Rebas' Adventure in Ozzieland

Not only can I still not get online with my computer, but my camera battery is dead. There is hope, however, Dave is working on the computer and hopefully on Monday it will all be fixed and then the world wide web will be mine, mine I tell you! All mine! ha haaa! (insert manic laughter here). OK, seriously. I had a good week, last weekend I was invited up north of Perth to visit some people with my friend Sarah. Sarah is single, in her thirties, is a movie person and has great love for Dr. Who. Needless to say we get on, although she is not quite a kindred spirit, she is a fun person to hang out with. We went up to the small, small farming community of Buntine, which is about a half hour drive to Dalwallinu (dal-WALL-eh-new), a town with a population of 1,500. We stayed at some friends of Sarah's who live on a farm, a really fun young couple who used to live in Perth, I felt very at home and enjoyed myself. On Saturday we all went to the Dalwallinu Show. Show = county fair. It was fun, just what you would expect at a small fair, a few rides (I have a great pic, hope you get to see it one day), and a few cows and sheep and chooks, remember chickens are called chooks. And food and hand made stuff that got prizes. Compared to, say, Clark County Fair it was very small, walking quickly you could see all there was to see in about 2o minutes, but we took our time and had a nice day. In the evening we make dinner and watched a movie and they made me watch Mr Bean, because I had only seen bits of episodes before. it was funnier then I remember it, but still not my fav. It was refreshing to be in the country, not that Perth is so very urban, but it was beautiful out there. Oh! I forgot, on the way out there, it was about a 3 hour drive one way, we stopped at a Spanish mission. Apparently some Spanish monks started a church and a school out here in the mid 1800's. It is called New Norcia and Sarah and I walked around, there is a museum, a hotel with a pub, a vineyard, and a bakery. It was so late in the afternoon that the pub was between open hours and the bakery was closed, but still it was beautiful and so European. I would like to go back sometime and see more. This week I milled sorghum grain, that was really exciting (she said with great sarcasm). I spend two days at the Department of Agriculture and Food of Western Australia (aka DAFWA), they have a small mill I could use to turn my sorghum grain into sorghum flour. the thing is, I could only put a small amount of grain into the mill at one time because it is so small. So I filled the hopper full of grain and let the mill run for exactly 7 minutes and then detach the container that holds the flour and empty it into my big bag, re-attached the container, fill up the hopper and start all over again. I took me about an hour and a half of milling time to do 25 kg of grains, and I had seven 25 kg bags to mill. I easily got it done in two days, the problem was, what do you do for exactly 7 mins all day long by yourself? I read, I organized my my papers, I talked to myself, I sang to myself. I had to be careful of those last two, because although I was alone in the room, the door was open and you never new when someone might walk past and catch you. But now it is all done and that is a good feeling. Talk to you soon!