The horses came home! Very sleek and slim and still in the head. As if they’ve been off on a yoga and detox retreat for six weeks! They couldn’t believe there was grass at the end of their stint of starvation so they were snatching every tuft as I walked them in from the Angle so as not to risk them or the truck on the rough road on the property.
My rushed endeavours to fence a paddock for them had backfired. I had hired someone I didn’t like or trust to do a day’s fencing for me and he had done the most appalling job. A blind, cack handed city slicker could have created something with more finesse. So I tried diplomacy but he was an aggro little bush pig so in the end I had to give him the straight talking he could understand! And I learned a good country lesson. it’s better to wait for the experts however long it takes than to rush in and create a mess that has to be fixed later.
The horses didn’t like that paddock anyway so they have migrated up onto the House Ground and despite the complete lack of fences and the cattle wandering on, off and round, have made no attempt to stray further.
As I was walking the horses in and showing them their new home another truck with the roof insulation was trying to find us so I had to wade through the river and walk up the hill to try and track him down as I had left the car up on the ridge where I had met the horse truck. Despite the driver’s insistence that he didn’t want to risk getting bogged on the property I thought I knew better . . . and sure enough he got stuck with no way forward and no way back on the damp red dirt on the other side of Hoppy’s Bridge (as we all call the cement causeway that John & Sally Hopkins put in ten years or so ago). We were going nowhere fast until I remembered all the carpet we had ripped out of the house and drove round and retrieved it piece by piece (Lord, I really need a ute for the farm!). Still, it took almost three hours to get him free, unload the insulation into the trailer and deliver it down to the house and into the garage and get him off again. Another big lesson – can’t bring a six wheeler with a lazy axle onto Avalon again!
Whoever thought that living in the country meant a quiet life??
The end to that extraordinary day was when I literally ran out of petrol halfway down the long thin river paddock! Thank God for Ged (Mr Solar and a neighbour) who brought me fuel and is determined to be a knight in shining armour to this damsel in stress!