If you were concerned about the lack of content in my last post, you are going to be thrilled with this one! I have FINALLY gotten my A into G and got my camera out and taken some snaps around the place! So make a cuppa and here she is.
Our swamp is in full bloom and it is a real sight to behold. It's hard to convey just how these lillies seem to go on forever! I did a little drone video to try and convey it a little better!
I googled and it said they would only be in flower for a couple of days (google lied!). So I ventured down with the flu and waded through the water to my chest, with kaka on my back because she couldn't touch, to get some of these images. So I hope you like them!
I love this shot of me old mate, I just wished he was looking at me!
Our new little baby!
Look at the whiskers he has!
Bit of a play! I love doing these types of images.
A week before school holidays, we ventured down to Dubbo to see some of our relatives! Of course we HAD to go and see the zoo and it was so worth the look. I always feel a little uninspired when taking photos of zoo animals. I feel like it's a bit inauthentic. Anyhow, here is a number I took. I wonder if you can guess my favourite animal?
I call the next 3 images "Almost got it"
What a dude!!! LOL
And I love this guy in the background being goofy while she is being so elegant!
Kids liked the goats!
How awesome are these!
Love these little ferals too!!
I read the above caption and thought the mother's name was a bit unusual. And then I saw the below.
5 legged Elephant!
I love these dudes! So cute to watch!
Did you guess my favourite? The tortoise!!!! I just love them, they are such dudes!
In between visiting relatives, we stopped at the Japanese gardens and saw these GIANT carp!
I should have got a duck in the photo for size reference!
Once we had left Dubbo, drove home to Rocky to drop off grandmal home to Green Valley to unpack and repack and then up to Aunty Fooz for Easter.
I think the kids were pretty happy to do some fishing and I was happy to be spending some time on my camera.
I loved these, I could have photographed these all day!
These guys were cool too, but I was too slow to get them on a piece of grass!
Overlooking the Bowen River.
When did she get so big?
Just a sprinkle of freckles! Can you believe that people get them tattooed on!
He's a good husband, he broke down a tree branch so that I could get this "candid" photo! Just what every photographer needs!
Mia and Kaka, pair of cuties! Cousins!!
Aunty Fooz got to come photographing for a couple of days with me which was lovely.
And below was what I was trying to create, after a couple of days of photographing all the bits and pieces. I got inspired by a lady called Pamela Pauline Photography, who does some very beautiful arrangements. I was fairly happy with my first attempt at this, I think it came together nicely.
And that was the ones from my SLR. Now to the month and a half that has passed us by in a flash, recorded by my never ending supply of phone photos.
From My Phone
Mustering team!
Proof!
I was running late to go somewhere and I told Justin that I wanted to leave no later than 3 and it was now 3:15, and he had the kids. So I messaged him to go a bit quicker. This is their hurried faces!
And this is where I was off too. Sheree and I booked in to do a quirky garden art metal workshop thingy!! It was so cool! I have a really strange affinity to various colours of tins now! Need to buy some big tins of tomatoes.
Kids had their first pony club rally day.
Kaka looking swarv in some hand-me-downs! Pretty sure she was stoked!
Before school was out, in the middle of our assessment week, we also managed to get our wagyu calves branded. This is a bit of a big task, as they all need to have their tissue samples for DNA sent away and all put onto the computer. This can be slightly stressful at times, especially when you only do it once a year and you have to familiarise yourself with all the systems again.
Anyhow, we got them all done which was a relief.
The first NLIS tag for Green Valley for us!
Poppy, Nigel and Justin doing the branding.
Looks like I'm getting the 'eye' here!
Our puppies; all bar one, "Tractor" went to new homes.
National Womens Day, turning out cows with my girl!
Off to mini school!
Snuggles with uncle Wes.
I'm not sure where all these bubbles came from!
Getting my sour dough to work perfectly!
Kaka playing with her school friend Kaycee.
Singing in the choir.... I don't think they had any idea what they were doing lol.
Our first family game of Monopoly.... or "Ponocoly" as kaka calls it.
The brumby training continues. I made this little bridge out of about 4 chep pallets.
I think I feel like every horse I train is the better horse than the last. Truth is I'm just learning more as I go along. I wish I knew then what a know now and I'm sure in the future, I will wish the same.
