Thursday 16th March.

We are 5km west of Cobden beside Lake Elingamite, have just put a chicken, potatoes, onions and carrots in our Cobb oven, it is smelling great. Got woken up this morning about 7ish by the rain, it is so nice to hear the rain pelting on the bus as we are tucked up,nice and warm under the doona. It has been a very wet and windy day which has made all the farmers around here very happy, they haven’t had any decent rain for a long time and most have had to buy hay for feeding the cattle, some have also had to buy water for drinking. As there is a lot of warmth in the soil, the grass should grow really well with a good soaking, it has been very very yellow and unusually dry lately. On the way here we passed some farms which were absolute junkyards. One in particular had about twenty rusted cars in all states of disrepair and the house and assorted patched together sheds looked like they would blow away in the next strong wind. When cleaning out my shed in readiness for this trip I soon realised that I too am a bit of a hoarder, but just on a much smaller scale than these blokes who must like collecting rusted things. I quite like all the rusty corrugated iron roofs and the hay sheds with their roofs falling in here and there. I reckon most hay shelters in Australia were hastily built with whatever materials were lying around at the time, and the spans and measurements calculated by thumb, far from an engineers specifications. I suggest we call them hay shods instead. We have just eaten the chook which was great and had some bread and butter pudding for treat afterwards. The lake here is fairly dry, deep mud around the edges for about 30 metres where the water would normally be, would be a very pretty place when the water was up to where it should be, and I’ve heard it is good fishing when you can get near the water. People with waders have got themselves stuck in the mud lately in their attempts to get to the lake. The Commonwealth Games started last night, we heard a bit of it on the radio, we feel quite far removed from it all really, having had no television for the last month now, which has been quite nice really.