Ivanhoe’s remoteness from the rest of the LAC means that the boys are allowed a fair bit of autonomy and one advantage is that they do their own rosters (they meaning me). As long as one of them is on duty and the town’s folk are happy and safe, the Command is happy too. This arrangement means that I can sometimes roster five or six days off in a row so that we can get back home every couple of months, to catch up with friends, maintain the house and smell the salt air – very good for morale.
It’s a long trip but we usually break it up by staying overnight at Cowra. In fact, with only the General Store and a café in town, overnight pet-friendly cabin accommodation is becoming the norm. While Hay is only 210 kms down the road, if you’re really hanging out for a Coles, Woollies or Pizza Hut it has to be Griffith (360kms away – or around 300kms if you don’t mind dirt roads) or across the border in Mildura (a tad over 500 kms away).
Considering we’ve done the trip before, it was pretty embarrassing on our last trip back from the coast, to miss the turn off to Wagga Wagga (the sign is actually quite large) and end up just short of the Victorian border.……………… Hmmm. And speaking of embarrassing, one of us (the one who isn’t a police officer) got caught by Highway Patrol doing a tad over the limit and was booked accordingly. Darn!
For the last few weeks, we’ve been hard at work in the garden digging up the concrete slabs, which have outlived their usefulness, now that the grass has grown. We’ve ‘replanted’ them to make a sort of courtyard (see photos) where they will live out their remaining lives as part of a Japanese-ish garden – once we work out how to source some pebbles/gravel. The trick will be to find a landscape supplier within 400 kms!
On Thursday morning we’re off to the coast again. But this time there’ll be 3 whole weeks of beach walks, prawns, a bit of kayaking, prawns, possible swims, more prawns and a bit of drinking. Are we all jealous? Speaking of food, the other delicious item that we miss out here is BBQ chicken. Ever since the Take-Away’s rotisserie broke down, there’s been no BBQ chook in Ivanhoe. Sad but true.
Married to a Country Cop 