A Dingo's got my Barbie!!!

I fit right in here.

I've always been one to keep a low profile, blend in with my surroundings, go unnoticed in a crowd. The reason for this is twofold, a) I'm basically a shy person who dreads attention (despite some of the things I've done), and b) my father who was neurotic drilled into me from the day I could walk, that I should be like the Shadow.

So what I wear is a bit of a dilemma for me here in the country, I could wear the uniform* of Akubra hat, Dryzabone coat, and Moleskin pants and RM Williams boots (if you don't believe me, check this out), or I could wear what I've always worn:- baseball cap, shorts, t-shirt and thongs (the footwear you dirty perverts!). So while I'm physically comfortable with my fashion choices, mentally it's another matter when you stick out like dog's balls on a cat.

Apart from the uniform costing three times the GDP (GNP for the Yanks out there) of a small nation, I've always felt uncomfortable dressing up as something I'm not (except when I go out with my tranny friends, that's different), so I just stick to my citified clothes and live with the stares of amazement. This means that the people who don't know me think I'm some sort of freak because I wear bizarre clothes (and yes, where I live 'bizarre clothes' means anything that isn't part of the uniform), and the people who do know me think I'm a freak because I let the dogs inside the house (which is considered even more bizarre than wearing strange clothes).

So it's been a bit of a struggle to fit in here in banjo county, but imagine my excitement today when I saw this on my way into town (it was at the end of my property)...

At last I'll be able to cement my place in rural society by alerting the owner that one of his calves has been hit by a car, thus allowing him to check his fences. So I swung by his place and told his wife (now, I don't do my good deeds for reward, but hey, if they want to give me stuff that's fine too). She said that she'd call him on his mobile (cell phone), and I continued on my way to do some shopping.

When I got home there was a message on my answering machine. It was Brett (the owner)

"Hey WT, next time I'm around your place I'll have to give you... [yes! score! here's comes the meat tray!]... a farmyard book. [WTF?!?! what's he talking about?] That's not a calf, that's a pig."

Well fuck me! Now I really feel like a country boy (not!), however in my defence, it was the same size as a calf and there are a bunch of calves in the paddock next to the road there.

It would have come from one of these as there are no pigs around my property (this picture was taken a couple of years ago, but funnily enough, they are parked directly across the road from where the pig was laying. click if for a better shot of the rigs that they use)...

* I'm serious, everyone wears this outfit, it feel like I'm walking through a school yard every time I go into town.

** This was a bit of a linkfest, sorry.

A drive in the country.

I mentioned yesterday that I visited a fellow blogger. What I didn't say, was that where she lives makes my place look like downtown LA! I have privacy, she has isolation, lots of bumpy, winding, treacherous dirt roads with very little indication as to whether you're going the right way.

Beautiful country though, and I got to meet a couple of bikers (in fact I even had a beer with them) when I stopped at their club house in the middle of nowhere to ask for directions. I did have directions from my blog buddy, but we won't got into that.

I took a few pictures of the trip, and here's the kicker, I'm going to give a prize to the first person who correctly identifies the subject of the second and third pictures (that is, anyone except Caroline)

The last signs of civilisation before we hit the dirt track....

Identify is this mystery object...

Here's a closer look...

This time you really need to work for your prize, in the past I've had the answer before the ink dried on the post. If you don't want a prize then they're pretty pictures anyway, and no-one says you have to try to guess the answer. I'm fairly certain it won't be a simple google exercise this time. But I'll tell you what, I'll offer a consolation prize to anyone who can tell me where my footie team came from originally.

Home at last!

manimsogladtobehomeicantbelievehowfuckingslowdialupisthisissomuchbetter
thingsjustseemtofairflyalongandboythatcoffeewasgoodtooigotbeauandbelleandnow
ithinkilljustputmyfeetupandgetoverthedrive.

How Embarassement!!!
Have you ever parked your car next to an identical one in a parking lot and when you came back from, the shops, try to get into the wrong one? Well that happened to me this morning. MDW gave me some of her frequent flyer points so I went and bought a 120Gb external drive (romantic aren't I?).

I noticed the car when I pulled in so I should have remembered, but I was just so jazzed about getting a new toy that I didn't pay attention. The thing is, I got in all right, it was only when I went to start it that I noticed that Bentley and Buddy were in the car next to me, and this got me thinking that i may have the wrong car. It was a simple enough mistake, see for yourself...

