It has been an interesting week… A change in the weather witnessed, the nights are starting to warm up. An unfortunate consequence of this, there is an increased amount of all too friendly mozzies. My body is reflecting this delightful insect's bites! The moon apparently having changed position, it's emanating bright light now makes it hard to see the stars. A bush fire has smouldered in the nearby area. I have watched an orange moon sink towards the horizon. A very noisy cattle truck has passed through momentarily stopping by.

On the same day two staff members ended up leaving us and moving on. Along with quite a few more Mister eleven’s, I have had my first group eleven :-). I have been told to see the painted desert. Quite a few games of pool have been played. Lots of Irish guesses directed my way; some new ones of Canadian and Swedish have been thrown into the mix…! Played a lot by a chef here, Xavier Rudd has become a new favourite for the Australia soundtrack. A lot of banter has been had :-). Called ma'am by a trucker named Bruce all night, Wilma by a man named Fred and encountering a man named Jye, the name apparently of Tarzan origin, some new favourite customers were found :-).

Finally finishing the drinking challenge, 38 days after it began, it ended with a very good bottle of moscato and some timtams :-). The last 18 drinks tried, three new favourites have been found – mid strength Pure Blonde, scotch and ginger ale (is it wrong for a Scottish person to call it this?!) and the moscato :-). Post challenge, reverting to ye olde familiar ways, I seem to be bonding with a man named Jim Beam and a woman called Tia Maria ;-).

On Tuesday, able to sit outside alone after work, this was the first time in 19 days that I hadn't had company. The wind rustling in the trees as I finally achieved the item that had been top of my to do list for quite some time, some space finally freed up in my mind. I had that all familiar backpacker moment… I knew what that meant – “It's time to move on. Lets set the onward journey plan in motion. I think i've learnt the lessons I needed to learn here.” Maybe the result of a change of room, maybe just the connection to my impending birthday in my subconscious or my original plan of having left here by now, planning the next stage of the journey has now climbed a bit higher on my to do list. Lets see how long it takes me ;-).