficiently before cutting, & with frequent often unpredictable ‘out of nowhere’ heavy bouts of rainfall which were often short lived but intense. Soaked to the skin in seconds. Almost instant dry ground to inches of water around your feet type of intensity. Oddly no storms though. Occasionally we heard distant thunder or saw lightning far away across the horizon out at sea, but this was the exception, not the rule. The rain itself was not monsoonal, the monsoon trough occasionally moved southward toward us, but never actually reached us. In fact I think Lockhart River had the Cape’s highest wet season rainfall totals. This rainfall also curtailed our bird watching outings. Mostly we chose to undertake these on days when we needed to go to Lockhart to collect the mail to save unnecessary use of the vehicles, but standing in rainforest with camera & binoculars with the possibility of being drenched at any moment saw us doing most of our bird watching close to the house. This in itself was productive, but less so than our time in the National Park rainforest had been last year. It was really no hardship however, we felt very satisfied with ‘staying home’, with views of the ever changing Coral Sea, walks along & through the mangroves, bird watching at dawn from the road outside & always the excitement of the sudden intensity of the rain. Sometimes it came as a complete surprise, other times we could watch it coming toward us across ocean. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, rarely light drizzle. When it hit, within moments water would gush out from the steep rainforest covered hill behind the house, flooding the road & leaving ever increasing amounts of sand & debris. Generally a quick hit & then gone (with the exception of the debris), drained into the sea on the other side of the road. Always welcome as the downpours always brought temporary relief to the humidity. This humidity, probably because of the frequent rains, was far less onerous than last year when the weather had been drier. We came to understand this desirable feature of the wet season – our 3rd in the tropical north, and the wettest to date. It seemed our wet season jinx had been broken. Yay!

Another task we had agreed to undertake in addition to covering the owners paid responsibilities to the Shire council for the grass cutting at Portland Roads, was also to maintain the local rubbish tip in a tidy state. Pigs & dogs often pull rubbish out of the pit & make a mess, so we regularly visited to clean up. As it was most of the pigs & dogs must have been finding plenty to eat elsewhere in the wet season conditions, there was rarely much to clean up. However on one occasion after a wet & windy night we found a largish tree fallen & blocking the entrance to all vehicles, & too large, heavy & poorly positioned to cut & move on my own with just a small chain saw & the winch on the car. I consulted with the owner letting him know that another local had offered to help me & that I wasn’t sure if we’d manage, but was happy to give it a go. But it wasn’t going to happen for a couple of days. He agreed. In the meantime another neighbour had heard about the problem & contacted me to say that he’d be happy to do his bit for the community with his heavy machinery. I was grateful & thanked him. Next time I drove past the tip the job had been nicely completed leaving me with a positive sense of how the community could come together in time of need.

