Hello from Ellendale ....

Hope you are all well. All 3 of us had a cold over the last week that luckily didn't last long. I am finally getting the house into some sort of order.

Sam is really liking school. She goes on the bus every morning and night. It leaves around 8am and goes North and then picks Sam up about 20 minutes later on its way back through Ellendale. In the afternoons she stays on the bus until it is empty and gets home about 4pm. I think Sam is finding some of the school work a bit hard, but she is still loving it anyway. She really likes the reading side of things and is catching up with some of the older children with the level of words she can read and recognise.

We went out and did some 4 wheel driving on the weekend. The vehicles over here are all raised like Dean's car, if not higher and they all run big mud tyres. We got about 3-5 metres up the first track and we were going no further in a forward direction (we did go sideways until we met the fenceline). The car just would not get any grip on the clay surface. After driving along numerous forestry roads/tracks we found some stuff we were capable of doing. We drove around and around in circles I'm sure, all the while being only 20 minutes from home. The surface was soft clay and lots of mud puddles, combined with medium sized rocks. We even did a water crossing in which the water was half way up the doors. Near the end, we were taken to see some lovely little campsites in the Repulse State Forest, along the edge of a lake. I have included a few pictures for you.

And these last pictures are from the front and back verandahs at 8am this morning. The radio said it was -1 degrees in Hobart at the time.

Once again, I hope you are all well.

Nicky

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