The pilot - first night at the farm!

We got some unexpected early good news and were told that the settlement of the farm was taking place on 24 March 2009, which is about a week earlier than expected. We are now farm owners!!!!

So with our new acquisition, Kath and I headed off to the farm on 28 March for our first weekend together, with Fonzi the wonder dog. We left Sydney at about 1:30 pm - although we wanted to leave earlier, we didn't get out $hit together. We eventually arrived at the farm a bit before 5pm.

With about 1.5 hours of light remaining, we started to establish a base camp. The choice of the location was next to the big trees near the big dam - a safe choice.

This is the creation of the base camp. All that stuff for one night!!!!!



To placate her fear of snakes and flying insects, Kath started off by mowing a patch of grass for the tent and other stuff. The muffler eventually fell of the 150 year old lawn mover and I'm sure people in the next town could hear it.


While Kath was mowing, I went across the gully with the car to cut some fire wood. I fired up the chainsaw and cut up a good amount of timber. Of course, I forgot to clean the chainsaw from the last time so all the stringy bark got caught in the chain guard and the chain froze. Damn! Well, at least we had enough wood for the night - but I always like to be over prepared.

We set up the tent which was a bit of guess work as we haven't used it for about 5 years and we forgot how it went together. It eventually came together without a problem. Here's the campsite at it grandest! Of course, there is still crap everywhere.


Once we were settled in, I started the fire in preparation of a nice BBQ and a cold night. The sun slowly dipped over the trees behind the big dam. As it turned out, the night was perfect with clear skies, no wind (although the smoke drifted off north away from us), a sky full of stars and chilly (not too cold) night air. If this is the average night at the farm, we are going to have a great time!!!

It doesn't look like much wood but we only used about 4 pieces for the night. The fire kept us very warm that night. The steaks, veges and Deb went down a treat for dinner!

After a long trip and a rush to get started, we were pretty tired (the bottle of wine Kath drank also helped). We headed off to bed for a relatively early night at about 10:15pm. Kath slept well, but Fonzi's snoring kept me awake until 1:30am, when I finally got my earplugs and drifted off to sleep. Fonzi slept well as he usually does on the bed!

We were up at about 8:00am with the sun hitting the back of the tent. It would soon turn the tent into a sauna - there are easier ways to lose weight.

Some morning plunger coffee made me feel like a human again. While I look like I have the hangover, the real sufferer was Kath, who had a dry-retching incident after going to the toilet. Very funny, but you had to be there!


After breakfast, Kath and I then took off for a short walk to the north boundary, which is only about 250m away. On our way, Kath heard some noises and we turned to see a large black pig make a break for it, followed by 3 little piglets, one of which was a rangar with some black spots. Luckily, Fonzi didn't see anything.

We then headed back to car and drove around the property, including the neighbours' properties . We also took a bit of a trip to the lookout and discovered what we thought was the back boundary is just an internal fence and the property goes for another 200m. Anyway, the lookout is a possible building location but it's a fair hike and access might be a problem especially after heavy rain.

After a nice lunch of BBQ sirloins, baked beans and cold noodles, we packed up the camp and headed back to Sydney. This weekend set the bar very high and we'll see whether future weekends turn out to be so nice.

Anyway, we're back at the farm for a couple of days after Easter, which is only a fortnight away.