Late afternoon update

Hi everyone,

Posting this from Shepparton.  It's been a day on the road.

We were up early and loaded the steers for Mt Martha and made the run straight down and back. Honestly nothing exciting to report apart from it's about an 8 hour round trip of which I drove about 3 hours. Lunch came from the Hungry Jacks / truck stop just before Kalkallo (photos below - if I've gotten it right they're now geographically tagged to be matchable with Google Maps!). My only observation on getting lunch there is that the massively obese guy ordering a couple of double whoppers really shouldn't have been ostentatiously carrying a copy of Mens Health.

We were at Mount Martha at about 1pm and unloaded without difficulty.

Then, back on the road for here. We stopped at Nagambie on the way back for supplies -

and I grabbed a copy of the Seymour Telegraph.

Once back here we gave water and hay to the steers who've been penned up all day and who'll be on the road tomorrow -

and I got not a bad photo of the grain silos in the afternoon light.

While on the road I had plenty if time to think, so I rolled a fair degree of Dad at a Distance stuff around in my head. Unfortunately, "time to think" easily morphs into "too much time to think". You know this means I was thinking about Joni.  When we were married I promised I would love and support and honour her forever, even when it got tough. Things are surely relevantly tough now, and these are the times that that promise was made for. Certainly I do not see any reason I should not honour it. So far so good. But, I wish Joni could trust me enough to let me be kind to her, and encouraging to her, and again to make her feel loved and adored and special and perfect. Knowing that that's no longer acceptable to her fills me with sadness rather than bitterness.

* * * * *

LATER: After that last paragraph we filled a trough of water for the steers and gave them more hay.

I rattled off a quick aerogramme to Grace and Rachel and we had dinner. Read the S. Telegraph and went to bed. Silent tonight except for insect noises.

See you tomorrow.