Taff Down Under 3

 

Greetings from a frosty Canberra, news from your old mate down under.

First of all SHOCK HORROR!! Saturday night it rained, proper rain, enough to get the streets wet, and puddles to form. Wow! People came out of their houses to watch, small children hid under the bed until it had passed. I was beginning to wonder how the hell anything grew here, especially as all the reports are of farmers going bankrupt due to the unseasonable weather.

 

This from the BBC;

"Sunday, 21 July, 2002, 12:09 GMT 13:09 UK

Drought ruins Australian farmers

Many farmers in Australia are facing financial ruin as they try to cope with the worst drought in almost a decade. Areas of Queensland and New South Wales have not seen a drop of rain in two years, and some are experiencing the lowest rainfall since records began in 1900.

Australia's wild weather

Dec 1999: Cyclone

Bernie rips through north- west Queensland

Dec 1999: Snow fell on Mount Hotham in Victoria's Great Diving Range over Christmas

Jan 2002: Floods in New South Wales

Jan 2002: Hailstones the size of bowling balls hit Kingscliff in northern New South Wales

Jan 2002: Electrical storms and temperatures up to 45C in tropical Queensland."

But I can sleep soundly now; I love the rain, and would be sorely tried to live in a land without it.

Other news:

Not a lot to report this week. Bethany has been off school all last week in her winter holidays, we did some fun things including a trip to the local climbing wall. (At her request, before I get accused of bullying her!) Bethany is scarily good at climbing, and has a great attitude to it. Not only will she do a roped climb, but also she will then repeat it, and work out little eliminates for herself, missing out selected holds. I hope she keeps this up, would be a nice way for us to bond. We have agreed to go once a week from now on as a treat.

As we enjoyed ourselves so much, and I hadn't had a chance to do any climbing, Bethany isn't quite big enough to belay me yet, LeeAnne had a day off on Friday, so we went again.

We took Tom (Bethany's "boyfriend") a funny little chap, enjoys wearing girls clothes and make-up. He wasn't quite as keen as Bethany, kept getting 4 foot up the wall, bursting into tears and asking to be let down. To be fair to him, after lots of encouragement from Bethany, he did top out a few times.

Highlight of the day was LeeAnne's belaying of me. As she hadn't done it before we decided to have a practice. I showed her the way to use the belay, and she seemed quite happy. "I'll go up the wall and jump off so you can see what it's like to hold me," said I foolishly. I climbed up about 20 foot and sprung off. Halfway down, LeeAnne passed me going the opposite direction fast.

She's only a wee thing you know.

Anyway, we all had great fun, and are going to make a regular thing of it.

 

I had that interview on Thursday night, went ok, but lots of local competition, I'm not holding my breath on it. Nevermind a few new good looking job adverts in the local rag this Saturday, and when I'm finished typing to you lot, I'm going to ring around.

Saturday night we went to a party at some work-mate's of LeeAnne, very nice couple. Bout forty people there, but once all the polite people had gone we got down to some serious drinking. Sunday was spent trying to piece the night before back together. I realised that I had invited several strangers round to our place for a meal in a fortnight, and LeeAnne would kill me if I told you what she had got up to. Very nice to start making a few friends here though.

We've been adopted by a currawong. Funny little bugger, bout the size of a crow, we've named him George. He turns up every morning when we are outside having our early morning gasper, and warbles at us for grub. We can tell it's the same one, as he has a dodgy wing, and limps. He is now confident enough to take bread from our hands, but the cat has its eye on him, I think its jealous, as it loves stale bread. The twat.

 

Other visitors to the garden this week have been a flock of Cockatoos lovely to look at, but hell of a skrake on them.

Ah well, that's it for another week, keep the floods of replies coming in, my mailbox is jammed with them. Is it arse!!!!