Ronnie Down Under

It looks like we have a new animal in the house. This is Mini Mouse (about ½ inches long). She’s been with us ever since we had the grass cut out back a few weeks ago. I’ve had her in my lap once and another time she sat up on the arm of my recliner. There’s no way we can kill this little creature so I had to order a live mouse trap from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in the states. I’ll release her in the field across the street when I catch her.

Last weekend Mary and I decided that we needed a break away from home repairs so we decided to join Mary’s sister, brother-in-law, and brother at the Boyup Brook Country Music Festival.

Since we were planning to have a few drinks we decided to camp out at the festival location. Here is a photo of Mary’s sister Lorraine and her husband Bill in front of their tent.

Here’s Mary in front of our tent. This is not the tent we usually use. It’s our cook tent. Our sleeping tent is much larger.

This photo is of our camp site.

This festival was especially exciting because Mary’s brother Jim was scheduled to play several times during the festival. Jim is a bass player with a band called Clearwater. Here’s a few photo’s that Mar y took of the band and her brother.






These photos are of some of the locals that were in attendance.

These photos will show you what some of the locals drive. These vehicles are called ute's (utility vehicles) and are the equivilent of a pickup truck in the US.

One of the things that we decided to try when we got to Australia was different methods of preserving food. That way we can take advantage of the low cost of food purchased from local markets and that which we can grow in our own garden.

When we were staying with Mary’s mom and dad in Albany she showed Mary how to use the bottling pot, which we purchased second hand at a yard sale, to bottle some peaches and apricots that we purchased from an orchard out on the highway. It was very easy and both Mary and I were excited about all the things we could bottle. Two weeks ago Mary purchased, at a great price, a bag of pickling onions from a guy that comes to town every Friday to sell veggies. She found a simple pickling recipe and gave it a try.

Here’s the pot for bottling. It’s almost as big as our little stove.



And here is the finished product:



The lid clips are removed after the jars cool. We gave these about a week before opening a jar. Wow, these are great. We’ve purchased two more bags and will jar them this afternoon.

I also found many different spiders. One was really big and hairy. It looked like a tarantula but a little smaller. Most of these I just shooed away since they eat insects and will be good for my garden but one of them I had to kill. It was a big Red Back (black widow) Spider. You can see him in this photo at the tip of my crowbar.