Just dropping in for a quick coffee before I go off to another festival. This one is called the Turning Wave Festival. It's at Gundagai, scene of John's story of Yarri of Wiradjuri. His group, the Roaring Forties are doing a CD launch at the festival. We'll be staying in a caravan park just across the road from the golf course, which was where the great flood of 1852 took place. However, John assures me that a)we are on high ground and b) floods don't happen there now and haven't for a long time since various re-routing measures were taken a long time ago - forgotten what those measures are called though.

On the subject of running over animals with the car, I had an unfortunate experience a few years ago of hitting a wombat on my way to a folk festival. It was dark, and the wombat appeared too late for me to do anything about it. I couldn't see where it had gone, but I called WIRES (the organisation that looks after wildlife) and left a message (there was no-one there at 8pm at night).

I had only just bought a few weeks before, my new second-hand Holden station wagon, so it was my pride and joy. When I got to the festival, I could only see a little damage to the panel under the front bumper and, considering that wombats are quite large, heavy critters, I thought I had got off pretty lightly. Not so the wombat. A couple of people who came later had apparently seen the wombat looking dead somewhere and said "Ah, you're the person who killed the wombat!"

Anyway, driving home a few days later, the wombat got its revenge. After a while, my car started to run really roughly, getting worse and worse. I checked the oil and water. Everything seemed okay. Oil showed up as full. By the time I got to Sydney, I knew something was terribly wrong with the motor, and I was stopping every 10 minutes to pour oil directly into the top of the motor. The next day I found out that the wombat had pushed up the oil pan underneath the car stopping the oil from circulating around the motor, and the motor had literally cooked. So only a few weeks after buying this car, I had to spend heaps more money getting a reconditioned motor, and somehow it never seemed as good again.

Not much chance of hitting a wombat today - they only come out at night. The only critters I need to watch out for today are other drivers!!