OK, some of the good things now. I have a few mad Meeka stories & pub brawls to catch you up on but I'll do that later. We are still heartbroken over the dogs but there's lots of good stuff happening, and the big one is we have a TREE HOUSE!
I thought of it and Gary built it. Photos later! I came home from work to discover Gaz up in the air waving a torch around. WTF? He'd put a platform & railings up on the trunk of the old gidgie tree in the middle of our compound. We sat up there drinking & watching the shooting stars. We now have the only two-storey home in Meeka! Everyone is wildly jealous. Honey sits on the ground and goes mad barking when we come down. "You came down from the sky!" Smokey hasn't discovered it yet, but I'm sure that when he does we won't be allowed up. The view is spectacular. Gary's putting a dining table up there so we can have fancy treetop dinners. We go up there every evening for sunset cocktails, admiring the vista and marvelling that we've found such a wonderful life. "I never dreamed I would have all this," sighed Gary with happiness as we gazed over our sheds, rusty cars and piles of scrap metal in the glorious fading light of the day.
I've completely re-landscaped the back area of the compound (yessss....photos....later...) and started planting our food supply & chicken feed garden. I built a bird feeder out of an old beer keg, a cable spool and some old teapots. Every morning I have my coffee at the backyard table, watching the three butcher birds and the two bower birds picking out the treats I've left for them. We even had two of the "Number 28" parrots come and check it out!
We are still having very hot weather - what happened to autumn?? Having menopause in 35-degree plus weather SUCKS big time. I walk around with a teatowel full of ice cubes tied to the back of my neck, and get up early so that everything's done by midday & I can go inside with the air con and read or smash spiders with my boot. The latest plague is stick insects. I find them crawling up my leg while I'm cooking. I think we ate one in the curry the other night. The bat has a friend now and they both come in to eat the moths etc in the main shed ("Thanks bats!"). The lounge area gecko is also doing a good job. Its friend has gone missing! We are mildly concerned, but at least it's not dropping off the ceiling onto the coffee table every night at dinner. The banded skink does laps around the room and we have to be careful not to step on it.
We had a big simulated disaster exercise at the Meeka airport with the fire brigade & all the local volunteer emergency services & police, hospital etc - almost the whole town was involved one way or another. It was great! Reese and I put out the burning cockpit (an old car that was set on fire for the exercise) then stood by with the hoses as Gary led the jaws of life team in cutting Tim and some other town volunteers from the "wreckage" (another old car). Lots of town locals played the part of crash victims and we all had a good laugh while getting through the demands of the exercise. We got a good report from the observers and Gary did a great job as our captain, I think it gave him a much-needed confidence boost (being captain is SCARY).
The annual gymkhana is on soon, so we have all sorts of horses and ponies hanging around - many of them are let loose to graze during the day, so I often come across them hanging around our camp. The two tiny ponies from Robyn's stables are hysterical (and cheeky). I well-intentionedly put one of the horses back in the stable yards before Greg told me it was allowed out (I thought the ponies had lifted the latch!). The glorious quantities of horse poo defy description...
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