Our great southern migration

  We have sheep instead. They aren't our sheep but are serving as lawn mowers. They do get around -they must be in great shape as they move up and down the hills all day long.  Their owner has mentioned selling them to this and we might take him up on them. They are dorpers - so have a combination of wool and hair. That means they shed their wool (think about hair falling out on a regular basis). Pretty cool and means lower maintenance.  They like bread. Well, four of the five like bread. I occasionally take out a piece to them to make friends.  Casey has now returned to the USA so I just fed her skink some banana to keep it happy, as well. The house is still coming along. We now have a living room rug! It helps tie the space together, I think. We have been working on the hillside behind the shed. It did house several very flammable trees - not a great idea that close to the house. We pulled those out and have been slowly replacing them with succulents and low flamm...

Photo credit : Casey Madill I didn't remember this poem by Shel Silverstein but there aren't too many kids songs/poems on skinks and lizards. I do like it even though it is wrong in so many ways! Lizard A lizard in a blizzard Got a snowflake in his gizzard And nothing much else happened, I'm afraid, But lizard rhymed with blizzard And blizzard rhymed with gizzard And that, my dear, is why most poems are made Casey has been befriending our lizard wildlife. They often leave whenever I walk by but she convinces them to stay out for photo shoots. This is the one that she calls fierce.  Photo credit : Casey Madill She has also been befriending the large blue-tongue skink that lives under the porch. We thought it had died but it does come out for Casey (and bananas) Photo credit : Casey Madill This is a different one but you can see the appearance differences vs the little guys Even when we leave Cobargo, her lizard charm works. This fellow (lace monitor) happily led us down the ...

  Black Joak Morris was a wandering troupe at the Cobargo Folk Festival. There were not too many like them! We got tickets to the Festival when we knew we were settling here (back in Dec, I think). We thought it would be a great way to meet village folk. It was way too big for that. Generally there were about 5 performance venues going simultaneously (besides the wandering troupe) along with the Renaissance festival type food and knickknack booths.  The bands ranged from relatively local to ones from Canada and Spain. The event was much much bigger than we anticipated. It started with a busking competition at the Cobargo Motel/Hotel/Pub/ Laundry/RV park on Thursday night. This overflowed into the street and had a bus to drive folks to and from local areas. We were off doing more rural fire service training so saw it but avoided it. [We went drafting instead-practice pulling water from a dam to reload trucks.]  We did hear some amazing singers and instrumentalists. We also...

  Image from Bateman's Bay Boat Association We didn't take the camera and I honestly didn't even think of taking photos. We did spend time here (Hanging Rock boat ramp) though! We bought a tinnie off the previous owners when we bought this place. It came with a motor, trailer and old life-jackets and all. The motor is rated to go above 10 knots. In NSW, if you run your motor boat over 10 knots, you need a captains license.  So we did this thing and took a course to get our licenses. We spent Sunday learning the rules of the water in NSW (apparently there are no rules in the Northern Territory), trying out our driving skills and taking a quiz about the rules and right of ways. We both passed. The morning on the water was lovely. Our instructor was relaxed and knew just when we needed a bit more direction. We practiced figure 8s to retrieve our "man overboard" and tried going different speeds to get a feel of safe /not safe.  Loads of fun.  Our instructor ran two gr...

  Our garden grows quite well, thank you. The first pear tree is almost done, the second just starting to ripen and the peaches are turning ripe and then overripe very quickly. I have run out of jars so am currently filling up the freezer and dehydrating fruit until more jars are shipped in!  We did actually buy more plants, including cauliflower and broccoli. Those of you that witnessed my attempts to grow those in MN can laugh. We also planted a fig tree (very small) and a passionfruit vine + seeds (carrots, radishes and turnips). Need to make more garden beds! We had our first lunch company today-  Suzie, Kerry and Mieke came over. We house sat for Suzie and took care of Mieke in Bermagui. Scott bought a grill the other day so we got to try it out. They did get cucumbers out of the garden and a little bit more veggies in the quiche; mostly they got to take home some fruit.  We also had our first truly home delivery this week - three rugs were brought up the road a...

  The Cobargo show is this weekend and goes three days (of course). This image above is prize awarding for some of the earlier classes. One competition I really liked was "working horse". Horses ran around trees, went over small jumps, had to stand and move appropriately while their rider open/closed a gate and then moved down a narrow path with low rails. All in a time trial. Seemed most useful! Then we I learned more about camp drafting and stock horses . We didn't see any successes in the adult competition (we did leave before the end). While the adults had to pick a calf out of a herd of 7, the kids got only one calf to move around; some did manage that very well! The adults decided their job was to "collect" the calves after the kids (and later, the adults) finished their run. This was necessary but may not have taken as many horses/riders as took up the job.  The night before, we joined the training for the Cobargo rural fire service. This happened to be ...