What is it about idiot tourists coming to our fair shores? It's not like we don't have enough of them locally.

Last week, some fool bogged his 4-wheel drive vehicle in sand on the Canning Stock Route. This would not seem terribly remarkable at first. Let me illuminate.

The Canning Stock Route is a three to four week drive through some pretty forbidding desert. It's described as one of the toughest and most remote trips in the world. It can reache 50C (122F) during the day.

As with any sort of journey like this, travellers are recommended to log departure and anticipated arrival times so that the authorities can be notified if you don't turn up. Then they can send out rescue teams in case you are in trouble. They also recommend you carry at least 100 litres of water as a minimum.

Let me emphasise the 'tough' and 'remote' parts. How long the journey takes. The sort of supplies you need to take and plans you need to make.

If you get this stuff wrong, you will die in the desert.

Our first joker thought he would attempt it in three days with a litre of water, a packet of biscuits (cookies) and 10 litres of beer. He hadn't told anyone and the only reason he isn't on his way to becoming a desiccated corpse right now is the sheer good fortune of getting stuck in sand and having another--better prepared--group of travellers drive past and find him.

But if that wasn't stupid enough, this bonehead broke the cardinal rule of getting lost in the desert in Australia.

Do Not Leave Your Car.

It's pretty simple. Think about it. What is easier to spot from a rescue helicopter? Your stationary car or your idiot self wandering about like a moron in the desert?

Many people have been discovered dead here having left their car and wandered, delirious, into the desert. The car gets found fairly quickly. The body? Depends on how far you manage to get away from the car before dehydration kills you. Because it will kill you before you find any form of civilisation.

But I digress.

Our next idiot should rank in the top three for the Darwin awards.

Now you have all seen (or at least have heard of) The Crocodile Hunter. You've seen pictures of Australian crocodiles. They are fierce. They are nasty. And they are BIG.

Never smile at a crocodile, indeed.

My nomination for this round of awards was holidaying in the northern part of Australia. This is the equivalent to the southern part of the US. Kinda steamy and tropical and jungly. And absolutely crawling with crocodiles. There are more crocodiles than people up there.

There are signs all over the place warning you in English and in fairly graphic illustrations NOT TO SWIM IN THE RIVERS OR WATERHOLES.

Note my use of capitals here.

I really mean it. You just don't. Because any body of water bigger than a kiddie swimming pool is going to have a honking great crocodile in it.

Just because you can't see the crocodile, doesn't mean he's not there. He is. He's hiding. And he's very good at hiding. He's been practicing since prehistoric times. He's really very good at hiding.

He doesn't want you to see him because he thinks you are lunch.

So what does this idiot tourist do? She completely ignores the signs telling her not to swim in a nearby waterhole. She becomes a midnight snack for a 4.6 metre (15 foot) crocodile.

She is (was?) an idiot.

There are reports that a tour operator may have said that it was safe to swim there. Now, maybe it's just me, but if I'm faced with an official sign telling me in English and fairly graphic illustrations that even getting close to the water's edge is going to get me eaten by a gigantic, prehistoric reptile, I'm not going to believe the words of some tour guide. This is one of the key differences between that tourist and me. That and I am alive as opposed to being dragged underwater, rolled until I drowned and stored under a log until I was nice and squishy and full of croco-snacky goodness.

To make matters worse, because he did what any self-respecting crocodile would do when tasty food starts frolicking in front of you, he was shot so they could recover her body. How is that fair?

Remember, people, just because you are on holidays, it doesn't mean you can leave your brain at home.

I was coming home from my belly dancing class on Saturday afternoon. The sun was shining as I walked the avenue of peppercorn trees through the park and it suddenly occurred to me. It was OVER. It was finished. It was done.

I felt the weight slide from my shoulders. For a moment I felt like I could fly.

Then my bones turned to concrete and my blood to liquid lead. Bone-weariness flooded me and it was all I could do to shuffle the block or so home.

Sometimes you are so caught up in the emotional, you forget what it is doing to you physically.

There have been little signs. The nurse testing my haemoglobin when I donated blood commented that my iron levels were the lowest they had been since I started donating nearly 10 years ago.

It's taking me longer to heal and I'm prone to minor headaches.

And I'm tired.

So very, very tired.

I'm counting down the days until I can take a break. I have two weeks off over Christmas and I think I shall use them to do nothing.

Absolutely bugger all.

I shall bask in the summer sun (with sunscreen, of course) and relax and take stock of my new life. And there are only 62 days to go.