What?!?! Hey I can't tell the difference between a candy and a crispbread, how the fuck am I supposed to distinguish between a Feroza and a Ferrari?! Boy you should have seen that baby, the hood (which is actually behind the seats), was Perspex or something so you could see the engine, sweet!

Oh, by the way, I'm giving a prize or two for the best and most correct rewrite of the first paragraph of this post. (Grammar counts)

Ok, we've got three winners, they are all a little different, Viva la difference! (ChrisB was the closest to how I would have written it)

WT's Big Cooking Adventure.

I got a few comments about the dinner I was going to make on Fun Monday, and luckily I got them before I made it so I took pictures.  As you may know, my past attempts at cooking lessons haven't been all that spectacular, I mean they're better than Ree's, but shit, that bar ain't set too high!

Before we start, I must warn you that there will be lots of technical terminology used here, so you might want to keep a cook book with a decent glossary handy.

Let's proceed shall we?

Fig A. First get all the shit you're going to throw into the pot and put it all in one place. This is absolutely essential if you want to take a photo of it before it all becomes food.

Fig B. Next cuberize the chook. This must be done because eating soup with a knife, fork and spoon just looks fucking stupid.

Fig C. Now turn up the volume in the pot until the chook makes a lot of of noise and then add the flavour (that's the stuff in the bottles) until the house starts to smell nice.

Fig D. While the chook is making noises and smelling nice, small up the vegetables making sure you don't get any turnip (which was actually a swede) in the picture in case someone complains about it. Those small onion looking goobers are really single clove garlic.

Fig E. When you get tired of smalling vegetables, throw everything in the pot so that the Tumeric can make them all the same colour. Keep the volume on high for a while and then pour in the box of chook juice.

Fig F. Your soup should now look like this. Oh I almost forgot (again), once the juice is in, turn the volume down low (I actually forgot to do this, and when I came back from reading some Fun Monday posts there was soup everywhere!).  Cook for at least one daytime talk show and two sitcom reruns.

Fig G. Eventually it should look like this. I added some mushrooms because they were getting a bit old. It actually tasted pretty good, go figure!

I had planned to take a nice setup photo of the finished product, ie. the soup in a nice plate with a toasted English muffin on the side and a napkin, but by the time I got to that point, I had lost interest in the whole blogging thing and just wanted to eat it.

You don't see that too often.

I went out the back to play with the dogs yesterday, and as I was walking down the hall I heard a helicopter that sounded pretty close. By the time I made it out into the yard, I noticed this...

"Hmm, interesting" I thought. "I wonder what's going on?"
The chopper isn't as close as it looks, I've actually zoomed in. It had landed on the highway about a half a kilometre away.

Next I noticed this...

That's an ambulance and a fire truck. If you click it, you may be able to make out a wheel pointing up next to the guy in the safety vest.

And finally, I noticed this...

There was a line of cars and trucks backed up for miles in each direction, I guess landing a chopper on a two lane highway will cause that. Thing is, I didn't even hear it (that's not unusual, I've tuned out the cattletrucks that bounce over that rickety bridge), and wouldn't have even known about it if I didn't go out to play with the dogs.

And now, just because I can, here's some live action footage.

I don't know what happened to the people in the car, I've asked but no-one knows (and no one particularly cares it seems). They weren't locals and the helicopter took them to Tamworth. I drove past the scene today and couldn't even tell for sure where it the crash happened.

See! I really do live in Australia

Just in case you think I'm really a Romanian white slave dealer living in Transylvania, here's a couple of pictures and a clip that I took five minutes ago from my computer room window...

Here's one with his buddy...

And this is why he's here...

Now for the clip. It's a bit shaky but who cares eh?  I didn't even realise there were three of them, I only got the third one because I was trying to see what birds were making all that noise...

A little light entertainment

The bus trip ended up being very tedious, and I don't want the story to get that way too, so we'll just take a short break now. Instead, here's a clip of Bentley the world famous duck hunter.

Those who have ever owned beagles will nod their heads in agreement, and those who haven't will shake theirs in incredulity when I tell you that he did this for six hours straight. It would have been longer if I didn't drag him out of the water.

What was really funny in a twisted perverted sort of way, was how all the ducks (they were mostly ducklings), just collapsed on side of the pond once I finally dragged Bentley away. They had to keep swimming as they were too young to fly. Anyway here goes...

