Mad Days in the Madhouse!

Wow! Australia Day - how did you get here so fast? I feel like I blinked and lost a month.

Things have been a bit mad in the Madhouse, hence the lack of posting. But now I am back - at least briefly.

So, how bonkers did it get? Think Bedlam on a full moon...

• The huskafloof went down with an injury to his right rear quadrant the weekend before Christmas. Vet management plan is in effect since Christmas Eve.
• We got a new puppy - Mia. Picked her up Christmas Eve. She will be trained and re-homed. We planned/arranged her before Stinker went down. It was a case of 'someone take her or dire consequences'. So we took her.
• We got something like 7 job offers. We were set to take 1, then another came up and we took that. More on that later.
• This job is ending. The feed is so scarce that the property is being de-stocked in March.
• Water problems. The bore runs through our place to the neighbours; several have been having water issues.
• Not a day under 40Celcius in 6 weeks.
• Snakes - bloody snakes. Eastern browns - 10 in 2 weeks. And a bandy-bandy hubby nearly stepped on.
• Burnt out cars - boss' car caught fire 15km from the homestead in the middle of the night.
• New job/moving/all the stuff THAT entails.

Most of that is pretty self-explanatory. This job ends March because so much stock died/had to be shot last winter due to lack of forage. The huskafloof's injury remains a mystery, 14 hours to the required vet specialist, who is on holiday until February. So we manage him.

The new job is 36000 km away in the goldfields of WA - on a donking great cattle station (2.5million acres total). We will be caretaking one of the 4 homesteads. While it is a long way from our family, the offer was too good to pass up. So we are off at the end of next month.

The job we were going to take - well, we had it down to 2. One was an hour south of Townsville, caretaking. The other was in Maryborough, about an hour from Hervey Bay. Also caretaking. Other contenders were a caretaking position in NSW, and a couple on the Maranoa (where we are now). The WA job we didn't even apply for, it found us through word of mouth.

I am packing everything up for the move already. We have soaping ingredients we've carted from place to place for 4 years; no more. So we are making soap to use some up (it stinks, it is not the pretty smells I like, but it works wonders for hubby's exczema/dermatitis).

So that is where I have lost a month to madness. And now ewe have only 31 days to departure for our next adventure...