deadly silence

has everyone gone into hibernation ?[:)]

You could be mistaken for thinking that they have!

yep… its been a bit quiet, everyone must be either up to there arm pits in greasy bike bits, or they’ve got all there jobs done and are chilling out waiting for the sun to arrive…
Speaking of sunshine, keep seeing all the bush fires in australia on the news, are they anywhere near you tony ?

Yeah, I work in Cooma NSW, there is a very large fire out of control about 12kms (7.5 miles) from there but it is heading away from Cooma towards the coast, so no risk there to me but plenty of landholders have lost all but their homes so far.
I am more concerned about the coming days, all in the mid thirties celcius, (95 degrees f) windy and dry.
I have not had to put out any fires on my 110 acre property yet, but have been involved in 7 or 8 small fires on neighbouring properties, it’s no fun.
Fingers crossed…Tony

we could probably put Norwich in 110 acres and still have room for a MotoGp track.? Blue[:)]

Hi Lloyd, I like your sense of humour…although I think you exaggerate a little!
We do have a small motocross track in the front paddock, around 15 acres I guess, but no motogp track. My farm is a mere “hobby farm” here, but it keeps me plenty busy!
Bushfires in the summer, frozen burst pipes and pumps in the winter, cattle to look after, foxes to shoot (foxes and rabbits are considered a feral introduced species here so we have to shoot them by law)and somewhere in all that I need to make time to drag the old VF1000 out of the garage for a spin.

Can you hear the violin playing gently in the background?

Truly, I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Tell you what Tony, how about I come over and look after the VF for you while you tend the farm. The flights pretty cheap and I dont eat much so you`d come out of it quids in mate !![8D]
Seriously, it looks like Tassie is being hit hard too.

Martin

Hey Martin, how about you come over and look after the farm while I ride the VF1000? LOL.
I hope the cool change helps them with their fires, 24C down in Tassie today.
Tony

Hi Martin,
You guys dont get fires like this over there at all?

Hi Tony,
I have a lot of friends and family around the country but none have been hit yet, Thankfully. It looks like the ride to Phillip Island is going to be smokey, smelly and black one just like the trip 4 years ago when most of Victoria went up. But i love the smell of smoke in the morning and you can see the roos and goanas before they jump out in front of you (if there are any left). Stay safe Tony and i hope to buy you a beer at cooma on the way down.
Cheers.
Paul.
p.s. email me your phone number and i will give you a ring when we are on our way.

Paul, we do get heath fires and some forest fires but obviously nothing like you guys. We lock all the nutters up before they start playing with matches. Anyway, with the weather weve had for the last 12 months, you could pour 10 gallons of diesel in a forest here and it still wouldnt burn (allegedly !)

yep, we do have a few heath and moorland fires but nothing like you oz guys… we seem to be getting lots of flooding at the moment, but as they say, if your house floods it will dry out eventually, if your house catches fire its buggered…

tony… wish i could send you some of our rain lol.

paul… hope you dont get lost in the smoke on the way to philip island, and watch out for those roo’s… we only have sheep to contend with, but i guess you guys know about those little suckers too. lol

Thanks for the kind thoughts guys, all we can do is be well prepared, monitor emergency radio frequencies and deal with whatever comes our way or get the hell out of the way of it. After the 2003 fires I saw some granite boulders while trail riding that had just exploded on the side of the fire, so our fires get bloody hot!
Our wildlife is certainly a challenge too, imagine a ram that can travel at around 70kph and jump 2 metres high over fences and weighs around 70kg and you can begin to understand what Kangaroos are like to try to avoid on the highway.
I have only hit two so far, both times while driving a car thankfully, don’t want to hit one while I am on a bike!
Luckily goannas don’t jump so you just run those bastards over, sure as hell if you try to steer around them, they will turn around and run under your car anyway.
Pete, any rain you can send would be welcomed, we have had 2.5mm so far this month!
But I guess you guys have your own different challenges?
Paul, I can almost taste the beer already. (might sneak a couple in between now and then though!)
Tony

Ok, time to fess up, I have already had those beers that I said I might sneak in, but no fires so I thought I might have a mini celebration drink.
It only takes a cigarette butt to be thrown from a car to ignite a fire here in summer, actually the fire at Cooma was caused by a lightning strike last Saturday evening, so the fire fighters cut a fire break with a bulldozer but did not extinguish the fire!
Now it has burned out 25,000 acres and caused catastrophic loss of livestock and property and is headed for the South Coast!
Beggars belief!
Tony

Hi Tony, You are right about the Goanas, back in 2009 on the Phillip Island trip, my brother colected one coming around a swooper and i nearly colected him, bloody hairy i’ll tell ya. about 4 hours later a ran over a brown snake which i thought was a stick, my mate thought it was flipping AWSOME. came accross an Equidna (did i spell that right) sitting in the middle of a blind corner, tried to get him (kick him gently) off the road but he kept going around and around in circles so we left him there, seemed like he was happy, also saw a flock of about 10 Emu along Snowy river which kept up with us for about a Km. they were all on the same trip. Forunately havn’t hit any roos as yet. so to sum it up, the wild life is pretty wild but awsome.
Cheers.

speaking of kangaroos, are they classed as something you would eat in australia… my local farm shop occasionally stocks kangaroo sausages, i tried them once but they gave me terrible wind lol. i suppose like all sausages they were made up of ears, eyelids and toe nails, all the best cuts lol…
for all our oz friends who are enduring 40 degree temperature, our forcast is for minus 10 tonight.

Hi Pete, you “can” eat Kangaroo, (but it tastes like shit, sorry, shameless Crocodile Dundeee line!) but it is the leanest meat you will ever see, zero fat, none, zilch. I sometimes feed it to my dogs and cutting it up requires a VERY sharp knife! Who knows, maybe the eyelids have some fat in them, as for the toenails, I will have to try to get a photo of a kangaroo foot…one huge middle toenail that is around 75-100mm long, and is sometimes used for ripping dogs apart, the upper claws are not very user friendly either. People would have us believe that they are cute, timid, gentle creatures, just corner one or get between a buck and his harem to find out just how aggressive they can be!
Keep out of the cold Pete, that’s about as cold as it gets here, if you mean Celsius that is. Not good motorcycling weather!

Hi Pete, Kangaroo is sold in steaks and other cuts and sold in most supermarkets and butchers if your taste desires, my misses doesn’t believe in eating our ‘national coat of arms’, i have tried it as well as croc, emu and goanna and didn’t mind either of them. as for the weather, its hard to cool down when it is so hot but you can always grab another blanket when it is cold (i wouldn’t go out riding in it tho). hoping for a nice 20 to 25 late feb (superbikes here we come).

It’s actually a shame that they don’t eat better, since the scientists tell us there are two roos for every Australian!
Even if half of them were “culled” for meat, that would still leave about 23 million of them. Now that could feed starving people around the world for a while! And at the rate they breed, you could probably do it again in 18 months. Lol.

There was a fashion here for Aussie tucker a few years back but you dont see much of it now. I tried Roo steak and it was nice - once you`d got it to stand still long enough !

[}:)]Today in the UK news you can get Horse burgers but its only limited supply as tesco took them off the shelves today also,something to-do with DNA 45% Horse

Its probably a bit tough to chew[:D]