I’ve been out of easy email access and no WiFi (well, it is rural Australia, after all!) but I will try to catch you up a little in amy travels.
I last left you in Murrumbateman. I had to leave all of Broni’s beautiful Merinos behind but she did send me off with a couple of bottles of Australian ginger beer (lucky I don’t live here or I’d be drinking way too much of this sweet drink!)
She also sent me off with a small part of a Merino fleece, so now my traveling arrangement looked like this!
On the several hour train trip to Albury I saw a lot of this
Upon arrival, I met up with a tour guide who took me around. We went to Lake Hume and the dam near there. Australia has a complex water system (at least in this area) and some of it gets released to farms.
It was a beautiful area. I added a couple more birds to my Australian bird list:
A top – knot pigeon
Not a very good shot but you can just see his top-knot. And a couple Gullahs (and I have probably spelled this wrong but can’t find my notes right now!)
And maybe a better kangaroo shot than last time. This one was on a military base where, my guide said, they are free to come and go!
My guide was trying hard to come up with a sheep farm for me to visit in the area and came up with…..a Dorper flock. Even though not “my” kind of sheep (hair rather than wool) it was really nice to meet Rob, the farmer, and really nice of him to spend time with me on short notice. I got a little lost on his breed development but I think it involved at least Merino, Dorset and White Suffolk. They had also done some breeding to eliminate the hair to get better skins (pelts).
He runs, I think, about 2500 sheep on 2000 acres, with 400-500 acres as crops. We discussed back lining for lice and fleas and the price of lamb (not good). He then invited us in for “a cuppa” and we were off to my next stop in Corowa for the next wooly adventure!
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