Ned the Gnome

This is Ned the Gnome. He was given to me by Mark and Jan for my birthday with a message on the card that read:

"Please love me and do not break me and make out it was an accident."

He resides in the garden as you can see. I was reminded of Ned today whilst in Bunnings. I had one of those wonderful 'inter reaction with a total stranger' moments there this morning.

I was at the check out with my wares, some rather nice potted grasses, which were being admired by the lady scanning my purchases.

"How tall do they grow?" she enquired. At which point a man joined me in the line with his punnet of vegetable seedlings. He admired the grasses too. He was an interesting looking character with a twinkle in his eye.

"About fifty centimetres" I replied, placing my hand above the bench by my estimation of fifty centimetres. "About this high, you reckon?" I asked them both.

"Yup!" said the character, as his tufty hair poked somewhat tuftily, funnily enough, from underneath his rather colourful beanie "About as high as my G-nome" (pronouncing it as in G-orilla)

"I have G-nome too!" I cried out with delight! "Mine is called Ned the Gnome."

"I call mine 'Arsehole' " he replied "As he keeps turning all the lights on and off in the house."

Then, giving me a cheeky wink, he went on his way, leaving me totally speechless!

Fence finally finished!

At last the fence is finished around the house, and the new garden is offered a bit of protection.

We used posts and tin sheeting for a rustic effect on the eye, a sensational feeling on the pocket, and to tie in with the stables which you can't see in this photo, but are to the right of the fence. It's all starting to come together and an annihilation and rejuvenation of the old garden has given us a great project at the homestead.

We went over to Scadden on Saturday and saw a beautiful garden owned and tended by the Thomas's. Sensational! I was swept up in the wonderful box hedges, amazing array of plants, olive trees, weeping mulberry trees, mop tops, crystal clear swimming pool and grass tennis court complete with pavilion. Quite breath taking. It made me want to rush home and start frenetically and frantically working on my own garden, and ours needs a lot of work let me tell you. The pool, for example, has water in it, but it is black, three inches deep and full of sticks, leaves, dead frogs and mosquitoes.

So on Sunday we decided to finish the fence before attacking the pool. In my frenzy to help shift a pile of posts off the trailer I dropped one on my foot and am now nursing a broken toe. I then took a large piece of skin off the middle finger of my left hand moving a selection of wooden rails, and capped off the day by driving a piece of weld mesh wire into my skull as I bent down to plant some wormwood in the chook house.

Given that I had also started the day with a extremely energetic walk for over an hour, I was totally crippled by 6pm and a strong gin and tonic was called for. I am subsequently looking for a strong, youthful virile type with steel capped boots, gloves and head protection to work in the garden.

Apply within.

Dear Ted,
Here you are having the Hill Plains experience along The Duke of Orleans beaches east of Esperance. The city boy turns biker boy and let me say you 'done real good' for the first time on a quad bike. What a day it was and didn't we blow out the cobwebs!

Just thought I'd let you know I am slowly recovering from my injuries after Tommo took off like a mad man along the beach with me and the dog up pillion and realised too late that he was headed for a cut away on the beach. Too late! Did you see how far we flew and where we landed after we had become airbourne?! My ribs are still a bit tender after the impact on landing and the dog looks a bit wary when we both get onto the quad now and suggest he joins us.....

Thought you'd like this pic, Teddly. Easy rider!! Catch you back in the big smoke,

Love Vic x

Ted Bull hits Hill Plains

A question I am often asked at gigs is "What does Ted look like?"

Well here's a photo of me and the infamous Ted Bull, whilst he was visiting us at Hill Plains over the weekend. He came down with fellow ABC broadcaster and good mate Greg Marston, who took this photo and was instrumental in getting my CD 'A Bird in the Bush' recorded and produced. You may have heard this 'pair of old jocks' entertaining us on weekend ABC radio.

True to form we imbibed in a few good reds and many a laugh on Saturday night before taking the boys to the beach and setting them up on quad bikes for a blast along the coast. Ted is currently enjoying ten months long service leave, so took the opportunity to jump in Greg's car and go on a road trip to Esperance.

Thelma and Louise eat your hearts out!

Flying High for the RFDS at Jerramungup

What a brilliant evening I had this week at the Needilup Hall, near Jerramungup. The Jerry Lions Club were hosting their annual fundraising dinner, this year in aid of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, so the evening had a flying theme. Pictured are Lions President Trevor and Flight Captain John at the end of the evening, by which time the Captain had lost his hat and stick on moustache! I was lucky enough to be invited as guest poet for the night.

