Having checked out of “Bates Manor” where we had a short but fantastic stay, we drove around to our old home that we lived and renovated between 1995-2003. We were cheeky enough to knock on the front door and introduce ourselves to the second lot of owners since we sold it.
Stan and Sandra have lived in the house for the last ten years and are originally from Scotland. They told us they bought the house off the web which was a brave thing to have done. We were pleased to see that all the work that we had done was still standing up well.
The garden unfortunately had seen much better days but a lot of this was to do with water restrictions which have occurred since we left. Planting an ornate English garden in a dry Australian climate was not the smartest of ideas. Had we stayed in the house, we would have had to change it.
All Di’s lead lighting which she had spent hours doing are still in tact and in relatively good condition. This is just two of the examples of the many windows that were done.
We were pleased the old thunder box was still operational.
When we sold the house we did so privately and Sandra and Stan still had our sign out in the garage. We had lots of memories come flooding back but at the end of the day we knew we had done the right thing by selling up and moving on.
Our next port of call was Tamworth which is a two hour drive north and through some badly affected drought areas. We were heading to Wallace Park to stay the night with Matt and Sal and their youngest daughter Georgie. Matt is the brother of our good friend Nick. We haven’t seen these guys for a number of years but we had a wonderful evening catching up on the intervening years and hearing what their two older daughters were up to.
Matt took us for a drive around the farm where we got a better appreciation of how hard the drought was hitting. He took us up to a high point on the farm where he has one of the large water tanks and took a lid off so we could have a look inside. Di didn’t mind the frog that was croaking away inside but the dead snake did her in!!! She hi-tailed it back to the ute. You have to be pretty tough to farm this kind of country.
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