Bush fires!

We had bush fires that passed close to our house last week. As you can see in the photo below, the fires came quite close to Hidden Valley, where we live. This shot was taken about 1.5 kilometers from our place. The CFA did a wonderful job of saving properties and animals.

To fight the fires, 'sky crane' helicopters were used to drop large volumes of water on problem fire areas. One of them sucked water up from the dam (Lake Grenville) at the end of our street. Uploading the water happened very quickly! I was hoping none of my duck friends would get sucked in - but the helicopter was so loud that I think they had plenty of time to get away.

Craig and Jude were worried that the fires might come too close to our house - Craig got lots of hoses set up so we could extinguish any embers that might land in our yard or on our house, or to douse grass fires should they come towards the house. He set up a hose from the water tank too. The thing that I liked most about these preparations was that there was quite a bit of dousing going on - and I luuurve jumping into the water and biting it. Someone has to show the hose who's boss!

Anyway - it's all good. The fires are under control now, and even though there are still occasionally fires that somehow reignite, the CFA is still doing a great job of keeping us safe. Thanks CFA!

[Message from Hamish] GOOD RIDDANCE TOBY!

This is Hamish, reporting in from Ballarat. I'm relieved to hear that Toby is going back to his own house today. Now don't get me wrong - he's a nice enough fellow even though he is a bit of a clutz - but he has been here for five days now, which is a long time for visitors to stay.
Let me list my concerns:

1. He loves me and keeps following me everywhere. While it might sound quite nice to be the subject of such adoration, it's actually a pain after a while. I can't get a moment to myself, and he wants to keep playing chasey all the time, even when it's 40 degrees outside!
2. He puts up strong competition in the table-bludging stakes. Toby has the advantage of being tall enough to see what's happening on the table, so knows just when to pay premium attention. What's worse is the fact that despite his youth, Toby is expert at bludging - he sits up straight, tilts his head at cute angles, and keeps eye contact, all the best tricks! This has had a negative impact on the volume of treats reaching my mouth.
3. Toby has questionable personal hygiene habits. He says he can't help it because he has long curly whiskers that attract mess, but he keeps leaving twigs and leaves etc from the garden in my water bowl! 
4. Toby doesn't know about barking at the postman - he puts no efforts into communicating with the postie at delivery time - hmmmph!
5. Toby has made me expand my eating repertoire when I'd prefer to be concentrating on my traditional targets (human food)! To keep up with him I've had to eat some new foods like carrots and baked bone-shaped biscuits for dogs. Heaven help me, but I had to eat a carrot the other day, after making a big production of stealing Toby's carrot when he was distracted. I was just trying to get the focus of attention back to me ... it didn't turn out that well for me. What I learned was: a) carrots should only be eaten by rabbits - they taste disgusting, and b) carrots are messy - I ended up with bits of carrot caught in my white ruff! Yuk! 
6. Toby takes up a lot of room - he often lies close to my humans, where I should be!
7. Toby is good at playing with toys. Maybe he even likes playing with them - who knows why? Humans seem to find this amusing. So Toby prances around with his toys, squeaking them and throwing them in the air and catching them etc., and hogging all the attention. 

So early this afternoon, I will be lining up at the front fence waving goodbye to Toby. I'll have a pensive expession on my face but inside I'll be doing a little dance, becaue we'll have peace and quiet again. 

See you next holidays Toby!

cheers,

Hamish

Hamish is starting to like me

Woof-oh, and greetings from Ballarat.

I've been staying at Gran and Pa's place for 3 days now, and I think Hamish is starting to really like me. At lunch time when Jude have me a carrot to chew Hamish stole my carrot when I was looking away. He ran around and around the living room holding it in his mouth. Jude said he looked like Groucho Marx - smoking a huge cigar.

Eventually Hamish stopped showing off and got down to eating my carrot! What a cheek - but it's almost worth it to have him liking me.