We'll try to go down Brian's Track (named after Brian Fish, who discovered the old track when he was bulldozing gorse for me several years ago), and down the old highway. Assuming the flock is where I'm expecting them, at the southwest end of the White Gum Grazing Area. There are several pockets of long grass in among the gorse cover that I'd like to let the flock graze. We'll be going downwind through much of the day, which could be a bit of a challenge. I was delighted to see on Monday how much broom the sheep got through along the edge of the highway--just the sort of thing I'm after, both from a nutrition standpoint and in terms of maintaining a balance of diversity--not letting my introduced species get any more out of control than I can help. And, in lovely news, the swans have started construction of their nest, on one of the islands in Swan Lake. I watched them be most industrious all yesterday afternoon. I'm so, so pleased!
END OF THE DAY NOTES: Hmmm. Curses, foiled again. (Do you have that old melodrama song here in Australia about the moustachioed villain and the beautiful girl and the hero who rescues her and causes the villain to mutter those words?) Anyway, the plan had nothing in common with the day, though the day was a lot like my plan on Monday. The nice intersection of two bad guesses was I opened the gate at the top of the Waterfall Gully on Monday, so today I didn't have to hike up the hill to open it. It was a surprisingly nice day, considering that it started with showers. The sun was out maybe a third of the time, it's warm, because it's supposed to really rain tomorrow (so no shepherding--yarn stocktake instead!), and the wind was light. I took 5 videos. I'm enjoying doing the videos at least in part because the voice-over saves me typing long captions single-handed. The sheep were delighted with the foray into the Basin, which hasn't been grazed since before the big rains. They aren't due to move into the Basin Grazing Area for another week or two, but I thought a tour through part of Old Cabin, and then up Waterfall Gully for some native tucker would be a nice change for them. They agreed.
Video V1 above
Video V2 above
P1: A view of the Basin. The big water hole was completely dry in early May.
Video V3 above.
Video V4 above
Video V5 above.
P2: Two very tired working dogs, resting on their laurels.
The beginning of the 2016 clutch of cygnets!