Got up a little late this morning, and wandered out the back door at about 9.00am and there he was:

After I turned around and put the camera back inside - I noticed a smaller one in the front paddock, casually hopping along the fence. They both disappeared quickly as I started to move around unfortunately.

Well I rang the bank back again today.

I've been "patiently" waiting for my courtesy call from them - nothing.

Courtesy call from the transport company too useless to find the major highway between Mildura and Ballarat - still waiting for that one as well.

This time I thought - screw it - you people are obviously morons - cancel the order. I want my points back (although god knows why - to redeem them I'm going to have to play this sodding game all over again).

This time I have to have the request to cancel the order escalated to somebody who can do something about it - and ------ you guessed it ------ I'll get a call from them when it's done.

Yeah right.

One of the things that we figured out a long time ago is that single use items aren't much chop. It's particularly applicable now that we're in such a small house. It feels rather strange having been whinging about the heat not so long ago, but heating the house in winter is something we've recently turned our minds to. One end of the place had a wood heater in it:

But it was one of those stupid single use - heating only ones. Not even a hot plate on top, just a big block of heater only - heating only one end of the house into the bargain.

So it's gone:

And we've replaced it with something infinitely more practical for the small space - this has the firebox on top (with a usable cooking top into the bargain), and an oven at the bottom. Smaller footprint, useful for more than just heating.

All we need to do now is install one of those gizmos in the roof that pull hot air from one place to another - to heat the far end of the house and we've got a much more practical, smaller footprint, useful heating / cooking and comfort solution.

Our dear old Toyota Prado was well over 13 years old, it has provided sterling service for all those years but alas, it was starting to get tired and starting to cost serious repair / restoration money. Plus it drank petrol like nobody's business. It was too heavy on the fuel and it was really too large, especially as we now use the ute for most of the lifting and carrying that needs doing - and well, we aren't going to be carting big dogs around anymore.

So we went shopping recently and we settled on a Volkswagen Tiguan. It's a diesel motor (outstandingly quiet) and we were particularly keen to get the most fuel efficient option in a reasonable size - we didn't want another huge big car, but we still do need to do a lot of country driving and we didn't want to go right down to a little car. We picked the Tiguan up in Ballarat this morning, drove home via Maryborough and the supermarket. It has a surprising amount of get up and go - we'll both have to watch a latent tendency to leadfootitis as we could get ourselves into a lot of trouble in this thing.

Off to Melbourne tomorrow in the new car - hopefully we'll get there and back in a lot more comfort than we used to in the ute!

You can just never ever have too many sheds!

Besides - there was nothing much in the vegetable garden area and carting equipment backwards and forwards from the main machinery shed was getting old, and Adam wanted some space back in there - so we put up two garden sheds.

(The one on the right is the one that Fiona and Andrew helped us put up last weekend). Now it's very civilised - I've even got a light out there and a chair and I can sit and contemplate the world (whilst pretending to garden).

Also - some new / closer photos of the Sisters in Crime at last

(They like wandering around under wire tunnels and things).

Now - another photo of Aunty Jack who is starting to realise that we might not be so bad after all - we can actually get right up close to him nowadays!

And finally - we needed to work out a way to move the chooks from the vegetable garden paddock to the orchard for a spot of weeding and insect control, but we didn't want to cut the fences or fiddle around with opening gates into the general yard and keeping the dogs away - so a chook style! Now all we have to do is convince them that it's useable - a couple are trying it at the moment, but the bulk are too busy sooking.