Rover's redemption

Rover the Landrover represents our first and final excursion into luxury motoring. We bought Rover from a smooth talker from Mudgee who claimed the vehicle was "in perfect condition" and "tight" and "immaculate" and being sold with great regret. Hmmn. None of the above turned out to be strictly true but I guess that's the risk you take buying second hand. Rover's first year in our stable was an expensive exercise, as we fixed the many minor and several major problems, and did a proper job of cleaning and detailing, as well as fitting dual batteries and electric caravan brakes.

It still feels peculiar to be driving such a high end vehicle, with leather seats and sunroofs and gadgets and gizmos you could never have dreamed up yourself, such as the feature whereby the electric seats remember the settings for two different drivers, responding to each one's personal remote. Who needs that? Nobody.  But you do get to like it. Still, it was hard to shake the feeling that the likes of us had no business in this kind of expensive European engineering, and we decided to sell Rover as soon as we settled down after our trip.

Well, now we're settled.

Today we spent the whole day cleaning and preparing, making Rover look beautiful for the selling photos.

And now we're thinking we just can't part with him.

So we'll procrastinate on that one for just a bit longer....

By the time all that cleaning was done, it was sunset walk time. Here's what we saw.

The lorikeet tree, with a pink horizon extending all the way to the south

Cormorants roosting in the casuarinas

Little wood ducks present on the greens

Little presents left by wood ducks on the greens

The moon reflected in the water