"Can Do" Women

I am sitting on the patio at my new home in Alice Springs. Shaded from the sun's harsh rays by elegant bottle green shade cloth, I gaze upon the visage of our hills hoist and the ceramic dog wearing a hat, named Reginald Percival the 2nd. Life doesn't get much better than this.

Our garden is actually rather lovely, all jokes aside. We have an enormous lemon tree, full of fruit and three white rose bushes. We're all rather concerned that they may not survive our four month tenancy. After careful consideration, watering them seems like the way to go.

My three youthful, exuberant companions and I have all become domestic goddesses, we think. We were off to a roaring start on night one when, full of good intentions, we came home armed with the ingredients for a roast dinner. By eight p.m. we had everything ready to go and went to turn on the oven. An hour later, we had all stuck our heads too far inside the oven, singed our fingers, dropped gas bottles on our feet and argued extensively. Someone suggested we get a taxi to Macdonalds. Another suggested taking our raw bird next door and wooing the next door neighbour into letting us cook it in his oven. 

As it turned out, we wooed our next door neighbour into coming over and fixing the oven for us. "Fixing" is a relative term in any case, as it was a matter of holding the knob down whilst lighting the gas. "They just don't make them like that in Sydney," we said, shaking our heads.

There have been moments over the past week when I've felt like Paris Hilton's sillier, sweatier and less attractive twin in The Simple Life. But not to worry, my three robust companions and I have vowed that by the end of our time here, we will be "can do" women, for whom no challenge is too mighty. Stay tuned.