Further south at Lockhart River community, a 45 to 60 minute drive up over the mountains & through the rainforest, on a road which became increasingly washed out with every rainfall event, the rainfall totals were significantly higher. It was common to leave to collect the mail (from the plane at Lockhart Airport) in full sunshine & find flooded conditions & heavy downpours as we got close . Occasionally upon our return we would find there had been similar rain back toward Portland Roads, bringing up river levels again, & making creeks un-crossable. We quickly learned to always carry food & torches, in addition to water & the satellite phone in the car, as waits for water levels to drop again could be long – up to almost 4 hours was the longest. On that occasion we sat patiently in the car (out of the reach of hungry mosquitoes), in the pitch dark, occasionally getting out to walk down to the water’s edge to examine where the water level was in relation to markers we had made on the road. Still rising? falling? A car with 4 young fellas arrived, in the dark, on the far side of the creek after we had been waiting for close to 3 hours. They stopped to get out for a look at the fast running water, with one wading into the water across the narrow concrete causeway to determine the depth in the light of their car’s headlights. We watched anxiously knowing that they would never see any large tree trunks coming down the creek at speed toward them as we had observed earlier, timber large enough & with sufficient momentum to knock a vehicle off the concrete into deeper water, let alone a single man. Thankfully none came whilst he was there. The water level had been dropping for some time, but was still above the bottom of the short shorts he was wearing. He was braced against the flow & every step looked precarious. We breathed a sigh of relief when he got back to their car unscathed. Communication was impossible above the sound of the roaring water. Unbelievably (to us) within minutes the occupants of the car began to edge the car to the water’s edge. We didn’t believe they would attempt to cross, but sure enough they did! Two on foot, one either side of the car, their bare feet detecting the unseeable edge of the concrete inches from the car wheels, & them just ahead of the car to act as guides, (the road markers having been submerged & then washed away). Half way across the car stopped, & reversed (without guidance). Our hearts were in our mouths! Then he came forward again, inching toward what we knew was a washed out hole where concrete met the dirt road. We imagined the brief sense of panic the driver must have felt as he dropped into the hole & the water came up over his bonnet unexpectedly, before exiting the hole relieved to have made it across. There were whoops & cheers. All piled back into the car, which stopped level with us further up the hill, wound down the window, the driver explaining with a grin, that he had backed up mid stream because he had misjudged. The water level was still falling but it was another 45 minutes before we did our own ‘’mid-shin’ test walk across & finally felt safe to drive across with the water now low enough to define the edges of the concrete. All other occasions of creeks being up were in daylight, & MrsTea did the walk tests on our behalf. Mostly they were drive-able or only in need of short waits. Other sections of the road saw washouts deepen, some deep enough to tear a tyre of a rim, but familiarity with the road meant they could be avoided without too much difficulty. There were muddy & sloshy sections, but these remained generally hard underneath providing grip without any dramas. Most surprising was how quickly much of the road would dry out with a few hours of sun. Driving with a little moisture on the road was preferable to completely dry as the darker red wet rims of potholes & ruts made them easier to spot in the sunlight.

Mail days were Tuesdays & Fridays. The weekly ‘Seaswift’ barge delivers to Lockhart on Wednesdays (mostly) so Tuesdays were not good for getting fresh fruit & veggies. Friday became our shopping day as we could combine it with the mail run & there was still a reasonable selection of fresh produce left on the shelves of the store. Everything comes in to Lockhart on the barge, a smaller front opening vessel which picks up the goods from the larger mother ship’ further out at sea, before it continues on to other Cape communities on it’s weekly run. Supplies for the shop, building materials, vehicles, fuel (diesel & petrol) to top up the the only fuel bowsers available and avgas to refuel aircraft at the airport & anything else anyone needs. Everything is unloaded with a forklift & transferred onto the back of trucks to distribute back in town a couple of kilometres away or a bit further to the airport. Quintell beach, flanking the barge landing on both sides is a pretty beach with large smooth rocks. Fishing is a popular activity for many locals, & walking along the beach among the rocks at low tide a pleasant way to spend an hour or two.

The store itself was friendly & well stocked, but mainly we only needed fresh produce to supplement our pre-arrival frozen meat order, & the boxes of non-perishables we had sent up prior to our arrival. Oh and fuel too. Mileages were not high, but we always erred on the side of caution to ensure we would have sufficient fuel to return to town.

Most of our time however was spent at Portland Roads. Alway something new to engage our interest. Sometimes passing cray boats with their line of dories following them, & other larger, presumably charter boats would anchor a way off shore overnight, occasionally disgorging mostly elderly patrons onto the beach in front of the house in a series of small boats, to be collected by Paul’s 4wd bus, at the end of their trip to take them back to Lockhart for a flight back to Cairns. Once in a while new folk would board the boat in the same way. On one occasion we received instruction from the house owners of the need to meet a small boat carrying a young man off one of the cray boats, with a head injury in need of medical attention, for us to take him to the Clinic in Lockhart. A lone small sailing yacht moored up one night, it’s owner coming ashore to collect mail from us.