On arrival we were led up the candle lit gangway to the 'plane' and ushered through the security gate and into the VIP lounge. Here we were served delicious canapes by the cabin staff, suitably dressed in their uniforms, before being seated for 'the flight'. The Captain welcomed us and instructed his crew to give us the safety demonstration, which I must say didn't inspire a heap of confidence. None of then seemed to have a clue how to put on their life jackets! Then we were invited to peruse the In flight dinner menu and In flight entertainment, all delightfully printed on our individual sick bags!

This was country hospitality at its very best. Eighty locals had gathered together and the time and effort put into this show by the organisers was fantastic. The log fire was roaring and the laughter, wine and good food flowing, and I felt right at home the minute I walked in the door. With Matt singing a selection of songs to his guitar and Murray adding his unique style of poetry to the evening we were well set. We had a twenty question quiz sheet on each table, the good old raffle and a poetry competition where each table was required to pen a verse.

It's a night like this that makes me realise just how great small rural communities really are. Thank you all for my beautiful banksias, a truly memorable night and the opportunity to meet and enjoy the company of some wonderful people; John & Helen, Don & Val, Trevor, Kim & Colleen and Linda to name a few.

It wasn't just the RFDS who benefited from this fundraiser.......

Claudia Wayup, International Motivational Speaker sidles up to State Treasurer and Minster for Commerce Troy Buswell at the 2009 Esperance Business Awards.

If ever you wanted to chuck a rotten tomato at someone on stage this ghastly woman would have to take the cake.....and the tomato too. On a whirlwind cicuit of WA she was in town for one night only.......mercifully.

She condescendingly addressed the audience in her American drawl, truly believing she was the only person to have ever got anywhere in the business world, and leaving them in no doubt that any of her business successes certainly had nothing to do with anything that was going on in her head. In fact, they were left wondering whether there was any action all at above her navel.

The award of the night surely must go to CEO Marcus Tromp and the President and commitee of the The Esperance Chamber of Commerce, who have well and truly got this prestigious event back on the town calendar. Congratulations to you, and to all the winners of awards on the night.

SEPWA Ladies' Day 2009 and what a day it was! Great speakers throughout the day, including inspirational Kirsten Skraha the RIRDC Rural Women's Award Winner 2009; Rochelle Adonis, amazing Canadian French Pastry Chef with a fascinating life story; pigheaded (her own words) Sonja Johnson, Silver Medalist at the Beijing Olympics in the Equestrian competition and Sabrina Hahn, gardening guru and total nutter! We laughed, we cried. It was a fabulous day and night, and if you weren't there you missed a real treat.

There was quite an attractive photo of Sabrina & I taken at the dinner that evening, but we liked this one more, and I've called it "The Two Nuts", which seemed appropriate given Sabrina's Dinner Speech. She stood on a coffee table, as she is knee high to a grasshopper, with a glass of red in one hand (which no-one seemed able to prise off her, and as she has a black belt in kick boxing no-one seemed overly keen to either) and regaled us with wonderfully politically incorrect tales of her life up north. These sort of people really should be bottled. Note I say bottled, not pickled. We were all fairly pickled by the end of the night anyway.

Local girls who added to this wonderful day included Michelle Barrett from HomebodE who not only shared her business sucess story with us, but the emotional roller coaster she is currently on having a severely injured three year old in Princess Margaret Hospital at the moment. We had a 'Parky' style interview with author of 'Red Dust' Fleur McDonald, who absolutley loathes public speaking, but did a fabulous job. She has a great website.

"Just google Fleur McDonald and I come up in first spot" she said.

"Just google Victoria Brown and I come up as a 23 year old American pole dancer" I replied.

And the list of wonderful women continued with Gill and Mandy providing delicious morning and afternoon teas from their enterprise 'Biccies', to Gail Adamson-Reynolds talking about the indigenous culture tour and bush tucker business her family runs, Kepa Kurl. Gail is a great bird who had us in stitches telling us how they had tried to get grants from the government for various projects in their business. Cramming an hour and a half of info into forty minutes, she delivered some classic lines, including;

"We put in for one government grant thinking 'You beauty, we'll get it, we're black....but we didn't!"

One of her messages to us was 'If you haven't been on a local tourist trip offered by a business in your town you should. How else can you promote your region if you haven't experienced what's on offer?'

Mae Connelly from Farmanco spoke to us on Grain Marketing in the most entertaining and engaging way,if that is humanely possible, and Crawford Taylor from Diamond Sponsor Rabobank seemed an exceptionally happy chappy, particularly at the dinner where he was the only man in a room full of drop dead gorgeous women. Onya Crawford!

Congratulations to the SEPWA Ladies Committee once again. If you weren't there this year, make sure you are in 2010.