Back South.

Hi everyone,

Here I am back in southern Victoria again.  Slept pretty well last night, although I never mind waking up in the small hours of the morning to smell country air at night.  It's really something special.

The day itself was what you might have expected.  We had breakfast about 7am and loaded the steers.  They were toey, and we now have a set of busted rails in the yard.  While they adapted to being on the truck we cleaned up and packed up inside the house and I put some sunscreen on as it was going to be a hot day (although I should say that living the open air life over the break means I now have a rocking farmers tan!

There wasn't really much to take pictures of on the way, except for a couple of photos of irrigation channels we passed over.

We got the cattle to Mount Martha after monstrous traffic through south east Melbourne (everyone with a boat, jetski or surfboard was heading for the Peninsula beaches, it seemed.  Then, back across the spine of the Peninsula to here.  I got another good photo on the way, this time over a valley of vineyards at Red Hill.  It's one of my favourite places to go past and is just near the Greek Orthodox monastery (google maps location here, if you're interested).

Once back here, it was time for lunch and some downtime.  Mum wasn't exactly welcoming when we came through the door: she greeted Dad with a list of other things he needed to do and hadn't done, notwithstanding that we'd been shifting cattle across the State for the last four days.  Lord but I hate hearing argument in any home.

The balance of the afternoon was spent refitting a pump for an old friend, Les, who lived over the road from us at Merricks North when we were kids.  Second Oldest Sister, Little Sister and I actually worked for him a couple of times in the 1980s, washing the feed dishes in his chicken sheds.  He still has chicken sheds, a few miles from where we lived then, and the pumps was to go onto a sprayer unit.  I remember he had two daughters, Jade and Jemima, who were a year or two older than me.  Jade was down for the break (from Queensland, judging by the number plates on the car).  She didn't come out of the house, although Les mentioned she has an eight-month old and I met what I assume was a son in law.  Not sure what they made of me, considering that at that stage of the day I was a couple of days unshowered, covered in a screen of dirt and sunblock, had hands covered in dirt and grease and had stubble that made me feel (if not actually look) like Enkidu-the-Wild-Man-of-the-Hills.

Once at Les' we found that teflon was needed; will be back there tomorrow to finish installing.

Quiet evening back here.  Had a much needed shower and a beer with Dad.  Mum was watching the Ken Burns documentary on Prohibition, which prompted one of her anti-American moments where she was ironically humming "My County tis of Thee" ironically at the discussion of internment of German-Americans during WW1, sometimes adding her own lyrics.  This got up my nose given that my wife, daughters and probably 50%+ of my friends carry American passports and after about 20 minutes of holding my tongue I suggested it really wasn't for Australia to be critical, given that in WW2 Australia tried to enter a non-agression pact with Japan. I don't actually buy Wurth's argument about this: when you read his book, the proposed 'pact' turns out to have been nothing more than a throwaway comment by then-Prime Minister John Curtin as to whether access to the iron deposits at Yampi Sound would address Japanese concerns.  However, I was exasperated enough not to care.  Not an improvement; as I said, I hate conflict in the home.

And now, typing this blogpost and about to catch up on other people's blogs.  Looking forward to it!

See you tomorrow.