12th April, Perth, Western Australia

We are back writing. It has taken some time to get the momentum back up. We have been busy!
The 12th of April was our Bucks / Hen's night...

From my side Azza picked up Kinga and I and then grabbed Will and Timbo and we hit the Swan River with tins and fishing rods. We dropped our lines in and we got a call from Renae. The girls were already on the way up the river on their lunch/wine cruise when Renae found out they weren't going to float past where we were fishing.

We quickly packed up and hit Bassendean under the Tonkin Highway Bridge. We had a solid plan!! We had just arrived and hadn't got our fishing lines in the water when the girls boat approached. Us fellas dropped our strides, stood proudly there fishing in our jocks!

The girls were impressed and the captain gave us a blast on the horn! A solid plan executed well. Anyway we waited for about 45 minutes in our jocks fishing and prepared for the next passing of the boat. The boat come past, we stood proudly in jocks and got plenty of shouts and another toot of the horn from the boat. Well, Kinga and I just had a stubby holder covering our private parts and our jocks around our ankles.

We thought the girls were a bit quite, so we got kit back on and walked back to the car park. As we got to the car park, another Swan River wine cruise went past. I took my chance and dropped my strides this time to the right boat!

We all got in the car and took off to Azza's and we could not believe we spent all this time preparing for the girls and we ended up stripping off for the wrong boat!!

Back Azza's we played cards, drank beer, had a barbie and had some entertainment. A good night in all.

From the girls perspective, we boarded onto a boat up the Swan River for lunch and wine tasting and then onto the 'Lucky Shag' for a few drinks and then into Northbridge. I was dressed in two wedding veils, a checklist of items I had to complete for the evening and various umm, items, pinned on me or around my neck, and a number of games to participate in. The girls had a rollicking great night, ending up in a kebab bar in the early hours of the morning in Northbridge providing a fascinating demonstration to the staff. Without going into too much detail, a good night was had by all.

5th April, Perth, Western Australia

We have been really lucky as Rebekah, one of our friends in an excellent organiser and she has helped so much in our abscence overseas in getting everything ready. She has been awesome! Needless to say, my involvement from Canada has been minimal, just more so in confirming if I like what has been picked. I'm pretty casual.

This week was a rush of getting stuff done. Tan and I visited the wedding planner and venue (twice), went to the table setting place (below), bought cake bags and cards, went to the Bluewater Grill for tasting of the wedding menu (yum - check out the dukkah crust lamb below), discussed the song list with the DJ, and had an engagement photo shoot and meeting with the photographer.

So it was a pretty hectic week but once it was done all we had to do was prepare for the bucks/hen's night, write our vows and meet the celebrant.

We got the chance to go out for dinner with Tan's mum and partner, Richard, and her Aunty Bren from England. En Rico was the place to be.

I got to go skateboarding with my brother a few times and busted some great moves. We had a lot of fun.

We also did a spot of fishing in the sun catching some toadfish. Mel loves her toadies!

3rd October – Raven Camp – SK

Big day today and no more chopper rides for a while. I organized the crew to finish the West Bear work while Tan and I got out of camp to pick up samples. Wes has been dropping our samples off on the side of the highway and today we had to meet him to get the remainder. We were still reminiscing on the wonderful display the night before.
We got to the drop off point and checked out the river only 200m to the south. Huge shoals of fish to 60cm were swimming away and making there way up stream. They were in their hundreds and later I found they were whitefish. We heard Wes coming so I emptied out the cargo net of samples and sent him on his way back. Tan was out working hard, driving the massive truck and lugging samples into the truck. This is a far cry from high heels and ironed clothing in her last job. She even got mud all over her!
After the work side was finished we pulled out Tan’s new rod and she casted (eventually) in the shoal of fish. To our surprise there were no bites as the fish were busy spawning.

This evening we went for a walk along some of the tracks around camp and through some lovely parkland. Here the reindeer lichen, a pale green moss, covers the ground and the trees are more established. It was a lovely walk in 2 degree weather with a fine misting of rain but we are getting used to it. Six months ago Tan wouldn’t leave the house if it was this cold!!

24th September – Saskatoon, SK

We caught a taxi into town this morning with a list of stuff we had to get organized before flying out tomorrow. When we are on camp, we are remote in that the nearest shop is 350km away and our mobile phones will not have coverage. So we had to make sure that we had everything we needed. We had to stop at the post office and send home some paperwork that we had collected along the way, cards and other bits and pieces. We then had to buy the important stuff (chocolate) to take with us. Nothing worse than having a craving and not being able to get any!!

