Powerful Stuff!!

Wagga Wagga Flood 2012

Yesterday evening Farmer Phil and I took a drive into Wagga to have a look at the flood waters. It was very scary to see how much water there was coming down the river and surrounds - it was flowing incredibly fast. If you've been watching the news and morning TV shows you will have seen the flood waters, but to see them for real is something else!

It was a very eerie feeling when you drive past Wagga's CBD and there is not a single vehicle or person to be seen - it definitely was a ghost town! But this morning it seems that most of Wagga came away unscathed by the 2012 flood. However there will be a hell of a cleanup go on over the next few weeks and months to help the residents of North Wagga get back to normal after their homes (all 240 of them) were inundated up to their roofs.

Emma is not expected to get back to school until at least next week with the Wagga floodwaters expected at her school on Thursday. The school has been reinforcing their own levee banks and have moved all stock to higher ground. Some of the teachers houses which are closer to the river than what the main school buildings and dormitories are have been evacuated. Thankfully, flood water is not expected to impact on any of the school buildings.

Looking over East Wagga

Getting close to it's peak

North Wagga Flats

North Wagga Flats

This is the Murrumbidgee River

Sunset over floodwater

40th's and Flooding!

We had a very interesting weekend!! It will be a weekend that none of our friends will forget in a long time! Jason and Kellie's 40th birthday party was moved from their home to the local CWA hall after we had almost 8 inches of rain in 4 days! We got dressed in our costumes, brought Ryan and Emma along to babysit the party goers kids, and packed an overnight bag just in case we got flooded in!

Well we did get flooded in and couldn't get home until Sunday afternoon. Here is some of the flood water we drove through. Our house and farms were perfectly safe as we live on much higher ground.

This is the back of Jason and Kellie's house on Sunday morning. There is normally no water there!
The 40th party was a lot of fun, but not long after we'd eaten the main meal, the SES said that all roads out of town would be cut within half and hour with flooding and anyone who needed to get home had better leave now! Well, that thinned out the crowd by 50%!

There was only about 20 people to watch the cutting of the cake and listen to the speeches, but those of us left had a great night. This was Kellie (aka Judy Jetson) and Jason (aka KISS) towards the end of the night.

Katie Perry made an appearance.
So did Jane, Kylie Mole and Jesus

There was The Joker, Jessie from Toy Story, Farmer Phil as a Jedi Knight and Jane

We had a Japanese geisha and the Karate Kid

Kylie Mole again with John Travolta, the King of Hearts and another Jedi

Other party goers were jockeys, Juliet, Jack of Spades, Kate Lee from Underbelly, Jesse James, a jackaroo and a judge. Anyway, a lot of fun was had by all but the flooding still continues!

Emma came home from school on Thursday for a designated long weekend. She was supposed to return by bus this evening, but the school has closed until further notice. It sits right on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River which is to peak tomorrow at 10m in Wagga Wagga which will cause major flooding for parts of the city. All this flood water will eventually make it down the river towards Emma's school. We will sit tight and wait to see what happens!

Dress Ups!

Tomorrow night we have our very good friends Jason and Kellie's combined 40th birthday party. It is a costume party and you have to come dressed as something starting with either J or K. I "Googled" both letters and came up with a long list - Jack and Jill, Jesus, Jack Sparrow, jillaroo/jackaroo, jockey, Kath and Kim, king, koala, kangaroo, knight and Kermit to name a few. I finally settled on what seemed easiest to sew.

Here's what I've come up with today.

Farmer Phil will be a Jedi

I will be a Jailbird

I'll take my camera and show you some of the costumes our friends came up with. Should be a fun night although we're supposed to get between 40 and 80mm of rain again tomorrow - we've had 150mm since Tuesday!

Where Has Summer Gone?

The weather really has been crazy this Summer! I'm still waiting for the hot weather to arrive!! We normally have a lot of days over 40 degrees, but this Summer I don't think we've had any!

It's absolutely pelting with rain today and the pool is just about to overflow!! I was planning a trip to town for supplies but have wisely decided against that! Rain is forecast for the rest of the week too!

PS: All up we had 225mm of rain over 5 days! That's 9 inches in the old scale!! Our average annual rainfall is 22 inches, and we've had almost half that in one week!! Unbelievable!!!!!!!!

I ♥ Rollerskating

Like a lot of teenagers in the 80's I was madly in love with rollerskating. Every Saturday night my friends and I headed to the local rink for the evening disco! The best part was when it was the "speed skate" and everyone would step onto the rink and proceed to hoon around it to "Wipe-Out" blaring over the sound system! Oh, the memories!!

My friend Andrea had the most beautiful white leather (or maybe they were just vinyl?!) skates with red wheels. Oh how I envied her! My skates were red, blue and yellow! How retro - probably a collectors item now!

Anyway, I always have the Ellen show on at lunchtime for a bit of light entertainment, and yesterday she had an absolutely amazing husband and wife team of roller skaters on. Check out their You Tube clip below - OMG, it's superb! Now why didn't I ever look like that?!

Emma's 15 Minutes of Fame!!

If you look really hard you'll see Emma's face on today's edition of The Border Mail newspaper - see in the top right hand corner!!

Yesterday I drove her to Albury to audition for X-Factor. I only saw the ad on tv at the weekend which said that auditions were in Albury which is only 1 1/2 hours from home. I suggested she try out just for the experience and also for feedback from the judges on what they thought of Emma's voice.

Although Emma did a fantastic job at her audition, she wasn't picked to go onto the next round. The judge was very impressed with her voice saying that he was surprised that she had such a strong voice, but at 15 years old she just needs some more performance experience and to definitely try again next year. He just told her to go out and do as much performing as she could.

