Deniliquin: Sheep Sales

Two blogs in two days! I must be getting the hang of this. In actual fact, I just had to share with you our recent trip to the Deni Sheep Sales Yard. Andy and Kate had 9 Merinos ready for sale so we took them along to the fortnightly sheep sales in town. The trickiest part of this ended up being getting the dim witted animals into the trailer (which was actually a horse float because that's all we had available). Even with good old Zali helping out, it still took a little while. But once on board it was a very quick process from off loading to sold! Here's a couple of pics of the morning event.

Melbourne.... with kids

We had a different to our usual experience of Melbourne last weekend (8 to 11th July), we took kids, 3 of them! Now when Rob and I go to Melbourne it usually involves some snazzy dinners, boutique bars and of course shopping. However, these sorts of activities were slightly limited by the addition of 3 kids under 3. That said, we still managed to have a fabulous time and as usual Melbourne was simply fantastic.

We (me, Rob, Jarvis, Kate, Andy, Saskia and Zara) arrived in Melbourne after a 3 hour drive with Sas and Jarvis "dying" for the toilet, they are recently out of nappies so there's no messing round with that sort of stuff so we pulled into the Botanic Gardens to use the amenities and ended up getting coffee and went adventuring through the childrens garden.

We then made our way to Fitzroy for some dinner at the pub. It was cozy and warm by the fire and the food was perfect. Thanks to miss Angela French we had a fabulous apartment in the middle of Melbourne to retire to. I almost fell over when I walked in, it is the trendiest yet most comfortable apartment ever, completely Ange and completely perfect for our weekend in Melbourne.

Saturday was spent at the Collingwood Childrens Farm and Growers Market. The farm is tucked away in a valley on a bend of the Yarra River. You wouldn't know you were in a busy city at all. The markets were really well managed with no useless stalls only top produce, yummy food and coffee to die for. We ate all kinds of yummy things and made sure we sampled all of the produce on offer (I gave the goat a miss). We then walked up the hill to the Abotsford Convent. There are a couple of little eateries in the convent grounds, one of which is Lentil as Anything, it is a fabulous vegetarian, not for profit organisation which asks it's patrons to pay what they feel the food (and the organisation) is worth. Unfortunately, the kids were starving and the wait was huge, so we made a small donation and then went to the Convent Bakery next door.

On Sunday we finally got to have a taste of the Victoria Markets. This sort of thing is definitely lacking in Sydney. It's a fabulous, huge market where you can buy lots of junk, but more importantly fresh produce: veges, fish, meat and most importantly... cheese. We stocked up on all the sorts of things we can't get in Deni and loaded up the portable fridge which we had brought along specifically for this purpose. We then made our way to Brunswick Street, had lunch at the Little Creatures Bar and then perused my favourite strip of shops.

We headed home on Monday after scrubbing ange's apartment clean of any evidence of the kids (just kidding ange) and a yummy breakfast at the George Street cafe. We had a great weekend in Melbourne but it was lovely to snuggle up by the fire back at Kintyre and gobble up some of (ok, most of) the cheese and wine we had purchased in Melbourne.

Deniliquin: Cousins Reunited

The big Australian adventure is definitely off to a slow start. But a lovely slow start. We arrived in Deniliquin (Deni) 2 weeks ago and the plan is stay here for about another month or so. We are lucky enough to be staying on Rob's brother's farm about 5 minutes out of town. The Farm is called 'Kintyre'. Kintyre is 50 acres of mostly cleared grazing land. The farm is bordered by a creek and gorgeous Murray Red Gums, the house is on slightly higher land in the middle of the property surrounded by vege gardens, sheds, chook pens and scrubs and trees. It is the perfect spot to start our Australian adventure.

The last 2 weeks have been spent shedding our fast pace Sydney headspace and getting into the Deni groove. This involves getting up after 8am (sometime 9), coffee and breaky and then to the animals. The chickens need to be let out, sheep fed, dogs unchained and the cat chased out of the kids bedroom. Rob and Andy then get off to a 'gentleman's start' to the working day (i.e. a 10am start on the building site). Some days the boys stay on the farm and put up fences, dig holes and other man-o-man jobs (Adam, Cy and Jamie; training will start soon). My days are generally spent hanging out with Jarvis and his cousins Saskia and Zara, cleaning, baking and some exploring of the local area. Jarvis has been loving the time with his cousins and the space to go a little crazy. He has recently acquired a balance bike (thanks Finnley) and purchased a new helmet so he has been pretty much riding his bike from sun up to sun down.

A couple of photos of the kids at play.... (this lot of photos are a bit kid focussed, don't worry i'll include some tractors and other fun stuff in the next post).