Our own piece of dirt........

Our travelling has stalled as we stumbled across a small acreage that seemed too good to be true, so we decided to put in a ridiculous price. They accepted and now we own our own little piece of paradise.

Right on the banks of:

A fresh water conservation reserve.  An abundance of wildlife - black swans, spoonbills, frogs, legless lizards and snakes all live amongst us. We even have resident deer - although they are too shy for a photo shoot.

Our first sighting

It was love at first sight

It looked like there was some serious work to do

So off to the hire shop for a self propelled slasher

Even I got into the action and helped mow down the tall grass - it took six hours

Then finally it was settlement and our big day of arrival

We experienced our first new sunset

And this followed with a fresh new dawn

There is a guardian of the lake

We planted lots of new trees including natives, lemon and lime trees. We dug our first vegie patch

Rob has done his research and we are now growing organic garlic - our first seed crop is in for next season. Rob has rotary hoed over 50 rows and temporarily seeded most rows with peas and oats which will be rotary hoed back into the soil to enrich it for next year.

It's coming along nicely

And here's hoping there's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow - although we seem to think we have already found it

2011 Grape Harvest

Well it's been a busy time with the grape harvest with  Rob clocking up 195 hours in two weeks once.

We've been all over the Coonawarra, Wrattonbully, Padthaway and Bordertown regions harvesting and bin chasing. Before this Liz had never even been in a tractor and luckily her first week was in the little Oompa Loompa tractor.

Here she is chasing the harvester down the vineyards - don't let any grapes drop on the ground now!!!

Two bin chasers (tractors) follow a harvester and when one bin is full of grapes they dash back to the compound to unload their bin and grab another one - then it's back to finding your harvester before the next bin is full - here's Rob chasing and me following hot on his tail

And here's Rob under instruction learning how to drive the big harvesters

Some vineyards seem to go on forever - here's a harvesters view (Jon our supervisor watching on)

We've seen many sunrises and sunsets - sometimes all in a days work

Our first week was spent at Penfolds in Bordertown doing nightshift - wasn't as hard to stay awake as I thought - nightshift was harder due to the fact that you had to find the exact row you were in and your harvester, as sometimes there are six going at once. You don't want to come up behind the harvester - it's a long reverse back to the end of the row - and for someone like me (who can't reverse the tractor and the trailer) that's a disaster and glad we didn't have to - but others did!!!!!!

Here's a pic back at the compound 

The forklift driver lifts your bin off your trailer and loads it straight onto the truck

yes that's my tractor and no I didn't put all those dings in it

Some of the tractors we drove were pigs

Some had no air conditioning, no lights, no cb radio to communicate with your harvester

The John Deere's (owned by the farmers) were good - air con, lights, kenwood stereo systems, power steering, very popular and had people fighting over them

This is Botrytis and is caused by too much moisture, humidity etc and has badly afflicted the whole south east, South Australian wine industry this year. Up to 80% of grapes have been dropped on the ground. Rob dropped over 150 km's of grapes on the ground in a four day period - now that's a lot of grapes that make a lot of wine

Our advice is don't buy too much 2011 vintage !!!!!

Now it's Easter and the harvest is coming to an end

Our work here is done

HAPPY EASTER EVERYBODY

Chow for now

A wee trip to Mount Gambier and beyond......

On a recent trip to Mount Gambier we stopped to check out the blue lake here - it is really blue, how about that and this is an overcast day

We spent a pleasant evening at a local Thai restaurant celebrating my cousin Sandi's 50th milestone - I think Sandi is the only one with her eyes open ha ha

and then the after party back at Sandi's place - and no I don't know why I am posting this gorgeous photo of myself ??????? hence why it is smaller than the rest!!!!!!

The next morning we decided to do a long tikki tour on the way home so we went down for a drive to Port McDonnell, a very rugged coastline here

and also the most southern point of South Australia (and 5700 kms to the South Pole)

Which way do I go which way do I go

We went from here and stopped off at some really rugged ports and coastal towns along the way

We came across this massive wind farm near Millicent on our drive back and stretching for about 40kms - it really was an impressive sight. You can see how big just even a blade of one of these windmills is by the size of the one on the ground below 

they seemed to go on forever





That's about

Frances - Adelaide - Sydney - Adelaide - Frances

We recently visited Rob's mum in Randwick, Sydney. Hi Janet!!!  :)

We went for a swim at Coogee, out for dinner at the Intercontinental (thanks to a friend of Janet's, Liz who won a four night stay there including a sizeable spending spree to be had in the hotel), we visited the brother in law on Australia Day for a great bbq and a nice dip in the pool (of course being over 40 degrees it was a good place to be), we also went for a lovely seafood lunch at Danny's at La Perouse.

All in all it was an enjoyable stay and it was lovely to catch up with Mum.

We had a day and night in Adelaide on our way back and caught a tram out to Glenelg

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.....

A nice suburb by the sea

Adelaide is a beautiful city - full of old architecture and stunning buildings.

We went to the Adelaide markets,we strolled around Rundle Mall and the Torrens River

Here Rob runs into an old friend in the street

Then it's back to the farm - where the dogs are just loving the country life

and don't think Buddy missed us at all

It certainly is a dogs life

Felix and Buddy are certainly great friends now - when they hear the bike or ute start up they're off like rockets to join Heather out for some fun on the farm.

Frances - South Australia

We arrived at Heather's property and she had been out that morning and bought 500 new sheep and lambs

And here is our welcoming committee

A few days reprive then it was off to work on the Monday - Rob captured some of Frances and Binnum from the silos at work

Then off to Mt Gambier the following weekend where Liz caught up with some of her long lost cousins

Frances Viterra was a lot more laid back than Bowmans 

instead of 450 trucks a day it was more like 50-70

Still the work was tiring especially after a 72 hour week and not a day off for 15 days

Then finally the rains came and the local pub was flooded

A big brown snake was signposted just outside the Frances pub as a sign that they are around

It also meant a few days off work and Heather, her daughter Kyla and aunty Maureen took ourselves to Penola (also the home of Mary Mackillop) where we visited some nice wineries and had lunch at Hollicks

We stopped off at Bool Lagoon on the way back (see picture of week for the froggy shot)

and we watched some bird life

The next day Rob and Liz drove down to Beachport - felt the need to be near the ocean

This jetty used to go 4,500 metres into Rivoli Bay but now is approximately half that length

still a long jetty though

Where the waters are pristine blue

Beachport was a beautiful spot with great coastlines

Then we drove round to Robe where we had some of the nicest fish and chips and calamari for a very long time (I can certainly recommend the deepsea boarfish - delicious!!)

Then of course it was a pale ale at the local pub before venturing off home