Busy Rainy Morning

Today is Saturday. Before we came into town today I decided to tackle a few things.  Cooking being the main one. Outside of course since I am determined not to cook in the caravan, even if it is raining outside.

 

 

When it is wet the otherwise quite spacious annex is very crowded. K has every chair we own unpacked and set up just in case someone needs them and because is it raining his tools are under the annex too.  The washing I did yesterday with the saved shower water is hanging from the annex roof. Yes I know I could have taken it down the hill to the shearing shed and hung it up there. Granted it would probably be dry by now but I would have got soaked opening the gate on the way.

 

Anyway back to the tasks.... I decided to make lunch with the left over roast lamb from the freezer. So I dodged the washing to use the outside burners to make Italian Herbed potato, sweet potato and roast lamb  with salad. Yum

I have just about worked out how to use the BBQ to make our gluten free bread.  Proofing the bread is a problem when the car is colder than the caravan. Bread rises really well in a warm car. But I had to heat the BBQ up so I put the tin on top of the BBQ lid wrapped in a wet tea towel. It made a sort of steam bath and up came the loaf a treat.

Bread is not too bad. Need a few more goes to get it perfect. But it tastes pretty good, warm with butter and cheese.

As I finished the loaf K came up the hill with more eggs... The chickens are laying four every day.So instead of turning the BBQ off I made a very large crust less quiche. K will be having quiche and salad for lunch for a few days.

I haven't quite worked out why my daughter has chooks. She, like her mother, does not like the taste of eggs. So while she is away doing the baby thing I have taken over her job of trying to work out what to do with  a superfluity of eggs.


Heading off to town get the house ready for the family (and new baby)  And upload a blog or two since the gods of the internet will let a SMS through at 3.30 am but will not let the signal stay on long enough to upload a blog with photos.


Cheers  Sue

A Ferg on the Move

Gentle days

A routine has developed here on the farm.


Breakfast sometime after sunrise, which thankfully is not as early here as in Mataranka since there is a 1 1/2 hour tine difference due to daylight saving. Check the water bucket under the shower and top up the toilet flush tank, or dump it in the twin tub for clothes washing.
K checks the power situation before making coffee in the pod machine if the sun has already started charging the batteries or in the plunger if it is still overcast.


Wander outside and contemplate the view. Be it raining, misty or sunny the view is pretty good.

Visitors at breakfast time

At the moment and probably for the next few days there is water in the buckets that we have placed to catch water runoff. Got twenty litres off the caravan roof yesterday and last night. Pumped through the filter that's one trip for water collection K doesn't have to do.

At sometime during the day the dogs, chickens and any other penned stock will get fed. K takes all 8 dogs for a run each day.

Two of the farm's dog contingent

 

Make bread, sort out food for dinner, try to use up some eggs, wash clothes, wander up to the gate to check the phone calls. Maybe go for a drive to one of the local towns we haven't visited yet.
We wandered over to Taralga one day, finding a café and drinking coffee watching the rain.

Will  get busier when the family get back from Sydney but .....

Mr Fix It and his new grandson.

Life is good.


Cheers Sue
A Ferg on the Move

Off the grid. Water

On the farm we are set up in off grid mode. That is we rely on LPG gas for the fridge and cooking, solar and generator for electricity. We have this all pretty much under control and can run and charge up most of the normal appliances everyone uses.

Water on the other hand is an issue. The family are still renting in town and planning to build their house here in the not too distant future. At present there in only an old rainwater tank on the shearing shed and that is for the stock … and the luxurious flushing toilet that a previous owner put in!  The water in the dams is not so attractive for people use.

 

So water has to be carried in every couple of days from town and transferred into the caravan tanks for washing and showers.  We have 180 litres so if we have lightning fast showers and save the dishes up for one or two big washes a day we can go four days before we run out. We have two 25 litre water containers that travel in the back of the Ute and every trip into town has include water collection. 

Once upon a time transferring the water was done by the old fashioned method of syphoning. Pipe with a weight on it into the containers, containers up on the ute tray and other end of tube into the tank. Worked well.

But  Mr Fix It was not content with that. Besides sometimes the water quality in some of the places we stay can be a bit dubious and he wanted to be able to filter if necessary. So this is the current solution.

In the black box is a water pump, exactly the same as the ones that are in most caravans today. (This one has spent a bit of time in the eldest son’s van one trip when his pump gave up)  The case is hung on the water heater by a hook.

A pipe goes into the water container and the pump pushes the water into the tank.

K has made a fitting that goes over the inlets so we don’t have to stuff a pipe into the tanks anymore. 


Water can be pumped through our filter as well, but this is town supply so we are not filtering it.

The pump is powered by the caravan batteries connected by an Anderson plug.  50 litres takes only a few minutes. Even I can do it.

We go into extreme water saving mode when camped off grid and so I have a 5 litre bucket sitting under the bathroom waste water outlet. One quick shower is about a bucket full and we recycle that either to fill the toilet flush tank or to use in the twin tub for clothes washing. I have to remember to go out and empty the bucket but it’s worth it to save K lifting more heavy water containers than necessary.  The kitchen grey water is run out to water the black berries or a garden when we have one.

