Thar's gold in thum thar hills

The Central Goldfields is a charming place a couple of hours NW of Melbourne. Very reminiscent of the Barossa in Adelaide, but a little more remote.

For the most part of the week, the weather was great during the day, and on the drives home at night, there were heavy thunderstorms. Excellent timing. I took a couple of shots, but realised that the camera was in sepia mode. They still look okay though.



And check out this knarley tortoise following the broad gauge line on his migratory journey between ponds. I didn't even know that tortoises were native to Austalia. Or that they got about in the arid regions.


Friday night, we had dinner at the local saloon and watched the deluge outside. The young farmers would have been upset to be recieving such heavy follow up rains during the harvest.

Standing at the jukebox, I was going to put on some Gene Pitney, when I felt a presence loom behind me.

'Twas a man in a flannel shirt with the arms cut off, stubbie shorts and desert boots. He was dancing, flailing his arms about, drunk, and he poked me in the back.

"Put on some country and western. That'd go down a treat right about now."

"Country and western?"

About the only country and western I like is bluegrass. And they didn't have Who broke the lock on the hen house door?. Although I would have love to have played it just to see what would happen.

I'd already heard Lee Kernaghan about thirty times that night, so I put on "24 hours from Tulsa" just to spite him.

Not a wise choice.

"What's this shit?" "This isn't Cuntry and western"

I was later told that his brother was in jail for starving all his sheep, and there was some talk that he had shot the cigarette out of a mans mouth at thirty paces.

That's the gold fever. All crazy like.

I hightailed it out of the saloon and headed for the hills.

If only they had that Benny Hill music on the jukebox too.