Spring

Hi everyone,

March is here and that means spring.  Nature is slowly coming to life with buds visible on the trees and the snow geese are crossing our house in squadrons of ‘V’ shaped formations for their northern return.  The animals are waking up from hibernation and the ‘big chill’ is coming to an end.  I have braced myself for the worse over the last couple of months but this winter has been relatively mild with little snow and no blizzards.  Nevertheless, we have a thermometer attached to our outside window so we can read the temperature clearly inside and a few weeks ago the red liquid was so compressed it was hardly making it out of the bulb at the bottom.  Sure enough the next day it burst and now we only have the calibrations left.  Today is very windy, icy and more snow is promised so we received the welcome news this morning – ‘School has been called off today’.

  We had a ‘pep rally’ in the gymnasium to wish the basketball players well in the State Championships but this year Crow Creek teams were knocked out quite early.  Last year they finished fourth but not having home games scheduled this season because the gym will soon be demolished has been unhelpful for the player’s preparations.  However, two million dollars has just been approved for the construction of a new gymnasium which will be commenced in June.  Furthermore, in two years time a new school will be built since many of the buildings are getting beyond their used by date and asbestos ceilings together with broken heating pipes just won’t wash these days.

 

Kate has the library looking really good and one of the goals of making it ‘more user friendly’ has certainly been achieved.  Not only do the students use the library during the day, but they are often to be seen there before and after school.  Kate has been busy compiling lists of suitable new books to be placed on the shelves to encourage the students to read more and she has been teaching the Senior class who intend to go to University next year how to do appropriate research for their assignments.

 

Our nearest town is Highmore about 20 miles away and I mentioned earlier that Melissa, an Aussie from Dalby Queensland, lives there with her South Dakotan husband and two small children.  Her parents have been over for the last couple of months and I finally met them the other day at Church.  It was so good to shake the husband’s hand and say ‘how-ya-goin-mate!’ and know that he understood me perfectly.  I said – “You wouldn’t happen to know Peter Callaghan who used to teach at our school in Broome – he was from Dalby?”  Of course being a small world, he replied: “Oh yes, I know him and the family quite well.”  I told him the story how Pete was fishing on the jetty and eventually he caught a huge trevally.  When his six year old son looked over the edge he fell in.  Peter of course dropped the fish and plunged in after him.  They clung to a barnacle-covered pillar until they were rescued by a boat.  Pete was a little annoyed when all the details came our in the paper.  He said to his wife “how did they find out all that information?”  Trish replied sheepishly “I was talking to a journalist!” 

 

I generally do the readings at Church each week because they seem to like the change with the Aussie accent.  Every now and again I get the guitar out too and teach a new hymn to get away from the two hundred year old dirges that are cemented in the hymnals.

 All the best,

 Kate and Brian