As the season moved on to what most (including us) thought was post wet season, activity in the water itself became more noticeable. Morning sightings of turtles became common, always brief sightings as they surfaced for air, their huge, often soccer ball sized, heads poking up out of the water for just long enough to recognise what they were, but never long enough to swap binoculars for camera & to focus it! 🙂 Occasionally we would get glimpses of their shells, some at least a metre in diameter. Densities of small, & some not so small bait fish closer to the water’s edge increased, bringing birds & larger fish, including unidentified sharks up to around 1.5 metres, in to feed. Fish ‘feeding frenzies’ were seen most mornings, often with smaller prey fish attempting to escape their hunters by skipping across the top of the water in large numbers, like flat stones thrown, with glimpses of the mostly unknown hunter fish behind them. Further out the water surface could often be seen ‘boiling’ through the binoculars, with birds, mainly Terns, & a variety of unidentified others having their turn at feeding frenzies. (Tern’s turns – haha). As tides went out the reef close to shore would be exposed & became the hunting ground for wading birds & different kingfishers (list of birds identified at the end of this post).

The house itself with shuttered openings rather than windows also ‘collected’ a number of ‘visitors. Snakes were well behaved and encountered just outside on a number of occasions, but none entered. Among them a small & cute Children’s python, a brown tree snake (aka ‘night tiger), & a long thin ‘Brown headed snake’ found only in this part of the Cape. There was also the much larger unidentified whole snakeskin found one morning just outside the kitchen door – a moulting visitor. Indoors we had geckos in large numbers on ceilings & walls. Clearly sufficient insect & spider life to sustain them. Apart from occasional small gecko poos, easily wiped away, geckos were no problem except ……. when they became amorous! “Oh come and look at this” said MrsTea the first time she saw them displaying their anti-gravity feat of fornicating whilst upside down on the ceiling. Later we discovered that their ‘anti-gravity ability appeared to lessen as their activity came to a finish, & that it was common, at that point for one or both to fall to the floor. That in itself was quite amusing, and the geckos themselves seemed quite unperturbed. However when they timed their falling antics to coincide with one of us walking below, we did find a couple of unexpected geckos falling on our head, or down shirts to be a tad perturbing. Not something one easily becomes accustomed to! A few birds visited, a Torresian Kingfisher who came right into the room & perched here & there for a while, appearing to take an inquisitive interest in us, a black Butcherbird who serenaded us from the balcony rail on several mornings, and a bright yellow chested Olive-backed Sunbird did a few laps around the living room. We felt privileged by these visits. We even had a new bird for us eating palm berries off a tree at the end of the veranda – a Fawn-breasted Bowerbird. A tiny lone micro-bat was in residence behind a picture of a Green tree python hung on the wall. It would spend it’s days there, coming out at night to hunt insects. Other larger bats swooping through the open living space were also nightly visitors. Most frogs called from outside, but one White-lipped Green tree frog took up residence for a while after discovering the echo-y nature (seemingly) of the entrance to the backyard pizza oven. He would make occasional silent forays into the living room or veranda, thankfully saving his persistent night calls for outside! Shortly after the rains had finished (so we thought) we had the night of the Mantis’ & Dragonflies. Two nights actually. Lots of them everywhere. Four different types of Mantis in the living room. With their swivelling heads & eyes that follow us as we go close to them, they really are quite engaging, in a way no other insect is. We only ever knew of the existence of the generic ‘Praying Mantis’, but seeing several species, obviously differing from each other led us to learn a little more about them. Apparently Australia has 160 different types of mantis! After two nights the main Mantis invasion was over. Just the odd one here & there after that. Dragonflies remained common, heralds of the change to the dry season. Another favourite, always around but never in large numbers were nature’s tiny LED’s – the fireflies. We know little about them, but they always seemed somehow so gentle. Less gentle were the occasional fawn-footed Melomys who would knock things off kitchen shelves whilst looking for a feed. These native rat-like creatures are quite cute, not at all threatening, but do like to chew on any plastic container they think may contain food. Sharp little teeth if their gnawing activity is anything to go by. Soap bars seemed to count as food! Mostly we would wake to find things scattered on the floor, but occasionally loud crashes of falling containers would wake us. When caught in the light of a torch they would just sit & look at you until you left.

