It's amazing how the Australian vegetation recovers from something as violent as a bushfire. When I took some photos of the burnt areas I never thought that after three and a half years I'd have trouble trying to push through the regrowth.

 If it isn't one thing it's another. I'm recovering from COVID. Yes it finally found me. Much more than a cold, aching all over my face, temperature, coughing and sneezing. It's been 7 days and while the aches have gone there's still a cough and now the overwhelming feeling of being tired. I did mange to take the dogs for a walk up the back of the property, they needed to do something and I survived just. The view over the dam is much different to the one 3 years ago.

 Maybe time to try and post regularly again. The last few years have been unreal, like a dream. Who would have thought the world would shut down, everyone remaining at home, social distancing and wearing masks. Arguments about vaccines and general hygiene. Covid19 became an everyday threat and news. We were lucky living on a property, there was room to move around and breath. I feel sorry for those in lockdown who lived in an apartment or a house with no garden. Developers don't seem to like building houses with gardens these days, but that's another topic. So we survived the bushfire just to be hit by a world wide pandemic, moved back, out of peoples awareness and forgotten. We were still dealing with things, loss of stock, loss of fences, the landscape slowly returning green but forgotten. Like the bushfire was in the past and we should be over it. Hard.

 

December 20th 2019.

The smoke from the fire that devastated our neighbourhood.

Amazingly the fire went around our house but the rest of the property was completely burnt. Most of our sheep were either killed or burnt. Later those burnt were shot by PIRSA as there was no way to help them. The horse and donkey survived but with burns. A Vet came to treat them and then they were taken to a clinic for further treatment.

What a sight to return too.

 

 

It's been awhile but we're coming up to the second anniversary of the bushfire of December 20th 2019. So I thought maybe I should start my Blog again. I'll be looking back to that date, a stinking hot, extremely windy day, that changed our environment. We left our house taking the dogs and caravan. We put the equines and sheep into a grazed field which had a largish dam. We thought we'd be back the same day but that huge black 'cloud' we could see heading our way turned out to be the fire that had started that morning, heading straight to us. It burnt completely around at least five towns and rushed through our neighbourhood that night. Many of our neighbours stayed to fight it. We watched the smoke from our escape town on the River Murray. not knowing what would be left. It would be two days before we were able to return through the dangerous fire zone.

Lambs.

With the dry start to the year we weren't thinking about a planned lambing. We had to divide the sheep up as to which would stay and which we would sell. Those that stayed went in with our ram. These were old thin ewes, some small lambs and a few nice ewes. Usually lambing at our place starts at the end of July but this year we had no idea when any or if any lambs would be born. So it was a nice surprise to go up to the flock and find a couple of lambs. Over the last three days we've had 4. The ewes won't let us get close and are very protective. We may get a few more.

Dams.

August has been a good month for rain. We can face the coming summer knowing the dams are full of water and the grasses should grow nicely now. The front dam has come a long way from back in May when it was dry and just been dug out.