Under a hotter sun; A new year!

A new year !
The girls have started school. Jacky and Lilli in Tyndale and Marie-Louise at Maclean High school. Norma said I could came with her to the assembly where the Headmaster of the school held a speech. I only understood the odd word Australian English was so hard to understand. My ear had not yet adapted to the sounds and vowels to the Australian language.

I was wondering how Marie-Louise would get along. All day long I was thinking of my girls in those strange schools, surrounded by strange people and also a strange language to learn. My heart was heavy when I went to pick them up at half past three from the school bus which stops at Hazel's milk bar. All three seemed to be happy and have taken their first school day in their stride.
Marie-Louise was taken under the wings of a few senior students from Year 11 and 12. They looked out for her and asked all sorts of questions about Switzerland, which she answered as best as she could. Also the Librarian asked her if she wanted to become a library monitor. It pleased Marie-Louise, she loves books. Her day went all in all quite well. The English teacher is prepared to give Marie-Louise extra lessons to catch up with her class.
Jacky and Lilli have also made their experiences. The teacher was talking about ants but they didn't know what he was talking about. So he send a child out with them to show them the ants. I think they will learn the language quickly because nobody speaks their language. They have to take their lunch with them as they are not coming home over lunch it wouldn't be practical as Maclean is about 23 km from Hazel's place and then there are an other 6 km to our place.

The bus leaves at eight AM and returns at half past three PM. It is a long day. I wonder how the five and six year old children cope with such a long day. When the children are at school I am mostly alone at home. Peter is always somewhere working on the property, and it is BIG. In Australia a farmer plants crops and he owns a farm. A grazier has beef cattle or sheep and his farm is a grazing property, these are the subtleties in different countries.
We have Hereford Beef cattle, so we are "Graziers"! Letters which are sent from Stock and Station agents are very old fashioned addressed only to P. S...., Esquire....I don't exist! It is not done to slight me, it is just the way things are done in a world of men. P.. too has this attitude. He had a new sign made for our house it just said: P. S....This old fashioned attitude "it niggles a bit"!

More clean up.
Peter was going to do more cleanup work along the river bank. To plant some corn and pumpkins for the pigs he intended to buy. It was hazardous work with all the leftovers from a previous flood hiding under the cover of man high weeds.

He suggested I should walk in front of the tractor to find out if some big tree was in the way of the tractors wheels. I put on my boots and sunhat and was ready for this task. Diligently I was trudging in front of the tractor. At first quite happy to fulfil this task, as there were all sorts of things happening in those weeds. Bugs and butterflies flitting past me, a tiny mouse or something similar scuttling away from my boots.
It was a big, big, big field. It seemed to me the rows were getting longer and longer until to the end of this particular field. It was not really easy walking, I had to be careful not to fall in a hole made by the water and the field was very uneven! When a big stump or an other hindrance was in the way, we had to push it away, it was really hard work. I was getting hot and hotter and sweaty. It felt like my face was on fire. I was not used to work like this. I was promising myself that this was the first and the last time to be the scout. I rather learn how to drive the tractor. I was tired, hot and had just enough. My stamina was on zero.
My pioneer days along the river bank were not successful!

This was a bad day for me. This was not grazier work, this was full on plain hard farm work.
The first corn was going to be harvested. This field was already planted by the previous owner. Our neighbour had a harvester machine. It looked like it came from a time bygone. It looked like "Tinguely's machine"! I wondered if he (Tinguely) saw this one before he built his!
The harvester started its work. It lost as much corn back into the field as landed in the bags. Next Year the corn will grow by itself if the mice, rats and birds haven't eaten it already.
The pumpkin crop seemed to do alright. Big Pumpkins round and fat, nestling between the leaves. Soon ready to be harvested. Then came the rain and the flood and goodbye Pumpkins. If they didn't drown they were happily swimming in the swirling water towards the sea. The corn was drowned too. Some could be saved. We have only once planted pumpkins and corn on the riverbank. The Australian farmers, living there since generations are much more fatalistic. They say, sometimes you win and sometimes you loose.