He never got any of them, as you can see when he got close to them, they just dived under him and came up behind him (for six hours).

**Updated: Mary asked if I was worried about crocs.  While there are freshwater crocodiles in Australia, they are much further north than where I am, plus they are more common in rivers, this is just a little pond. If you want to learn a bit more, this may help. And to put things into perspective, this clip shows the pond and where it is in relation to my place (that's my hous in the background)...

WT's weather report.

The Central Coast of NSW (where our place is) has just been declared a natural disaster area due to severe flooding caused by the worst storm in 30 years.

Meanwhile, where I am has finally got some rain, actually, lots of rain! We also got some of this...

And a touch of this...

And a little more of this...

But here's the kicker, this is the first time in my life (apart from Canada and Lake Tahoe, but they weren't my houses) that I've been able to get my house and snow in the same photograph!!

Oh, and the rain? Here's the dry creek behind my house. That's from just two days of constant rain. I got 70mm the first day and 90mm the second.

So guys, WT's weather report is Cold and Wet!!

A troubled bridge over missing waters

A big thank you to Simon and Carbuncle for the inspiration for my title. So now it's onto another riveting post about life in my little bit of country.

Idyllic isn't it, but having to use it on a daily basis can be challenging...

Yessir that ole bridge sure does look purty! Especially from a distance. Up close it's a slightly different story...

There's no two planks the same height, which makes for an interesting ride. While Sabrina talks about getting her rocks off riding her bike over a cattle grid, that has nothing on this baby. A cattle grid is like sex without foreplay compared to this 60ft pleasure machine. You hit this baby at 40mph and it will take some time to wipe the smile off your face! Unfortunately my tyres don't feel the same devotion, largely due to these bastards (a riveting post, get it?)...

And finally, this is the reason that I rarely hit this bridge at 40mph...

Probably between 10% and 20% of the planks have this kind of damage. But here's the thing, while I crawl across the bridge hoping that it won't collapse under me, trucks like these cross it at speed all the time...

These guys must be new, they are parked there while they walk across the bridge deciding if they should cross it. In case you haven't seem them before, they are cattle trucks and they can get really heavy. Each cow weighs over a half a ton and they really pack them in there...I guess you could say they pack them in like cattle.

If the landscape looks familiar, that's because I took the picture this arvo from my front verandah, so its the same as the Fun Monday pics from a couple of weeks ago.

I'm doing my bit.

A while back, Robin and Swampy started this recycling thing, it had sidebar bling and everything! Well I didn't sign up for it, but that's not to say that I don't recycle. In fact I've been an avid recycler for years (and not just my underwear either). On the Coast we have had separate bins for about 15 years and up here there's a recycling facility about 10 minutes from here.

About every two or three weeks here is where I take all my paper, plastic and glass...

And as for plastic shopping bags, I don't use them. I've had my own shopping bags for over three years now...

Those blue ones are insulated, which is a good thing, seeing as I have a 50 minute drive home from the shops and my car doesn't have air conditioning.

Boy this sure was a lame post!

Pretty classy eh?

Ok gang, time's up (truth is it would have been up a while ago, but I had to go and take the picture). Put down your pens and pay attention.

For all of you who said it was one of these...

You'd be wrong... This isn't the best example of a cattle grid as it's no longer in use, but it was within walking distance so this is the one I chose. I did look on the net, but I couldn't find one made out of railway track like this one.

So what is it then? Ok I'll put it in perspective for you....

Still don't get it? Ok then, it's a wool classing table. Once the sheep has been shorn, the fleece is thrown onto a table like this and a wool classer determines general condition, fibre size and cleanliness, and a bunch of other stuff that I should know (seeing as my cousin is a wool classer) but I don't. I've looked and looked and this is about the best picture I could find, sorry.

On another matter, a lot of you probably think that dogs are smarter than cattle, and while for the most part you would be correct, but when it involves my dogs, you would be wrong! The whole point of cattle grids is to stop the cows from getting out without having to close gates all the time. Cows are smart enough to know they can't walk across a grid, not so my dogs...

Arrghhh!

I just wrote a long (for me) post filled with wit and wisdom, but when I hit 'Save' the session abended (that's a computing term). Dammit, it was one of my better efforts too, no pictures or anything, just literary brilliance. Shit! It just crashed again, but this time I didn't lose this one measly paragraph that I'm typing, unlike before when the screen blanked and I lost a page of pure gold.