When on our mail collecting visits we got to know a young NZ couple working there for a while as part of their new Australian travelling lifestyle. When flights had re-opened between NZ & Australia they had jumped at the opportunity. Josh & Jem are a couple we clicked with & hope to maintain an ongoing friendship with. As their accommodation was relatively close to ‘town’ occasionally we would hear stories from them about some of the ‘goings on’ in town about folk we didn’t know. It was good to get this second hand insight into aboriginal community life, something we felt quite removed from up at Portland Roads, from folk experiencing it for the first time. Mostly the white community outside of town are fairly insular, valuing their privacy, but over time snippets of gossip were shared & relationships revealed. It served to enhance our awareness of how in small communities connections between folk cannot be predicted. Good or bad. We endeavoured to be ‘listeners’ but not ’spreaders’, both out of respect & because of the high possibility of ‘putting our foot in it’ if we were to say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Local ‘politics’ was like the onion with multiple layers. We were very aware that from our limited vantage point we only ever saw the outer skin, just enough to know there was far more going on below the surface than we would ever be privy to. Several different folk at different times appeared keen to know how we found the owner of the place we were looking after. “How do you find him” was the common question asked. “Yeah OK we’d reply, we take folk as we find them” our always cautious & diplomatic reply. “Well no-one likes him” (or similar) they would say, before going on to tell us why, often in great detail. We simply responded by telling folk that the sort of behaviours they described were not something we had experienced, only to then be told “that’s because you’re doing something for him”. That was always the end of that conversation. The similarity & content between each of these interactions with different folk was generally consistent and in hindsight should have been a warnings we took note of but it is both of our natures to generally look for the good in everyone we meet.

Now wouldn’t you know it? Just a week or two away from ‘civilisation’, a repeat performance of what occurred 2 years ago when we were a couple of hundred kilometres north of Broome in another wilderness area. My computer died – just two years old! It didn’t completely kark it immediately though. I was able to continue using it in ‘recovery mode’ which allowed me to do most of what I needed to do, albeit with a need to reboot every time it went to ’sleep’ or the lid was closed. It no longer knew who I was & I had to reacquaint it with me every time I used it. A real pain, but also a warning of impending doom. After exhausting all I could do to sort the issues out I came to the conclusion that I had an unreliable machine which would cost more to repair than it was worth & was likely to fail completely at any time. I mail ordered a new one from Apple. Amazingly in the weeks following my having ordered a new one, the old one gradually ‘got better’, to the point that on the day the new one arrived it worked 100% perfectly for the first time since the initial failure. It proved however to be it’s last hurrah! Shortly after I had transferred everything from the old to new successfully, it’s screen went black & nothing I could do was able to revive it. I scavenged the ‘net for all sorts of resuscitation methods & tried them all, but dead is dead. Like the Monty Python Parrot, this Macbook Pro was deceased, was ‘no more’.
It was easier to accept the ‘passing’ knowing I had a brand new replacement Macbook Air. Having accepted the loss I was both disappointed but relieved the end had come. The past few weeks of our relationship had not been easy.
Disposing of it at the community tip made sense, rather than have it eat into our meagre luggage allowance on our return flight to Cairns, but what to do to prevent the unlikely chance of some computer whiz strolling through the Portland Roads tip, spying the dead computer in amongst all the other human debris, & taking it home to extract all my banking details etc.
How to ensure that the internal solid state drive, which I doubt I’d recognise even if I could see it, was rendered useless?
I considered dousing it in petrol & setting fire to it, but having discovered a suitable instrument of destruction in one of the sheds I dismissed immolation in favour of the brute force of the axe!
Having sought a place of privacy where I could not be observed, just in case an unlikely passer by might consider I had lost my marbles, my temper or both (I hadn’t …. honest!) I addressed the task at hand with the same distaste I’ve felt in the past when euthanasing sick animals on our farm. (Albeit rather more humanely than is possible with an axe!)
Now it turns out that the aluminium unibody of a 2017 Macbook Pro is somewhat tougher than your average piece of kindling. Several blows had disfigured & distorted it but I had no idea whether the information on it’s hard drive had been effectively destroyed. A few more blows were required.
The next one must have ruptured a battery, smoke poured out together with a loud hiss from a now revealed black rectangle which was bulging into an oval shape as it did so. I stepped back smartly unsure if it might explode. Instead the now very bulging rectangle was getting hot & developed a gentle flame, but seconds later the flame, roared, ignited gas. I think there must have been four batteries as they all succumbed to the heat & one by one performed the same hissing, roaring flame thrower trick. It was quite impressive, perhaps because they had been fully charged? As the flames petered out what had burned remained visibly red hot.
MrsTea came to see what the cause of the burning smell was which had reached her on the other side of the house. She found me staring down at the hot, black smouldering remains feeling something like I imagine a remorseful vandal might feel after desecrating a work of art. Not one to miss a chance, even though April Fools day had already passed she asked, in that ‘innocent’ manner she does so well “I hope you got the right one”. Just enough to cast momentary doubt, for the stomach to contract & for me to rush upstairs to check. 🙂

