What a weekend!

We had a very busy day on Saturday doing trail support crew for the local Oxfam Trailwalker.  It's the sort of fun extra stuff you can do when you are an emergency services volunteer.

It was a very rainy and stormy weekend, so bad that the 100km walk was cancelled, but the 50km one went ahead, and a lot of the 100km people went on that as well instead, so it was a very busy start with around 1000 people heading out in two separate shifts 45 mins apart.  Here's Andrew doing traffic and walker wrangling just after the first lot started.

Look for the orange raincoat!

Despite the weather everyone was in a great mood and that continued at least as long as our shift.

Some teams were dressed up, so it was fun keeping track of them as we went up and down the trail doing this and that and they slowly progressed.  This team was easy to follow!

We handed out lollies between checkpoints to cheer people along, gave muffins to road marshals, and did whatever other jobs came up.  Towards the end of our shift we got a call to go and shift a light tower.   Luckily I had Andrew there, because I'd have been too timid to tackle the job, but he read up on it and worked it out just fine.  Thank goddess for handy blokes!

Special kudos to the walker who handed me a lollypop with a handmade "You're awesome" tag on it as she walked by.   Carrying lollies 50km just to thank the volunteers you pass is a special kind of lovely!

Also special notice goes to the two lively street marshalls who wore cow suits and blew bubbles and rang cow bells to encourage people past their point!

Andrew just sent me this pic of me, taken between checkpoints, cold and wet, but no more bonkers than usual.  :D 

The trial support vehicle was a Prado.  Nice!

Sunday we met with some of our local druid friends and had a lovely chat.  In the afternoon we went out to check a local tiny house display.  On the way home the wet weather turned into weather suitable only for ducks, with buckets of rain and even hail coming down in an extreme sudden downpour.  

The little jimny handled it pretty well but the windscreen never did unsteam completely.

When we got home our front path was a stream, but the rain had gone as suddenly as it arrived.

The wet weather isn't putting off the local flowers.  Here's a trigger plant and some blue Leschenaultia in the forest

 Mum's wisteria glowing in the evening light.

Google did this animation for me, and it's a weird one because it starts with Tuppy and ends with Rosie.  Took me a while to work out why there was a lead and then there wasn't! They must have been standing in almost identical positions when I took the pics and google has joined them up!   Even technology has trouble telling black labs apart.   :D

I'm sure spring will be back eventually, but the longer the wet weather holds back the fire season, the happier I'll be!