Winter rain cometh!

It would appear that the “Parcel”thing may well have been some sort of scam. What the purpose of it is or was, we have no idea but it

would seem several people across the town received such an email. Anyway, it has been deleted but it seems such a strange thing without any definable purpose.  After we dropped Andrew back at his place yesterday, he apparently continued to work on the cleanup after we left. Andrew’s house is an older house – actually it is two houses joined together – professionally done – and he has rooms everywhere inside and sheds and garages out the back, a cubby house and  what used to be a home office – similar to mine. There are trees and bushes planted out front and they have been allowed to become overgrown. To the right of the house (left of the main garage) there is a water outlet, which feeds water into a “river” that runs along the front of the house, under a bridge and ends in a pond at the left side of the house. Over the years the  bushes have become overgrown, the  river is clogged up and the pond is full of leaves and branches. We discovered solar lights and gnomes fishing there. Andrew has not really done much since it’s only in the last seven months or so that he stopped running back and forth to Roxby Downs – the  big South Australia Mining Area – ( he’s a Systems Engineer) and settled in to home. So he has this project of cleaning everything up and  getting it all back together again. He says he has reservations about  getting the water flowing again, but he does want the  “riverbed” cleaned up.  Me?  I would go all out to get the water flowing again, but that’s just me. I had a waterfall here and it grieved me when we discovered that it had  deteriorated too much to be put back  into use. But I did work on it and turned it into a sort of rock-raised flower bed.  But these things are not uncommon here –  many people built water features in the days when water was water and plentiful. Most of them would have been turned off forever when water ceased to be water and became a major source of State Government Revenue –  and South Australia has the highest water costs in Australia. We also have the highest gas prices, the highest power prices and the highest State Government charges. We are in the process of building the third most costly building in the world- the Money Pit known as the New Royal Adelaide Hospital. But we have a spendthrift government – and I believe Arrium is merely an example of a system, which might not quite be broken, but has bits falling off it. It’s a borrow and spend culture.

I have started to do some work on the back garden.  Shared my ideas with No. 1 son and he was not too impressed. He thought my ideas were good but some parts were too big for the available

space. Anyway, I’m working on it. I have emptied and moved the first of the two sheds and I hope to have the second one moved to its new location sometime today.  (didn’t happen)

Thursday 16th: That was yesterday and today the rain is pounding down outside and the lightening is lighting up the sky. Rain was definitely on the weather forecast for today. At the moment I can only hear – it is still too dark to see anything yet. And yes, you may assume that we did not go out for our morning walk. Call me a wimp if you will, but walking dogs in the middle of a rain storm, with the accompanying thunder and lightening,  does not fit into my definition of a good morning’s exercise   :o)  However, I will go and check up on the WaWa – Benji is curled up asleep. – as is the WaWa.

To add to the gloom of the place, our Mayor – Mr. Jim Pollock – died and his funeral is this coming Monday.