Years ago when I was about 14 or 15, my father with his brother had a block of land , and all scrub, 4 square miles of it , there were some arable patches dotted around

so my father in his wisdom bought this old crawler tractor, I think it came out of the Ark, any way I was to drive it out to this block, which was 26 miles away.

taking a tin of bully beef and my .22 rifle away I went, of course the tractor only do 2 miles an hour .so that night I camped by a windmill and tank , ate my tin of bully beef and lay down and started to count the stars

but the roos kept coming into the well for their nightly drink and I with my .22 rifle would point the rifle in the general direction and fire , heard a few thuds as the bullets found some marks , but when daylight came I not find any dead roos. after having a bushmans breakfast I went on my way , when I got to where I was going ,parked that tractor under a tree , and I think the bloody thing is still in the same place. never was used.

this place was called curanna and no one knows the history of it , as there were old ruins there and the remnants of a garden , and scattered all over the place were these wells , abandoned as too salty but there were two wells that had the best water that I have tasted, on stinking hot days we would climb down one of these wells about halfway down there be a cross bar that holds the pipe for the pump.used to share the coolness with the blowflies and sometimes a snake or two, got a bit scarey at times.

scattered around were these plains ,couple of acres or more , and they had all these wild peach trees, or Quandongs being correct name, but the fruit of these trees were not too good as full of worms, the fruit being about the size of probably inch through and the and the seed or kernel would be the size of a marble, guess u know what a marble is as most boys would have played them at some stage , not the marbles that rattle around in your head .

Where we camped was just two sheets of iron on a low branch of a tree, just room for two beds , of course there was no electricity either , so had hurricane lanterns, and the campfire for light, we used to go out there and camp for a week at a time, and other times just go out for the day, on these occassions the whole family would come and treat it as a picnic, my uncle eventually gave it up , and then later my father did also,

now this place is a conservation park ,but I have fond memories of it.

Remember one day had to drive the sheep over to another uncles for shearing , this being maybe 10 miles, and being about 120 in the water bag , it was pretty bloody hot , my sister and I were the dogs as in that heat dogs not like to work , about half way there was this abandoned farm , and it had a rain water tank ,and being as thirsty as I was ,drank from this tank with dead birds and other nasties floating around in it .,

when we got to my uncles and the sheep were yarded i drank gallons of water , and uyou guessed it ,I was bloody crook for rest of the day , so that from then on I rarely drink water during the day no matter how hot it is, even when I was shearing , but boy I make up for it when days work was done , but now days it is not water that I drink to replenish the fluids , but that amber fluid. ........Emu