Or maybe‘Ovine horribilis’
So dear reader this monthly saga continues although some of you may have considered it balderdash from day one and consigned it to the bottom of the bird cage to soak up more.
So said ‘The Courier’ – 10 Acres of prime land close to town and local facilities with Dam, Power and Phone connected. I thought close to Ballarat? Worth a look? The price was something I might be able to handle and plus what I had seen over the last two years to connect the essentials it was affordable. Having experienced a lot of realty hype over a couple of years it looked a little too good to be true.
It was about thirty clicks following the Agent (that tells you not to sign anything?) through towns rich in history but devoid of personality. I was a-cumin’ round the mountain when I first sighted Linton ‘the historic gold town’ Passing along the main drag I got that ‘home’ feeling, from the Olympic sounding Linton Sporting Complex to the Railway Hotel (Is there a decent village or town that does not boast either a Railway, Royal or Commercial Hotel?) I liked the look of the town. It seemed, unlike many small villages on highways, ‘that it had a heart’, admittedly a bronze swaggie and a couple of black cut-outs of a drunk looking at an empty glass and a watchful sheep but it felt comfortable. Alas we passed through this village too, where was my Shangri-La, my Utopia, my Prozac?
Like Rocky Horror it was a lurch to the left that did it, 89 Kilometres to Geelong? Past the inexplicable curved streets, past the late ‘Oscar’ in his A-Frame Humpy and 5 K’s later we finally arrived at the block for sale.
A rare vacant block with some healthy Wattle trees on it. Far superior to the straggly gums and blackened stringy barks everywhere else. Admittedly they were laid out in rows that nature never intended but I guessed I could live with that.
The moment I saw the military precision of the wattle trees and my neighbours perfect front yard I knew where I wanted to be. Little did I know what I was in store for, us city slickers, but to avoid procrastinating all the way to the crematorium I made the decision to buy.
It was fortunate I decided that I would come down every month or so, to bring some junk to store and having never fully-owned property before to proudly waddle around hugging trees and calling out greedily ‘their mine! their mine!’
It’s lucky, because on the third trip down arriving just on sunset I was relieving myself against a tree when behind me there emanated such a blood curdling sound my pee almost froze in mid air. The feeling was immediate shock and impending horror as I peered into the darkening bushes. Musically I would have said it was somewhere around lower B flat at 100 decibels. Having recently seen ‘Attack of the Killer Sheep’ my hands shook and legs trembled at the sight of an incredibly obese animal, with menacing black face and matching stumps, literally leap out of the bushes and pin my shoulders to the ground.
Faced with the yellow rolling eyes of a completely berserk sheep I screamed at it, it froze, tilted its head, licked its lips, sniffed me, started chewing its cud as though to make room for one of my feet but finally decided I was not something it should ingest.
To be honest when I was first assaulted by it, the sheep was carrying so much wool I couldn’t make out its gender, and I spent some time with gentlemanly prudishness following it around eyeing off a daggy butt whenever it stood still. You would probably know, you more experienced shepherds, that when a very large, unshorn sheep is facing you, gender is not something you can pick easily, it’s not like they wear a bra or use lipstick, and I’m not the type to try a disguised grope.
The first couple of times I couldn’t make out if it was an embarrassingly under-developed ram or a ewe that needed a training bra. To be honest, until I had done a T.A.F.E Course on small farming I’d never had the need to really confront a sheeps’ crutch before.
On the next trip down I decided that I would have to involve myself with it physically. I would need to roll it on its back. Would I survive the ordeal of taking on a giant 80Kg tea cosy? In I went, head sideways to flank, both of us simultaneously, Oh! Hell! Who was wearing thongs at the time and received a well intentioned stomping on at least three toes? I should have put boots on, what would give way first, the sheep or my lacerated foot? Like a bomb, once dropped it couldn’t be taken back. What resulted was a sort of cease-fire, it was resting quietly between my knees but at the expense of two bleeding left toes. It looked at me as though to say ‘How very dare you’ and there they were - a well developed udder with two teats.
Hi there - may I introduce MAXINE.