In the meantime, I shall eat slabs of steak the size of my head and mountains of nummy asparagus and broccoli and spinach and drink countless pints of Guinness. I have my health to consider, you know!

Immediately after our immigration interview, Ghost and I opened a joint bank account. The bubbly smiley girl at the bank collected all our details, opened the new account and happily informed us that the bank account was ready to go.

I went to an ATM on Wednesday to withdraw some cash.

"This transaction is not allowed."

After several attempts and much cursing, I had to make a cash advance against my credit card, incurring fees and immediate interest charges. I hopped online to find out what the hell was going on. Apparently we had money in the account, but the 'Available Funds' were zero.

WTF?

I rang the bank. Apparently our bubbly smiley girl had forgotten to allow us to access our money. And it could not be fixed over the phone.

Our rent was due that day.

I was starting to feel like all our planets were lined up in the house of 'fuck you'.

Thursday morning, I confronted the bank only to be told that our bubbly smiley girl was in a meeting and she needed to be present to fix the problem.

I could not stick around and wait for her as I had made an appointment to donate blood for survivors of the Bali tragedy. So I went off resignedly to the Blood Bank to do my bit.

A pint or so later, I came back to the office to two messages.

One from the bank telling me that the account had been fixed and not only that, we were not going to be charged the cash advance fee or interest on my credit card.

The other was from our immigration lawyer. He had gone in with both boots and Ghost had been granted a temporary visa. Not only that, but he got a work permit as well. Ghost can get a job whenever he likes and he will be granted permanent residency as soon as we have resolved the outstanding stuff.

He's staying. He can work.

Sometimes you have to give to get.

All that for a pint of blood? Not a bad exchange, I think.

You can probably tell from the tone of this entry how our immigration interview went.

Since the bombing, immigration has changed the rules. Now all applicants must provide not just a local police report, but the equivalent of a federal police report.

I understand the need for this. I understand that we need to protect the borders of this beautiful country.

It's still hard for me to understand that Ghost has been refused his visa until this information is provided.

From the middle of July, right up until 11pm Saturday, everything we had provided to immigration was sufficient. They knew everything they needed to know about him, his character and his past. There were no issues with any of it.

Because of what happened on Saturday, now he is a potential threat to our security.

If Saturday had not happened, not only would hundreds of Australians still be alive and happy, my boy and I would probably have been celebrating last night.

I was far too invested in yesterday's interview. I really believed that we would walk from that room with his visa. Now we must wait until his application is processed from Washington DC.

But that is not all. Without a visa, Ghost is still not allowed to work. It is illegal for him to get a job right now.

He has been in mandatory unemployment since April. Apart from the financial issues, this is driving him out of his mind with boredom and frustration.

We applied for an interim work permit, to allow him to work while we wait for a visa.

Apparently I earn too much money to let him work.

Figure that out.

I would understand completely if they said, "Yes, he can work, but he is not allowed to apply for unemployment benefits while he looks." I can respect that. But he can't work because I earn too much money? And they tell us that while our bank account has $3.78 in it? When 30% of my income just goes on rent and utilities? When we are paying off a gigantic personal loan to pay for the government fees involved in immigration? When we have no savings, no investments, no property? When we currently have no social life? When we spend the last week before payday living on spaghetti because that's all we can afford to eat?

We are existing, not living.

But I am deemed too successful by some government chart, so my husband is punished.

I think my head just exploded.

The interview was horrible. He started off my telling us that we weren't getting the visa or the work permit.

Well, gee, thanks for your time buddy. What is the point of the interview then?

It was not a good start.

He interviewed us together. Then he split us up. He asked us three different times why we didn't wear wedding rings. He wanted to know why we had so few photos. He wanted to know why I said the walls of the apartment were cream and the carpet was brown and Ghost said the walls were white and the carpet grey. (He's a guy for crying out loud. Unless they are gay, they don't notice these things!) He ticked off Ghost's answers against mine.

He asked Ghost what he would say if he asked him if he just got married to obtain a visa.

The questions were like accusations. He kept interrupting me. I felt myself second-guessing myself. Did that sound like an excuse? Did it sound real? Why is he looking at me like I'm lying when I'm telling the truth? Don't cry, by all that's holy, don't cry, he'll think you're putting it on. (I cried anyway, great heaving sobs that I had no control over.)

It's his job to weed out the fakes from the genuine couples, but that doesn't make the process any easier.

To our credit, by the end he believed that we had a genuine relationship. But that meant little to us.

We walked out, devastated and empty-handed.

