I have just come in from a big ride on my trusty quad bike. I needed to check on the fence repairs & on the goats that are running with the sheep & cattle in the big paddocks after we had the escape last week. I took my camera & my phone, although if I had gotten into trouble out there I don't know who I could have called to rescue me.
Home alone at the moment. Contingency plans... like getting the feeders filled & putting out hay are one thing but as we all know the Law of Murphy usually kicks in when you think you have everything sorted.
Yesterday, I went to the other town - 45 minutes drive from home and got back about half five so I'd have plenty of daylight left for stock checks. Not really sure how this happened ...I have no recollection of putting the headlights on BUT they were ON when I went to use the ute 2 hours later. Needless to say the battery was flat... trusty bike to the rescue.
Then I finds a dead kid ...about 5 weeks old near the water trough in the yard at the shed. Not happy about that and no sure of the reason why! It is somewhat concerning to say the least that the blokes decided to use the area out front of the goat shed to store hay. There is grain in it, grain attracts mice and mice attract other things. Digressing slightly, when we had the mouse plague, the foxes were catching mice on the hay bales. The other 'thing' that mice attract is snakes. We have seen them going across the road from the hay bales, have had them in the goat shed so that is a possible cause of dead kid.
That is not a good start to my time alone. The agenda for today was the stock check. I prefer to use the bike as I'm closer to the ground & can see the rocks & stumps in the long grass... so away I go.
And again, my friend Murphy has been busy. The fence fix was holding OK but the stock numbers don't look right. I had far more ground to cover to find animals, there were some goats running with the sheep but I needed to find more so further afield I rode. Then I found 3 boys in the neighbour's paddock. They are close to water, but naturally no gate in the near vicinity. I'll have to contact him later when he gets in from harvesting to work out how I can get them back. They may have to stay there until I have another person to help me.
Also I didn't find all the cattle that we have on agistment, only saw half of them ...they did the big escape a few weeks back into the neighbour's & out onto the road. The fences are not really good and the kangaroos test them. The terrain is rough & rocky in places, and the vegetation is thick in parts. I decided to abandon any further riding around today. Murphy will no doubt make more mischief come tomorrow... so I'll be out on the bike again, just to check what he's been up to!
Before I got out of the house paddock I found this fella looking at me.
This is a 'roo' hole we patched the other day. While it's a common sight to see kangaroos jumping over fences, they only do that when pushed ...like when they are in an all fired hurry to get away. Their prefered method of dealing with fences is to go 'under'. Once they've made a hole, they keep going back to it. We have lots of 'roos on the property, so we have lots of holes in the fences, making it difficult to keep small stock, like sheep & goats (in particular) in a paddock with mesh fences.
Nice bit of beef? I don't eat meat!
This is malley scrub. No riding through this stuff.
Open grazing country, rising up to a rocky hill with native pine vegetation.
And so ends my first 24 hours of Home on my Ownsome! I do enjoy the peace & quiet but I would rather be doing my 'thing' than having to keep an eye on my friend Murphy. Now, I'm off the get the jumper leads & try getting the ute going!
Cheers from "the middle of nowhere"
P.S. If you click on the photos they will enlarge.
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