Anyway I have pretty well completed most of the difficult tasks involved with cleaning and getting this house in order for my possible moving out. My Danoz steam cleaner has been a real godsend, oh yes you can get good products from those TV info-mercials. Much of it is crap, such as all those fitness equipment, bit sus to me. But there are gems. If not for Sally's fixations of those info-mercials I would have never known about this steam cleaner. Each time I attended to Sally's care needs, more often than not she'd be watching those info-mercials, we have four TV channels devoted almost entirely to these!!! Can you imagine??? FOUR TV channels devoted almost entirely to what is essentially adverts!! Who'd watch them!!??? Well lots of people apparently, Sally being one of them. And at times Sally would say, uhhhh it would be nice to have this, or that..... but of course when 99% of my disposable income were being spent on bandages and other medical expenses, purchasing items off info-mercials were out of the question!!! But I do remember seeing the steam cleaner advertised, and I thought to myself, it be so nice to have one of those, it would make keeping house so much easier especially when much of my time was being spent attending to Sally!!! Well to cut a long story short, after Sally passed away and confronted with the task of getting this house back on order, well I did switch on the info-mercial and did finally purchase one such steam cleaner - and it has been my life saver, it does make cleaning this house much easier, it can be used to clean virtually anything. These days the only reason for watching the info-mercials is to watch the "psychic live" episodes, that is usually late at night, and they have all kinds of live psychic readings - tarots, astrology, past life readings, even tea leaves - you get all sorts of things on there, and well I just find it fascinating, my soul connections with all that is higher dimensional!!
Meanwhile back at the ranch.... or my house as the case may be.... I finished most of the difficult tasks. Finally finished all those venetian blinds. Although the steam cleaner made it easier, the time spent remained the same, being a fiddly and tedious job!!! Then the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, all so full of cockroach stains, but thanks to the steam cleaner, cleaning them was a breeze and they now looks like new cabinets!! All I have left really is the carpets, and that can be steam cleaned using one of the attachments that I gotten with my steam cleaner. And just other minor tasks that can be done over the next four weeks to the end of my lease.
The garden however, well the weather has been the main obstacle, but last Thursday was the first clear day in three weeks so I took advantage of that and did all of the front yard - mowing, edging, weeding, etc. So now just the back yard. It looks like a wet weekend, but expected to be clear the last three days before I go back to work on Thursday. That figures, the weather will clear up and warm up just as I am going back to work!!!!!
The trailer.... well finally got that fixed. When I called Tow-Safe to book the job, the guy warned that there be a $70 call out fee. Well I couldn't exactly take the trailer to the shop, the lights not working, and knowing my luck, I'd be pulled over by the cops and would end up costing me a lot more than the $70!!!! So I was quite willing to wear the $70 fee, especially since I budgeted about $300 in total for the repairs as I thought the whole electricals would need to be replaced!!! Well when the guy finally came out last Wednesday, he would not have been there more than ten minutes!!! It turned out to be a case of the contacts on the globes just needing a clean!!!! If I had known that I could have done the job myself!!! Indeed that is what the guy advised, to check and do the job myself!!!! Anyway the whole affair costed me just $60. The guy charged only $50 for the call out fee, and $10 labour for cleaning the contacts. So now I have a trailer that I can use..... and if I had known about the problem being just dirty contacts I could have fixed and used the trailer a long time ago!!!! Uh well as they say, one lives and learns!! $60 from a budgeted $300 is not bad going!! An extra $240 to go towards moving expenses.
The only major issue left is the shower screens and doors. The hospital had removed the screens and doors with my landlord's permission so that Sally could use the shower with her mobility aids. Tragically Sally never gotten to use the shower!! So now I am left with the task of having the screens put back together again as per lease agreement, and currently trying to arrange help for that.
