Dunnies are my currency

At Betka Beach just after first light. Stunning.

Sitting here in front of a roaring fire, kitten on my lap, Emma Kirkby singing Hildegard of Bingen’s greatest hits on the cd player, it’s hard to remember that times are a bit tough. I'm having far too much fun.

My meditation on money the other day was a little unsettling, but I live in Paradise, and I guess that’s the trade-off. Traffic jams/stress/no time to think vs bliss/no money. A no-brainer really. So, to stop myself thinking in dollars and getting all agitated, I think in dunnies now, and that is far more fun and less scary. Here in the Republic of Betty, dunnies have become my currency, and of course that makes me giggle. 

***For non-Aussies, ‘dunny’ is a slang term for toilet, specifically the long-drop or can-type affair that stands in a vine-covered shed in old-style Aussie back yards, and hosts redback spiders beneath its seat. That’s not the sort of dunny I’m referring to here. My dunnies are more modern and less spiderous. Made of gleaming porcelain or ceramic goodness, my dunnies half-flush or full-flush. This is quite a relief, as I clean several of them each week.

A load of firewood is a 5 dunny expense, but will last almost half the winter if I’m careful. So really, a winter of glowing warmth is about a dozen dunnies’ worth. Not bad. A bottle of gas for cooking that will probably last a year? 5 dunnies.

A bottle of wine is around half a dunny, unless I go for the expensive full-dunny quality stuff (which I don’t). It’s still a kind of expensive purchase though.

A trip to the doctor is about 2 ½  dunnies, and Medicare refunds one of them. A kilo of chicken breast fillets will set me back about two-thirds of a dunny (i.e., I have to clean for about 40 minutes). 5-6 weeks worth of cat bickies for Basil is a 2 ½ dunny purchase. (Perhaps I could save on that if I let him catch his own dinner….. *slapping self*) A tank of petrol? Two dunnies, but it’ll last me for weeks around Mallacoota.

A not-too-flash entry-level DSLR camera with a couple of lenses is roughly a three dozen dunny purchase, and won’t be happening in the foreseeable future.  Why would I bother, though, when my humble phone (bought in the old currency when I was still a half-mad fulltime teacher) takes photos like these:

*sigh* I LOVE this place so so much!

My friend Deb was here over the Anzac weekend, and we went to Betka Beach for some beautiful free sunrise viewing. We arrived a little after first light and stayed a couple of hours, and played photographers with our phones. What fabulous dunny-free chicken soup for the soul it was!

Of course, with the amount of free time I have complementing my cleaning gigs, I probably have time to write a best-seller that will earn me mega-dunnies – in which case I’ll get one of those snazzy cameras to capture some really good pics of the birds around here.

Life is good.