We ate well, the frozen supplies from a Cairns meat supply company was good quality, better than we have had to become accustomed to from supermarkets. However the real highlight was the quantity of prawns we obtained. They had been secured direct from one of the fishing boats & we were told how to cook them. We like prawns boiled, chilled, peeled & eaten with lemon & pepper (me) or with lemon & mayonnaise (MrsTea), but really we had never had prawns of this quality & freshness before. They were boiled in seawater collected from the beach in front of the house, placed into the boiling water & returned to the boil for two minutes max, removed & placed immediately into chilled seawater, & then into the fridge. We thought we had more than we needed, made 8 meals out of them & then wished we had bought more. $20! Mainly Tiger prawns, which when peeled yielded meat around the size of a man’s thumb. I don’t think we’ll ever look at a supermarket prawn in the same way again! Absolutely delicious.

The renowned Chilli Beach was an easy 15 minute drive away. We made a number of enjoyable visits including one where we walked the full 12km (or 10 km depending on where the info comes from) to the Chilli Creek and back, the creek the beach takes it name. With rest breaks, & photo stops & a mini picnic of water & fruit cake at the creek it took us around 5 hours, with softer sand over the couple of kilometres before the creek slowing us somewhat. With neither of us having walked any great distances for a while it felt like an achievement, both of us tired but satisfied to find we could still manage it. Finding an intact nautilus shell amongst other bits & pieces gave added value. We visited a number of times at various times of the day & night to find & photograph the Palm Cockatoos who live there & in the hope of seeing one of hard to find Green Tree Pythons. We found the ‘Palmies’, but lucked out on the pythons. It remains our favourite beach anywhere to date & was thus a great spot to meet up with Josh & Jem a couple of times on their days off.

We also met a couple who live south of Portland Roads in a lovely house right on the waters edge with a beach of their own. They asked if we might be interested in house-sitting for them when we had finished at Portland Roads. We were keen, but told them we would like to discuss this with our current owners when they returned from holiday as it would mean that flights would have to be changed, & they were the airline’s ticket agents for the region. A matter of courtesy particularly as they had paid our return fares as part of the house sitting arrangement for them. The couple were happy with this, & made it clear that they would cover the cost of the additional fees for flight changes. Our 10 weeks had just become 3 months & we were excited about the prospect of the second sit, particularly because of the property & the two large dogs to look after. A bit of doggie time again was well overdue.

