Life on the Farm

Have managed to get an internet connection so thought that I would update our blog.  


We're house-sitting for Jeff's boss's brother in a rural area called Childers in Queensland. Childers is a farming area and is surrounded by sugar cane plantations, macadamia nuts, melons, oranges, limes, bananas papayas and more.  We're staying in a gorgeous wooden 'Queenslander' property (house on stilts to catch the breezes) set in 28 acres with no near neighbours, with 4 cows, a dog, a cat, 5 goldfish, 2 ducks and 2 chickens.  We're in the routine of feeding the menagerie but arrived home when the sun was setting last night which was a different story altogether... the only thing I could liken it to was the Blair Witch Project!


The cows are left to roam during the day and are brought to a smaller area at night... Jeff shook his sheep nuts(!) as per usual to bring them in to no avail and had to go off with a torch searching for them.  After half an hour they all turned up together, appearing out of the black void and scaring us silly.  
Meanwhile,  I had to hunt for the free range chickens which I found whilst battling through cobwebs and numerous cane toads.  (Cane Toads were introduced to Queensland from South America in 1935 in an unsuccessful attempt to deal with the cane bug beetles: the toads are vermin and just keep breeding with nothing to threaten them).  
Suspicious, unidentifiable noises in the grass surrounded me as I finally managed to get the 2 chooks into their roost... Rummaging around in the dark, I was then spooked by 'something in the woodshed' which revealed itself as yet another cane toad along with a humungous spider crawling over the animal feed: yukkadoodle.


The dog (a beautiful cattle dog called Digger), had gone AWOL and as we were calling him, various pairs of eyes shone in our torchlight: none of them Digger's.  He eventually just appeared at Oli's side which spooked us all!  When we finally accessed the house we realised that the cat wasn't in yet... we could hear her mewing and eventually found her stuck 15 feet up a tree outside... bloomin' heck... what a night!