Thursday 2nd March

A Our around Australia trip has come to a bit of a halt for the moment. I have spent the last day and a half in Melbourne collecting all the material I need for the new project. I surprised many people by returning to Melbourne so soon, and it is sort of strange going back to the “big smoke” and dealing with peak hour traffic and the hustle and bustle of city life. Caught up with Mum for lunch, Cam and Gill for dinner and Mike Craig for a quick coffee and florentine in Oakleigh. If you are ever in Oakleigh, do yourself a favour go to Nikos and buy a Florentine, they are wicked. Matt’s Mum Jenny came back with me in the van today and when we were passing through Simpson it was nice to be able to say, “we’re almost home….” A strange string of coincidences has led me to be embarking on my latest, very exciting piece of art. Blown headlights, cheese and forgotten handbags have all been in the mix, which will be revealed to the blog soon, but there are much more pressing stories to tell. Let me tell you about eel fishing in the Gellibrand River. I have been coming to Kangaroobie now for about 17 years and Matt and I have been going eel fishing down there on many occasions. Things required for this activity include night time, firewood, beer, fishing lines and some sort of bait. I suggested last nights lamb as bait, but the boys who had just had a few at the “Talk of the Town”, found a swarm, maybe 200 or so crickets on the verandah and so the subject of bait was no longer an issue. Matt has always regaled me with stories about all the eels they used to catch down there, crikey, they were this big……… I have only ever witnessed one eel in the vicinity of this fishing hotspot after all these years, my luck coming last year when Matt had left me to drop the kids back home. I should never have told him that I actually caught one, and we could have kept his myth going for a while longer. Well, I have just had my second experience with an eel. Jesse the Canadian guy who has been helping Matt on the farm is heading off tomorrow and was keen to have a go. Off we went under a sky so starry, tubs of crickets, worms and the pippies that have been in our freezer since Helen’s Mum was here ages ago, fishing lines and beer; was too warm for a fire. It has never really been about the fishing, it is just a great time to chuck in a line, have a laugh and lie down and look at the wonderful night sky, we saw 3 shooting stars, cool. We were probably ready to go when Jesse pulled in a squirming,slimy, wriggly eel. He caught it with a cricket….. Howzatt??!! So Matt cut off its head and showed us what he used to do as kids, stick your finger in its mouth, and it sort of bites and clamps on to your finger, strange…. Dan decided to find out what pippies taste like and I challenged him to eat one for a dollar. And then for $2 he ate a live cricket! Ha! A cheap nights entertainment I reckon. We will be here for another couple of weeks while I am doing this work. The Commonwealth baton is coming to Port Campbell on Saturday and there is a music festival there which we will go and see. We welcome any comments or suggestions. It is a funny thing doing a blog, it is a great record of our trip and more for us, it would be nice to know who is sharing it with us.