{Not my...}
{usual...}
{stomping ground.}
I’ve been away and I’ve been in the country. I’ve been away from home, away from the city, 536kms from my house to my destination and back again. I’ve been to St Arnaud, where my Mum was born, and where some of the family still live today. St Arnaud via Ballarat, Clunes, Maryborough, and the Pyrenees on the left, via every small road until the Sunraysia highway was the only option.
{A small nest, recently vacated, belonging to a pair of willy wagtails.}
{Outside, someone else lives here.}
We drove in steady rain for an entire day. Rain in the middle of January, in the middle of summer, in the middle of a drought. The long mechanical arms of the new windscreen wipers barely remained stationary from our street, riddled with potholes, to dirt road. What had seemed like an add-on to a routine car service and tune by the mechanic earlier in the week, proved fortuitous.
Relishing in the journey, we four stopped off at Ballarat to collect a requested exhibition catalogue for friends at the gallery, and later at Burly Babs, a favourite haunt, where a green glass rabbit egg cup greeted me upon entry and would not let me go until I had shelled out the figure taped to its translucent flank. Captivated by its green luminosity I happily obliged and now, as it sits on the desk before me, I am glad I snaffled it up for a tiny fee. A stop in Maryborough some forty minutes later found me at the whim of a small china fawn perched upon a pink, curved bud vase. Found in a cabinet of vaseline glass decorative objects and ornamental vases glowing florescent at the Maryborough Station Antique Emporium, I could not resist. Inside the asymmetrical railway station, my second lucky find! Found and purchased.
{What I'd happily drive, were it in driving condition...}
{several cars at my Aunt & Uncle's place, St Arnaud.}
So, I have finally stretched my legs a little further than my immediate surrounds, Paula (Yay!). And I have thrown over my home-loving ways, momentarily, taking in new sights, new surrounds, and new smells. I have reacquainted myself, briefly, with a place I had not been since Primary School days, and finally had a much needed spell.
In keeping with the previous post, I have compiled a little list of things seen and experienced… first (which may especially please last list fanciers Lisa S and Veronica, and which may gladden Lottie as she arms herself "with some hot chocolate and a blanket...").
{Collection.}
{Spring.}
A list of things that came first.
First cd played in the car:
Manu Chao (still) followed by Texacali Rose. (If you ever come on a road trip with me I’ll let you pick the musical accompaniment and truck stop café snacks too.)
The first time I have seen rain in countless days… wet roads, wet ground and the bluish purple mountains of the Pyrenees, named for their supposed similarity to their European cousin, shrouded in a blanket of rain. Wet livestock. Wet sheep, countless sheep, all standing in yellow paddocks, rinsing their coats or huddled underneath a tree.
First handmade sign read by the side of the road:
“BUNNY POO & POULTRY MANURE” written in white paint followed by a sign for “BAA POO” for sale, and going cheap, a little further on.
The first time I went swimming for the year:
At 9.30 in the evening, to the right of the house, I swam up and down the length of the pool in a variety of strokes, all a variation of the dog paddle.
{KTMs, Harleys & Holdens. Louise gets a ride on the back of my cousin's Harley, and she hasn't stopped grinning since.}
{Mulberries to eat and enjoy straight from the tree.}
{Stained fingers and thumbs, a telltale sign.}
The first longhaired manx cat I’ve ever met:
Charlie, with a fluffy almost rabbit like cottontail and huge fluffy paws to match.
The first sounds I heard in the morning before I rose:
“What’s Charlie caught? It looks like part of a hare… he’s dragged in the hind quarters of a hare”. Heard shortly after listening to the pleasant hum of morning conversation, my Aunt and my Mum discussing craisons (dried cranberries) at the kitchen table.
The first time Louise has been on a Harley:
With a bright orange helmet squeezed onto her head, LJ hopped onto the back of my cousin's Harley and sped off for a tour of the local environs, glimpsed through eyes part shut, in the rain. (Find a little more over at Elsewhere, to hear it straight from the horse's mouth as it were… and see a little more over at flickr soon enough too.)
The first horse I have met in a long, long while:
Trooper, a Clydesdale Thoroughbred cross, all 17 hands of him. With a head longer than the length of my arm, I kept my thumbs well tucked in as I warily let him eat a piece of carrot, and later sugar, from my palm.
I have searched the front paddock for two thrown horseshoes of Trooper’s and come up with two different shoes in their place (one belonging to a previous horse). I have taken countless photos, seen family I haven’t caught up with in the longest time, and I have eaten mulberries picked one by one from an old mulberry tree, staining my fingers on my left hand and my tongue a deep purple… and all the while I did not think about work nor the chores that awaited me upon return.
{Meet Trooper.}
{Neatly assembled piles, organised in order of size and colour.}
{Wire coils, wood stacks, little and large teepees.}
Happy week to all...