Today I did the clothes in the twin tub with shower water and a  few extra  litres from the caravan tanks for rinsing. This is when the twin tub really comes into its own.

This kind of camping is a bit more work, but very satisfying. There’s something special about being reasonably independent.

Cheers Sue

 

A Ferg on the Move.

Grandparents again. Or more things I do to get a phone signal

First of all the baby has arrived. Mother and son doing well.  We are all happy and feeling very blessed. But...... there is always a story to tell.

There is no reliable phone service here on the farm. We have intermittent signal in various places over the block and I do get phone if I stand in the middle of the road near the gate. Every now and again for some completely mysterious reason there will be a beep and in will flow a few SMS messages. Sometimes there will be time to reply, but most likely  to answer I will have to hike up to the gate.

So even though we were suspicious that baby things were happening yesterday, unless I was going to camp out in the ute next to the gate,  we just had to wait to find out.

When I was woken by an unexpected message beep at 3.30 am this morning I was certain that there was important news. Mind you the time stamp on the message was 7.45 pm last evening. For some strange reason the gods of mobile phone signals decided to allow the SMS through the ether or wherever it all goes 8ish hours later. It was a media message and the signal disappeared immediately so no time to download it. 

Sure enough after I took the car up to the gate I was blessed by a photo of our newest grandson and his very exhausted mother. Danny Charlie born tea time yesterday. I didn't reply at 3.30am , so I sent love and congratulations after another trip to the gate at a more suitable hour this morning.

Can’t wait to see him in a couple of days when they come home from Sydney. And to see his mother and big sister who have been in Sydney near the hospital since just before we arrived. That’s our job in all this…. Keep an eye on the animals.

In the meantime there are still lots of births here. New lambs every day.

Cheers Sue

A  Ferg  on the Move

Darwin to Crookwell. Amusing and amazing

The recent dash from Darwin to Crookwell meant we didn't stop for sight seeing. In fact a lot of my photos were taken from inside the car. Well would you get out if it was either 38 degrees or there was lightening crashing down?

So the sky. Spectacular cloud formations, sunset as we hunted for a camp and smoke from the many fires.

Another sunset.



Smoke rising from fires behind Elliot township

Sun in the passenger window

Storm clouds just north of Pt Augusta. I couldn't
time it to get a shot of the lightening

Strange sights. A very unique tourist bus that is a cross between a sleeper car and a normal Greyhound bus. Boulders near the Devil's Marbles site. The strange alien at Wycliffe Well the UFO capital of Australia.

Devil's Marbles turn off is just ahead

Aliens at Wycliffe Well

Some kind of hybrid bus sleeper cabin

The landscape changes hourly.

Rain on the windscreen

Dry hot and brown

Red dirt

Last hotel in NT

Much greener camp between Hay and Narrandra

We did however find time to revisit an important tradition. Breakfast at Banrock Station Winery in SA's Riverland. We try to stock up both good food and good wine here every time we go past.

 

 

Balcony dining at Banrock Station Winery 

Murray River Flats

Decision time

 All set up on the farm now. Sheep and lambs grazing outside.

Sheep and a lamb or two at the farm.
This is the view from my doorstep for the next month or so.

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

 

Darwin to Crookwell. Settling in to travel

Mataranka has been our home for 7 months of this year. Travel mode is very different to our living set up. We sprawl out into the annex and except in really hot weather live outside the van most of the time.

 

Just about ready to hook up

So all the extra luxuries get put away and we live, still in quite luxurious circumstances, but with less.
Things need to be locked down. This we know. Or I thought we did. Someone, probably me, didn't look down closer to floor level before we locked the door and left Mataranka. Oh yes all the overhead lockers were shut. But every drawer had pushed open. Lucky nothing fell out..........So I'm out of practice.





Van all packed up for travel

 



 


K had an attack of the funnies and left these pegs on the back of the van. They are still there 6 days later.

Good quality pegs still on the line 6 driving days later

For the first time we travelled in convoy. The silver Ford sedan is going to be left in the east somewhere....still deciding where. While it is handy to have two cars with two workers the sedan is not really suitable for travel to many of the places we work. So K drove the ute towing our house and I followed behind. It is a bit strange watching your house travel down the road ahead.


My home disappearing over the rise

I don't drive at night. K loves night driving and is often the only caravan tower on the road after dark. So he has spent 6 days and more than 3500 kms pushing the Ute and caravan up to 95km/hr and I had the sea anchors out keeping the Ford below 100.

Still nothing beats pulling up in a road side parking spot and cooking in your own kitchen and sleeping in your own bed. And using your own shower.

Nothing like your own bed

Saw some spectacular scenery even though this trip was more like a race than a leisurely holiday.

Might post those pictures tomorrow.

We are settled on the farm. Its cool and wet. And I have to drive up to the gate to get phone, so I might be sitting in the car a lot.  Baby lambs in abundance around here. Pictures of them later too.

View from our camp on the farm.

Baby has not arrived yet so we are in time to mind the farm during the event.



Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

Hi everyone,
got phone for a few minutes. Travelling well. Had very hot 38 degree days at first but as we have come south we now have lightening and rain. First rain I have seen since we were in NSW in April. Lots of photos and stories to post later.


cheers Sue
A Ferg on the Move.