Tell you what, living out in the bush is just so good for you. Two days off work and I feel like I've had a two week holiday, even though we've been working hard on our cleanup. The little wagtail follows me around all day, never more than ten feet away, often almost underfoot - she knows I'm pulling things up and exposing lots of tasty insect treats. We have catbirds in one of the groves nearby, or possibly bower birds pretending to be catbirds (they copy other birds' calls). And yes they sound exactly like a bunch of cats miaowing up in the trees!
What cracks me up is that we haven't had to do the old mail-out to let people know our new address - we just had to tell a couple of mates, and now everyone in town knows where we are. Yesterday Ronnie Bell and his wife dropped round; we get visitors every once in a while, which is great. When you have visitors in the bush, you gather round the back of the nearest ute and the resident sheila pops the kettle on for a cuppa, then you all stand around talking about the generator.
We also get the odd passerby in the form of one of the station helicopters zooming past at about 50 metres altitude, lookin' for cows, or the local police doing a drive-by along the racecourse & station tracks, which is reassuring.
I've got rid of the old marijuana plantation (a tiny pathetic patch hidden in the bush, no survivors), and cleared out what I suspect were parts of an old drug lab in the shed! We were going through safety stuff at fire training, and our instructor said to look out for hazards such as clandestine meth labs when going into burning houses. "What kind of evidence do we look for?" I asked. "Oh, lots of 2 litre Coke bottles with darkish fluid, sealed windows, lots of plastic mixing containers, excessive DIY electrical wiring and powerboards, light fittings in odd places, gas cooker parts, that kind of thing," explained our instructor. My eyes were like saucers. "We have ALL of those at our bush camp! Oh my god!" Gary was sorting out gear nearby while we were talking about all this, so I called out, "Honey, we have our own drug lab!" We'd been wondering what all the weird bottles, containers and crazy wiring were. So hopefully Big Tony and his hired goons won't come up from Perth to find out what happened to his meth supply...jesus god.
Anyway, the drug lab bits have all gone to the tip, and I had a very satisfying day building a zig-zag compost / mulch / garden supplies "corral" out of old corrugated tin and mulching up some of the damaged native bush clumps. The weather is just beautiful at the moment, and Smokey has been making the most of it by lying on his back in the dirt out on the floodplain. Look out for hungry eagles Smokey!
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