Goodness Gracious! Great balls of fire.

Anyone got a bean bag? Ever had the clean the darn thing? My son has and we had too.
DOG PEE!

What a nightmare. Had to vacuum all the stupid beans out of the bag. Do you know how static sticky those things are? THEY. GO. EVERYWHERE.

I did manage to get them into garbage bags; double bag them and put them up high so the kids couldn't get them. Then I washed the bag and left it dry.


That was a couple of days ago. I was waiting for some help to get the beans back in...wasn't too sure how I was going to manage that task without creating a big old mess and was even toying with the idea of throwing the lot out and putting the empty bag away - should have.


Went to Victor Harbor today, to visit the parents. Dogs stayed home; locked out in the back room. Upon our return, we opened the back door to - you guessed it - beans, millions of tiny, white balls stuck everywhere and on everything. Looks like the dogs climbed up onto the boxes we had stacked out there; the boxes the bags were sitting atop. Looks like the dogs climbed up there, accidently knocked the bags down, then decided to give the bags a bit of a sit on. Somewhere along the line the bag was scratched to smithereens and the beans were spread all over the place.


We were hopping mad and have just finished cleaning up the disaster zone - NEVER AGAIN. If the dog pees on that thing again (and God only knows why he did it in the first place) it is going straight in the bin. HUMPH!

The Mount Compass Cup

What better way to get reaquainted with one's Aussieness than to do something completely ocker (stereotypically feral Australian), and on Australia Day, no less.

January 26th is known as Australia Day and is also the day of the famed Compass Cup -"Australia's only cow race". In true Australian enthusiastic style, the Cup only kicks off at 12:50 pm. The day is not only about cow racing, no siree. There is truly something for everyone at the Compass Cup. You can enjoy such athletic delights such as the Thong Throwing competition (footwear variety not undies) and tractor pull; all the glamour of the cat walk with the rubber boot marathon, and for the culinary enthusiast the Australian Iron Guts competition, which amounts to demolishing large quantities of Aussie treats, such as meat pies, lamingtons and Iced Coffee, complete with the always classy vomitting equals disqualification rule. There was also the very blokey ute competition, which consists of hotted up man toys with big engines parked in a line with burly owners posing along side and of course the mandatory drive by with obligatory elbow sticking out the window sunglasses pose - iconic Aussie rock classics like those screamed by Jimmy Barnes, Cold Chisel and The Angels blaring from the stereo and a bit of an engine rev ....so impressive, I almost fainted. But wait folks, it wasn't all glitz and glamour, there were legitimate scientific experiements which involved moments of risk and daring; the Engine Blow promised to deliver this brand of edge of your seat action.

A waterless and oiless old beater was presented in the middle of the arena - the sacrificial lamb if you like - the object of this high brow experiment was to see how long it took to blow 'er up. Fire extinguishers were at the ready as several blue singletted scientist initiated the experiment, but like all worthy experiments the outcome was surprising and not the least bit expected - bugger all happened in fact, the engine simply died a quiet death after about 20 seconds (quite the anti-climax).

The cow race itself was painfully non-action packed, although quite comical. The main challenge was staying on the cow - no saddles you see. But unlike race horses, the cows weren't into it and planted their hooves into the turf like unwilling mules. It wasn't a race persay, rather a win by default. The winning cows were those who just happened to be walking in the right direction for long enough to have eventually and quite accidentally wandered over the line, while the rest of the handlers chased loose riderless cows all over the arena as over zealous chaps attempted to climb on board. It was a crazy spectacle and a weird day, but after that... I knew I was home.