Gone stashin

And there's a sign upon my door.... (shangri-la)
Gone stashin'
Who could ask for more....

G'day all!

Well Bendi has come and gone and yeah, what a day!

I got up before dawn and got to K's place when it was still dark enough for the view towards the city to look like this:


Though if I looked in the other direction it looked like this - dawn was definately on its way:

(But the camera lies a bit - it was quite dark, it just was catching my excitement)

So we hopped into D & K's car and off we zoomed. Sunrise eventually caught us up:


And then the fog descended as we ascended onto a plateau:

(we got to see a lot of grey on the way back....)

Finally we were at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show, held annually in Bendigo:


Inside unassuming halls, like the LR Osborne hall,


we found delights - walls of yarn and fleece, and piles of fudge:


There were sweet little sheep in a stand outside - this young ram loves getting a good scratch:

(can you guess his breed? There has been a clue in a pic earlier. The next sheep pic is the same breed. They have these funny little waggy tails)

And this ewe could have up to SIX babies on board! She certainly looks big enough!


There were sheep dog trials:


And enormous queues for the ladies toilets, unless you walked 20 metres down the way and used the porta loos in the big semi-trailer (what a job - hey, Bazza, what do you do for a living? Oh, not much - I drive a semi-trailer of porta-potties around Australia for the ladies). No, I didn't take a picture, surprisingly.

We saw a lot of the feature breed at this year's show - alpacas:






Including this little sweetie cria, who was determined to eat the ribbon stretched across its stall:


Around 2pm we decided to move on. I had done my dough, seen lots of stuff and was loaded to the gills with bits and pieces. We stopped at the Bendi wool mills to paw through their fabled back room, full of bargain yarn. As we pawed and marvelled, the cold change forecast for the morning finally hit. It rained. It rained a lot. No pics of the trip home because it rained and was grey a lot. The rain was so heavy at Malmsbury that it had filled up a gutter by the road that was about 50cm deep. The water was so dirty that in running across the road, I nearly ran straight into it, thinking it was part of the concrete driveway that crossed it. Then K nearly did what I did as I yelled at her to avoid it.

(Many thanks to D for driving me up there and being so patient as I got caught up with various vendors....)

Here is what you have been waiting for:


Can you guess what my favourite purchase is? Hint: they are vicious and have pride of place.

More next time, when I reveal the true horror of what I brought home.

anon!