Big Bug Station New Start Mayer,AZ

Thursday Dec. 6th Big Bug Station….the old Mayer, Arizona dancehall a part of a 1902 ghost town building. It is a gathering place of storytellers and lively personalities, and an important part of my new home. Yesterday, I moseyed in (I live in a historic western town now so I mosey instead of walk) and sat my tush on one of the stools that line the antique barroom bar. I mused on the tameness of this “bellying up to the bar” compared to a hundred years ago. Susan my landlord, was killing some time till her friend called to meet her out in the scrub further up Big Bug Creek for a hike in the hidden wilds. Mike Connors, her husband and our host, grinned his welcome and pointed to the fiddle lying on a table nearby. “The Judge is gonna play for my wife in a minute,” he stated with a jaunty nod. John Kennedy presides in his courtroom several buildings over and takes breaks from his day’s work that occasionally lead to a serenade of the lucky few who happen to be here. Just then our fiddler was talking to two international visitors by the big window that overlooks Big Bug Creek out back. He was giving them directions to other historical stops in “them thar hills” around the Prescott area. Don sat down next to me. Susan received her phone call that the hike was on and Kennedy picked up his fiddle and played Away in the Manger for us all. What a lovely Christmas season morning.. Conversation filled the space left by the Germans and Susan. What kind of pet does a de-scented skunk make and how to de-scent it was one topic along with the intelligence of Queensland Blue Heelers and my new acquaintance Don got up and did a pantomime of the movements and hyperactivity of ferrets. I also learned that morning that one of our area’s business men who owns three Liquor Barns calls himself The Beer Whisperer! As I was leaving to begin moving boxes into my new apartment two doors down, a couple of locals, Joe and Jan bustled in proudly waving an antique old flannel bathrobe they found next door and bought. I didn’t get away without a mention of the ghosts in my apartment, three of them. This stopped me in my tracks. I was told they were friendly and one had a peg leg. Sure, they tell me this after I had signed the lease. I left talking myself into thinking they were just kidding me about the ghosts. My new home promises to be interesting.

Wyatt Earp, Ghosts and New Friends

Whoa, the gypsy woman is settling into one spot for a bit. Just rented an apartment that once was a 1902 barber shop across from the old brothel in Old Town Mayer, AZ. Wyatt Earp used to stop there often. They sport a photo of he and his horse in front of the brothel. It has been hinted at that my bedroom used to be where the big tin bathtubs were that the cowboys and dusty travellers could buy a bath. The now bricked in doorway is perhaps where the girls from across the road would slip in after their clients washed off the blood, sweat and steer of the ranching trail.The town of Mayer is situated on Big Bug Creek near Prescott and was originally, as lots of tiny western ghost towns were, a stage station called Big Bug Station. My time in the outback of Australia over these last 25 years makes living in the metropolis of Phoenix a nightmare to me. So this sleepy little town only fifty minutes from Phoenix and twenty minutes from Prescott, appeals to me. Throw in the possibility that Wyatt Earp may have slept here, and whoa horsey, look at me the new cow girl in town! I even hear faint echoes of The Big, The Bad, and The Ugly 's theme song in my ears each time I enter my favorite hang out in Mayer, Big Bug Station.

Lightning Ridge Opal Field Cookbook

Aha, took the advice of my son Ron Vil of OutbackGems.com and added color to the cover of my cookbook. Writing this cookbook and sharing some of my adventures on an Australian opal field has opened a flood of memories that are spilling out into a murder mystery I am writing and making for wild colorful dreams in my sleep. The cover to the cookbook called out for some of that color. It was a good reason to learn how to paint with Paint Shop Pro.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes a Lightning Ridge Opal Field Cookbook

Author and illustrator, Barbara McCondra, worked in the oilfields of Prudhoe Bay Alaska before heading Down Under to buy a black opal. Twenty five years later she still hunkers down around campfires with miners fevered of eye and wild of heart who share their secrets, dream their dreams, and laugh at frustration. The food she cooked in outback makeshift kitchens gave her energy to labor seventy feet below ground with jack hammer and shovel. The companionship shared in those dirt floor kitchens gave her heart to continue living the opal life. The people of the outback, the energy of the bush, the thrill of the hunt for opal and her ability to bring it alive to the reader is found within the pages of this cookbook. She has already published the book Fire in a Plain Brown Wrapper and numerous articles for Rock and Gem Magazine in the USA and Metal Stone and Glass Magazine in Australia.The cookbook is in the mail to the printers. It will retail for 20.00 USD but is being offered for sale at a prepublication price of 10.00USD plus 2.00USD postage. within USA. The printers promise a four week turnaround. Send purchase price plus postage to Paypal account mccondra@parchedearthopals.com 8.5 x 11 inches and 70 pages in black and white with characatures and cartoons of the locals and the life and times of mining in Lightning Ridge.

