Living in Birdsville: Our new home

We were a bit concerned that we would fit into a "one-bedroom unit" after our three bedroom house in Sydney, but were pleasantly surprised — its pretty compact, but the living area is quite spacious, and clean except for the red dust on top of the fridge and cupboards. It has all the necessities, including a fridge, the world's smallest lounge, washing machine, table and chairs and a bed. Hang on, its a single bed! Hmmm ..... Luckily it also has a very large pantry cupboard, because a large part of what we brought with us was my entire pantry contents. I was quite depressed unpacking, I had no idea how it was all going to fit, but with some re-organisation, its all in and working. First thing Evan did when he got all the boxes in was to locate his laptop and make sure the internet was working, which it was, so he was happy. The phone wasn't though, and there is no mobile coverage here, so we had to go to the public phone box outside the pub to phone and let various people know we were here safely. The stove wasn't working either, it runs on gas, and we assumed the gas cylinder was empty.

We threw our camping mattress on the floor and went out to explore our new surrounds. We have "water glimpses" — you can just see the billabong through the trees, so we headed down there to check it out. The ground around here is covered in gibber stones, and is very rocky, not to mention the red dust everywhere. The billabong is a fairly pleasant expanse of brown water, and can be quite picturesque in the right light. The vast flat horizon is just amazing, there is such a feeling of space here. And as we walked over to the pub for dinner, we saw more stars in the night sky than I've seen for a very long time. Dinner at the pub was very good, city-quality food, although a little pricey, and we wandered home and slept very soundly on our very hard camp mattress.