Best Beach Spot

Off all the places we have easy access to for a day out, we love Green's Beach best, 

whatever the season. It's about 45 minutes away from our place at the top of the Tamar estuary on Tasmania's northern coast, a blustery, breezy, ozone scented place. 

Whether summer or winter, it's always full of sunshine and wind, kids shouting and laughing,

the dog barking and the jovial sound of mums and dads having a laugh

 and a break from the humdrum of everyday life.

Not that life is all that humdrum here in Tassie.

Even the dog has a good time, now she's got over her abject terror of the waves.

Retired sheepdogs aren't natural lovers of water, unless it's in a farm dam.

Everybody gets a ride on the land yacht. Except yours truly -

the wind had died down by the time it was my turn. What a shame.  

It's a great place for chilling out.

And for stunning photos of the children. 

And then there's all that nature...

Which they just love to get their hands on since the school kitchen

garden taught them about how great worms are.  

And then there's the colours, which are apt to make your country wife

get a bit poncey with the camera.

And then of course the Other Half always looks mighty fine in a beach setting.

It's a place we love to take our visitors, whether they're beach people or not.

And there's a lovely coast path through the bush at the top of the beach,

so you can have your beach walk and explore the rock pools,

and then walk back out of the wind.

We love Green's Beach.

Coming soon!

Holiday on the Mornington Peninsula in June

and why you should always read the guidebook before you go,

 in case it says things like

 'The peninsula is quite different in the months of June to September, when it rains a lot.'

Alpaca Shearing Time - Charlie Spits the Sock

It’s alpaca shearing time in Tasmania and once again Charlie has disgraced himself.

None of the alpacas especially like being shorn. Stretched out on the floor attached to a rack, they look for all the world as if they’re about to be tortured. And they respond accordingly, by spitting.

Our alpaca shearers Tony and Glen hold no truck with this, and slip a well worn sock over the alpaca’s nose to deter the spitting, or perhaps just to contain it. Whether the sock is well worn by them or previous alpacas, nobody much bothers to ask. But Charlie doesn’t think much of it, that’s for sure.

For the past two years Charlie has managed to spit with such velocity that he’s shot the sock off and spread green regorge all over the workshop floor. You’d better hope you’re not standing upwind of him when that happens. By then there’s a fair coating of slimy semi-digested grass on his muzzle as well. Not surprisingly, when it comes to hand trimming the fleece around the face, shearer Tony isn’t having any of it, and who can blame him.

So Charlie gets left with an untrimmed goatie.

This gives him an air of gravitas quite beyond the norm for a little alpaca wether who’s had his knackers removed. And it only serves to endear him to us more than ever.

After the trauma of shearing, for despite Tony and Glen’s kindly firmness, trauma it is, all five of our alpacas go into what can only be described as mild shock. They graze separately, putting a strangely equal distance between themselves. They’ll do peculiar things like lying down to graze. Or sometimes they’ll just wander disconsolately around the paddock, as if having lost their coat they’ve somehow lost their bearings also.

And when we amble down to Willow Paddocks to see if they’re okay, Charlie canters up to us whinnying and bleating, and folds himself up into a submissive heap on the ground in front of our feet. Once he’s up again, he trots alongside us like a large hairless poodle. We head on down to the willow tree to see how much foliage Lorna has nibbled away in the mistaken belief that she’s a giraffe, and Charlie glances about as if trying to figure out what we’re all doing there.

In many ways, Charlie is more like a dog than an alpaca. In the alpaca world, the submissive gesture is a flicking upwards of the tail. My Other Half only has to glance out of a window and make eye contact, and Charlie’s tail is raised skywards like a royal standard and flattened along his back fleece. OH is his alpha male, master and leader – hoist the flag!

Some alpaca owners eat their wethers – you can’t breed from a castrated male, and companion animals are no good to a serious breeder. So they end up ona plate, or a spit roast. Apparently it doesn’t taste like chicken. ‘What does it taste like?’ my Other Half asks Glen.

‘Alpaca,’ replies Glen, alpaca shearers being known for the alacrity of their work but not for the effusiveness of their conversation.

Having come to love our alpacas as pets it would be hard for us to contemplate them as a food source. We’ve hummed to our alpacas, fondled their ears, blown up their noses and smelt the sweet grassy smell of their breath. So we’ll just continue slipping a sock over Charlie’s nose at shearing time. Perhaps we’ll try one with slightly better elastic next year.

Country Wives - Very Handy Around the House

To hell with hire a hubby. If ever I'm rich enough to employ household staff, I want a wife.

You can't live around here and not be endlessly admiring of the women you meet. I know a one who can install a grey water system, although she’d probably get her husband to do the digging. There are women who cultivate crops and sell them at market. Women who birth sheep and raise them, crutch them and load them onto the truck to be turned into chops. Women who do endurance horse riding, just because they can. And women who breed long haired cattle, although one of them nearly got my dog speared.

Country women are amazing.

Sometimes I pretend to be one of these women. It’s still a put-on job, I’m a bit like a dahlia in a pot of natives, but I’m improving. You probably can’t have a pot of natives - it's a long journey.

My Other Half went away for a month recently - not my fault – and none of the livestock escaped or died. The compost took a turn for the better and I got to know and love the hens. True, at the end of the month the septic tank looked like subsiding and I didn’t really know what to do about that, apart from not stand on top of it.

In an attempt to gain country wife credibility, I helped out with cutting the alpacas’ toenails. This is a spurious achievement – after all, what are alpacas for? You can shear them and their fleece makes a gorgeous yarn, it’s true. But I don’t spin or knit, so we’re not wearing them. I’m booked in to a workshop to learn how to felt their fleece so I can make us handbags and felted jewellery. It’s hardly a survival skill. But at least I gave them a nice pedicure.

I’ve achieved certain things in our time here which surely earn me country wife brownie points. I’ve delivered a baby alpaca, although you don’t have to do much – just spray some iodine on the umbilical cord and not run away when the mare screeches at you. I’ve killed a guinea fowl chick when it needed putting out of its misery. I’ve been there to chronicle both ends of the spectrum of life, like Samuel Becket but with longer hair and elastic sided boots.

I’ve learnt that raking a path through the bush block undergrowth is pointless as it will be indiscernible within a day’s passing. I can light a fire, split a log and stack wood. I’ve learnt that newly weaned pigs prefer their veg cooked, and I’ve catered for them and my own family of four. And I can bid on timber at a farm auction without my hand trembling.

I have to admit that I can only split one log and that when people try to talk to me about their paddocks my eyes still glaze over because I don’t know what they’re talking about and couldn’t really give a toss anyway. I can’t crutch or crochet anything, and nor do I want to, although I’m loving my new crocheted apple cosy from my hand crafting country wife extraordinaire neighbour.

The biggest thing that I’ve learnt is that once you learn how to do something, you find it’s not so hard. But you can’t shortcut. You have to do it yourself, your own way, and make some mistakes.

Country women do all these things and more, and all the normal wifely things too, like vacuuming, keeping house and raising happy kids. They’re endlessly capable.

So when it comes to future disposable income and choice of household help, I’m with the two gay guys in New York who said what was missing from their life was a wife. I want one of those too.