Now with most tasks finished, it is now play time for the rest of my vacation - my back yard notwithstanding!!!! Yesterday, Friday, was also another clear day so I took the opportunity for a day trip to Wongan Hills!! There's a bit of a story behind this. Last year during one of Sally's stints in hospital, I took the opportunity to do something I haven't been able to do for a long time!! Go on a day trip somewhere!! So I picked Wongan Hills, and there is a reason why the town is called Wongan Hills. There is really a range of hills in among the wheat fields called Wongan Hills and it is set aside as a nature reserve, and as I discovered when I went there, some walk trails!!! The town is a little over 2 hours from Perth by car, so I had gone early in the morning, explored the place, there are a few places to see around there, the hilight being the Wongan Hills reserve. There are two walk trails, a short one and a long one. By the time I gotten there, I had time for only the short trail as I needed to be back in Perth in time to see Sally and bring her dinner - I was forever bringing Sally meals in hospital as the hospital catering service was full of dimwits, one of the fruits of the Liberal govt's privatisation policies!! Politicians being such dimwits, they pass a law that there has to be three tenders, and the govt dept is obligated to pick the cheapest of the three tenders. Politicians does not believe in the saying "one gets what one pays for". The cheapest always means the worst service, and so the unfortunate patients in the public hospitals in Western Australia must contend with sub-standard meal services. Meals are often cold when they finally get the meal, and they don't know what "gluten-free" means, so Sally was often served meals with gluten even though her form states "gluten-free" - hence I often was left with the task of bringing my home cooking to Sally during her hospital stays. So anyway, I only had time for the short walk at Wongan Hills so I could be back in time for Sally's dinner at the hospital. So I had been wanting to go on the longer walk since then, but had no chance to do so..... until now!!!!
So yesterday I drove back up to Wongan Hills specifically so to go on this longer walk, all 9kms of it. And I finally did it!!!! I walked all 9kms of this longer walk!! I took many pixs along the way, they are all on my Instagram account under @gariga888. Just visit the Instagram site and do a search for @gariga888 - there you will see my pixs. My profile is set to public so you don't have to have an account to see it. But the advantage is, when I take the pixs with my phone, it automatically uploads to my Instagram account - so cutting out the task of having to come home, upload pixs to my computer, and posting them on a website!! So just go to my Instagram profile for pixs of my Wongan Hills walk as well as various other pixs from my at times weird musings!! It is also linked to my Twitter account @gariga, so you can see my pixs from there as well. If you have a Twitter profile, just follow me @gariga and you will see my Instagram pixs from there. All simple and much easier to deal with. So anyway, was rather exhausted after my 9km bush walk which including going up and down all those hills!! I went to bed early last night and slept 6 hours straight without waking up!!!! Usually I sleep only 4 hours in total, usually waking up in the night once or twice in the process!! So moral of the story - if I want a decent night sleep, then go on 9kms bush walks!!! After my walk, I drove back into Wongan Hills for the best country lunch ever, the bakery there has the best snacks - I bought a toasted sandwich with chicken and mayo and cheese, and it's better than what I can make!!!! Utterly delicious!!! Pricey, a whole $5 for just one round, but delicious!!! I bring my own soda, my cans of Coke, I have a travel cooler that plugs into the car cig lighter, that keeps my drinks, etc, cool - it keeps things cooler with less ice than the traditional esky. So after my lunch I head back to the big smoke - Perth city and home.
My next day trip will be something of a pilgrimage - to Bruce Rock to see Mother's old farm house. There is a story behind that. Just before Mother was diagnosed with that terminal disease, she and Pasco drove up to Bruce Rock to try find her old house, and it turns out that it is still standing albeit now abandoned. It is one of those things that Mother must have known to do, it was just before her diagnosis, just before she got sick. A few months later, Sally and I were planning to drive up to Kalgoorlie to see her friend there, so I said we would stop off at Bruce Rock to see Mother's house. So before we went on the trip I had gotten directions from Mother. Now Mother is good at many things, but giving directions is not one of them. Let's put it this way, if you want to win a car rally event then DON'T bring Mother for a navigator!! She is no good at reading maps, and get's easily lost even just going around the corner!! - well maybe not quite that bad, but you get the idea.
So anyway, Mother told us that we go on the Merredin-Bruce Rock road, and along there is Belka Road, leading to the settlement of Belka, and along that road we would see Mother's old house. Indeed Mother said you should see TWO houses close to each other, I think one of them was for farm workers, the other being Mother's family home. So armed with this information, we headed towards Kalgoorlie, and when we gotten to Doodlakine which is before Merredin, we turned off to Bruce Rock, mainly cos there was a sign in Doodlakine pointing us to Bruce Rock. And well I wanted to see the town anyway, to see where Mother grew up. So we drove around Bruce Rock for a bit, that didn't take long since it is only a tiny little town, smaller than Augusta, indeed just a little hamlet. In comparison, Merredin is virtually a city, it is a large town, only Northam is larger. The towns in Western Australia are not large to begin with compared to the eastern states, but from our point of view, Merredin is a large town while Bruce Rock is tiny. We passed by the school thinking Mother would have went to that school - she'd often recall stories of her having to walk many miles in 110 degrees F heat to school each day from her farm, there were no school buses in those days and she didn't have a bicycle - she'd recall that story each time we dared to complain that we had to walk around the corner to my Primary school from our estate house while everyone else had bicycles!! - before my 10th birthday when I did finally get a bicycle for myself!!
