Too many Acronyms!!

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DAY 426


I cannot say much about today because there really isn’t much to say, it’s been a fairly quiet day, we were going to pop in and see the activity in the shearing shed, but today the opportunity seemed to escape us.

I found Andy and Helen in the kitchen, Andy sitting at the laptop tippy tappying away and Helen had just come in for some breakfast after an early start sheep shifting as the Shearer’s are coming in today. Kimba is lolling around on the veranda, who can blame her? She has walked all the way back from Hazeldene this morning as she sort of ran off so had to find her own way home as she had been helping to bring the sheep in.

In Kimba’s early years she fell off a truck (before Robert and Helen bought her) and broke her leg badly so she has a metal pin in it. Despite this Kimba actually does very well, she is a good sheep dog, but of course if she overdoes things then she tends to walk quite badly so you can tell when she is tired, but she is good to herself she opts out when she needs to, often when she has gone off with Robert and the other dogs, she will eventually reappear back on the veranda and slumps down on the doormat for a rest while the others are still hard at work, on the same veranda that Kimba protects from Toby, she growls at him any time he gets close to her “spot”.

The other thing I must say about Kimba, she does produce a good puppy, Jack, Tiny and Trixie are just three of Kimba’s offspring (ok I do have to include Wally in that as well!) as he is the dad to them all but sadly we did not see any of Kimba’s last litter but I am sure they are just as nice.

Helen tells me that some drivers are very gracious and wait patiently for the sheep to clear the road before they move on, and yet sometimes they do get impatient people, one day Robert cleared the sheep to the side of the road and beckoned the driver on, however the driver blew is horn to move some straggling sheep, then there were sheep everywhere and complete mayhem!!

With some chores to do for Helen we drove into Gundagai, which is a very small town on the edge of the Hume Highway, roughly the halfway point between Sydney and Melbourne. Gundagai is very quaint, reminiscent to the Australia of years ago. On one of the walls outside the Hotel there is an Original Cobb and Co sign, Cobb and Co is the name of a transportation company in Australia. It was prominent in the late 1800s when it operated stagecoaches to many areas in the outback and at one point in several other countries, as well. As you travel around Australia you have the opportunity to see various buildings that were Cobb and Co some beautifully restored and lived in, others in serious decay while some have been turned into museums.

With the issues about the “dog on the tuckerbox” resolved another issue is coming up, it seems that the building of a big supermarket is planned.

In 2006 the population of Gundagai was almost 2000 and I am sure that figure has increased, so no wonder that there is a need for another supermarket, the IGA’s can be expensive they don’t have the buying power such as Woolworths or Coles, and of course some of the locals want to support the local IGA, but with the offer of a decent competitor a wider selection of goods and cheaper it will threaten the existence of the IGA.

So we headed to the NRMA, NAB and IGA. A day for acronyms, to many I think, the NRMA is the National Roads and Motorists Association, a bit like the AA or the RAC in England.

The “greenslip” needs renewing on one of the vehicles, the “CTP greenslip” is the compulsory third party insurance that you have on your vehicle registration, and despite having fully comprehensive on vehicles you still need the greenslip, not everyone will have both with fully comprehensive insurance and rely solely on the third party insurance provided by the greenslip, you may remember when we were in Darwin we bumped into Mirjam and Dave on the day that they wrote off their Landcruiser, albeit an old one they still lost as significant amount of money on it because they only had the “CTP greenslip”.

We head into NAB which is the National Australia Bank and then the IGA (Independent Grocers of Australia) , the chores did not take us long, so once complete we headed back to Woodstock with the full intention of having a look at the activity in the Shearing shed.

But we needed to head indoors first, but once indoors we struggle to go out again, we have a little lunch and some of us, have a afternoon siesta, whilst Caroline does a couple of puzzles on her DS, but I think even Caroline gave into the temptation of an afternoon nap.

Later in the afternoon whilst sitting at the breakfast bar we see Robert with Wally, Toby, Jack and Trixie working the shorn sheep back in to the paddock below the Woodstock dam, Robert is on the quad, with the canine boys and girls doing their thing, reacting to Roberts commands.

A little mob of sheep make a break from the pack and Jack and Trixie absolutely fly after them to bring them back with the rest of their sheepy chums. Soon the gate is being closed and the sheep are scampering across the paddock towards greener pasture food.

This afternoon is baking hot, probably around 36 +degree’s, but don’t forget British readers that we are smack bang in the middle of summer over here, well certainly in New South Wales, in the top end of Australia, the Northern Territories it is their wet season, when it rains monsoon style and with the wet is the humidity, I wonder what it is like up North, we would both love to experience it, not to mention seeing the North in the wet season would bring a whole different landscape to look at.

We feed the dogs and make sure that they are all in their respective places, although Tiny keeps running back to “her” yard that she used to share with Kimba, we don’t think she likes her new home, we think she thinks she is being reprimanded and tries everything in her power to stop us taking her up to her new yard. Tiny’s tail drops between her legs and her ears flop down as soon as we indicate that she has to go home, we have to put her on the lead everytime, but she turns round and jumps up as if to beg “please don’t take me there!”

With the dogs fed and watered we have our own dinner then settle down for the evening.

We watch a film on TV, Japanese Story with Toni Collette a romantic drama, it was a little bit of an unusual film a slow burn so to speak but the filming was done mainly in the Pilbarra although hard to depict a specific area it was nice to see as we can relate to the terrain and how remote you can be, how hot it is in the day and how cold it is at night.

As soon as the film was over we all retired exhausted from not a busy day but another hot day (its tough out here but someone’s got to do it).

Lets see what tomorrow brings.

PS. We were going to put our top 5 in today as it was a quiet day, but we still need to shorten the list so will give that a little bit more work and you will hopefully have that in a day or so.

Good night bloggers, until tomorrow.

KJ XXxx

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Photos

Cobb & Co
The Old Stage Coach Sign

Comments

[lurpak34]

FAB as they used to say in Thunderbirds! I did get a bit lost in the acronyms actually.. I've passed on to Namibian that his paragraph was well-received, by the way. Ha ha.. And I look forward to the tea! I'll get back down to Oz one of these days, I'm sure. Thanks Caroline. Big hi to Andy..