Bugs, Bids and a Wombat

What a lovely spring day for our annual country school auction and some time spent at my childhood home. Out in the garden masses of ladybirds were brunching on the aphids, so many I filled the card in my camera in no time. They're just so cute! Oh well, no pic's from the auction.

I'm quite impressed by my degree of restraint given that I managed to come away empty handed. I cheated though, if you take no money, you can't spend it! And lucky for me cos there was this gorgeous little antique timber fridge or ice box, which in my opinion went cheap at $120. It would have looked much cuter in the studio than a boring white power sucking bar fridge. I could easily imagine sipping cool lemonade straight from the ice box, whilst working on a long overdue quilt. Oh well. Maybe next year I'll keep an eye out for one (when hubby's not with me)

My eldest had her first taste at bidding, thanks to the openness of Nannies purse. She was the successful bidder on a box of miscellaneous odds and sods containing some old Christmas decorations, a few mismatched dinner plates, quite a few, and a cake container that she'd been eyeing off full of little Winnie the Poo, Piglet and other Disney characters. Well... at the raise of her finger, the auctioneer was smitten and refused to take any other bids, declaring it sold to the young lady in the front row. I'm sure if we'd let her go, she would have purchased many other pieces of interest otherwise known as 'Junk'. Either way she has the bidding bug now so I will need to teach her a few lessons in sticking to your limits and not getting carried away in the moment, and to stay off eBay!

After a spot of lunch back at home our attention was redirected from car racing carnage of the Bathurst 1000 V8 Supercar Races on TV, to the screaming sirens of the local fire truck, which had been on display at the auction for all the kids to climb over and press the siren buttons.

Sirens were followed by more sirens, and then the whiff of smoke from a grass fire...coming our way! After assessing the possibility of being burnt out, we decided to drive over there to determine just how bad it was before making any rash decisions. Not sure of the cause, but someones grassy backyard was burnt out and it had run up the embankment and a couple of gum trees just beside the main road. The three fire trucks had it under control. Definitely lucky they were just down the road, or things may have been worse if it had managed to jump the road.

What an exciting diversion for the day. Whilst over that way Poppy decided a short educational walk was in order down to where an old lime kiln once existed. Unfortunately it was filled in due to being a risk to public safety. So why visit a filled in lime kiln? For the fossils of course! Within metres of stepping out of the car the girls were finding shell imprints in limestone rocks at nearly every rock they turned over, oh... and a good Australian red back spider. We left her right where we found her.
And then, another very good spot by my eldest... a wombat just resting under the lime layered cliffs

So we went to an auction, photographed masses of ladybirds... went to a small grass fire, fossicked for fossils, picked up scats... I think it was owl poo which contained the furry remains of a ring tail possum (I found his body further down the track), I'll get those analysed when I get back to work! Spotted a lazy wombat, walked up hill and down through pine forests, then went back home to finish the day with a beer whilst kicking back in the spa. How good's that?