Gwenny's 21st

Gwenny and Graham had their 21st at Colin and Dorothy's place at Humpty Doo.  It was held outside in Colin's partially finished but perfectly usable shed.

Paul and Gwenny were engaged to be married at the time

Paul and Gwenny engaged!

Paul and Gwenny were officially engaged today.   Paul actually popped the question on new years day (13 days earlier) but didn't pluck up the courage to ask Gwenny's Dad until the 13th!

They decided they were quite fond of each other at a camping trip to Koolpin Gorge a few months earlier.  They are planning to get married at the end of the year when Gwenny finishes her Teacher's Degree.

Where it all began?  Koolpin Gorge in '88

 

Christmas at Camooweal

Paul drove Gwenny to Camooweal for Christmas in 1988 as her parents were looking after the AIM church there whilst the normal pastor was on holidays.  Paul and Gwenny were just "going out" at the time.

They stayed there for about a week and had a good time meeting a few of the local people.   One day they all went for a drive to Mount Isa in Paul's new little Hyundai Excel and they caught up with Chris Downes as well as others.  Paul bought a Commodore Amiga 500 computer whilst in Mount Isa.

Pictures to come.

Paul gets baptised

Paul was baptised tonight at the Community Church by pastor Peter Ezzy.

Pauls work camp moves from Mount Todd to Harriet Creek

Unfortunately the company that Bruce had the mining contract with at Mount Todd Gold Mine has gone broke and Bruce is stuck with some expensive machinery that he needs work for to pay off.

Harriet Creek is a large creek that crosses the Kakadu Highway just over 25km from the turnoff at Pine Creek.  Bruce successfully got a job to build a bridge to cross this creek for the new highway.

We started demobilising our camp at Mount Todd in mid February 1988 (Rob and Jessie moved there on the 22nd) and setting up a new camp at Harriet Creek.

Paul was mainly labouring at this site - including the very hard work of using a pnuematic hand held rock drill to drill holes in the granite so explosives could be placed in the rock to break it.  Often he did night shift on the drill which meant very long hard nights.

The Harriet Creek bridge project

Rob and Bruce at Harriet Creek

Koolpin Gorge trip

There was no real date when Paul and Gwenny decided that they were "going out" but they did do a camping trip with Gwenny's family to UDP falls and Koolpin Gorge many think that they came pretty good friends then...

This famous photo of them on lilos just floating around chatting might have been the start of it - or the time Gwenny offered to put sunscreen on Pauls back...

The camping trip was quite memorable as they had to rebuild bridges with dodgy logs and sticks and drive across them with their 4wds.  Rob and Jessie had their old green Landcruiser Troopy and Paul drove his yellow Suzuki sierra.  Steve Smedley also travelled with Paul and Gwenny. Graham Pattemore and Tim Cowen, as well as a guy named Lindsay.

Also at one time everyone had to stand on Pauls suzuki as he drove across a flooded river to stop it floating away.

Gwenny and Paul at Koolpin Gorge

Paul moves to Mount Todd gold mine

Around October 1987 Bruce moved to Mount Todd which was near Edith Falls, between Pine Creek and Katherine.

It was a big move and expansion for Bruce as he had to get a large loan for all sorts of machinery including a new Kobelco 30 ton excavator and 3 Terex articulated 23 ton dump trucks.  A lot of investment in setting up the camp would've been required also.

Paul helped setup the new camp at Mount Todd and then started driving Toyota DA tip trucks carting mine extractions whilst they were waiting for the new machinery to arrive.  By November the 3rd Paul mentioned in a letter to Gwenny that he was driving a Terex so they arrived sometime before then (in another letter dated October 26th Paul was driving the tip truck still).

A Terex dump truck similar to the ones Bruce bought