Hi Ho!

So...yesterday I started my new one day a week job down at the local school. I was incredibly nervous about it and spent hours on Wednesday planning for it....(which is something I have not done for ages!)For the first two hours of the day I was and will be, every Thursday, in the Year 2 and 3 class. I will mainly be teaching them Science and yesterday we finished off some work they had doing previously on the Life Cycle of Butterflies and, as this is Australia, Crocodiles. We talked about the Life Cycle of a Frog as next week they have to do a Science Assessment task writing about it.The morning passed fairly easily and quickly and the boy in the class with behaviour problems stayed at his desk and worked the whole time.After Morning Tea I was in the Prep / Year 1 class until the end of the day. I am going to be doing History and Geography with them as well as some spelling and handwriting. Yesterday, following the Australian Curriculum, we were identifying places that were Natural, Managed and Constructed. Yep, it was thrilling!There is a lovely Teacher Aide in the class who is, by a strange coincidence, related to Ms Z the T.A who texted all the way through my last supply day but she is nothing like her and is going to be a joy to work with.After the Lunch break the whole school had a practise for the Anzac Day service on Monday so I had an easy last session.The Prep / Year 1 class is lovely and Nate from Next door is in the class too.He did very well at calling me 'Mr Allen' rather than 'Nick'.

We have not been idle!

So...since you last heard from us we have not been idle...well, we were a bit over the Easter weekend, but since then we have been quite busy.If you remember the I dug the post holes for out new build last week. Since then we have been scouring the property for Dead Cypress trees as we need five 5 metre poles and four 3 metre poles. Will will not cut down a living tree and so we have been all over looking for dead ones.We have cut enough poles now though some are still lying away in the bush waiting to be carried to the building site. Thankfully, we have managed to carry all the 5 metre poles we need to the site and now only have a few 3 metre poles to collect. It was no easy job I can tell you and today we needed Roxy to help as we had to transport one of the poles up the hill from down near the Kiwi fruit orchard.We also had some sand delivered today by Ron who delivered our gravel a while back. He said the next time he comes he wants to see a 'Mansion' here. I think he might be disappointed.

...from all of us still alive at Frogknot!

And then there were eleven.

So...we had another attack in the night with the murderer returning to the scene of their first crime...on Easter Sunday too!We lost the three brave hens who were still roosting where the first attack took place, Dou -Mu, Wujimu and Orphea, who we only named yesterday.

The eleven who were roosting in the old pen are all fine.We cannot understand how the attacker got into the pen after all the modifications we made to secure it but it is clear that the culprit is now, most definitely a quoll. All three hens only had head wounds. So while everyone else hopes to be visited by the Easter Bunny we get the Easter Quoll!I feel bad and very sad about it all because I built their death trap. I stood and watched the three of them climb in yesterday at sunset before securing the hail net over the entrance and fastening them in for the night.We will have to keep the rest in the old pen but still let them range freely during the day. There was a quoll attack years ago in the old pen but the culprit of that attack never returned. I hope that this attacker does not find them there. It would seem nowhere is impenetrable.Quolls numbers have declined drastically over the years since European colonisation and so in a weird way there is a slightly positive side to all this.

Undercliffe Falls.

So... Ros is with us for the Easter weekend and today we went to see Undercliffe Falls which are near Liston in New South Wales and about a 45 minute drive from Frogknot.We were not expecting the steep climb down and once down dreaded the climb back up!