Baby blockie (beginnings as a farmer)
When I bought this little plot of farming land in western Victoria I was still living and working in Melbourne.
Melbourne is the state capital of Victoria and is a large sprawling city with a huge population.
I would drive every second weekend for about two and a half hours to reach the “farm”. Then, after a couple of days, I would head back home again.
Soon this frequency was not enough.
The migrations moved to weekly. And then I added an extra day - a three day weekend was what was required, every week. I would take a bag of clothes and a bag of food and my loved ones and we would vacate the big city.
I soon learnt that I needed to travel at night to avoid traffic and reduce the travel time. The journey literally took me from one side of Melbourne to the other and then out to the Westerns regions via the city of Ballarat (third largest city in Victoria).
Speed of journey was not just for my convenience but also for the carload of creatures travelling with me. At this time I had two dogs, three cats and about five chooks. Each Thursday night they were bundled up and into the car. Chooks in cat boxes. Cats in cat boxes (different boxes to the chooks) and dogs on the ute tray. Packed in. All of us together. No one gets left behind.
[There is a funny story about me going through a police breath-testing stop on the way to the farm. Imagine it? Be like the Clampetts without the Beverly Hills. Young police officer, eyes darting about, not really sure what he is seeing here…]
Maude (one of my rescue cats) was the only one to complain. She found it to be a weekly trauma and would go to great lengths to hide.
She became very skilled finding better and less obvious hideouts. She would dash into the cat run and lie in a section where she knew I couldn’t reach her. Or disappear upstairs and behind anything she could find, moving around as she heard me calling her. She had extraordinary stealth which, if you ever met her, you would find not just unlikely but impossible.
Her most ingenious spot was under a bed and through a rip in the bottom of the mattress. If not for her tubby little body I would never have found her. The big bulge sagging to the floor gave the game away but it was still a chore to get her out…
The weekly migrations had also become a necessity after I had bought my first and then second horse. And whilst I was fortunate to have a kind neighbour who would check on the horses when I was away (at least drive past to make sure no one was stuck in a fence) I knew that I wanted to be where the horses were - for both my sake and for the horses. And for Maude.
