Friday, November 29, 2013

Congratulations to Miss 12

Today was the Graduation and Awards Ceremony at my daughters' primary school.

Miss 12 was awarded the Scitech Science Prize:


Congratulations!  We are very proud of her.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Normally I'm not a fan of "participation medals" ...

as that is because that is normally ALL that is awarded.

However, at Miss 12's fire running junior state championships this weekend they gave out awards and medals to those who came first, second and third.  In addition to those they gave all the other kids "participation medals" AND I think each and every kid earned them!

We needed to be at Fremantle at 7.30am on Saturday.  It took about an hour for everyone to get organised.  The competition started with a march past and then speeches from a few dignitaries.

The first event started at 8:45am and Miss 12's team was first up!  There are a range of events over the two days.  Some of them are for teams of 4, others for teams of 2 and then there are individual events.

Miss 12 competes in the Junior category for the team events and as a Sub-Junior for the individual events.

The events involves some combination of fire hoses and hydrants.  There is also just a hydrant race, where they run like anything with the hydrant and connect it into a hole in the ground.

The initial events were all "dry" events, but by the afternoon they were using water and spraying it at targets.

Saturday finished around 4pm.

Sunday was pretty much the same, down there at 7.30am and the events finished around noon.  Then there was the presentations etc.

I didn't go down to watch on Sunday - hubby did -  I was helping Miss 10 with her homework and caught up on the washing.

On the Saturday we also had Shooting Buddy come along and OldNfo - which was a special treat.

I was very proud of Miss 12 and her team.  All of their runs were "clear" (if you don't do a connection correctly or move the elements out of the markings on the ground etc you will have a non-clear round and no points will be awarded for it).

Here are a couple of photos -
Connecting the nozzle to the hose

Picking up the hose

Putting the hydrant in




.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Road Trip

Well I have just been on one of the best road trips since I was married (and that was a long time ago).

The first leg of the trip was from home to Shooting Buddy's place in Carnamah.  As this is a 3.5hr drive we stayed overnight there before heading to the property which is East of Paynes Find - see "A" on the map.

The property is in what is known as "Station Country".  It is approximately 551,300 acres in size and covers some of the most spectacular country I've ever seen.

Here's some photos:


There were also a lot of animals - can you spot the two kangaroos in this picture?
Or the three in this one?
Then there were the emus:
Goats:
In addition to the animals there were lots of lizards -
This is one of the bigger ones we saw.  Unfortunately the smaller ones didn't hang around for photos.

The scenery during the day was spectacular and at night the sunsets were also fantastic -


Although it wasn't wildflower season there were a few flowers around, this one was my favourite
There were also a number of old structures on the property:

This is a well -
And this is called the "Camel Camp", where the camels used to be broken in -

We self-catered and the food was good :)  Here's breakfast day 1:
Lunch -
And for a yummy snack - Yabbies -

We didn't end up doing much hunting - but we got four rabbits that I'm looking forward to eating!

All in all a GREAT holiday and the place we stayed (Narndee Station) is highly recommended.  The station managers (John & Judy) are lovely, generous people and we had a great time with them.

One of the most amazing things about the trip is that between the time we left Paynes Find (Friday lunchtime) until we returned there (Monday mid-afternoon) we did not see another vehicle on the roads.  We must have traveled over 500kms between these two events and there was not another vehicle at all.  That was a bit of an eye-opener to the remoteness of the place.

Oh, and if you're looking for a good feed, you can't go past the Steak Burger at the Paynes Find roadhouse.