I rang the Newman vet to see how Bandit was getting along these days, and she has found a wonderful home in Northam (near Perth) on a farm with a woman who runs a sanctuary for disabled working dogs! So she is all healed up and is living with 6 kelpies (chaos). I burst into tears when Karen told me, I'm so glad she's in such a great place. They wanted to send me photos but thought I'd be upset, but I said I would love to see some pics.
We are busy as usual. In no particular order - someone set fire to the fire station yard (!) and burned the fence, we put out another fire down near the roadhouse (some kids stole matches from the roadhouse, then went and set fire to the scrub next door), we're building a fantastic fence out of old pallets, the back yard is full of parrots, Gary brought me an old wooden gelignite box to store my cowboy hat in (boom!), I'm about to put out my souvenir catalogue as soon as my printer ink arrives and the business looks like it should be a pretty good success. Russell, our postmaster, now gets as excited as me when one of the sample packages arrives and he's even started opening them up with me right on the post office bench, then we get whoever else is in the post office to give their opinion. Everyone is very impatient to see the catalogue and get hold of some stuff.
But most excitingly, I learned how to make ice at the ice factory! Norm, one of the town's old stalwarts, has a big shed in the back area of town where he set up this crazy looking huge contraption that makes ice cubes - he supplies all the town's ice (we use A LOT). Gary and Andrew were helping with ice making last week so I went along to watch and ended up helping. Gary climbed a ladder and busted up the ice to make it go down the chute, then Andrew and I took turns operating the foot pedal that releases the ice from the chute into the bag, and operating the scary metal clip machine that seals the bags. We made 100 bags of ice. The whole operation looks like something from Dickensian times. It was lovely and cool! For some reason, Norm has a pet guard sheep that lives at the factory, so it came in and watched.
Smokey is being harrassed by the parrots, Honey has had her first summer shave and looks like something the Japanese would invent, and Red Dog is happily chewing on his revolting enormous emu leg & claw that he brought home. Gary is making a lot of banging noises in the bathroom, he's been making inventions all week, the latest being a 12-volt chandelier out of an old speedway lamp and a reading light over my desk, with yards and yards of wire everywhere of course. I'm busy mulching all our new young trees to help get them through the summer. The heat is coming...
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