Thankyou to Nita for showing such grace and working on making a hard decision.  Nita could not have been kinder to me, and I am so glad to be back on board.

 

My goodness!  What a lot has happened in the interim since I last wrote.  Brian, Alice and I have had our holiday in sunny South Australia (check out the photos, hopefully), which was my forty-fifth birthday gift.

 

I had not been back to Coober Pedy, the biggest opal producing area in the World, since I was seventeen.  My goodness, how things have changed!

 

We didn't live in a dugout, those wonderful holes in the ground, because Mum was claustrophobic, a fact I did not find out until a decade after I had left.

 

Mum and John, her last husband, bought the Brewster General Store from my Nanna (the first white, permanent, female resident) and Uncle Jack, and then re-built it to become a supermarket.  They also constructed Coobers first restaurant, which hosted the first wedding reception, the power supply (which they later sold to the State Government provider), stopped the Town Hall being sold to Bepe Coro, our arch-rival (he had the other supermarket and hated our guts as I understood it, even though I visited his "Miner's Store" because it had a lot more atmosphere than ours, a great place to buy gelignite!), who was going to use it for storage, and, of course, did a lot of opal dealing, particularly to the Chinese buyers.

 

On our last night, we visited The Breakaways, which has the most spectacular scenery!  It is now a National Park, and I think the flies are the most numerous indigenous wildlife.  We were attracted to The Breakaways, the flies were attracted to us.

 

But seriously, folks, you have to see to believe.  I could have stayed there for hours.

 

The trip up was very easy, done in stages with stops at Pimba and a roadside convenience setup.  It's fully paved the whole way.  And, of course, the scenery is amazing - wedge-tailed eagles eating road kill, huge salt lakes baking white in the sun, more stars than at the Academy Awards, but these twinkle beautifully, and it's very easy to spot meteorites trailing their way in to our atmosphere.

 

Back here, Aaron, Brian's oldest son, was kind enough to look after all of our critters.  We had three roosters die.  No great loss, and the pigs were happy with the carcasses.

 

The other two roosters were eaten on Tuesday night.  Stringy little darlings, I brought them from cold water to the boil, and then gently simmered for ages.  It helped.  So did the star anise, garlic cloves, dried onions, peppercorns, cardomom seeds, bay leaves and anything else that I could lay my hands on.  They were a bit gamey, but the flesh, although a challenge, was tender.

 

Our weather here, like up at Coober, has been hot.  Tonight, finally, we have a thunderstorm.  The lightning has been enthusiastic.  I like lightning, but I do stay indoors all the same.

 

We stayed with Mum on either side of the visit to Coober.  It was wonderful seeing her again, and we were able to help a bit here and there, cleaning up, shopping, having people over and cooking for her.  It was such fun!

 

It's in the quiet times like this that I wonder how much longer my Mum will be on this Earth.  I don't want to lose her so early that I could say, "We didn't connect and I wish we had."  We are, praise God, very good friends, and unlike fifteen years ago, she really loves my visiting.  I was such a ratbag earlier that I would have tried the patience of a saint.  What a dramatic change in my life!

 

We have some new calves - Friesian crossed with Angus.  Angus being the bull.  They are a glossy black, and quite beautiful, three heifers and a bull, soon to be steer.  In another one of God's wonderful Coincidences, I had seen some black poll herefords, and commented to Brian about how lovely they were.  He wasn't buying any, commenting on the temperament.  So God provides my black glossies, but a different, quieter mix.

 

We brought back with us some wonderful meat pigeons.  I have a soft spot for pigeons, they look so terminally, innocently, surprised.  They are doing very well in the aviary, and it was interesting having them in the back seat with Alice - they cooed a lot and skated a lot with their clawed feet on the cardboard box floors.

 

Desert

 

You are as I remembered.

 

Stark but interesting -

burnt, pure, comforting in your ancient solidity

 

The sky, a turquoise dome, provides such a contrast

and rain comes when it will