The Native Iowan

It’s the 4th here on this side of the planet. Saturday morning with clear blue skies and a chilled southerly wind. Winter here in the land of Aus is pretty damn mild, as far as winters go.

I’m not a “Holiday-making” kinda guy but I admit the 4th to be my old Skool favourite public holiday. The weather is normally great, the days are long and the evening into night parties always offered good ol summertime fun. And who doesn’t like fire works?

Of course, there shall be no special “Independence Day” celebrations for us. I dont have a circle of “Yank” friends. I’m sure some expatriated Americans will be having their own celebrations but nothing special is planned for me and mine. We’ll watch from afar as the USA does their thing.

Its not unusual for us to have a Solomon Islands Independence Day party on the 7th of July. We have a lot more Solomon friends around, and though this flu and hassles therein makes it non-conducive to hold a big party, it does get me thinking about next year.

The Kung-Flu here, downunder, is an interesting subject of study. With a recorded total of 8255 cases and 104 deaths, we are seeing a spike in cases but no new deaths. The spike appears to mainly be in the state of Victoria.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a death attributed to the kung-flu. With about 25million folks here, we end up with a .0003% infection rate and a .000004% death rate.

The States here have been quite strict with attempting to contain the spread of the virus. Bars and eateries and nightclubs have been closed nation wide. The decision in reopening is a State by state matter.

Though interstate travel has been shut down since March, the past few weeks has seen quite a bit reopening. The local bars and restaurants have reopened under certain restrictions. I know that gyms and beauty parlours reopened a while ago. I see that the regional tourism businesses and operators are advertising some very good bargains.

I have been talking about life and lock-down and business and productivity with a number of professionals I know… My real estate agent friends all tell me business is good. My car salesman buddies tell me the same thing. May, month on month, year to date shows better sales in 2020m than 2019. Go figger!

My house building friends, one a builder and another an electrician, tell me things are slow. If not for the “Job Keeper” scheme, which guarantees wages until end of July, they’d all be in dire straights.
New houses being started are down. Houses being completed on schedule are down. My guess here is that the builders and tradesmen were keen to take a few months off, paid by the Government to stay home. One buddy I spoke to on Tuesday said he needed a few more weeks of time-off to complete the 1960 R50 BMW motorcycle he is rebuilding.

One good buddy is a local policeman. He tells me of an increase in domestic disputes.

The good news is that everything should be opening up soon, going back to some form of normalcy. I think July 10 is the date for the interstate boarders opening up. Schools go back into full swing as of July 13.

An interesting observation: Last weekend we had some dear friends come visit us at the farm. Our little farm is a quiet place with 4 very friendly, big dogs, 34 pregnant cows, 13 weaner calves, and one big arsed bull, named Hank. The farm is fun and we have a couple dirt bikes, a fast quad, a big, slow work buggy. Our teenage grandsons were there and the three little visiting kids with their mom and dad all had a hoot. We raised hell during the day, built big fires and cooked good huge meals, stayed up late. Had a very good time.

These were our first “visitors” since lock-down. And we all caught each other’s bugs. I guess the isolation did work at keeping us uninfected by new bugs. I think we all carry a bug or two of our own domestic breeding. It’s been a week since the visitors left and we’re all slowly recuperating.

A minor mile-stone this morning… Our big arsed bull, Hank, had his first baby. Yep, Hank is officially a daddy.

We bought Hank right on a year ago. He’s a pedigree DroughMaster from a very good breeder. We’ve been waiting and waiting for his first baby. We know, can see that all of our 34 cows are pregnant but were being impatient. We counted down the 9 months from the day Hank joined our herd, and have been hanging out since May, second guessing Hank’s abilities. Feeling a bit uneasy as 9 then 10 and now 11 months pass, without a new Hank baby being born.

Happy to announce the calf drought is broken…

And the beat goes on.

Smiles