Now we must wait again, at the mercy of the US and Australian governments, and hope that the right papers saying the right things arrive at the right time.

We have our health, we have our friends and family and, most importantly, we do still have each other. He's not going to be deported just yet.

Here's to more spaghetti dinners.

Thank you all for your lovely comments. If you could keep the odd digits crossed for us for a bit longer, we would appreciate it.

This guy could have had a really off morning and send our plans spinning out the window because some moron cut him off on the freeway.

He holds our future in his hands and he might be pissy because he spilt coffee down his tie or because he didn't get any last night.

We could be one papercut away from appeals, tribunals and deportation.

OK, OK, I'm getting carried away, but I am afraid.

How am I supposed to convey in a sterile interview what Ghost is to me? How his arms are sanctuary and his lips are so soft and how he pins me down to tickle me? How I need to call him when I have news? How I love his sleepy "Bye." as I leave for work in the morning? How he understands my madness and revels in my glee? How we fight and forgive and shout and argue and love? How frustrated he gets with me and I with him because we are so different and so similar? How we drive each other nuts, for good and for bad?

How am I supposed to express the shape and size of his place in my life?

I don't know what to do. But I'm going to ask you to do whatever it is that you do, pray, light candles, chant, whatever, to make sure that this guy gets laid, doesn't spill his coffee, isn't cut off on the freeway and doesn't cut himself on the reams of paperwork he has to deal with.

For Ghost and me.

Apparently all I needed to do was water it a bit more often, feed it and stick it on the kitchen windowsill so that it could get lovely morning sun and it would make a bigger comeback than Lazarus.

I'm not entirely convinced. You see, it only has two live leaves left on it (and one sad little curled up brown one that just won't fall off). But I walked it around the bonsai show and pointed at other bonsai to inspire it. I took it home and watered it well, fed it the bonsai equivalent of sushi (full of fishy, seaweedy goodness) and stuck it in the kitchen window. There is a proper sized fig tree outside my kitchen window. As my bonsai is a fig tree, I figure they can be mates. Just as long as my little fig doesn't get delusions of grandeur.

"Think it'll work?"
"It would take a miracle."

Despite the name Tree, I have no affinity with plants. I am black-thumbed. Plants will flinch away from me as I walk past. Don't bother asking me if I've tried growing species X or Y, I've tried them and I've killed 'em. My housewarming invites come with the following warning: Guests bearing houseplants will be beaten senseless.

I don't do plants.

So what did I get for my last birthday? One bonsai (dead), one pot of assorted herbs (dead), one potted camellia, one potted gardenia and one potted daphne (all mercifully alive).

I was watering them on Sunday when I noticed that some of the camellia's leaves were a bit wilted. I looked closer.

EWWWW!

BUGS!

Hundreds of the little fuckers!

I snapped off a twig-load of them, stuck them in a bag and headed off to the local nursery to find out what was what. I also took a bud off my gardenia because while it is budding beautifully, none of them open into actual flowers. They just go all brown and dead and fall off.

I'm infested. Apparently I have thrip. How I've managed to get thrip when these plants are on a balcony two floors up, I have no idea. I have mountaineering thrip or something.

The lady at the nursery was very kind and sold me some lovely, environmentally friendly, instant-thrip-death-in-a-can made with pyrethrum, garlic and chillies. So if it didn't kill them, it would make an excellent Thai stir-fry.

And you can bet I gassed their thrippy little butts when I got home. Damn they smell tasty now.

But this is not why I'm gargling with bleach and making noises approximating an asthmatic cat with a hairball. I'm not tucking into a tasty garlic and chilli thrip snack. No, it's much worse than that.

Since I've started Weight Watchers (I've started a separate blog about that) I've been eating a lot of dates. When I'm in the mood for something dense and sweet, instead of eating chocolate, I reach for Ghost... er... dates.

I had a craving for something sweet and calorically-dangerous this morning, so I grabbed a couple of dates. I took a big bite of one and paused. The texture was all wrong. I looked at the remaining date.

It was crawling with bugs.

ACK!

PTUI!

I may never eat another date again.

Postscript:
As for the gardenia bud... well, I'm not sure I should tell you. You see, I may have a mutant gardenia. I suspect the government. It's a global conspiracy to create the perfect soldier gardenia. Your garden is about to become part of the war against terror. Terrorists will walk past your garden, admire your lovely blooms and suddenly be assassinated by your mutant gardenias. But I don't dare tell anyone in case the men in black arrive and fry my brain with pyrethrum, garlic and chilli.