We then went to Quinn – The Eskimo where Dan stocked up on his winter clothes. He bought some very gay looking white snow boots, big gloves (in winter they may have to check rigs in the middle of night when it is minus 30), massive coat and pants and rain proof jacket and pants and a huge duffel bag to throw it all in. Once it is at camp, it will stay there as it is unlikely we will need such heavy winter gear outside of this area. As we’re not 100% sure of my plans over winter, we didn’t purchase anything other than some more heavy duty thermals and gloves for me.
We then went to a massive outdoor store that sold EVERYTHING a man might need. Guns, target practice fake animals, fishing, hunting. All of that stuff. There were stuffed dead animals including a polar bear in the store. Dan bought himself a new fly reel and flies to do some fly fishing including a small new rod for me. When we were at the cashier a man just walked into the store with his massive gun under his arm to buy ammunition I’m guessing. We thought it was highly amusing because is he had done that at home everyone would of thought it was an armed holdup. No one batted an eyelash in this store. We dropped our bags of purchases back at the hotel where I stayed and Dan went out to conduct a lab audit for a few hours. When we came back we went over to the bottle shop and bought a couple of bottles to take up on site. The bottle of red wine is “the prize” when I get through four weeks of no drinking (if it lasts that long).

Later that evening we had dinner and met up with Dan and Duzza who worked up on site when Dan was there for his last stint. We toasted to our last drinks and made it to bed around midnight. We have to be up at 5.15 am to catch our flight tomorrow morning…

We are off to Raven Camp in Northern Saskatchewan tomorrow. Our last flight for a little while. Apart from our flights to both get to Toronto we worked out we have taken 10 flights in a month!! I think we’ll both be glad to have a break from flying! A number of people have noticed that Dan has gone MIA from blogging for a little while and I’ve been updating. Don’t worry, he’ll be back soon!

13th August, Raven, SK

This morning a squirrel worked it’s way under the door and was running around the office tent. I gave it an awful fright and it hid under the fridge for a while. Something different.

Tonight we waited for Brendo to come down so we could go fishing. When the truck came and he wasn’t in there I quickly got Derek to catch the last hour of darkness. We drove down to the boat ramp at Hidden Bay and traversed the awesome parkland towards the Umpherville River as it flows into the bay. The river which I have mentioned before is very picturesque. Up to 40m in places and fast flowing over rounded glacial boulders. I got my feet wet again but casting into the rapids for grayling was lots of fun. We worked our way down to the end of a small island and casted into the shallows which eventually dropped off into the honey zone. It wasn’t long, second cast and Derek tapped into a monster pike!! It fought hard, had a little jump and I got most of it on video. When the monster come to shore it was a mad rush to get hold of it to calm it down. A few happy fisherman shots and it was back in. My Minor Bay 1-888- BIG – PIKE measuring tape got a work out and the fish was 35”. Nice.
I ended up losing my lucky lure, the one I got snagged seemingly a long time ago at Wolf Lake where I retrieved it in my jocks. Derek finished the night we a solid walleye. All in all a great night’s fishing.

12th August, Raven, SK

A really busy morning! Today is the sample shipment day. The ore material is classified as a dangerous good so once they are loaded the truck has to drive ten hours to Saskatoon to the lab. It is important to get all the paperwork right and ensure safe delivery of our samples. Samples are placed into pails (white buckets) and typically we send 20 – 40 off a week. Today we sent off 98!! A Raven record, thanks to our West Bear sampling. Hopefully we get some good results. The line cutters , Larry, Thomas and Norman, come back again for the afternoon and got stuck into it. Chainsaws are a lot quicker than the trusty axe. We heard about a month ago that the MacKenzie River was the place for walleye. Derek, Jessica (the baker) and myself hooked up with Brendan at Points and then traveled another 30km the other side. We knew where is was because we had a look in Google Earth. We got there to see a nice sandy beach. Derek caught a nice pike within minutes. I followed suit with another. A kingfisher was darting around us and wasn’t too happy by our presence. From the bridge with my new polaroids I watched a pike strike Derek’s lure. Watching this was inspirational to catch more. Derek ended up walking out a long way along the shallow levee bank and fish in deep water and nailed one more great pike. Brendo, Jess and I went the other side and fished in the shallow water. I ended up wading out past the height of my gumboots and the other two decided to do the same. One more pike and this one decided that my repair job from that afternoon was insubstantial. It was weird fighting a fish with only the bottom half of the rod doing the work.

The sunset was great, lighting up the road cutting and surrounding trees. The esker, long sinuous ribbons of sand had about 8m of relief on the edge of the lake / river. That night it belted down with rain on the tent roof. Pity as it was supposed to be the night of an awesome meteorite shower.

I got some photos from Derek where he captured underwater footage of the pike. They are pretty neat!