Posted 2:23 AM by JS

settlement day: driving out of the city in intermittent rain. about 50k out, the countryside opens up and closes in at the same time - the scale becomes smaller, a road twisting up every hill, houses scattered across the earth like discarded jumping jacks.
the place has at least been tidied up - meaning slashing the grass around and sometimes in the courtyard.

checks done, I decide to go back to Castlemaine via Donkey Gully Rd, 3k of meandering gravel. over to the right on a rise, I see an alert wallaby or small grey kangaroo - then another, then another, lying on the grass. an actual mob - they must have wandered out of the forest.

there's still a drought, but the land no longer looks like a desert - fresh grass is everywhere.