Funk it up

A few months ago we bought an old caravan from a friend so we wouldn’t have to keep putting guests up in tents when they came to stay. It’s a classic old 1974 Viscount, with a gaudy gold DIY paint job. Inside and out. The cracked skylights had leaked water into the ceiling, rotting the plywood and fostering some fine moulds in the mattress and cushions. Rather than redo the roof we saved money by building a new roof over the top to stop the leaks before ripping out the ceiling, the bed and half the cupboards. It now has a new ceiling, two single beds and a new paint job. Emma is planning to give it another coat of paint to help funk it up and she’s enlisted the help of our friend to re-upholster the cushions.


For a long time the caravan was owned by an aerialist, a trapeze artist who would travel up and down the eastern seaboard going to festivals, towing her caravan behind her. Fortunately for us some of her stuff got left behind, tucked away in little drawers and cupboards – treasure waiting to be found. Feathers, jewellery, costumes, lights, underwear, glasses, belts, stickers and even tiny mirror balls. The kids now have one hell of a dress up box.


Today I had my first performance with the Bella Bago choir at the Choral Kaleidoscope in Port Macquarie. For the performance we had to wear black and purple with a splash of yellow. I have a favourite pair of old, black dress pants with suspenders which are not long for this world so I dug them out so they could shine once more. They have holes in them but I improvised and coloured in my leg with black texta where the holes were. I was having a lot of trouble finding a black or purple shirt until, minutes before I had to go Em fished a tight, shiny purple top from the dress up box. Perfect. The performance went well although I think everyone was upstaged by the all-male choir Blokes Notes who did some fun stuff including a Steve Taberner song that involved pulling out nose hairs with multigrips.


“I’m grateful that I went to Bryony’s and had a nice day, and played with Morrow.”
(Confused? Look)

The Mercy of Foxes

I walked to the tank in thick mist this morning. The water level had dropped about an inch overnight, which doesn’t sound like much but it works out at about 800 litres per day. We’re losing over five tonnes of water a week somewhere and I have no idea where, and the ground is already wet from the rain making it hard to spot. Tonight I will go and turn off the supply to Sue and Rob’s and see if the level drops again, if not then the problem is somewhere between the tank and the pump, including the Dairy.

We spent the day turning the half-finished duck pen into a chicken pen. The wire is up, perches are up and I made a gate, which I need to hang tomorrow. It was good to get it up fast, most of the hard work already done, as we will hopefully only be using it for while, until we’ve sorted out the mobile chook pen as part of the cell rotation system for the cows. Then it can house the duck again and all her new friends that are on the way. One of the locals down the road who has lived here all his life has offered us a drake who keeps trying to chase after the wood ducks, and next month I should be getting some Indian Runners from the guy I spoke to a couple of weeks ago. We’d like to get some geese too, to keep the grass down in the orchard. There is a gaggle of escapee geese that live down in Beechwood, grazing by the side of the road, at the mercy of foxes at night. There was an ad in the Beechwood Post once that said if you could catch them you could have them, and I was sorely tempted. I have enquired since but I get the feeling I might be taking away the town’s beloved geese. Unless nobody likes them. The new chicken pen is going to house Ange’s rooster Tiplet, along with two of Gladys’ daughters Claire and Lauren. Building up our breeding stock.


Em wants to do the caravan up so she can also use it as an art studio and I almost had a meltdown today trying to choose paint colours for it. Something that would match the fake 70s wood veneer and orange speckled laminex benchtops. What was I thinking? Finally I saw the light, relented and now I’m just going to let Emma sort it out. I can see why the Amish paint their buggies the same shade of grey.

Tonight we went up to Sue and Rob’s and watched Gourmet Farmer. This week he was talking about his pigs, Wessex Saddlebacks, which he is rearing on his farm in Tasmania to sell. We are considering getting some pigs one day so it was very interesting stuff, and interesting also to read his article on it, especially the expense of the grain. As we left we grabbed the rooster and the two girls to take to their new home. Tiplet was roosting in the lychee tree behind the chook pen and we all stood around, shining our torches into the branches, trying to find him. He was about seven feet up, the wrong end pointing at me as I reached up to grab him. We took them home, Noah got a photo and we put them on their new perches, Roddy crowing next door. The widow Marmalade has been shifted to the chook tractor for a while, until we make a new duck house somewhere.


“I’m grateful that I gave you those nails, and the duck, and we didn’t hang it up, and I liked the gate.”
(Confused? Look)