So after a short time in Bruce Rock, telling Sally many a story, we drove up along the Bruce Rock/Merredin road, looking for this Belka Road. And it wasn't long until we came to such a road, so we naturally thought.... aha!!!!... that's the road!!! We drove along the road back and forth to the little settlement of Belka. Now if Merredin is a "city" compared to the tiny hamlet of Bruce Rock, well compared to Belka which barely qualifies as a "town" with only an abandoned rail station and a couple of other clearly abandoned buildings, Bruce Rock seems positively like a metropolis!!!! Now Mother assured us that there were only one instance of the two abandoned houses along the Belka Road, so all we had to do is drive along the road and if you see two such houses then that be Mother's family home. So in spite of driving up and down the road we could not find two such houses. However there in a wheat field we DID find the foundations of what used to be two houses, they were knocked down, and all that remains in the wheat field were the foundations. So Sally and I concluded that Mother's house was finally knocked down, and Mother was most fortunate to have seen it before it was knocked down.
We then headed back up the Bruce Rock/Merredin road into Merredin, then to Kalgoorlie. Of course Dad lived in Merredin but at the time I didn't know where. I had since gotten that information but that was after our Kalgoorlie trip. However after driving along the Bruce Rock/Merredin road for a bit, I was shocked to see ANOTHER "Belka Road" along the way!!!! I thought.... OMG!!!!!.... did we go up the wrong road!!!??? Mother did NOT say there were TWO Belka Roads!!! Like I say, she is no good at navigating!! I think she assumed we would just go along the road from Merredin and turn up Belka Road from there. I think Sally thought the same. But unfortunately it was getting late and we needed to be in Kalgoorlie by a certain time, so had no chance to drive up this other Belka Road. It turned out we drove up "Belka Road South", and the other road was "Belka Road East", and both met at Belka crossing over each other - basically what consist of this "town" of Belka - it is just where the two roads crosses over, with a rail station and a couple of other buildings!! We figured we should have gone up the East road, not the South.
Our mistake was confirmed when at the next family gathering, Mother did show us her pixs of the house that she took when she went there with Pasco, and the settings were very different. The two houses were among open woodlands, there were no wheat fields. So indeed we hadn't seen Mother's house afterall, and it seems likely the houses would still be there!!!! So Sally and I made a plan to go back to Bruce Rock.....
However of course life happens..... Mother got sick and she passed away, and Sally soon became too sick for day trips into the country, and as they say, the rest is history. Sally never lived to see Mother's house.
So since Sally's death, I had decided that I would go back to Bruce Rock to look for Mother's old house. And well with these last few days of vacation and the weather clearing up next week, I am hopeful to finally be able to make this trip - some 8 years later!!! Hopefully the houses will still be there, a lot can happen in 8 years, but my memory is photographic, I know exactly what the pixs Mother showed me looks like, so if the houses are still there I WILL FIND IT!!!! I just now know in hindsight to travel along the EAST road, not the South road. And according to my Google Earth software, there are some of areas of woodland along this East Road to Belka, so Mother's house will be located within one such area - if indeed it is still there!!!
This trip will take some planning. While Wongan Hills is only 2 hours away, Merredin/Bruce Rock are a full 4 hours drive. My plan is to go there and be back before dark. Now the days are getting longer, this can happen. My plan would be to leave about 5am which is still dark but the first rays of the sun are visible. This will necessitate getting everything ready the previous night, so all I need to do that morning is pick up the bag of whatever I would need which is not much, the travel cooler packed with my Cokes, then embark on this trip. It will start to get light just 30 minutes later, and should arrive at Bruce Rock by 9-10am. This will give me four hours, I will just buy my lunch there, and 2pm would be the latest that I head on back home in order to arrive home before dark - it gets dark about 6:30pm now.
