Katherine Day 6

Dropped Steve and Midget (croc bait) back off to his kayak to continue is paddle back to the ranch. Thought he’d be only a couple of hours, given his description of where he landed. Turned out he was only about half way down the river not less than 10kms to go as John had deduced. So I went into town to get lunch and bits for dinner. Arriving back home we waited for a while, and John said lets go down and see if Steve is back. We drove the 2kms to the back of the block and walked down the bank. The dogs had a run around, but still no sign of Steve. So we returned.

Jayne had just returned from her week-long art classes in Jabiru and was exhausted. Made lunch and enjoyed the afternoon with Jayne chatting about her work, John’s work and life and the universe in general. It was really pleasant. Meanwhile John took another trip back down to the river to check again on Steve, in between installing fence posts. Around 4pm Jayne said lets go back and sit on the bank and wait till Steve returns. We took the dogs again and continued our conversations. It was really pleasant and relaxing.

When the sun started heading down, we walked back to the car. She then said she’d talk a drive along the fence line and see if we can see him coming. We headed through into the next door neighbour’s block and then turned down a track down below the flood plain. The owners were down doing some fencing and looked startled. Jayne wound down the window to ask about Steve when they announced that some weirdo just walked past pulling a kayak with a dog. Apparently they’d experienced some really weird experiences on their block including returning home one day to find some weirdo had got their ladder and climbed up onto their roof and remained until their return, and the worst was an arsonist who nearly burned their house down, and if Jayne and John weren’t home, they might have lost. Apparently the arsonist wont be doing that again. No more was said.

Steve and Midget had just arrived (via the road) to the house by the time we’d driven back. Boy was he in the shit!

We then started a dinner rather late of the most beautiful Barra that I’d ever tasted. Jayne chopped 3 huge fillets into small 2” cubes and rolled them in a little flour and sesame seeds (very nice!) and we pigged out! It appears that John & Jayne’s diet consists of a lot of home-caught wild Barra. What a life! They said they wont eat anything else!

Midget is resting up from her gruelling wallaby hunt. She caught nothing but heat exhaustion and a buggered right hip. She can hardly walk (again). I watched her go to lie down. It was quite an ordeal for her to go through. She lifted her entire body weight onto her front to legs. Lifted her whole rear end and legs to the right and placed it down on the rug and then the front half followed. And there she stayed. Jayne gave us a doggie anti-inflammatory tablet that really seemed to help Midget.