Mungo and the cold

My trip to Mungo was eventful in all the usual ways, and some unusual. The archaeology was exciting (even if you think of archaeology only as mucking about in the dirt, this was still exciting - for me, an avid and keen archaeologist wannabe i was practically wetting myself). The location was stunning (unless you have a phobia of wide open spaces). The people were great, friendly and smart - and just as colourful and bizarre as usual.

We stayed in a 'rustic' station which translates as derelict and uninhabited since the 1950s, but once we did a bit of serious cleaning and some minor (by which i mean major) repairs it actually wasn't that bad and kinda fun. If only I'd remembered my dryzabone, accubra and horse i would have felt like a pioneer. Or a serious cowgirl outlaw about to go charging into the sunset and away from the law.

But i digress.

Mungo really is one the most beautiful places in the country, my photos do it no justice, the space is enormous and the horizon looks like it's been taken out of a movie and at night the sky seems to touch the ground and it's so clear you can see every single star individually in the milky way and the only sound was a distant animal wondering about or Craig snoring. Yeah the night sky was awesome. Until you had to pee at 2.00am. It was sooooo incredibly cold up there at night that we all wore more to bed than during the day. I slept in my thermals, over which i wore another set of thermals, a pair of socks with bed socks over those, my flannel pjs, my soft gloves, my beanie, my polarfleece jacket and sometimes a scarf (until i woke up two nights in a row having choked myself awake in its tangles) and this was inside my snow sleeping bag and two blankets. As you can imagine waking up really needing to pee at the coldest part of the night was never pleasant. You had to get out of your warm sleeping bag, pull on your boots, leaving your room by the door that had stuck shut with frost while trying to not wake your roommate, pull on an extra jacket and grab the torch. Then bracing yourself against the icy wind you ran the length of the station because all that time getting out of your room has made your need for the toilet even more desperate, also running helps the blood keep flowing. Right now you hate the clear starry sky, the wide open space (especially since this space is between you and the outside toilet at the far end of the station site) and any noises you hear scare you because they sound so close and you really need to pee, not try and find some stupid desert animal to reassure yourself it's not going to attack you. Finally you reach the corrugated iron shed and rush in to it's solid blackness, then holding the torch in your mouth so you can still see in the pitch black you have to yank off all your layers while scanning to see that no nasty spiders had moved in during the night before you sit (and that did happen quite a lot, the spiders loved the toilet shed) and my god the toilet seat is FREEZING!!!! Try not to yelp at the cold in case you wake the others. When you finally get back to bed you have no chance in hell of getting warm again and spend the rest of the night shivering and cursing that cup of tea you had after dinner by the fire.

But apart from that - and the cold showers, and then no showers because the pipes froze - it was great! Everyone there was lots of fun and we all got along really well. Within a day of meeting each other most of us had acquired nicknames. Craig who was huge, 6 foot 5 i think he said, and solid but the strong silent type though really nice, was nicknamed Obelix. Peter, the bone expert (so consequently i hung with him a lot) was great fun, a real joker and always playing pranks and supplying the alcohol was called Peter Pan because he refused to grow up. Nikki, who was heading the dig was The Boss, Deanna the cook was called Cookie, Cally became Supercally because Rachel and Coby (the kids) thought her name sounded like the first part of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins. Red became Bluey, Rudey became Inspector Gadget because he fixed everything, and always had everything anyone needed on him. Jackie became No.2 because she was Nikki's assistant. And i became Oh Passionate Gazelle. And no i am not going to say why, suffice to say that it's all Peter's fault. The others kept their names.

Archaeologically so much to do and even more to learn, talk about being thrown in the deep end! I actually found something! All on my own! A skeleton of a Tasmanian Devil (silly me for thinking that they were only ever in Tassie) that dates back to approx. 16,000 years ago. Peter Pan was really cool about it and it got to be my own little project. Which was exciting until i panicked and freaked out about all the responsibility this entailed cos if you fuck up the uncovering of a 16,000 year old skeleton there's no way to fix it.

This post is way too long ( i whinged about the night toilet excursions too much) so I'll stop there but it was a great trip and i had a great time and pics will soon be up on my new facebook account (how's that for cross-referencing and advertising).

Kisses, L.