Woah!

I swear I'm about to burst a foofer valve.  It's so hot today and we're just hanging around indoors with the AC on.  Both Molly and Lucky are completely out to it, sprawled on the slate floor as long and as wide as their bodies can go.  Mike is asleep on the couch with his feet up.  And I do believe there may be a nap in my very near future too.

Okay it's official, I'm completely OVER summer!

Australia Day.   The Muster.   OH MY!  It was spectacular.

The Muster Committee this year put on "The Drovers Return".  It was so incredibly good.  Three bushies sitting around a camp fire as Andy the Drover passed them by and went off to drove his cattle.  They told yarns, which span into plays and re-enactments and displays under spotlight on the equestrian field.   All the while the bushmen (including a crazy one named Whacka!) kept spinning their tales which went into the next act, and the next act.  They spoke of Clancy of the Overflow,   Mulga Bill and his bicycle,  the Geebung Polo Club, the Man from Snowy River, all acted superbly by local families and talent from around the south-west.

At the start when the stock riders came in and were riding around displaying their skills, okay, stupid as it sounds I burst into tears.  CRAZY STUFF !  I think I got so wound up that our little town, our little speck on the map, could put on something of this calibre.  Kudos to the organisers.

At one point when the bushmen settled down to sleep, Whacka woke up to see a horse riding around.  Honestly I've never seen such a sight.  The rider had I guess they were two long sticks with some sort of tie between the sticks, so imagine it as a big skipping rope.  Except the tie part of it connecting the sticks WAS ALIGHT WITH FLAME.   And as he rode he would basically skip with it and the horse jumped over the lit skipping rope, continuing right around the oval.  Of course by the time "Whacka" had woken the other bushies to tell of a horse skipping through fire, they thought he must be dreaming.

UN-FLIPPING-BELIEVABLE.

The skill of the riders was something to be believed.  I'm actually quite fearful of horses, I don't like being close to them at all, but my goodness they were an extension of the rider.   They did everything their rider told them to by movement or touch or spoken word.

My favourite part of the night was the dancing.  Imagine if you will bush dancing, you know how it is, a line of boys and a line of girls, you move to each other, bow, move back, move forward again, spin around, side step up and the top couple go skipping through the line of dancers.  Are you still with me?

Well they did that with a line of dancing people PLUS there was a line of  horses and riders dancing in time too, doing the same steps.  Two lines of horses, moved in, nodded their head, backed up, moved in, backed up, side stepped, and then the top two riders galloped their horses down the middle of the line of horses.   All in time with the dancers doing it too.   Like nothing I've ever seen before.

Because it was all done at night and under light my photos were blurry, so hoping our once a week newspaper has some photos in it next Thursday to show.

Onto the scrapping front...

Finally scrapped some photos from our Boxing Day evening with the kids.   I am gradually making each of them an album so they'll each get one of these in their albums with a facing page featuring themselves.

Credits Designer Digitals

And with that I do think I need a cup of tea, the only thing to quench my thirst on a hot day like today is a hot cup of tea strangely enough.  And there's scotch fillet steak and salad for dinner to be had.  So in that order.   Tea, nap, dinner !