At around the the halfway point of the owners holiday absence, the diesel generator which provides supplementary power to the solar system on a daily basis failed. Power went off at 3:30am (I woke when my CPAP machine switched off). No power meant no internet, & no internet meant no phone. So we were without communications too, save for a provided satphone which we had no means of recharging.(It’s 12v charger was broken so car charging was not an option). Contact was made with the owners after driving several kilometres out of Portland Roads to the top of a hill where we could get one bar of 3G mobile on our mobile phone from the distant tower in Lockhart River. Discussion was had, & questions asked, with me driving back & forth between house & hilltop to obtain the info required from the generator & to relay it back to the owner. After this consultation it was determined that the generator which had provided reliable service for the past 8 years was no longer able to do so. It appeared to be a fault with power generation, rather than the diesel motor. This made for a critical situation. The power system was running 5 large chest freezers full of seafood for the owners seasonal business. Should they thaw out it would be disastrous & costly. A short term plan was determined by the owner who instructed me to borrow a small generator from the storage shed at the local community hall, & to use this to run 3 of the freezers overnight to take the load off the solar system. He was very specific in his myriad of instructions, I was being micromanaged but accepted this as I could imagine how anxious he might be feeling in the situation, & I followed his instructions to the tee. This got us through until he had had an opportunity to discuss the issue with the supplier of his generator & arranged for a local electrician to come and have a look. The electrician although having never worked on one of these generators consulted with the supplier advisor by phone as he worked. Unfortunately it was determined that the the only fix was replacement parts not immediately available. The owner decided to return for a few days, leaving his partner ‘on holiday’, so he could remove the suspected failed part & either get it rewound or replaced. He arranged for a chap in the area to help him remove it. In the meantime the small borrowed generator failed! I was instructed to take it to the chap whom he had teed up to help, to drain the fuel from the carburettor as water in the fuel was suspected, (after a number of folk in Lockhart had suffered a similar fate in there cars recently). Although familiar with the little generators I was told not to drain the float bowl myself but to take it to the other chap. Very explicitly. I did so albeit feeling a little silly asking someone else to do something I could have easily done myself), but water in the fuel was not the problem. It turned out to be a fouled spark plug. I borrowed another identical small generator from the chap, concerned that if the weather turned bad for more than a day that having sufficient power to keep the freezers running was at risk. A good move as this is what occurred, & both small generators were required 24 hours a day for a short time when heavy cloud saw virtually no solar input, but we successfully kept the freezers going, even though we were using torches at night & no CPAP machine to save every morsel of power that we could. A day or two later the cloud cleared & increased solar allowed for a less tenuous situation.

Upon the owners return I collected him from the airport. The chap engaged to help with the generator dismantling the following day was the chap who had asked us to house sit after our time in Portland Roads finished. That evening I mentioned the second house sitting request & asked the owner about getting the flight dates changed. The response was completely unexpected, a long rant about how he was the only person in the district to do things properly & how he lived in an anarchic community of individuals only interested in themselves, all out to take advantage of him. In response I mentioned the help received with the log at the tip. This only seemed to fan the flames of rage with him suggesting the chap who had helped on that occasion was trying to take his job, and getting paid for it. It seemed he had nothing good to say about anyone and it was a long convoluted rant, including accusations about my wanting to desert him to caretake for Dave on Restoration Island. He claimed that Dave had been in contact with him and told him it was all arranged. It was the first I’d heard of it & I was at pains to offer my reassurances that no such thing had been discussed with me & that walking out on him mid way though what we had agreed upon was simply not something I would contemplate. I didn’t feel believed, and he continued repeating the entire rant twice more before abruptly declaring he wouldn’t talk about it any more. After a short & silent hiatus I took a deep breath and asked about the flight changes again. The response was that it would only be considered if the second house owner reimbursed him half our airfares back to Cairns! Our agreement for the Portland Roads sit would have been completed & the deal had included our return fares being paid, so I thought the expectation that someone else being expected to pay was unreasonable, & considered it would place our second sit in jeopardy. We were first choice, but there was a back up couple available in case we couldn’t do it. I mentioned this & was then told that the help with dismantling the generator had been secured on the basis of payment being offered, & that the insistence on half our return fare being reimbursed would be dropped provided that the ’neighbourly thing’ was done and payment for the help refused!