School creations.
School excursion with G man's good friend Ben.
This is Pirate. The cow that we were having to hoist with the bobcat at the end of last year because she was so poor. Look at her now.... she's so fat! The photo doesn't do her justice.
Off on our road trip!
Photo at 2am.... on our way to Dubbo! We left Rocky at about 2am and arrived at Dubbo.... I think about 4pm which was 5pm by our time.
Check out these trees! There had obviously been a HOT fire through the national park. They had, had all their leaves burnt off and then reshot all along the trunk. It was really weird. The photo doesn't really show it that well, but if you look close at a couple, the leaves are all down the sides of the trunk.
There were 100s like this. If you look to just left of centre you will see one really clearly.
After the hot weather we had been experiencing at home.... Dubbo was COLD! I was so pleased that I took some warm clothes.
We were fortunate enough to stay at my Aunt (mum's cousin), Viki and Ted's house. They had a little granny flat, which was perfect for us to take over for the few days we were there.
Some Zoo photos.
I feel as though there should be an animal in the background but I have no idea what it is.
She's such an animal person. She just walks over and starts patting the goat, no worries. G man tries to do the same and it gets up and runs off. They just have completely difference auras.
Such a beautiful photo of Viki!
Uncle Ross taking the piss out of Ash... I won't elaborate.
Kaka's highlight was the snail she found.
Facetime with dad.
We saw the prehistoric Wombats at Wellington. Current wombat beside the fosil for reference.
Apparently when the caves at Wellington were discovered, a fella was thrown off his horse down into a cave hole! Ouch! Later on, they found the wombat fossils.
If you look to the RHS of this image, there's like a table section in the formations. Apparently, there was a wedding held here in the cave and preacher left the bible open on that table, where there verses were. The water was dripping down onto it from a stalactite in the ceiling, and now the bible is part of the rock. You can still see it, which I think is pretty cool.
This part of the cave was cool, the kids could thump on their chests and you could hear it reverberating around the cave SO loud!
Mum was OBVIOUSLY very excited lol.
These guys were still alive with the Aboriginals were around. They have found remains from the same era. Can you imagine that. Coming around him in the middle of the scrub somewhere! We also saw a big goanna that was the same size.
I'm not sure what this was, but it was interesting.
G man had a good buster going down the hill from the cave (entrance was on top of a hill). Then later that day, he had a heap of bites from a green ant. THEN later that night, he run SMACK into the glass door!! This is the point where I KNOW I'm a terrible parent, cause I laughed so hard. I had to walk away and let grandma do the consoling. Then when I finally emerged, Garrett goes, "Mum, why are you laughing?'
"I'm not laughing mate, I'm crying!"
"Oh mum... it's alright"
ha ha ha ha ha ha.... he saw the funny side after a while!
Japanese Gardens at Dubbo! How gorgeous is this tree!!! I want one!
She's put bread on the end of her stick to try and catch a Carp!! *insert face palm here*
Then before you could blink, we were heading home again. Was very sad to be leaving all our beautiful Mexican family behind. They are such a lovely bunch of people and I wish we lived closer! Least we go to see most of our relatives down there and the kids had an absolute blast in the pool. Plus I got to spend some time with mum, which is a bit precious, as it doesn't happen as much any more!
Left Dubbo at 2am their time, 1am QLD time. Arrived at mums at 4pm which included the hour we stopped to collect our new pet. We saw many kangaroos, an echidna, cat, foxes, a wombat and poor mum was a nervous wreck. I'm not sure how we made it home alive lol!
We left mum's the following morning to journey back to Green Valley.
"Gremlin" in the middle. She was gifted to Kaka from her school friend Hugh (that she gets very grumpy when I tease her about him being her boyfriend). Gremlin, is just that and she is fitting in very well in our mad house.
Kids were keen to stop at the minions for a photo. These are so cool aren't they!
I was still unpacking our car from our Dubbo trip, when the guy arrived to do the killer. I'm not sure why I went down, as my services weren't really required, but he was very efficient.
Check out these guys. They are called Stomach Fluke. I had never seen them before. I think they are from snails (a particular type of snail).
With the killer quartered and hung, we spent the next morning packing to go to Collinsville for Easter. arriving there at 10:30 at night, I was a bit shabby after all the driving from the previous couple of days.
