Greetings

4^th June 2007

 G’Day Mob,

Brian and I have been at Rocky Springs for just over a month now so I figured it was time for an update. Both of us are really happy here and excited about all the challenges and opportunities that are presenting themselves. We are quite popular in the district as the locals reckon we have bought the rain – a temporary relief from the enduring drought. There have been over four inches in a month and it is the best rain they have seen in over a year. We are finding that rain on black soil is a whole different kettle of fish to rain on the traprock of Braeside. For starters, the road into the property only has to sniff a storm cloud and it falls to pieces. We were away from the place for our first storm and Brian warned me that we had better get home quick. I thought to myself that it had only been raining for five minutes and that he was over-reacting just a little, but no, I had to get the ute in 4WD and I skidded and slipped up the hill to the house. Since then I have had several lessons in fishtailing at speed, which tends to get the adrenalin pumping. So I thought if I couldn’t drive around the place after rain, I should just walk. And that is another joke. This black soil sticks to your boots like nothing I have seen. You literally end up walking on wobbly high heels, until the high heel falls off and then you fall back to earth with a thud. Even poor old Bo didn’t know what to do with all the mud building up on his paws – I nearly bogged a huntaway!

Rambles Preamble

G’Day Mob,

 I guess most blogs start from today’s date and work forward. Well not this one. I am going to time warp you all back about five years when my husband, Brian, and I moved to this two thousand acre property, “Rocky Springs”, near Coolatai in northern New South Wales. We’d spent the previous two and a half years on another property called “Braeside”, west of Tenterfield, which consisted of three thousand acres of hills with a mountain in the middle of it, and I was looking forward to the kinder topography of the northern slopes. Prior to our farming habit I was an exploration geologist, a diver, a bookkeeper and a trainee accountant. Brian grew up amongst the steep hills of New Zealand and has held jobs as diverse as head shepherd, possum trapper, deer hunter, taxi driver, rigger and abalone diver. We met in the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia where I was seduced by wildflowers and red cordial.