Lost loved ones and found a lost love!

G'day Mates!

Strange title huh?  Curious?? Can imagine!!

First of all I like to apologise for taking so long to write a new story but so many things happened lately I didn't had the time nor the energy and I even didn't had the inspiration.

Well of course the lost one was my very dear uncle Rob. I wrote that already in my previous story. They live in Queensland, Gold Coast and because we are house sitting in Bendigo I had to fly to Coolangatta on my own.
In the mean time we also lost my aunt Maja, living in The Netherlands and so we cannot attend at the funeral. We are going to Holland soon but not in time for the funeral.

We hope both, Rob and Maja, will have peace and happiness where ever they are now.

As I said, we are going to the Netherlands end of April which also means a lot of organisation. Luckily we can leave our caravan here at our last house sitting address in Bendigo and so we have to sort out what we want to take with us as between leaving here and our flight lies 5 days which gives us a bit time to pick up other stuff we want to take with us and what we have stored amongst family and friends.

Then we are trying to sell the car! We might have been nagging a bit about it but apart from some minor repairs, which could happen to any car, he never let us down even when he had to tow our caravan which actually is too heavy for him and that's the only reason we have to sell him.

Of course that also was a lot of work, cleaning in and outside, water is scarce here in Bendigo so you have to be careful and so we struggled with 1 bucket of water but he came our perfect!

Anyhow that's some side information, now we come to the funny part, the "found a lost love" part. The loved one found wasn't mine but my hubby's. Have you ever seen the show " Memories" ? It's about people who are looking for their old, mostly first love  and they are being helped by the people of the program.

Fred has been engaged for a few years more then 50 years ago (Crikey!) with a girl named Ella but in the end she chose for another guy, (lucky me!). After many years, we were already together, Fred found out from one of her relatives that she was living in Australia and he tried to trace her as we often went on holidays to Australia so we could go and visit.  Didn't had any luck. Then Facebook was born and several times he tried to find her through that, no luck.

Hey! No, there is nothing wrong with our marriage, he just wants to know how she went in life!!

Then, last January, he looked again and there she was, on Facebook, her grandchildren put her on, finding it time for her to get into the social media world.

Mind you! she lives in Perth, on the other side of the airport where we have been staying with Sheila at the Central caravan park.

After making contact we found out that she is a widow for not so long and she really wanted to meet Fred as well as me. So here she is, staying with us for 10 days at our house sitting address of which the owners proposed to let her stay with us in stead of a hotel. That is highly appreciated ! Thanks Jan and Tony!

We had a lovely time, all Ella wanted was to relax, read a book and have lots of talks, cries, laughs and drinks. And because the nights are pretty cool, Fred lit the fire which made it even more cosy.

We had a great spot outside at the back under a big umbrella and views into the bush were we spent many hours.

Me being absent because of the funeral for two days, gave the two the opportunity to talk about the past and the good old days.

But we also had time to do a little tour and so we went to Castlemaine which is a lovely little town and worth visiting.

Castlemaine is a small city in Victoria, Australia, in the goldfields region of Victoria about 120 kilometres northwest by road from Melbourne and about 40 kilometres from the major provincial centre of Bendigo.

Back in Bendigo we suddenly found a hidden lane with some nice eateries...

and here, also Bendigo, Ella shouted us a nice lunch on the waterfront...

We again have a very special house sitting and I've got a lot to tell but I'm afraid that won't be earlier then we will be in The Netherlands. Well, I assume we have a lot of rain there again so there will be time enough. No, I'm not a pessimist but every time we see the Dutch news, some reporter is standing in the rain!

Anyhow, please keep looking for my new stories as they will be worth reading!

Till then I say, stay healthy!
Cheers!

3 April 2016, mixed feelings

G'day Mates,

Today my Hubby Fred got a year older so we did a little celebration......(no we can't afford that real champagne, we got that from a friend which on itself is very special, but that's for later)

Sadly also today my dear uncle Rob passed away and we are very grateful we have had a great Christmas together.

Love you.

R.I.P

It will take some time before I come back with a new story, till then, be safe and enjoy life.

Animal talk

G'day Mates,

In the mean time we are spending some time around the Melbourne and Gippsland area but because that's mainly with family and friends I don't have much adventures to share with you. Not that the people we are with are boring but its just not interesting for you guys and for us a bit private.

But because I don't want to disappoint you and I don't want to loose my faithful followers, I will show you the last few days of our house sitting in Barjarg.

This time it's only a movie but quite lovely as I may say myself, just watch and enjoy;

    

Movie time;

Our next house sitting is in Bendigo, see you then!!

Happy Easter!

Cheers!

Picking Grapes

G day mates,
Guess what! We have been grape picking for a few days. This is the picking season and because we're close to some wineries we thought let's try to get the job, thinking it would be easy.

I sent an e-mail to two wineries and one of them called me back on a Monday and Tuesday morning 07.15 we were standing in the middle of the grapes ready to pick. We tried to catch up with the rest of the pickers, who worked the whole day but we couldn't cope so we decided to shorten our working hours, after discussing it with the over-man it was OK.  We still started every morning at 07.30 with the result that we had to get up at 06.15 in the morning, Crikey, that's a long time ago we had to set the alarm clock and not used to it anymore!

After a cup of coffee, half sandwich, getting into the car and on our way, it's 32 k's to drive, I come to my senses half way and realise that this is such a great time of the day.

