Happy New Year

from the SCHAER cats to you all and especially my dear blogpals Copperwitch, Cat Politics, Highriser, Hels Art & Architecture, That's So Pants, and Tony on Hebden Bridge. Thank you all for the pleasure of 2016, keep 'em coming.

PARK! the herald angels scream ...

Wishing youse all a very merry Christmas but frankly I got very Victor Meldrew yesterday after a 3-hour drive from home when I joined the mongol hordes at the shopping mall. Just look at this selfish parking. and here is another one - who ignored the difficulty I had reverse parking into the spot behind him, despite my deliberate provocation of getting as close to his open window as possible,

that guy sat in his car reading with his foot on the brake for 40 minutes while I went and returned from the queue in the post office I just don't believe it or as That's So Pants would say "What is wrong with these people?".

My Day

This is what I was looking at tonight around 7:30 PM. Several hundred acres of The Western District. Very very close to where Victorias first/earliest settlers settled. Those bloody Hentys. My Nan always claimed that our lot helped the Hentys get their luggage off the boat.

My farmer is interstate so I went round the boundary at 7:30 to make sure no cattle were on the road. Noticed a sign flat on the ground, face down.

Should have stopped to read it and restore it because halfway along the hillside road there had been a serious landfall.

Woops. Think Top Gear in Bolivia who would have been laughing as they roared along the remote and narrow unstable precipice.

So of course I came up behind the sign at the other end of the road, the one that everybody else just went around. Sigh. Obviously there are other road users but I saw none of them. Total peace and quiet and fresh fresh air.

For contrast, earlier, at 11 AM I was 40 kms away in town seeing the Absolutely Fabulous movie and I thought it was. Edina finally having some kind of realisation about her shallow life pool as her grand-daughter picks up the fashionista baton. All the fun of vicious comment/observation on puerile media frenzy and every other societal sin "we're in the south of France darling, everyone's a criminal",  and "Kate Moss has never been so in-demand as since she went missing", a Princessian mountain of flowers at the crash site, with a collection of plush toys and childish portraits of Moss [and a pair of Hunter wellies with Glasto mud on them], with Edina reprising her star turn 'falling out of a car', and Hotel Du Cap, Nobu, Jean Paul Gaultier in several scenes as a Riviera beach fossicker, Bubble the dippy PA in the background laughing as she read a book by Friedrich Nietzsche. Star turns by Rebel Wilson as an Air Hostess, Joan Collins, funny Jerry Hall, her daughter Georgia, Lily Cole, and Barry Humphries playing a now aged old flame of Patsy Stones in his best Sir Les Patterson lewdity, and I am sure I saw John Galliano pass by. I now know that they all mouth 'Thurrssday' when cameras appear. 
There was an Al Wei Wei joke, book publisher jokes, and poor Lulu was trashed rotten as always. The only time the other 5 women in the audience laughed was at the 'discomfort of unknowingly eating wasabi' scene. The script was only as shallow as the viewers cultural frame-of-reference. I was impressed by the choice of Janis Ian At 17 [a commentary on society's beauty standards] for Saffy to sing in a gay club and leave them all in tears. Her wonderful "duck saliva" response [in the Hearst Corporation EYE magazine which was as close to the legendary UK  NOVA as the USA could get]  to the moronic interview question that passed for  record promo - "what is your favourite beauty product?" has been a treasured memory of mine.
I was amused that the Coming Feature trailer was for The First Monday In May a documentary about the very people "we MUST have Rihanna" that Ab Fab was ridiculing. There was some serious cast overlap too.
No muddy roads in either film.
My no-shades-of-grey day.

Western District awash

The farm fence was submerged this week by all the rain here in the Coleraine area. Hibernating snakes all got a wet wake up and a sheep was swimming down the street in Casterton.

This image is the same place as the one above, taken from the bridge the next day with all the flotsam caught in the fence wire. Bit of work ahead to replace it all. At least the dams and tanks are all full.
This image of the nearby Nigretta Falls

is from The Age and please do click this link to it's entry World Of Waterfalls. Not only did flying kangaroos wreck their rental and inspire them to publish several images of kangas leaping across their bows but they went in November when the falls were dry - here is their image of that:

World Of Waterfalls I wish they could see it now.

Koalarama

On my way home from shopping [in Hamilton, Victoria 3300 the heart of the wonderful and woolly Western District]

eventually he left the road ...

and went up a tree.

That was all cute and groovy and I mooched further toward home only to find

a tortoise on the road. sigh. of course I had to pick it up and put it safely away from the hurtling logging trucks which most certainly would not swerve to avoid a fatal end.
If Copperwitch [hi Coppy] was writing this post she would make it hilarious. She shops at Southland which probably has koalas and tortoises too.I can only sigh.