The House(s) of Fran_mart

When we first came to Carwoola Frances noted that our neighbour's property was called "Wombat Crossing". We certainly noted a fair number of traces of wombats having been around the place - without going into details they mark their territory with cubic crap. However until the last couple of days we had had very few sightings (a couple of times as I drove out to meetings after dark, and once on a morning walk). When we returned from our Brisbane trip, while taking Tammy-the-rat for a walk I spotted a couple of them down by our creek. They bolted before I could get the camera on them but the next afternoon I got a few images of this one. Surprisingly it let me get within about 20m before ambling back into its hole. The first lot of friends, now referred to in the title are not fat, just have a prickly personality as shown in the LHS of the image below. I found this little chap snuffling around in a tussock on 6 August. We have noticed evidence of them improving

I hope these will appear in more or less the right order, but Blogger seems to have a mind of its own. If you have trouble sorting out what is which, regard it as a form of Sudoku! We should have: the Darling at Tilpa, two photos of the Darling River Run (320km of dirt road between Wilcannia and Bourke); the Japanese Gardens and a lookout in Toowoomba, Woolgoolga Beach and Fred Hollows grave in Bourke.

These are some photos of the Broken Hill part of our trip. They are: a long shot of the Miners Memorial (on a mullock heap overlooking the City); a close up of the aisle of the memorial; the outside of the Gaol; a weapon of localised destruction (Broken Hill, WWI,style); long and close shots of part of the Sandstone Symposium sculptures; two of Geoff DeMain's murals and me (being obedient).

These are some of more interesting vegetative states we encountered on or trip. In order they are: Correa, a close up of one of the drier bits of Bowra, a longer shot of same, wattle, two forms of sundew, Prickly pears near Moonie, mallee scrub at Monarto and a wild grevillea.

In the order in which I expect them to appear, we have images here of: Banded Lapwing, Flying foxes, Little Corellas, Jacana, Beach Stone-curlews, Emus, Wedge-tailed Eagle, Rainbow Lorikeets, Australian Bustard, female Mistletoebird, Other birds at a feeder, Australian Pelican

Each evening when we take the rat out for a pit stop there tends to be a controntation with a possum. On the evening of the 4th of July I got a photo of the enemy. Obviously red-eye reduction doesn't work with marsupials! I'd point out that we are keen to see that the confrontation stays verbal (hissing, spitting and occasional barking. I reckon the possum outweighs Tammy by a factor of two and seems to have a very bad attitude.

This afternoon I went for a walk around the block to do a last look for birds in this year of the COG Garden Bird Survey. As it was blowing a NW gale there were few birds around an those that were present were generally moving rapidly towards the SE. As I got back to the end of the lawn I noticed a lot of water laying about. Hmm . We had had about 6mm of rain in the last few days but not enough to cause that. Then I looked and could see a large hump in the lawn that hadn't been there before. When I stood on it, it went 'squelch". Oh, fornicating faecal matter!!! After a few minutes rapid spade work I found a large bore (say 7cm) pipe with a nice joiner in it - or should I say NEARLY in it. We were talking leak city! There are a number of lengths of pipe disappearing into various parts of the property and this looked as though it was related to one or more of them. My hope was that it was in some way related to one that emerges from our dam: on inspection it seem