The sun is coming up and you get the most beautiful light you can get for pictures.

 But we also realise that it's dangerous on the road because of wildlife being active (watch the movie) and most dangerous was the last approx. 7 k's before the turn off to the winery, we had the sun, just coming up, right in the eyes and even the sun visors were of no use so we had to be inventive and stuck some brochures under the mirror.

The Winery we go to is.....

The views at the winery were magnificent to..

Grape picking maybe sound very romantic but it's hard work and even scary sometimes. First you have to be careful with the clippers because it's easy to cut into your fingers.

Sometimes the grass and weed is very high so there could be hiding everything f.i. snakes, luckily we didn't see one. And what about spiders? The grapes are covered with webs

and where webs are, are spiders and we have seen several residents of the webs. One of the pickers caught a redback spider with his clipper and I hope you don't mind that I didn't take a picture of the huntsman walking over my hand, brrrrr. And sometimes you find an abandoned birds nest hiding in the ranks, I rather see a resident of that.

At approx. 10 o clock it's 15 minutes smoko time and we all go to our car to have something to drink and eat.

And during smoko we still enjoy the beautiful views...

After smoko we rattle our painful joints and start picking again. 

The pickers pick as a couple, on each side of the grape vine is one picking so you also have to be careful not cutting into the fingers of your partner.... 

In between the over-man collects our full buckets, throw the grapes into these big crates and brings it to the winery....

And this is the result....

Its a shame you can't smell what I did.....

We stopped at 1 o clock and that's about lunchtime for the others. It's enough for us. We go home and relax for the rest of the day.

Last but not least, ITS MOVIE TIME (don't skip the movie!!!)

See ya next time, Cheers!

Funny, Scary, Exciting, Beautiful; all in one day; 5 March!

G'day Mates!


5 march 2016 is a day I will always remember. It started with a loud boink at our bedroom window in the middle of the night and after that was the sound of an unhappy miaow so we figured out it was the cat Milek trying to get into our bedroom from outside through the fly-screen.
Of course the boink woke us up and as soon as I opened my eyes I saw something black cruising through our bedroom but I thought it was the shadow of the cat or I must have been so excited for the things to come that day, something on my bucket list,  that I was seeing things which wasn't there.

Anyhow we went back to sleep, not for long because as soon as there is the smallest, tiny, little light commencing the beginning of the day, Milek starts miaowing till he has food in his bowl. Amazing actually is that Cinnamon, the other old cat, normally is as deaf as a post but she knows exactly when one of us comes into the kitchen to feed them as you can see her waggling from the living room, where she has her own chair, to the kitchen.

It's only 06.15 so I decided to back to bed to get some more sleep but as soon as I come into the bedroom, I see that black thing again and I hear the blinds rattling. So I turned on the light and said to Fred that I think there is something scary in the room and it must be somewhere near the blinds. Then suddenly we see some black shapes sticking out under the blinds and we decide to be brave and move the blinds a bit, me being the farthest away from the window so Fred had to be the hero. The black shape started to fly and lands on his belly on the floor, hell knows why, but it did. MY GOD, it was a BAT, Crikey, isn't that scary!! No idea how it came inside other than the cat could have taken it in. It was laying there very quiet so Fred got a towel and threw it over it, then carefully picked it up and put it outside where he or she took off.

You can imagine, no sleep any more.

After a little brekkie with coffee we took the car and drove towards Mansfield, before Mansfield we turned off to Tolmie and went into the high country. Climbing higher and higher, we turned off again into a dirt road to the Hidden Trails horse riding.

Yes! I booked myself a two hours horse ride, through the bush and paddocks, over the hills.

Coming there already looked like a set out of a movie, or some scene out of  McLeod’s Daughters.

Yeh, that's what I want for those two hours, being one of the McLeod’s daughters actors, Stevie maybe, riding on a horse, mustering cattle. But of course that's just a dream as you have to ride a horse hell of a lot better then I do haha.

Anyhow I survived, even when the horse, (his name is Shadow, what a coincidence, two shadows on one day), slipped a few times and jumped aside as a bird scared him and I didn't fell off!

I had a great time, I even was very lucky as we should have been, apart from the guide with the three of us but the other two had cancelled just half an hour earlier so I was on my own together with Annie the guide so it felled like a private tour.

It doesn't look that way but the track behind me is very steep and I got instructions here, before we went up, how to handle and how to stay on the horse!

Great view towards Mount Buller.....

After the two hours, Fred had been staying behind reading as he's not into riding horses, we came back and I could hardly get off Shadow, I was so stiff we had to use these steps to get me off.

I helped cooling down Shadow and after that we went home, me very satisfied......

Surprise Surprise!!

Movie time!

To give you an idea of the surroundings, which I couldn't show you during my ride as it was too dangerous to get my camera without letting loose of the reins, I here show some pictures I made during a drive with the car here.

This is Tolmie, doesn't look very welcoming hey!

But this does......

The mountains just outside Tolmie;

In these mountains the film "Man from Snowy River" has been filmed.....

You can even book a ride, half day or longer, even days, and then you go to "Craig's Hut" a set out of the film. 

Isn't it beautiful....

from this hight we go back down, little movie, maybe don't seem scary but I can assure you that the slopes were very steep AND deep!

Movie time;

Finally back down......

I hope you enjoyed this again!

See ya next time,

Cheers!