I returned to MrsTea & reported what had happened. We felt angry at being placed in this position and stewed on it for the next 36 hours whilst waiting to hear whether our second owner had unwittingly passed the test he had not been made aware of, feeling that for us to tell him had every chance of making the situation worse. It seemed a very unreasonable situation for us to be placed in, we felt disempowered & resentful. To us it seemed like a very childish way to determine an outcome, and completely uncaring of our needs. As a result we decided that if he would not agree to our request to change the flight dates we would approach the airline directly ourselves & get the changes made…… and stuff the courtesy!

Late the next day, we were told that our flight dates would now be changed as requested. No explanation, nor apology was offered, but we ascertained that the chap had declined payment. Again we were subjected to a re-run of the initial rant ‘for MrsTea’s sake as she had not been present first time around’ & the need to ‘justify’ his actions appeared important to him. From our perspective it still didn’t stack up, but our impression was that he considered he was being perfectly logical & reasonable. We thanked him & again assured him that keeping our commitments was a matter of pride & that we were sorry that he might have ever considered otherwise.

There were approximately 3 weeks until the end of the owners holiday. We were managing the power system well & keeping the freezers going when the ‘Great Fuel Crisis’ (GFC) happened. You will recall that all fuel is brought in on the barge. On Week one of the GFC a mistake was made & Seaswift departed from the Cairns docks having accidentally left all the fuel sitting on the dock. It would be the following Wednesday before any more fuel could be brought in. The town ran dry. The following Wednesday our Jerry can supply for the two small generators was getting low so we made the trip into Lockhart to get more, only to find a notice on the bowsers saying they were out of order. Various stories were going around as to what the problem was but it turned out that the steel containers the fuel is delivered in had been mis-labelled, & the bowser tanks had been contaminated with the wrong types of fuel. Another week before fresh fuel would come in, (after the tanks had been emptied). I spent a fair bit of time that week chasing around to ensure I had sufficient fuel to keep the freezers going. With fuel in short supply everyone was in a similar boat. The owner was kept informed throughout as he requested. On the following Monday a culvert was discovered to have collapsed under the bitumen road into Lockhart & declared too dangerous to be driven over & the road (& only access in & out of Lockhart) closed until a replacement culvert pipe could be found & installed . This was feeling like a John Cleese farce except that the risk of losing all the freezer contents was far from funny. On the day the owners were due back & I was to collect them from the airport it was clear that I could neither get to the town for fuel nor to the airport to collect them. Arrangements were made for someone to bring them to the airport side of the collapsing culvert, & I would drive to the other side to meet them . They also arranged to secure some fuel, as we were almost out, with not enough left to get through that night. Skin of the teeth stuff. We had put a lot of effort into keeping those freezers frozen & the thought of it all being for nothing at the last moment was an unpleasant thought. A fair bit of ‘finessing’ had been required to keep an eye on solar input & to make judgements about when to start the generators without using up fuel unnecessarily from the rapidly depleting stock.

When the owners met me at the culvert, neither acknowledged me, not even a ‘hello’, let alone a ‘thanks for coming’. They simply walked straight past me & began loading their stuff into car. Pushing my shock at the rudeness aside, I helped to load the ute. On the way back they talked together as though I were not there. Not once was I addressed by name. It was clear I was ‘just’ the chauffeur. I sat almost silent & fuming the entire way back. Stopping only to speak to a neighbour coming in the opposite direction who pulled up. I passed the time of day with him pleasantly before he realised the owners were in the car with me at which point he acknowledged them & shared a few pleasantries. As we pulled away I wondered if it may have ‘broken the ice’, but the couple only continued to talk together about the chap we had just met, ignoring me.

