Are we a local yet?

This one of Belinda's friends who is always in for a pop in visit or text message conversation. Anita (Pathways Coordinator at Yirara; husband Sean is assistant in charge of Boarding House. These are their 2 kids Lachlan and Courtney)
Craig and Sharon Collins "popped in" for a visit. Gave us a ring from Tennant Creek and said they were passing through. A complete surprise, but a welcome one for us. What absolute legends!

Up on ANZAC Hill with the family and sister Karyn.
Lattes at the Flying Doctors.
Beautiful Belinda and serious Joseph.
The Modlin boys.

I didn't get too excited on Elijah's sports day. Until he WON!! First place in the sprint. Look at him proudly wearing his first place ribbon. He got to stay up past 7 o'clock that night!!


Finally I bought a bike. No hills around here. The boys love it!
Elijah's 5th birthday. On AFL Grand Final day. Birthday party was finished by 11am so I could settle down to my four 'n twenty pies, my beer and drumstick.

Belinda is VERY excited....can you see why? (A little too excited for my liking)

Tourist season is mad around here. They take my favourite parking spots and fill up my favourite restaurants and cafes. Being a teacher means I don’t have to rely on them for the majority of my income for the year, so I tend to be much more friendly to people who I can just tell are locals. I like to walk through the mall or shopping centres and say hello to people I know, indigenous kids who I chat with and then realise I should be asking them why they aren’t back at Yirara yet, and just trying to give off that air of “Watch out, I’m a local.” Belinda and I are trying to establish ourselves as local, but most of the word on the street continues to be that you have to see the Todd River flow 3 times to be considered a local. It has been extremely dry out here this year and we are now worried we will not be here long enough to experience the flowing of the Todd River. A teaching colleague of mine at Yirara (Dr K) from Kenya, arrived last year and saw the Todd River flow 3 times in a month. We NEED that to happen or we might have to write a letter to the paper advocating for our criteria to be adopted- at least we seem to visit most of the attractions- surely that counts for something?
We have now slowed down and don’t go to EVERYTHING that happens, but it sure is tempting. We have had our own private boycott of some events thinking that surely they will be on again next year and we’ll just commit to participating in the event and being “seen” at the event some other time. So I am sorry to the tireless workers and promoters of the “Alice Desert Festival”, you will see the Modlins next year.
(I wrote this 3 days ago and since then we have had “Hurricane Alice” or “Desert Storm” (media terms) come through on Monday 22nd September. Winds at 120km/h whipped through the place and brought a big dump of rain and hail. As you can see by the pictures, we had an incredible dust storm as well. Quite a bit of damage and we had water in the Todd...not really flowing, but we might count this as our Todd River flowing thingy.)

Water in the Todd River- How exciting!!

Desert Storm rolls across the Alice.

The Sunday Markets every couple of weeks. The sights, the smells, the frozen mango smoothies!!

A couple of photos of my Mum and Dad with the boys. Just to see if they are still reading the blog!! And letting them know it has been 6 weeks since they have been out here. Must be due for another visit!!