So I'm going back to pictures!

What are these dogs doing?.....

Here's different angle....

So by now you get the picture, but here's what they're after....

Yes that's right, they are waiting for a free meal, which incidentally was what I was doing when I took these pictures, except I was waiting for a roast beef dinner and they were after hoof clippings. And I was an invited guest, not a moocher. Well I guess I was an invited moocher.

It just crashed AGAIN, but I have been saving to draft so I didn't lose everything! I think it's my ISP.

 

Where's the beef?

Remember Clara (I think that was her name), the old lady who wanted to know where the beef was? Well she has nothing to do with this post, truth is it's a pretty boring story so I thought I'd try to distract you by trying to get you get you to remember the commercial, it was for a hamburger chain but I forget which one.

Anyway, this happened a couple of days ago. I wish is was more exciting than it is, or funnier (hell I'd settle for it being interesting!), but it kind of fizzles out at the end. But for now let's start at the beginning. A couple of days ago (did I already mention that?) I went to get the newspaper and as I pulled out of my place I noticed a huge Hereford bull (seriously, I mean this was one big mofo) casually walking along the road near my place.

I thought to my self that someone must be missing  one somewhere, but didn't think any more of it until I got back from buying the newspaper and saw this...

Yep, he decided that the shade provided my trees would be a nice place to spend the day. Want a closer look? Here...

You should have seen his balls, they looked like a couple of cantaloupes in a sack! Notice that the fence is behind him, that's actually not the ideal side for it to be on for safety purposes. So I sent the dogs down to move him one, yeah right! that worked. He stayed there for a few hours and then just wandered away.

Oh yeah, I did manage to find out who he belonged to, no it wasn't my neighbor who has five bulls in the paddock next to my place (his are all Aberdeen Angus). I went around to their place but apparently but they were at a rodeo for the weekend so I don't really know what happened in the end but I hope they got him back, those bastards are worth a lot of money.

Before the storm.

Before I was so rudely interrupted by the gazillion volts of electricity that barbequed my computer (even quicker than a microwave), I was telling you about Buddy. Mary asked how I knew it was a snake bite. A good question and one that deserves an answer.

It was a case of deductive reasoning. Let me illustrate, say you are on holidays in Moscow and everyone seem to be speaking the same language, but a language that you don't speak; it's fairly safe to assume they are speaking Russian (ok, I didn't really need to do that, I'm just practicing for Mindy's challenge).

Dogs (and cats) as you know, are creatures of habit, they like to do the same things at roughly the same time everyday. For my guys, at around 7:00am there's a shift change, the dogs go outside and as they do, they pass the cats in the doorway coming in for breakfast. The dogs stay outside for about 30 minutes and then want back in. When I let them in it's a mad dash to the cat bowl to see if there's anything left for them.

Two days ago when I let the dogs back in, Bentley made a beeline for the cat food, but Buddy, who seemed to be limping, just slowly headed to the beanbag and slumped into it. This caught my attention and I assumed he strained a muscle as he was running around, so I got a doggie treat for him to get him up so I could check out his limp, but he wouldn't move. That was the first sign there was something very wrong, he is totally food driven. So I picked him up and put him in the centre of the living-room floor to see what he did, he just wobbled a bit and flopped on the floor.

So now there are three possible explanations (there are more of course, but I knew he wasn't hit by a car): Snake bite, spider bite or paralysis tick. I could cross off the tick as they are only on the coast (something I know only too well), a spider bite would normally have him showing more signs of distress (funnel web, trap door and red back spiders all have very painful poisons) so that left snake bite. Going back to my silly analogy, if you know that there are a lot of eastern brown snakes in the area (I see them fairly regularly), then you assume that it's a brown snake, plus the all purpose anti venom to treat brown snake, black snake and tiger snake costs an extra $450 a vial so you bet on brown snake (as it is brown snake anti venom is around $500). And that's how I knew guessed it was a brown snake.

When I got him back from the Vet's he was still unsteady on his feet, but he's getting a little better. Now for some gratuitous dog pics....

Buddy on his first night back home.

It was really lucky that I noticed him walking funny, because had I not it would have been very hard for me to realise that he had been bitten, given this is what they both look like most of the time anyway...