Whoops!

This dead tree had been standing just outside our place for more than 30 years, so I guess it had to come down eventually. We heard the crashing sound late last night, but didn't know what had caused it until this morning. Jon and I spent most of the day cutting it into little chunks to fit into our fire place during winter. I was looking forward to finding bird nests in the hollow branches but there was nothing there. However there was a brown snake that slithered out of it ... straight into the garden.

name this moth!

A moth in our back yard. I have no idea what type of moth it is, but I like its fur coat!

New neighbours

Here is one of our new neighbours! A flock of 17 lads (yes, all rams!) all very quiet and friendly, just trying to seek out a little bit of something to eat in the incredibly dry paddocks. They are quite happy to hang around with the cattle, but they also go off by themselves and spend a lot of time sitting outside our front fence, under the shade of our apple tree.
To try to gauge if anyone is actually reading this blog, I think I will put up a poll. Please click yes or no to the question 'Do you like sheep?' Thank you.

Golden Orb Spider

This beautiful creature has made a very large web just outside our back door! She is no threat to us, she might even help out by catching some flies, she's not in the way and she is very interesting, ... so she stays. It will be good to see how long she lasts, but it's autumn here now, and it will be frosty soon, so I suppose by then she won't want to be there any more.
She is called a golden orb because of the colour of her web, it really is very yellow and glows ... golden! Tiny little males live on the outside areas of the web and risk being eaten when they approach the female.

Paragliding

A beautiful day for flying. I like it when these people who come from all over the world drop in, but today's conditions were too good for that. We live too close to their launch site, and they could go as far as a few hundred kilometers further than here if they are lucky.

caterpiller with salad dressing

Sometimes I just don't run for the camera when I probably should.

Last night, luckily it wasn't too dark when we were having dinner on our (usually candlelit) front verandah. There we were tucking into a delicious roasted meal accompanied by a fresh salad made with lettuce leaves from a sealed bag bought in a big supermarket. No use naming or blaming them, I should have checked more carefully ... but half way through dinner a big caterpillar surfaced onto the rim of the salad bowl! It looked really strange, he was definitely trying to escape. But instead of filming it to show you, I pulled him out gently with my knife. In the dark, we thought it looked like a millipede, but after we had finished eating, Jon washed it off and had a look, it was just a caterpillar and he put him outside. We wondered later if a bird liked the flavour of balsamic vinegar on his dinner!