Documentary Maker Radio Special on Lightning Ridge Personality

On my blog awhile back titled Cornbread, Harmonicas, And Alkies Birthday, I mentioned Billy Capp who I knew during the Lightning Ridge, Australia years when I minded the black opal and harvested adventures for ten years there as "Eskimo Nell". A documentary maker for radio ( I won't put in her name in case she wanted to remain anonymous) contacted me asking for his email. Well, I answered that he wasn't exactly the type to have an email as he mostly lives pretty rough and is quite the character. She had done the documentary on him for UK radio and as she said in subsequent email today," My documentary went out on the independent radio network in the UK. It was also broadcast in the United States where it won a gold medal in the New York Festival of Radio." What an exciting response to one of my blogs! You never know who will be reading your writings! To see what I do and why I do it go to www.ParchedEarthOpals.com and www.outbackgems.com

Yowah and Koroit Computer Terminology

RURAL AUSTRALIA THESAURUS OF COMPUTER TERMINOLOGY*
Log On - Make the barbecue hotter*
Log Off - The barbecue is too hot*
Monitor - Keeping an eye on the barbecue*
Download - Get the firewood off the ute*
Hard drive - Trip back home without any cold tinnies*
Floppy Disc - What you get lifting too much firewood at once*
Keyboard - Where you hang the ute and bike keys*
Window - What you shut when it's cold*
Screen - What you shut in the mosquito season*
Byte - What mosquitoes do* Bit - What mosquitoes did*
Mega Byte - What Townsville mosquitoes do*
Chip - A bar snack* Micro Chip - What's left in the bag after you have eaten the chips*
Modem - What you did to the lawns*
Dot Matrix - Old Dan Matrix's wife*
Laptop - Where the cat sleeps*
Software - Plastic knives and forks you get at KFC*
Hardware - Real stainless steel knives and forks from K Mart*
Mouse - What eats the grain in the shed*
Mainframe - What holds the shed up* Web - What spiders make*
Web Site - The shed or under the verandah* Cursor - The old bloke who swears a lot*
Search Engine - What you do when the ute won't go*
Yahoo - What you say when the ute does go*
Upgrade - A steep hill*
Server - The person at the pub who brings out the counter lunch*
Mail Server - The bloke at the pub that brings out the counterlunch*
User - The neighbour who keeps borrowing things*
Network - When you have to repair your fishing net*
Internet - Complicated fish net repair method*
Netscape - When fish manoeuvres out of reach of net*
Online - When you get the laundry hung out*
Off Line - When the pegs don't hold the washing up.
To see what I do and why I do it go to www.ParchedEarthOpals.com and www.outbackgems.com

Yowah Magic Amidst the Howling Dark Wind

My good friend Gwen and I awoke to a blustery cold black predawn morning. We shuffled our groceries and hot water urn out to the truck or "ute" as the Aussies say. We had loaded the portable grill and propane bottle on board the night before along with a long table and many folding chairs. The tourism group of filmakers both crew and stars were expecting to shoot on top of The Bluff here in Yowah, Queensland, Australia. We had offered to fix them a bush breakfast Yowah style. Gwen used to have her own catering company in Melbourne area before the opal mining addiction had hit her and I am a good cook used to cooking for fourteen when I did my Outback Opal Field Tours. About four kilometers away on a dusty bush corrugated dirt track with a steady climb upward, was the top of the bluff where if the sun had been up yet you good see far to the horizon in any direction without any sign of civilization. With our flashlights we hunted up wood kindling, sticks, and logs to start a blazing red orange fire for our guests to huddle by when they arrived and for us to see by as we unloaded our cooking gear and food. As the horizon began to glow and the fire roared we had already set up and fired up the grill. We had the crepe suzette batter made, bacon sizzling, coffee, tea, and juice bar laid out and were ready to pour the crepes onto the griddle when the sleepyeyed camera crew and actors arrived shivering in the cold and bee-lined for the campfire. Our scrambled eggs bowl was brimming over and the crepes were stacked. We set out bowls of fine grained sugar, and halves of fresh lemons, along with many sticks of real butter. We directed all to smear their crepes with butter, sprinkle lightly with the sugar, and then to squeeze the lemon juice over them. This was outback cooking sorcery at its best...this fresh and flavorful and light crepe! They then added their scrambled egg portions and snatched up the bacon slices and chowed down in great wonderment that our opal field food (tucker) could be so, soo... cosmopolitan. The contrast was part of the pleasure. The sun began its wondrous display of "Sunrise on The Bluff" and the bush magic show was complete. Yup, aside from being women opal miners, Gwen and I are Wizards of the Outback, too. To see what I do and why I do it, go to www.ParchedEarthOpals.com and www.outbackgems.com