On the virtues of planning ahead; someone in Telstra likes to go fishing

Trotted around to James and Jane’s at 6:30 this morning to hand over my laptop for five days. Jane has only about 4GB of Flash to store stuff on, and they’ll be spending mucho time in Kalbarri and on the coast up to Shark Bay. Photogenic country, that, as is most of our coastline and big swages of the inland. Very unlikely to fit into 4GB.

Nothing had been packed. At all. They woke up as I arrived. Jane turned to asking questions like “How can I redirect my ’phone while I’m out of range?” (which they will be^* for most of the trip) or “Can I get my email to send back a message telling them I’m away?” (hello, spammers, this is a working address!) and James was dealing with three children out of four having left their sneakers (and the dog’s bed, and maybe some other stuff) out in the rain overnight. This while they dressed all four, breakfasted and hurriedly packed up a mountain of stuff that I really can’t see them fitting into their Commodore wagon even with racheted luggage straps and great determination. Perhaps we’ll have a child or two to babysit for the next five days? (-:

They might have left by 10AM instead of, as planned (well, wished for) 8AM, and the rest of the day will be rushed.

Jane now has the picture of Emma Williams climbing Tai Chi in Calpe, Costa Blanca, Spain (thoughtfully blogged by
Michael Ellerman) as a wallpaper, 17GB of free disk space, and all of the setup needed to soak data from her cameras to keep her happy. James now has GXMAME and about 2000 ROMs to keep him happy. I now have their accomodation’s email address to forward any urgent stuff to. Everybody happy, everybody sing. Maybe.

^* BTW, the coverage map linked above tells a little pork pie. <sarcasm>I can’t imagine why Telstra would do this</sarcasm>, but the idyllic Monkey Mia resort has a mobile ’phone tower on the hill behind it, with excellent coverage out to about 7km offshore. Not shown on the map.

The green splotch between Kalbarri and Carnarvon is Denham. The splotch should cover the other side of the peninsula as well, pretty much all of it. Coverage might be patchy at the far extremes of François Péron National Park, but it looks like somebody likes to rest, fish, cruise on the Shotover Cat and so on without being out of touch.

I note that there are transmitters near Cervantes and Jurien Bay, even on this map; Cervantes doesn’t have the population to justify even one. There are many outback towns similar to or larger than Cervantes, yet which do not have any coverage at all. Cue, for example, where #1 daughter is staying on a camp, or Wiluna, where last year’s camp was.