Honey and I went for a stroll around the racing stables to visit the horses. Around the back of one of the sheds, we came across a shirtless man shaving his head. "Did I get all of it?" he asked me with no preamble. I inspected his head. "Nah, you've missed a few bits, here, give me the clippers." So next thing you know I'm standing in the bush shaving a strange man's head and ears ("Ear hair is not very popular with the ladies," I explain). Declaring him to be "all purty", we move on to introductions. It's Ken, who travels WA with his three race horses, making money doing all the small town outback race meetings - he usually makes at least ten grand per town. His horses are lovely and calm compared to the others at the stables; I'll be putting a bet on Cool Eyes, who's been winning a lot of races lately (according to Ken).
Making note of where all the poo piles are for later composting collection, I head back to bush camp where I find Gary with the big tray truck. "There's heaps of timber at the tip!" We come home with an enormous pile of wood for building our workshop shed, and just as we're about to sit down and have a good rest before the fireworks night, the pyrotechnics team call to ask if we can go and burn off a safe area, then we realise that no one knows if the fire brigade has signed off on the all-important "hot works" permit, then we find out that the only firefighters available to patrol the fireworks area are me and Gary because everyone else has been drinking all day. In other words, a typical Meeka situation which is solved in the time-honoured manner of "oh well she'll be right", a few confused phone calls and just turning up to do our best.
It's a good thing that Gary and I were there because some sparks set off a small grass fire. I drove the bush fire light tanker with Gary walking ahead wielding the hose as we prevented the town from burning down. We were right under the fireworks display so it was fantastic!
The festival opening night consisted of two verrrryyyy sllloooowwwwww food vans, a tiny jumping castle, a bungy trampoline thing for the kids, and a really daggy animal theatre show called "Sydney Or The Bush". Run by a bush couple and a volunteer backpacker, the show features R.M. Henry the Flying Dog and a horse called Vegemite. R.M. Henry is supposed to jump off the horse and also play dead when the "farmer" shoots him, but R.M. Henry has fleas, so he spent much of the show gnawing frantically at his balls, then realising after much shouting from the Farmer that "Oh! I'm supposed to play dead now!" and lying down with his paws over his eyes, then gnawing at his nuts again. It was hysterical.
Very tired, we packed up the trucks and were about to go home when the FESA emergency centre rang. Could we go and attend a scrub fire out at the Peak Hill / Three Rivers road, 200 km away? "Yeah, no worries..." Gary and I grabbed some ancient sandwiches from the roadhouse and took off in the light tanker. Eighty kilometres out of town, we got the order to "stand down" - the fire's burnt itself out, no need to go and do anything. Bloody hell! We finally collapsed into bed around midnight, totally knackered, and got about four hours' sleep before the damn chickens decided it was time to wake up and have some kind of noisy chicken party.
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