Taste of our region

So I have a friend who works out near woop woop. It's accessible enough to get there in an hour or two driving but its not on the way to anywhere at all so its out of the way enough (not quite like the Pilbura or anything, just inconvenient). She sends me the best snapchats ever. She works on the Great Dividing Range, somewhere between Bathurst and Goulburn and the country is not disimilar to that of the English Highlands, only rockier, drier and with more eucalypts. I'm currently building a folder devoted to her glorious snaps. I'll give you a taste....

Its so much easier to communicate via imagery, well for me it is anyway. Verbal language is just one tiny percentage of human experience. I'm rather taken with how snapchat has changed human communication, again. We can bring someone into the moment we're experiencing by sharing our visual stimuli. I think its pretty cool anyway.


In other news, we went for a drive the other day. Fancy having this kind of forest surrounding you and spending a day indoors! (guilty, I did yesterday) This is a shot I took as passenger while driving through Hampton State Forest. Employment with the Forestry aside, this land is such a glorious resource to have and to hold as custodians. We have to treat it with the respect it deserves because the way things are going it's likely we might lose it in the future to National Parks, who generally erect gates to keep the minority who do cause trouble out, disadvantaging the rest of us who truly appreciate it.

(Retrieved from: https://www.instagram.com/p/BA-wbChzOij/?taken-by=cait_eliza7 )

In a similar post of appreciation I'd like to share some of the shots I was fortunate to capture the other night while we watched lightning flashing across the sky. The last week has been an onslaught of summer storms, one of the better aspects of summer. We've had a bit of rain from them too, resulting in a wetter summer than we were expecting.

 

Turns out the camera on my phone isn't the best but still managed to catch a couple of marginal shots. This is looking out to the north from the end of my parents driveway. I do enjoy a good storm.


Other short updates include
1/ Vaughan and I rode two of the newly broken horses yesterday. His first time on a horse in about 10 years and it went really well. Can't help the initial nerves but I reckon we'll go great guns together in a few months. Dingbat was antsy once she was leading, needing to check Bruce (the standardbred) was following every three seconds. Can't be getting left behind! So much whinnying, but it seems to be going well. She's responsive to every little aid I give and Bruce, being an ex-trotter, is calm and getting used to balancing the weight on his back.
2/ Vegie garden is loving the storms and bits and pieces of hot weather, yielding zucchinis (courgette) galore as well as peas, beans, tomatoes beginning to come on, lettuce and basil with the pumpkins beginning to develop.
3/ The backroom project is coming along well. All walls have been painted 'pearl seed' and it looks so much better, except now its making the ceiling look bad. Next clear, free day we'll move everything out and sand it back to paint then we can pull up the carpet and sand the floorboards underneath. My nan has told me she has an antique walnut bed head and end we can use too which should go well with the light airy room for an ideal Airbnb bedsit. Only thing is we'll have to drive the 14 hour round trip to collect it. Its not so bad when you make a nice trip of it though.
4/ I've scored a trial nursing locally! This is my foot, going in the door! Perhaps when we travel I could figure out all the paperwork to nurse?

Updating on travel plans, we've been advised to check out gumtree for jobs abroad so we're keeping an eye on that and may even post an add looking for work coming up to when we decide to head back over.

Otherwise we're just continuing living life well here and hope you're doing the same!