Touring

I visited five towns yesterday, travelling around 400 kilometers in my work hours. My new job is at the Riverina Regional Library headquarters. A regional library is a group of libraries from what can be a large geographical area, who join together to be able to provide better services to their communities. There are nine different councils represented in RRL, with thirteen branches and a mobile library that visits around twenty villages. Each library has its own resources, bought with its own money, but the collection can be borrowed by anyone in the region. Each council pays to be a member of RRL and that funds the headquarters staff who do big picture stuff like policies and grants, develop and deliver programs and training, purchase all the resources on the libraries' behalf and make it all work by moving all the books and DVDs between all the branches.

I hope that wasn't too boring. I just wanted to explain why I went so far yesterday. Doug is our internal courier, he does that run every Thursday, and he is on my team. I wanted to see what his day is like, say hello to the staff at the branches and prepare myself so I could do it if Doug is sick! I really enjoyed it because there are some towns I have never visited before, I hadn't been to any of the libraries, and it was great to get to know Doug, whom I have only really seen when he drops off lots of tubs to Wagga at the end of a loooong and tiring day.

The countryside is so dry. Bone dry, brittle and dusty. The towns we visited were lovely - Junee, Temora, Cootamundra, Gundagai and Tumut, but some of the little villages between were sad little pockets of dilapidation and poverty. This hill is where Doug eats his lunch on a Thursday in winter, a hill above Gundagai. It was much too hot yesterday so we sat in the shade by the river with some oldies next to their caravans.

Today is Mum's last day with us. It has been, as always, so good to have her here and a shame Dad couldn't come too. Do you have big plans for Australia Day? Me, I am going to get up at eight, not six, and apart from dropping Mum to the airport, have no plans beyond relaxing!