GODFREY ZONE
So dear reader this monthly saga continues although some of you may have considered it balderdash from day one and consigned it to the bottom of the bird cage to soak up more.
So said ‘The Courier’ – 10 Acres of prime land close to town and local facilities with Dam, Power and Phone connected. I thought close to Ballarat? Worth a look? The price was something I might be able to handle and plus what I had seen over the last two years to connect the essentials it was affordable. Having experienced a lot of realty hype over a couple of years it looked a little too good to be true.
It was about thirty clicks following the Agent (that tells you not to sign anything?) through towns rich in history but devoid of personality. I was a-cumin’ round the mountain when I first sighted Linton ‘the historic gold town’ Passing along the main drag I got that ‘home’ feeling, from the Olympic sounding Linton Sporting Complex to the Railway Hotel (Is there a decent village or town that does not boast either a Railway, Royal or Commercial Hotel?) I liked the look of the town. It seemed, unlike many small villages on highways, ‘that it had a heart’, admittedly a bronze swaggie and a couple of black cut-outs of a drunk looking at an empty glass and a watchful sheep but it felt comfortable. Alas we passed through this village too, where was my Shangri-La, my Utopia, my Prozac?
Like Rocky Horror it was a lurch to the left that did it, 89 Kilometres to Geelong? Past the inexplicable curved streets, past the late ‘Oscar’ in his A-Frame Humpy and 5 K’s later we finally arrived at the block for sale.
A rare vacant block with some healthy Wattle trees on it. Far superior to the straggly gums and blackened stringy barks everywhere else. Admittedly they were laid out in rows that nature never intended but I guessed I could live with that.
The moment I saw the military precision of the wattle trees and my neighbours perfect front yard I knew where I wanted to be. Little did I know what I was in store for, us city slickers, but to avoid procrastinating all the way to the crematorium I made the decision to buy.
It was fortunate I decided that I would come down every month or so, to bring some junk to store and having never fully-owned property before to proudly waddle around hugging trees and calling out greedily ‘their mine! their mine!’
It’s lucky, because on the third trip down arriving just on sunset I was relieving myself against a tree when behind me there emanated such a blood curdling sound my pee almost froze in mid air. The feeling was immediate shock and impending horror as I peered into the darkening bushes. Musically I would have said it was somewhere around lower B flat at 100 decibels. Having recently seen ‘Attack of the Killer Sheep’ my hands shook and legs trembled at the sight of an incredibly obese animal, with menacing black face and matching stumps, literally leap out of the bushes and pin my shoulders to the ground.
Faced with the yellow rolling eyes of a completely berserk sheep I screamed at it, it froze, tilted its head, licked its lips, sniffed me, started chewing its cud as though to make room for one of my feet but finally decided I was not something it should ingest.
To be honest when I was first assaulted by it, the sheep was carrying so much wool I couldn’t make out its gender, and I spent some time with gentlemanly prudishness following it around eyeing off a daggy butt whenever it stood still. You would probably know, you more experienced shepherds, that when a very large, unshorn sheep is facing you, gender is not something you can pick easily, it’s not like they wear a bra or use lipstick, and I’m not the type to try a disguised grope.
The first couple of times I couldn’t make out if it was an embarrassingly under-developed ram or a ewe that needed a training bra. To be honest, until I had done a T.A.F.E Course on small farming I’d never had the need to really confront a sheeps’ crutch before.
On the next trip down I decided that I would have to involve myself with it physically. I would need to roll it on its back. Would I survive the ordeal of taking on a giant 80Kg tea cosy? In I went, head sideways to flank, both of us simultaneously, Oh! Hell! Who was wearing thongs at the time and received a well intentioned stomping on at least three toes? I should have put boots on, what would give way first, the sheep or my lacerated foot? Like a bomb, once dropped it couldn’t be taken back. What resulted was a sort of cease-fire, it was resting quietly between my knees but at the expense of two bleeding left toes. It looked at me as though to say ‘How very dare you’ and there they were - a well developed udder with two teats.
Hi there - may I introduce MAXINE.
GODFREY ZONE
