DOES THIS TRACTOR MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG?

Well, does it?

I have to say that this weekend epitomised the entire reason why we moved to this property in the first place.

On Saturday, Courtney's boyfriend came over, and I must admit that I had several manhattans by dinner time was in a very very good mood. As a family collective, we thought it would be fun to prank the kid's old school mates.

Yes, that is right. Two grown men and three kids sat around the family dinner table pranking their friends.

My favourite was:

Me: "Hello is Miss Wright?"

Unsuspecting Kid: "No."

Me: "This isn't Miss Wright?"

U.K.: "No. Who is this?"

Me: "This is Mr Wong. I am looking for Miss Wright."


And the night only went downhill from there.

I ran out of vermouth to make manhattans so I walked up the street to the bottle shop. That is right, in the middle of nowhere, there is a well stocked liquor store open until 8:30pm. It doubles as a gas station.

I bought three bottles of cheap red wine (for Stuart) and the biggest bottle of vermouth one has ever seen. On the way home, the box dropped and all the bottles went crashing down to the street.

I heard a very loud sound of a bottle smashing to bits. I hoped that it was one of the cheap bottles of red wine, but of course it was the vermouth. I was too embarrassed to go back to the bottle shop, but I sucked it up and bought another bottle, where the clerk proceeded to laugh at me and tell me "I hope your luck gets better."

Oh yes, I almost forgot that the Eurovision Song Contest was on all weekend and we were glued to the TV every night.

For those of you who may not be familiar, Eurovision is a song contest where every country in Europe enters their favourite band and they all compete to win. The budget for the show is approximately 300 million Euros. Every number is costumed and choreographed with LCD walls and floors, lasers, pyrotechnics, trampolines, conveyor belts... anything the mind can imagine.

There are some horribly funny entries (generally from Eastern European countries) but others are simply amazing. Like the UK entry. Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote and played the piano for this entry. Greece put on a hot show, which concluded with the well muscled singer, dressed in white, ripping his shirt wide open.

He gets my vote.

Anyway, Norway won. Check out YouTube for his song, I am too lazy to do a link.

A tid bit of Eurovision history for you. It launched ABBA's career.

How was your weekend??

MEET MR AND MRS ADDER

Living surrounded by thousands of acres of national forest brings many wonderful visitors into our parcel of land.

Black cockatoos, Kookaburras, Finches and Butterflies all flutter over to say hello and of course it is always a blessing when the Kangaroos drop by for a cup of tea.

Some visitors, no matter how infrequent are never welcome.

This would be one of them:


The Death Adder.

Last week, this little guy's long lost cousin stopped by to check out the stables.

Let me tell you about Mr D. Adder's family. The Death Adder by most accounts is the ninth most venomous snake in the world. Personally I don't really know what difference it makes how deadly a lethal venom is, but there you go.

Death Adders are slow moving snakes that have a tendency to remain still and motionless. A person can walk with in centimeters of this snake and not even know it, or even be attacked.

Despite the fact that they move slowly, they posses a lightening fast strike, one of the fastest and most accurate in fact.

Another interesting tid bit is that Mrs D. Adder actually gives birth to live young and not eggs.

As interesting as the Adders sound, I will not be inviting them over for a martini anytime soon but what should one do when they are faced with these unexpected visitors.

According to the snake guy we met at the local agricultural show, get a shovel and... nope, not chop their heads off (that is an offence attached to a $10,000 fine).. get a shovel and put them in a bucket that is deeper then Mr Adder is long and call a snake removalist.

I don't think I will be attempting that method and fortunately, there is one other option.

Grab your garden hose and turn the water on Mr Adder. Spraying directly Mr Adder will only piss him off, however by pointing the hose in the air, the falling water will simulate natural rains. Mr Adder hates to cool down and will slither off back home.

This method also proves highly effective for other unwanted guests of the human variety.

COME ON TO MY HOUSE

The telephone company actually came to the plate and when I got home from work on Friday the wireless modem was waiting to be plugged in and set-up. The best part about it is that apparently wireless broadband is faster than the telephone based broadband service. Bonus.

Without further ado, Welcome to my home.

Of course as you know, when entering you must come through the gates (that if you remember I built myself) and come up the Canadian Maple lined driveway.




Eventually, after stopping to refuel your car and admiring the sun shining through the autumnal leaves (it is after all winter down here at the moment...




...you arrive at the front entry to the house.



Do you notice all of the red roses in the photo above? I have counted all of the roses around the house and it totals 175. Yes, that means 175 roses to deadhead and prune.

Last weekend I made a very bloody and painful attempt at weeding the clover which was growing around the base of the bushes. My hands look like I tried to molest a cat.

Let's go for a walk around the property, which borders on three side to thousands of acres of state forest.



These trees are the home to many red-tailed black cockatoos, twentyeights (a type of parrot) and whatever else lurks under the rocks.

In the night, kangaroos hop secretly through the trees and come to the front paddock to graze. This busted fence is the front door for these bouncy creatures.

All that walking really builds up a thirst. I am feeling really inspired by the red leaves, shall we go inside and have a few Manhattans?

SO THIS IS WHAT DEATH IS LIKE?

This post is especially for the thousands of you who have been concerned and/or demanding pictures and/or suggesting I look at their cute kids doing some cute concert and/or spitting out blogger gin in my absence:

We finally moved home on Tuesday 28th April. The day after ANZAC Day... well Anzac Day was actually on the Saturday, but if a public holiday falls on a weekend, we get the following Monday off work. So it was really the day after the Monday of the Anzac Day long weekend.

I took the Tuesday off work to supervise the move, and boy it was a mistake. When I got the office the next day, the building had collapsed and was in ruins. I can't leave for a second.

The first room I set to unpack was the kitchen. I am a control freak when it comes to the placement and organisation of the kitchen items.

My clothes are still in boxes, my DVDs are still in boxes and my books are still in boxes... but the kitchen is done.

When I got to work the next morning, it was not actually in ruins, however the power board for the building did explode leaving us without lights or computers or copy machines or any way to charge my mobile phone.

This unfortunate situation lasted for several days, when mysteriously the electricity came back on in the office down at the end of the building. The next day I brought in the longest extension cord I could find and plugged it into a socket in this powered office, all the way down the hall into my office, so I could power a small lamp and my computer.

I am pleased to report that almost two weeks later the power board still has not been fixed and I am slowly going blind.

In the midst of the move, we had to shut off the internet at home until our telephone number had been connected. However once the number was connected, we discovered that we are too far from the telephone exchange to get broadband through the phone line, we now have to go wireless and capture the interweb from rays in space.... at least in 6-10 working days, which is how long it is going to take for our new wireless space ray capturing network device to show up.

What I am trying to say is that, although I have taken pictures, I cannot post them just yet.

I was also thinking about doing a weekly vlog on a city homo turning farmer.

I got this idea from a friend who grew up in the country. When she found out I bought a farm, there was great laughter as she pictured me in my Dolce & Gabbana accessories and orange crocodile shoes trying to scoop horse shit.

To be fair, I came to see the humour in that situation when I came home from work and started to dig the earth for a pond. Stuart came outside and laughed because here I was with a shovel of dirt still wearing a 3-piece suit and fedora.

How is everyone??? Can I make you a martini?