July 16

Lina took a shower and reported that it was freezing cold, so cold that she turned off the water to soap up! Jillian and I decided to pass on the shower experience and tried to keep warm while we changed clothes. Without breakfast food, we all headed down to the store in Inverell. Jillian and I went with Michael in the truck, with very little shock absorbers. When we got there, somehow the other car got lost and so Jillian and I waited on the corner to flag them down. We waited and waited and waited, but never saw their car. As we got madder and madder (and hungrier and hungrier), we marveled at how things happened before the world of cell phones. Surely there wasn’t this much inefficiency!! We even went to the store and walked around, but couldn’t find anyone! How’d we get so lost, we thought?! But then Lina came out to find us and we finished up the grocery shopping with her. We bought food for the next few days and Michael bought stuff for the party. We purchased about 6 carts (they call them trolleys!) full of food! And some items, we bought the entire inventory of the small town store! We loaded it all into the back of Ed’s 4-runner and filled it to the ceiling. I’ve never seen so many groceries. Then came the beer! A huge flatbed cart with about 24 cases of beer! We jumped into the back of the truck and loaded it up. We went to get breakfast with the Irish girls while the boys loaded more of the heavy rentals into the truck, then headed back to the farm and unloaded all of the groceries and items. It took the rest of the day to unload and sort everything out.



In the evening, we loaded up the cars and headed down to the Creek, which is a nearby place that the boys have a yearly camping trip called Farm Fest. We built a big bonfire and BBQed some sausages and drank and got to know the boys. Jillian had never peed in the wilderness before, so Lina and I taught her how to squat and let it loose, sans toilet paper. After a couple drinks, she was a pro! I however, struggled to make it up the hill in my flat Ugg boots and fell a couple times. I have NO recollection of getting back to the farm, but somehow, we made it back and then tried to teach the aussies how to play beer pong, without ping pong balls. We used a cap and the game went pretty fast. Then Ryan, who was playing with us, taught us some card game, which seemed to be pretty random doling out or taking drinks. At some point, the boys played some Didgeridoo, and Jillian and I tried to play, but didn’t realize how hard it would be. Apparently, you have to relax your lips so much, and play like a giant trumpet, but ours only came out sounding like raspberries! =( We gave up pretty fast and went to bed.