It’s been several days since I’ve posted and the problem with that is I forget what we’ve done. Although, I do know that after our glowworm excursion on Tuesday, Lou, Christine and I didn’t do much at all on Wednesday. We all needed a day of rest.
On Thursday, I had a Zoom meeting related to my hospital board work. The meeting was at 4:00 p.m. Wednesday Eastern time, so that was 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning Aussie time. I have a little trouble getting my days straight, especially when I have to get it right due to having a meeting. My colleagues at UHS were very impressed and they say I set a record for being the most distant person to attend a UHS meeting.
After my meeting we went for a walk. Rylstone is a lovely, quaint little town and the countryside is very serene. I think Lou picked a great location and he is really happy here. We had a good walk through town and then we walked along the Cudgegong River. That’s the river we kayaked on last Sunday. Down behind the town’s fairgrounds there’s a nice place to swim in the river, if you were so inclined.
Here’s a poor selfie attempt in front of the Welcome to Rylstone sign.
Later in the afternoon, Lou did some yard work and his neighbor Christian came over to help do the edging. Lou’s got an acre of land to care for and he is working to make it full of plants, shrubs, trees and flowers. It’s a beautiful garden with lots of flowering things. Lou is also an avid bird keeper and he has several aviaries with wonderfully colored birds.
After dinner we spent the evening watching tennis.
Friday I did laundry in the morning and then had a lake association Zoom meeting at 11:00 a.m. Everyone kind of puttered around much of the day. Lou is always off doing chores around the property. And I watched tennis. At 5:00 p.m. Lou’s neighbor Debra came for a drink. She’s an interesting woman who lives in Sydney, but comes up to her weekender. She is a case manager in labor relations. We enjoyed talking with her and when Margaret, Clare and Daniel came to join us for dinner, we invited Debra to stay and eat with us, so we had a table full. It was a nice evening with good food and conversation.
Saturday I went to Mudgee with Lou to do grocery shopping. On the way we passed the Windemere Dam. The Cudgegong River is dammed in 3 places, one in Rylstone, one close to Mudgee at Windemere, and the last is Burrendong Dam. Windemere is a very large lake and it is beautiful nestled among the rolling hills.
After shopping and lunch we went to Margaret’s to help with a project. She is replacing one of her water tanks, but the concrete pad where the old one sits needs to be enlarged to accommodate the larger new tank. So, she needed to pour concrete. Lou and Margaret’s brother Ray, who tragically died in an accident last year, was always one to acquire equipment and stuff and he had given Margaret a cement mixer that she’s had in a shed. Job one was to get the mixer down to the tank site, which meant putting new wheels on it. One wheel was replaced easily, but the other wouldn’t come off because we couldn’t get the cotter pin out of the hole, but we decided to try rolling it onto the trailer anyway. Fortunately, it did move and with lots of pushing and pulling, we got the thing in the trailer. Once down near the work site, Margaret was able to finally get the new wheel on after a lot of finagling. And, Ray was true to his word when he told Margaret the mixer did work. It started right up. Clare calculated the water to concrete mix formula and into the mixer they went. The old, rusty mixer did a fine job after a cloud of concrete dust spewed out. We all had to don masks to avoid inhaling all the dust. Clare did yeoman’s work shoveling the concrete out of the mixer and Margaret used trowels to tamp down the concrete. Lou and I were in charge of holding the mixer in place while the concrete either poured out or was shoveled and I toted the bags of concrete from the shed to the work site.
We worked hard, but it was fun working together. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough bags of concrete to finish, but we’ll get the rest poured sometime next week. While we were pouring concrete, Christine was busy clipping the greenery overhanging the planter boxes lining the carport. It was nice that we could help Margaret with the work. She works so hard and is busy all the time so helping out is a good feeling.
Clare raises goats and there were many in the paddock. Some of you might recall that when we were here in 2020 one of her goats had twins which she named Christine and Linda. Here are 3-year-old Christine and Linda.
Saturday evening we had dinner with Margaret, Clare and Daniel. Daniel cooked kangaroo! At first, I was a little squeamish about eating kangaroo meat, but it was actually delicious. It’s a very lean meat that tastes somewhat like beef, but with a fuller flavor and not gamey.
And then Sunday was a day of rest and lots of tennis watching.
OH NO Adding cement mixing and pouring into your toolkit??