The buzz of a light aircraft made us look up into the azure blue sky one Thursday morning. A small plane flying low over the paddocks behind our caravan was clearly looking for somewhere to land and the hilly terrain was proving to be a bit of a challenge. We jumped onto the four wheel motorbike which I’ve now learned to ride and raced over to the airstrip near the chemical shed. Luckily the plane had found this too and by the time we arrived it was taxiing towards us. The grass airstrip is in the middle of a paddock of flowering canola and is noted as the steepest in the district. Despite the lack of a windsock, flight tower and a man with ping pong bats, the pilot performed a virtual handbrake turn and bounced off down the hill taking off after a remarkably short distance. Performing another reconnoitre circuit of the neighbours farm across Gabalong West Road the plane came into land again and this time came to a halt next to us.

The young pilot jumped out and greeted us with a big handshake and a grin from ear to ear. He explained that he was here to spread urea on the neighbours farm as the ground was too wet to drive a tractor. Shortly the neighbour arrived in his tractor towing a trailer load of urea and was swiftly followed by a truck with an auger to transfer the urea into the hopper in the nose of plane. The truck driver was quite a character and aged 76, had no intentions of ever retiring. His red Kelpie dog named Polly had a similar attitude barking ferociously at the noisy pump on the back of the truck. Loaded up, the little plane took off and treated us to an aerobatic display as he off loaded his cargo onto the neighbours paddocks.

Yesterday another larger yellow plane called an Air Tractor came into land to spray fungicide, this pilot was another Kiwi and both of them could have chatted for hours. Later much our delight gave us a couple of low overhead swoops.  Here’s a video of him taking off..

Love is in the air…. Joe the farm sheepdog (aka Joe 90) has fallen for our Daphne….

Meanwhile in his pen beside caravan, Sprocket continues to grow and we’ve been weaning him onto a clover diet which he noshes away at quite happily. This weekend he’s in for another new experience and along with the rest of the flock will be tagged, drenched, tailed and de-nutted. It makes my eyes water thinking about it but it’s all for the best and he’ll get an extra big bucket of clover in sympathy.

The days have been passing so quickly, friends have been asking what on earth I do all day. Living in a small space with two Golden Retrievers means that hateful housework takes up a fair amount my time. But being a huge fan of electrical gizmos I recently revolutionised my life spending some of my birthday money on a dustbuster! I’m so embarrassed at the amount of crud and blond hair it’s been sucking up! Other activities include gardening as I’ve been missing our allotment so I’ve started a veggie patch. The Kiwi wants me to go foraging for sheep poo under the wool shed but due to my deep fear of long wriggly things I have resisted.

I gave the Kiwi chilli-con-carne for his dinner last night and he complained it was so hot he had moisture forming on his solar panel (bald patch). I said it was better than having Klingons on his starboard brow.

Back in jolly old Blightly things seem to get madder and madder. Whilst reading the Daily Wail’s (Daily Mail) website I discovered that one of my old bosses from my secretary bird days in London had been suffering from an invasion of squatter’s in his house. Namely D & S Cameron…. Arghh!!!…. But it looks like ex-box has had a reprieve and they’ve gone on their hollybops – what a sight!