Emma was really happy with her audition and even happier with the judges comments. She was just glad that he didn't tell her she was a "crap singer", to use Emma's exact words! So she's very excited about the year ahead and what it could hold for her!
Check out http://www.bordermail.com.au/news/local/news/general/wouldbe-stars-face-auditions/2464954.aspx to read the whole article and watch a quick video of Emma practising before her audition.

Always Busy

Every second day Ryan has been inspecting the grain bags of wheat filled at harvest to make sure that they are in good condition. Birds, foxes, kangaroos and emus will put holes in them which need to be patched up with silo tape.


Some of the bags have a lot of tape on them and resemble a patchwork quilt!

Look at what I had to contend with this morning!!! We have not owned sheep for about 5 years now - Farmer Phil hates sheep and does not tolerate them on his cropping paddocks at all! We have a mob of sheep being agisted on one of the paddocks that we do not grow crop on as it's too steep and full of rocks and trees. I received a mercy call this morning from Farmer Phil - the sheep had escaped their paddock and were happily tramping all over Farmer Phil's good cropping paddock.

I grabbed Lucy the retired sheep dog and rounded the rogues up and got them back in their correct paddock. I haven't worked sheep in quite a few years but was happy that they all behaved themselves and marched straight back into their paddock.

Lucy was happy to stay on the back of the ute and bark instead of rounding the sheep up. Actually, I didn't want to let her off in case she ran around in front of them by mistake as she hasn't seen a sheep in a long time and maybe wouldn't remember what to do! Jack kept her company and let out a few helpful barks along the way too!

Farmer Phil has been busy doing more spraying after we received rain again on Friday. It's mainly just self sown wheat from harvest time which has sprouted. Easy to get rid of with Roundup.

We've had a water ski tournament on every weekend for the last month with one more next weekend before we get two weekends in a row at home - yeah! Ryan is jumping 6m more than last season so he's happy with that! He will be skiing at the Australian Nationals at Easter, so we'll be skiing for another few months yet!

Emma is back at school as a Senior in Year 11. She is a dormitory prefect for the Year 7's and 8's. During week one she had to soothe each girl in her dorm who were all feeling homesick! She said they've all now settled into life at boarding school with no more crying episodes! She dressed as a fairy complete with tutu, wings and tiara for the annual swimming carnival and went in every race except butterfly to get points for her house. It must have worked because Mighty Mutch House won the carnival yet again!

Jack Takes Over!

It was my birthday 2 weeks ago and I received this gorgeous wicker sun lounge for the deck from the family, but it looks like I'll have a fight on my hands with Jack for any rights to said lounge!!!

Back Again!

Well, 2011 is done and dusted and 2012 is almost 1/12 finished!! Can you believe it?!

We had a quiet family Christmas with Farmer Phil trying to get as much stubble sprayed as possible before we headed away on our annual 2 week water skiing holiday to Renmark, SA. The rain from late Spring and early Summer has meant that lots of unwanted weeds have grown and need to be controlled quickly.

Our New Years Eve incorporated a 50th birthday party for a good friend and neighbour and I finally met a fellow "farmers wife" blogger in Polly from Duality.

I do not have a single photo of our holiday this year - the camera never came out of it's cover! We spent the whole two weeks very relaxed just skiing, chatting, having a few drinks, eating ourselves silly and generally chillin' with our friends Andrew, Michelle, Lucy and Hannah. We had a rather large camp this year with Daniel and Ange visiting for the first week, Ryan stayed only for the first week too and then went to a water ski training camp. Emma had her friend Hannah stay with us for the whole two weeks which was very entertaining! And Andrew's brother and family visited for a weekend too! We've also made friends with some fellow campers from Victoria who we catch up with each year at Renmark. So, we're home now and getting back to some normality! Although we're off to Port Macquarie tomorrow for Ryan to compete in the Australian Junior Masters Water Ski Tournament! No rest for the wicked as they say!

I thought I'd share with you a few of the Christmas presents I received this year. I was very impressed that my family have actually listened to me when I've dropped hints over the last 12 months!

First of all I wanted a silver balls necklace and I did receive! Yeah!! Now to get the matching bracelet?!


A few new cookbooks were also unwrapped so it either means I'm a terrible cook and the family wants me to get inspired, or they think I love to cook?!

And this is a picture of one of my bookcases absolutely chocked with books - I'm an avid reader and can get through a large number of books quickly when I've got my reading mojo on!

So Emma remembered that I'd been looking at getting myself a Kindle a few years ago but that never eventuated, so I received one on Christmas day! It's the best thing - so easy and cheap to use (lots of free and 99c books to download! The funny thing is that my sister Lisa also received a Kindle from her family for Christmas without either family knowing! If you know either Lisa or myself then you'll know that we're very much alike - we hate coffee but love chocolate, we order the same food whether it's just a sandwich or a meal, and we have the same taste in home decor, clothes, shoes etc. It's very spooky sometimes!

Since receiving my Kindle on Christmas Day I have read:

Cocktails for Three by Sophie Kinsella/Madeleine Wickham

Dodge the Bullet by Christy Hayes

Girl & The Ghost Grey Mare by Rachael Treasure

How to Break Your Own Heart by Maggie Alderson

Six Geese a-Laying by Sophie Kinsella

Wedding Bell Blues by Ellie Ferguson

Territory by Judy Nunn - 16% read so far

I've also downloaded ready to read:

Campaign Ruby by Jessica Rudd

Ruby Blues by Jessica Rudd

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

So there's a really quick round-up of the last month or so here on the farm since harvest finished. More to follow later!