We are still at Killawarra!

We are really enjoying the time here with the Hirst family.  It has been easy to become involved with the work and the local community.  While Bun has been kept busy on the property, I have been to numerous exercise classes with Mim and Jaimie, sewing days with Mim, helping look after little girls as well as reading plenty of books and quilting and knitting.  I certainly haven't had time to get bored or restless :)

Bun found this moth sitting outside one morning and was fascinated by the colouring on it.

I thought Callie would like Bun's pose in this photo!  It actually shows the front of him for a change :)

The Moonie River runs along a boundary of the property here and flooded in late January this year.  There are still logs across the water in numerous places.  We tried fishing the other weekend, well the guys did anyway.  The girls sat beside the campfire and had a wine!  No fish were caught but some beer was consumed and some funny stories were told so all up we had a great afternoon.

Some photos will look pretty similar but I'm trying to master the camera still.  You wouldn't believe how many photos get deleted once I've had a chance to have a good look at them on the laptop!

Last Wednesday we had rain nearly all day.  It was just what was needed here for the planting to be able to continue.  It was pretty cold that day too. As I'd been to Dalby the day before, we were cosy in the van with a column heater and another large mat on the floor.  They will both come in handy in Wee Waa as I'm sure it will get chilly there.  This photo was taken the morning after the rain when there was thick fog.

I managed to get the first stars of the night in this shot but I'm thinking that a tripod might make it onto the Christmas wish list so that I can try for night shots.

We are planning to pack up here on Friday afternoon and then leave on Saturday morning.  It will be sad to say goodbye to the family but Jaimie has said that we should 'call in on our way home from WA next year'!  She's a Pom so maybe she doesn't realise just how far 'out of the way' that is hahahaha.

While we are based in Wee Waa, we will catch up with a couple that we met in Gunnedah in late April.  Len and Jan stopped to chat about the truck and van set-up as they would like to set themselves up for some travelling. 

Kate and Roger are also going to head over on holidays and call in to see us.  I'm not sure whether Mum and Dad will drop in too.  I will be working in the shop Monday to Saturday lunchtime so we won't have a lot of free time to go far together but I'm sure that Bun will get to look around some more.  If it's warm enough, he might ride the bike but we all know that he hates the cold!

Callie is still hunting for work so hopefully it won't be too much longer before she has some good news. Steven has a new (to him) ute and is very happy with it.  It sounds like they need to put something in the back so that Storm doesn't slide around too much :)

Josh and Kara only have 9 weeks left to wait for bub to arrive.  Kara finished up at work on Saturday and by that night there were pictures on Facebook of the baby's nursery all set up!  I think the girls were excited to get it all organised :))

Ben is due back this coming weekend after another work trip to Indonesia.  He had hoped to be able to hire a bike and ride around but wasn't able to find anything. 

That's probably it for now.  We will only be about 10kms out of Wee Waa on the property so should have plenty of service for the phone and internet.  Who knows, maybe we'll have TV reception too :)

Cheers!

Well considering that when I first said that I was going to write a blog, Bun said 'what do you want to do that for?', it has now been viewed over 2000 times!  I'm quietly impressed hahaha

I decided to do this primarily so that family could keep abreast of where we are (or have been) and what we are doing workwise.  As an added bonus it will remind us in later years of places we've visited and people we've met and can be printed up into a hard cover book.

It was interesting when we were home in Feb/March to have various people say that they'd had a look on the blog, particularly for Bun as I really don't think he thought that it would be read by anyone outside of the family.  In fact, funnily enough Bun hasn't read it at all!

When we left Lightning Ridge, we went through Hebel and on to St George, stopping for a walk around town.   We decided to go a little further that afternoon and camped beside the Warroo Bridge, about half way between St George and Surat.  

The photos below were taken at our overnight stop.

The following day took us back to Killawarra, above Moonie.  We were welcomed back with open arms by the 3 generations of the Hirst family!  It was lovely to see them all again.  We are probably going to be here until the end of May, leaving just in time to go back to Wee Waa for the job to start on 3rd June.

Having arrived on Friday afternoon, we found out that the Goondiwindi Show was on the following day so we went along for a look.

Bun was pleased to see the old Sandman ute, it took him back a LOT of years to his youth hahaha

This Razorback ute took out the Feral section of the ute competition, I don't think there was anything else that could really compete with it!  Check out what is hanging from the towhitch!  By the way, the ute stunk something rotten too!

Thought I'd better include these two just for guys to drool over :)

I've never seen this done at shows before but the kids looked to be enjoying it!

I really love the sunsets up here, you're just lucky I culled all the photos down to one.

We've spent the last 2 Sunday mornings in Mim's garden, with Bun working his usual magic with the electric snips and chainsaw.  Mim loves him coming to visit, I think.

This ugly/cute dog was in the main street of Dalby on Saturday, he's a French Mastiff.  I sent these photos to Callie and she loved the wrinkles!  What's the saying about it being a face that only a mother could love??

Mother's day breakfast for me was Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon (just missing the spinach), it was very yummy and was lovingly prepared by.....me!   There's no way Bun would have cooked anything like that hahaha

Bun is keeping busy here, working with Andrew most days.  We had a slow start today as there was about 4ml of rain overnight.  Not really enough to be useful, apart from keeping the dust down, but every little bit helps.  

I went to exercises with Mim yesterday morning and have a few sore muscles today :)

Last week there was a sit and stitch day in Moonie, followed by pilates later in the afternoon.  It was good to meet some of the local ladies and gave me the kick up the butt I needed to start hand-quilting.  I have been working on a quilt for a special little girl (due to arrive in August) and I have finished it!!

All I need to do is quilt her name on it now :))

I deliberately didn't bring the sewing machine on this trip and only brought along hand-sewing projects, knitting and crocheting so that it would encourage me to finish some of them LOL!