We offered to continue our postal role until we left & this was accepted. For the rest of our stay we made a point of maintaining politeness & amenability throughout, very aware of the absence of almost any “Pleases” & “Thank you’s” from the owners, something we made a point of continuing to model appropriately but sadly without effect. We were never asked about our experience whilst there, & no reference made or questions asked about all we had done for them in their absence save one very noticeable (by virtue of it’s singularity) ‘thank you’ to MrsTea for watering the plants by the owner’s partner. A variety of further small instances contributed to a situation where it felt like we were being treated as though we were ‘owned’. We found ourselves wishing we could leave as soon as possible and had determined well before we reached the day of departure that paradise or not, we would not consider returning a 3rd time again if asked.

A few days after we had left and were at the second house-sit I sent the Portland Roads owners an email thanking them for the funds they had reimbursed us for fuel purchases, letting them know the money had arrived in our bank account.

A few minutes later an email arrived from the owner. An angry & vindictive email. Nothing about all we had done for him, just telling us what terrible house sitters we were (myself in particular) & that he was withdrawing the glowing 3 page reference he had provided us with after last year’s sit. It was obvious that the email had been pre-written & ready to go. It was a litany of untrue & unsupportable accusations, & distorted truths about things that had they been true, could have been addressed at the time. It also included the costing for what he called a Fly/Drive package that they valued at $7560.00 which he now claimed they had agreed to as ‘payment in kind’. No dispute that this is how he saw it, but it was an agreement we had never been consulted about & the very first we had heard any such monetary amount referred to in regard to our services.

After further time to process what went wrong we feel that two things were probably significant influences behind the behaviours we observed & were subjected to. These are of course just our opinion, but when anyone feels wronged it is natural to seek explanation.

We think our first ‘mistake’ was to make other connections within the small community where both the owner’s & other’s descriptions suggest a long standing difficult & strained relationship to the point of being adversarial.

Our second ‘mistake’ was probably to accept the extra time, viewed by the owners as ‘payment’. We explicitly state on our house-sitting bio “We do not expect any payment, but rather an arrangement of mutual benefit.” In part this is because we would rather end ’sits’ as friends, than as ‘ex-employees’. Once considered an employee some employers consider this gives them rights to treat folk with less respect.

My apologies if you found this abridged saga a little tedious to read, but our blog is a reflection of all of our experiences both good & bad & to gloss over it would never have felt right. It’s now past tense.

Bird list.

Shining Flycatcher
Brush Turkey (northern variety)
Eclectus Parrot – Male & female.
Metallic Starling (Adult & immature)
Masked Lapwing
Fawn-breasted Bowerbird
Channel Billed Cuckoo
Lesser Frigatebird
Pacific Golden Plover
Red-capped Plover
Grey tailed Tattler
Lesser Sand Plover
Golden Sand Plover
Olive-backed Sunbird
Sulphur crested cockatoo
Spangled Drongo
Dollarbird
Black Butcherbird
Green Oriole
Torresian Imperial Pigeon
Wompoo Fuit Dove
Varied Triller
Rainbow Bee Eater
Crested Tern
Sacred Kingfisher
Large-billed Gerygone
Pied Oystercatcher
Eastern Reef Egret (Dark Morph)
Eastern Reef Egret (White morph)
Beach Stone-Curlew
Palm Cockatoo
Wedge tailed Eagle
Large tailed owlett-nightjar
Collared (Torresian) Kingfisher
Whimbrel
Common Sandpiper
Double eyed Fig Parrot
Dusky Honeyeater
Little Tern
Rose-crowned Fruit Dove
Bar Shouldered Dove
Lemon -bellied flycatcher
Frill-necked Monarch
Eurasian Tree Sparrow
Red Backed Fairy Wren
Varied Honeyeater