Kids enjoyed some fishing. Even though it was only catfish, I think went you're catching it doesn't matter!
G man and Darcy
We left for home on Easter Monday.
Home to unpack and catch up on everything.
It's a unit.
More brumby training. I think I'm starting to annoy him. I was trying hard to get him to do a flying change, but he keeps getting his back feet wrong, but all the spurring isn't making him very compliant, so I've had to lay off him a bit.
We went halves in this killer with Sheree and her and her family came to help us cut it all up. Well, we actually left the boys to cut up, while we prepared food and sorted kids and sat and had a long overdue catch up on all things.
Sheree's role with the FBA, helps landholders to get funding for different projects to improve their land. So we spent a day driving around, looking at erosion and grazing management and discussing things that we can do to help utilise the country and minimise any future erosion.
On top of cubby house hill.
Sheree giving J the "F Off mate, I'm not buying it" look!
I actually really enjoyed driving around our new home and making plans for the future.
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| They actually made a good team. |
After our drive around, we decided that it was time to rotate our herd out of the paddock they were in, to the paddock that we had been spelling. Hopefully by leaving some extra grass cover behind, the frost won't be as bad through the winter.
Kids making some mud monster.
Starting my new garden. Hard to see in the photo, I need to take it at another time of day. I found some lovely lilly pillies, so I can't wait for them to take.
My little helper.
We had left our babies to the very last this year due to various circumstances. So they were VERY big. A couple wouldn't even fit in our calf race. I'm please to say that we FINALLY have everything branded, which is a bit of a weight off, as I had been stressing about getting them done.
I can't wait to get some photos of them as weaners! They look pretty fat and shiney here.
Nanna and Poppy on the job AGAIN to help us with our branding. I am sooo grateful for their help. Would be extremely slow without them. As it was, it was a pretty long day, but the time we got both mobs done.
Poppy giving the kids a run for their money with a good chess game! He had forgotten what some of the pieces moved were and Garrett "conviniently" only told him all the possible moves, once he had taken one of Poppies pieces! ha ha ha ha ha
Waiting for the second mob to be put in the yards, which took a lot longer than we anticipated, as one of the bulls was being a bit of a rogue.
My little helper. Poor G man didn't make the horse team this time, as his horse was being a bit 'naughty' and bucked him off. Which was rather sickening to watch really as he even got hung up for a moment. Then she proceeded to keep bucking and flipped his saddle underneath her and then destroyed it by ripping a flap off and cracking the tree!!!
Aaaaanyhow, I think by the end of the day, after I had been riding her, I think she had regretted some of her previous life choices. My horse that I had been riding, Schultz, also got some time on the thinking post, as when he saw Garrett's horse bucking, he thought that was the going thing to do.
Kaka was so good helping in the lead! I would have been a bit busy without her.
The tag loaders and their shenanigans.
The one that got stuck in the race, which is a bit hard to see, had to bit hoisted out with the bobcat! Fortunately with no injuries.
I tell ya, I was feeling it. I haven't been exercising for a couple of months now because I had been sick and travelling and any other number of excuses I can find. So by the end of the day after branding some of those bigs suckers, I was a bit tired and sore. Thankful for cuddles from this pair to make it all better.
Bit of a sleepy day today.
Aaaaand her butterfly hatched! Tbh I thought it wouldn't happen, or that it would be a moth! So we were pretty excited to see a little butterfly in the jar. I hope that its wings open up and that we haven't hurt it by having it in too small of a jar.
Video of bits and pieces that had been happening. My favourite is Kaka saying goodbye to the pody that we couldn't save.
That's a wrap!! I know, I know... on and on and on.... but we've had a very busy few months and if some of my posts don't make any sense, that's because my brain hasn't really caught up with all that's going on yet. We started back at school today and despite my complete lack of organisation, it wasn't too bad.
This next term is going to fly past and I don't think I have a spare weekend for a very long time.
I hope you are all well. I hope that some of this lovely cooler change has reached you and that you had some lovely April rain.
I not long finished a book called "Never Split the Difference". It's written by a guy who was a top hostage negotiator for the FBI and it is really interesting. I highly recommend it.
Alright I must sign off now, it is past my bedtime and it's taken 4 days to put this one together.
With Love.