So one quilt is done, the scarf I'm knitting is almost done and a small hand-stitchery is half-done.  That still leaves me with plenty of projects to keep me busy until we get home.  It's probably a good thing that we don't have TV reception here because it means I'm more likely to work on things during the day and in the evening.  When we first went away in the van last year, I overheard Bun tell a bloke at the caravan park in Cobar 'She knits mate, it's great, she has to count so she can't talk!'  Don't you just love that guy's thinking??

When we were talking to Ben on the weekend, he is due to get wisdom teeth out in July and he was sussing us out about where we would be.  The thought being that 'maybe Mum could come and look after me?'   Got to love the way kids always want Mum when they're sick!

We talked to all the kids on Sunday and everyone is well.  Ben is hoping to hear next month whether he can get a posting to Adelaide so we'll keep our fingers crossed for him.  Josh and Kara are fine and bubs is growing well.  Callie is still looking for work so we'll keep everything crossed that she gets something soon and Steven is apparently enjoying the new job.

I think that's probably it for now but I saw this on Pinterest the 

other day so thought I'd share :)

Cheers

Anne

Warning!  Lots of photos 

We ended up staying at Ponto Falls for 3 nights and there was a couple of people having a camp fire down where the rocks were.

This was the view while I was doing the dishes :)

Definitely a place to keep in mind people!  It's only about 45kms south of Dubbo on the way to Wellington.

We went to Lake Burrendong to catch up with Ben, it is just east of Wellington and is actually a dam.  There was a big fishing competition on over the Anzac weekend so we got up early on Saturday morning to watch them all head off for the morning session.  They were sent off at 10 second intervals at 7am so we had to be down there early to get a look.

Ben showed me how to use the panorama option on the phone so I was able to get this shot of the dam/lake.

Ben went to the Dawn Service at the War Memorial in the morning and then arrived at the lake just before lunch.   We went for a look at the dam wall for a better view of the lake.

I really have no idea what they were dribbling about here!

Ben decided to have a play with the camera and take a night shot.  Think we might need to get a tripod at some stage so I can have more of a play :)

These shots were taken as the boats were getting ready to start the morning session.

The iphone camera seems to have distorted this shot.

Ben's verdict is that 'if you're not using a tractor to put a stump on the fire, it's not a big enough fire'!!

Bun was pretty impressed with the fishing boats!  I think that looking at the seats they have, our dinghys just don't cut it!!!

We went to the Wellington Show on Saturday for a look, typical little country show :)

The drug sniffer dog was used on the children!  Not sure what that says about the local population hahaha

I think the police dogs were used in a demonstration so the locals remembered that they had to behave :)

For some reason, this 'art installation' reminded me of Craig Holtham!  :))

And some mornings have been cold enough for someone to rug up while he waits for the day to warm up!  However the last week has been pretty good with temps between 24 and 28.

This was an old Store in Mendooran.

In the BCF store in Dubbo, would you trust these two??

Ben went back to Canberra on Sunday morning and we went back to Dubbo for a night, to catch up on washing and fill up on clean water.  The water at the Lake comes straight out of the dam and looks like well-brewed tea!

On Monday morning we set off towards Quambone fully intending to have a quick look and pass through.  Knowing that it was Jack's 'local', Bun decided one beer wouldn't hurt.  As you can see in the photo below, he settled in for the afternoon.  When he was on beer No. 4, he started playing 'Snap' with the Norwegian bartender.  He did okay with Snap but once she started dealing Blackjack, it all went downhill from there.  Still it made for an entertaining afternoon.   Needless to say, we only went around the corner to the 'Primitive Campground' to set up for the night :)

For those friends who know the story, I thought this cloud looked like a troll's hair!!

We went along a couple of really dusty dirt roads yesterday on the way to Lightening Ridge and even got stopped by a farmer who asked us to ring 000 and report a fire for him!
It was all happening out here hahaha!

We stayed at Lorne Station (bush camping) for the night, it's about 5kms out of Lightening Ridge.

We went for a wander around the town this morning and found ourselves in the most amazing art gallery.  It was originally the local squash courts but is now owned and run by John Murray.

After much deliberation (well minor stressing about the cost) we decided to purchase the set of three canvasses as seen below.  We got to meet John and hear the story behind the painting which was the icing on the cake.  As Bun told him, we've been waiting and looking for 15 years (since we built the house) to find the right thing for the lounge room wall!  So it will be shipped home into Kate's hot little mitts and she can't wait to 'look after it' for us until we get back.  It will be awesome!!!

This afternoon we did a self-drive tour around the township and the diggings.  There are some really unusual dwellings!!  The people outside town have no power supply or water, they need to pay for water to be carted out to them.  Considering the temperatures they get here in the summer, I wouldn't want to be out there.

We stopped to watch the cotton pickers working alongside the road and Bun took these photos as the bale was being pushed out the back.  I thought it looked like it was giving birth :)

This is Stanley, the 18metre tall emu.  You can just see me standing at the bottom.  His official opening is on Saturday and it sounds like the whole town of Lightening Ridge will be in attendance.  

These native citrus trees are just growing beside the road here and Bun was interested to see the unusual flower on them.

Sunset (yes, more of them!), this time from the lookout above Lightening Ridge at the site of the first dig back in 1902/3.

Tomorrow we plan to go through Hebel and then to St George and stay overnight. After that, we are going to Killawarra, where we were in October.  It will be good to see Jaimie, Andrew and their girls again.

Josh and Kara have moved into their new rental, still in Para Hills.  Callie and Steven are now living in Valley View, with Steven due to start work on Monday and Callie is applying for jobs.

Ben is likely to be going to Indonesia again in May for a couple of weeks.

I think that's about it for now

Cheers