I was headed to a meeting of the Olijnyk minds back in the old country. They grow a lot of pines out that way.
The bus was very pleasant. I worked on my laptop until the battery croaked, then for the other six hours I read my book and looked out the window and contemplated the mysteries of life.
Before too long, I was back in the Rendelsham scrub with Anna, having a look around. Not much has changed. I used to spend whatever time I could in there, until I discovered the magic of skateboards.
Evidence of human occupation.
Me: "Why would anyone dump their rubbish here?"
Anna: "Well, because it's convenient and cheap"
She's wise.
We made it to the cemetary. One of the nicest examples of the form if you ask me.
These belong to our nice old neighbours Col and Ethel.
On the way back, we spotted some cows.
Baiting
Tough crowd
The home stretch. The trick to making it extra fun is whenever you hear a car or a motorbike coming, run like hell and hide. It saves you from imagined villains and generates a lot of laughs.
This is the weird bee shed (named so because they used to keep bees there) over the road from our house. It's for sale if you're interested in turning it into a cafe or something.
Back at the homestead, brother Pij had arrived with Tess (his girlfriend, not our dog. I know, it's confusing). He set about fixing up the old coffee grinder.
Tess the dog wasn't able to make it (neither was Rosie the human), but Penny was there and she was loving it.
We took a drive to Southend to some crazy cliffs. I think it's actually called 'Buffoon's Point'.
As if to discourage buffoonery, it began pelting down rain.
Good scrub to the right of me,
buffoons to the left.
Buffoon's ladder
We waited out the shower in the car.
Back home again, we spent a lot of time building and tending to a fire.
Anna and Pen
It was inevitable that this kind of stuff happened. Notice that Pij is blogging his own leap. I think he has a bit of a Rick Howard style.
I paused to snap a photo of Bub hand cleaning the gutters, when she appeared a tad concerned by Pij's latest leap.
He took it a step too far and frazzled his fringe.
That's about it, really. A great weekend adventure, and fantastic to see my kin. On the way home, we stopped for a peep at the Woakwine Cutting, a massive path through a stone hill that a couple of farmers made over a few years in the late '50s. People are amazing.
I also made a video on the last afternoon of our stay, in the spirit of the other fancy tourist ads they've been trotting out for SA hotspots recently. Bye for now.