Not only I will look for Mother's house, I will also look for Dad's house since I know have the address to it in Merredin. It will be interesting to see if it is still there or whether it has fallen victim to redevelopments. I guess I will soon find out. According to Google Maps "street view" it looks like the house is still there, but won't really know until I actually visit there. "Street View" on Google Maps is not always accurate, it sometimes shows the wrong house, such as the house next door or down the road!!
At this stage the day planned for this pilgrimage is next Tuesday. It is expected to rain all weekend, and in any case it is a holiday weekend for the Queen's Birthday. So want to avoid the holiday traffic and the coppers. You could go all year without seeing any coppers on the road, the only evidence of any law enforcement would be an occasional speed camera and even then they employ non-police contractors to set up and man the speed cameras!!! However come any holiday weekend there be coppers everywhere!!!! Coppers blitzing every highway and roads inbetween. You'd couldn't go out on a holiday weekend without seeing a copper. And I am a rather paranoid creature, I hate being followed by coppers. If I see a copper behind me, I'd either change lanes or go up the first side street that I come across. I was shocked one fateful day when I turned up a side street, the copper followed me into the street and he pulled me over!!!! It was just a random breath and license check, and on this occasion my shady past did not come to haunt me!!! Nevertheless I freak when I get pulled over by any copper!! So day trips on holiday weekends is NOT a good idea. Then the weather is expected to be clear for most of next week, and in any case the rains often doesn't reach the wheatbelt, which is what the farmers complains about!! - we might get a lot of rain in Perth, but more often than not, they don't reach any further than the hills, or Northam if you're lucky!! And going on Tuesday still gives me the whole day Wednesday recovery time before I go back to work on Thursday. So unless something else crops up, Tuesday is the planned day for this trip.
Another thing is, Merredin is an ET hotspot, many UFO reports seems to originate around this area. Of course I refer to my own experiences, when Sally and I were coming back from Kalgoorlie. On the highway between Merredin and Kellerberrin we were pulled over by a "cop" - I told this story many times before. The cop turned out to be an ET. Although the copper didn't know me from a bar of soap, he swore black and blue that he had seen me before, and he basically predicted that Sally and I would be at a particular church in Perth despite the fact we had never heard of this church nor had any intention whatsoever of visiting this church. After we drove away after the "copper" finished with us, Sally and I both concluded that this copper was not human. Sally thought he was an "angel" in disguise, that is due to Sally's religious beliefs. Me however concluded he was an ET. So while our conclusions differed according to our religious/spiritual beliefs, we were in agreement with at least the fact that this copper was not human!!!! And well, to cut a long story short, by extraordinary circumstances, Sally and I DID visit this church three months later for a concert - and the building which the church occupies is haunted. It is the old theatre in Beaufort Street, it had been used by various churches and denominations since then. It IS haunted, and I did see ETs in among the stage fixtures up in the ceiling above the concert stage!!! But this ET experience between Merredin and Kellerberrin happened during the time when I was investigating with a friend in Melbourne about the very strange Orange Light UFO that I saw back in 1980 - what had changed my life. This friend also had an Orange Light UFO experience, hers was in Melbourne in the Dandenongs. So we were both investigating this phenomenon when Sally and I had this experience!!! I later learned that Merredin is an ET/UFO hotspot!! It seems various people in the area has regularly experienced strange phenomena in the area. Me being a contactee, well anything can and probably will happen when I visit the area this Tuesday!!!!!
Lastly.... there is a reason why Bruce Rock is called Bruce Rock!! There is indeed some rock formations just out of town that is indeed called "Bruce Rock"!!! So the opportunity to engage in my geological pursuits, my fascination for rocks and geological formations. A visit to those rocks will be on my agenda for this visit to Bruce Rock.
In choosing this song for today, I think back to the influence of religion shaping our family circumstances. Religion can be our greatest friend - as long as our lives falls within the rules of the religion. But as we all know, "life happens" and it doesn't always fall within the rules of religion, and when that happens, as our family history proves, it can be our greatest enemy, destined to make life far more difficult than need be..... So just imagine there is no religion.... believe it or not such a day is coming... and we shall all know, there is no Heaven above, and no Hell below us, no place of eternal suffering..... the current sufferings on earth seems eternal, the Hell is indeed on this earth not below it..... anyway enjoy this song, and enjoy what life will be like in the future hopefully not too far away.......
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