December 2016

1-31 December 2016

December has come and is now almost gone and it has been an interesting and somewhat tiring month. The harvest continued and our working hours increased to a good level, thanks mainly to the removal last month of the extra staff.
Working 6 days a week from 6.30am to 6 or 6.30pm the month went very quickly with little else but work, eat and sleep being about the only events for each day.

Forecast earlier in the year for a bumper harvest the total tonnage for our site was downgraded to 65,000 tonnes after frost hit the area and did some damage. But, as of when we left site we had taken over 85,600 tonnes of Wheat and Barley, which was on par with last year. Some of the harvest is still to come in before the clean up commences, but that, thanks to the reluctance this year to use casuals because of the cost will be handled by the permanent CBH staff and will probably be all done by the second week of January.

So, thanks to a slow morning on Christmas Eve we managed to pack up in between trucks and then after the site closed at lunchtime all we had to do was have a shower and get going. Driving the 300 odd kilometres to be with family for Christmas we arrived in the late afternoon and set up camp on our son's front lawn.

Since arriving we have spent some great time with our children and grandchildren on Christmas and Boxing Days, before a special family day on the 30th.

Christmas and family over we will be making our way down to Mandurah for a couple of days with our friends the Polmears for New Years Eve celebrations.

And so as 2016 comes to an end we begin to look forward and to some more adventure and exploration in 2017 to connect a few lines and start some new ones on our map.

2012-2016
(Different colours for each year)

Mark Twain once said "...years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do that by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - and so we will.