RDA, Riding for the Disabled Association!

Gday mates!

At first I have to ask you a big favour! Because writing about this association will lead to more readers (I hope) and that's why I want to ask my new readers to also read my previous story as that is a preface of this story. But also important; as you will notice my far from perfect English, it is necessary to also read my featured post at the beginning of my blog, then you will understand!


OK having said that, LETS START!!!

This story is all about the RDA of Bendigo. They provide horse riding and carriages driving to people with disabilities. Their programs have therapeutic, developmental and social value for riders and drivers of all ages.

The RDA is mostly run by volunteers and I must say that both, my hubby Fred and I, were very touched by all the effort these people put in this non-profit organisation.

It's not only the riding on the 1 rst and 2nd Wednesdays but also the care of the horses they give the day before. Jan has to brush and clean the horses who are being taken the next day and put a sheet on to avoid them from rolling in the dirt again. When Jan can't do it, volunteers come and do it.

Spider gets her special breakfast...

Then it's time to get them into the trailers and that's not always easy.

If you have seen my previous blog, you must recognise some names I also going to use in this story.

There are 4 horses/ponies picked up today for the riding so that means that one is staying on his own and that's Zip. He knows it and is the rest of the day very restless.

At the house sitting address, owned by Tony and Jan, 3 of the 5 horses/ponies are from the RDA and because Jan is President and Coach of the RDA a few horses are home at their property.

Arrived at the RDA site the horses are being stalled all in a separate area were they are being fed and cared for...

But not all horses present are from the RDA as there are clients who have their own horses but there are also volunteers who have horses they take with them.

Brushing, hugging, cuddling ......

and even some horseshoe care....

then it's time to start.....

The second Wednesday a month it's carriage day..... 

The volunteers of the RDA are amazing, they care very much for the disabled but they also give all their love to the horses!

Jack was nearly asleep ....

Is this all??? No it isn't!

Like my previous story, the most important pictures and films are gathered in a significant movie;

So here is for your pleasure;

Movie time;

 

Cheers!

See ya,

 Next time we jump to "The Netherlands" 

Farmers Life

G day mates!

What did I say?? It’s raining so here I am, finely back! In the mean time I showed you we are in the Netherlands and the people here are very happy as we brought the sun with us. Not all of course as we cannot imagine an Australia without sun, but at least we had nice weather till now and we are about two weeks here already.

Of course the stories of our adventures in the Netherlands will come later as I'm not finished yet with our last weeks before the big travel overseas.

As I said we had a fantastic house sitting again in Bendigo. It had something really special and that I will tell later in the next blog, for now I just want to show you our daily routine.

First, meet Farmer Fred;

We had to look after 2 ponies......., may I introduce; Jack and Spider....

Jack

Spider

3 horses, Badger, Zip and Jackson.........

Badger a Chestnut Horse

Zip a Strawberry Roan Horse

Jackson a Bay Horse

.....and 7 chooks (sorry, no names) who provided us with enough eggs daily to start a Bed and Breakfast haha!

At first we opened the little gate for the chooks to extend their area during the day. (At night they are locked inn to an area in which the foxes cannot come). Then we give them our leftovers out of the kitchen and we check their food and water and look for eggs.

One of the two ponies, Spider, had a special diet of which we had to mix all the ingredients and give it to her in the morning.

So our round was mix the food for the pony and give it to her, we had to watch the other pony, Jack, as he also liked that food very much so Spider had to be locked up in a special area that Jack couldn't reach her. We gave Jack the nearly empty bucket to lick the left overs out of it.  As soon as Spider was finished, Jack jumped at the empty trough and had special tricks to get the last bit out of it.

Then we check the food and water for the horses, checked some points which were tricky for leaks, as we said that area is very dry and after that we had our breakfast.

You must be wondering why there are not much pictures about that ritual; that's because I made a film for you to enjoy, so don't skip the MOVIE........

Movie time!

On regular base we had to collect the poo from the horses with a special machine and put it in one big heap. There we could put the poo in bags and place them outside the driveway near the road to sell for a good purpose which is the RDA (Riding for the Disabled Association)
We are not asked to do that but we thought it is such a good charity, we should continue that!

Fred is preparing the quad

Nearly empty;

Also for this "shit job" (haha, just joking) and providing the hay bales, I made a funny film;

Enjoy, MOVIE time;

After these jobs we had a well deserved beer at our favourite spot;

We had marvellous weather all 3 weeks, with sunshine mostly very day, approx. 25 degrees and at night nice and cool so we could enjoy the fireplace and have a good sleep.

Jan and Tony also gave us the opportunity to leave our caravan at their place during our overseas "family visit/ holidays", of which we are very thankful.
The original place we could leave our caravan was at Wally and Kay's place, in Barjarg our previous house sitting address, but leaving it in Bendigo saved us an extra trip and day before we left.

This house sitting life gives us a lot adventures and experiences about all sorts of animals and situations but the main thing is that we meet so much nice people of which a certain amount become real friends, and that's what life is for!

Jan, thanks for sharing your horse knowledge with us!

My next blog is about RDA from Bendigo, an incredible story in which you can see how important volunteers are!

Till then,

 Cheers!

Help!

Help!! I'm so busy, still haven't time to create a new story!

In the mean time we are in Holland and just to let you know I'm still around, I herewith put some typical Dutch pictures on the blog to warm you up for new adventures.

But my next two ones will still be of Australia, so please be patient, I'm back as soon as I can......

Sorry Aussies, I took some sun with us to Holland, hope you still have enough over there!

I'm going to set up our caravan......

Cheers and till soon!

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!