What Else Did We Achieve in September?

It's time to reflect on the last month in relation to other goals that I set for myself, as well as some other bits and bobs.

Firstly, to my goals....

1.    READ A BOOK

As I posted back here, I read five, including two ebooks for the first time.  I'm pretty happy with that.

2.    TRY A NEW RECIPE - AND REVISIT AN OLD ONE

Also, back here, I showed some old recipes we revisited.

The new ones have been damper and beef and beer stew in the camp oven, which I shared here.

3.    FRIDAY FUN DAY

There has been no outing, as such due to the continued lock down, but we did go for a nice walk last Friday.  Mick needed to collect some bits from Super Cheap, so, as the weather was glorious, we decided to walk down, a return trip of about 8 kms.  Once we started out, he suggested we make a detour via the river, which made our walk just on 10kms.

The river walkways have proved to be extremely popular during the lock down, with the the car parks full most of the time.  

I was happy to see the white duck. It seems to live around this area and is usually accompanied by a black duck, which wasn't around on Friday.  I have seen it since.

Everything is looking lovely and fresh and green.  All of this area was under water until recently, due to minor flooding from all the rain during winter.

You can see in this tree how high the water was, quite a bit above the fork in the tree.

Out walk took us under the old Denison Bridge.

This bridge is now just a walkway, but used to be for the main western highway.

After we collected Mick's bits at the shop, we walked along another path, past some horses.  The Clydesdale is always a favourite.  My poor legs were a bit weary after that little stroll.  We need to do it a bit more often.

4.    HAVE A WEEKEND AWAY IN THE CARAVAN - OR - CAMP OVEN COOKING

As we are still in lock down, there has not been any weekends away.  

However, the camp oven cooking has been great fun.  In addition to what I shared previously, Mick is currently heating up some more heat beads, ready for our latest experiment.  Watch this space to see the results.  Now we just need to get out and about to have a play while actually camping.  We can't wait.

And now for the weather......

Yesterday was the last day of September and turned out to be the first day of the summer storm season.  We just had rain and a bit of thunder, but just out of town it was a bit different.  A tornado tore a path through some rural areas, destroying or damaging eleven homes and injuring three people.  Thank goodness it wasn't through a heavily populated area.  One of Mick's work colleagues had his home and sheds destroyed, and another of our good mates had it miss his house and sheds by just a few metres.  He has still had quite a bit of damage around his property. 

Tornadoes are rare, but not unknown in the area during storm season.  When Mick was a kid, they had one go through their farm and destroy a shed and when we lived out of town one went near our place.  Our little dirt road ran along a ridge and the tornado followed the road, ripping out huge trees along its path.  Fortunately, no homes were damaged that time.

Today, we have been having storms pass over since mid morning. producing spectacular skies.

There was a bit of hail before lunch, but not too much and only small.

Tonight I will be joining in with Cheryll and the girls on Friday Night With Friends, so I'd best go and find something to work on.