Day 180 Nubeena Tuesday 26th July 2011

Hello,
This morning I hitched up the yellow trailer to carry 6 large apple boxes back from Huonville about 120km away for use as greenhouse planter boxes. By the time i had fed the chickens, tested the pools, despatched the goats into the paddock and taken on the last minute instructions it was 1030 later than i had intended to leave.
Driving northwards I passed a truck with a light blue shipping container at Dunalley and correctly guessed it was Ilan's cargo from the farm sale.
I arrived at the country market at Sorell and picked up our order. I had to return to pay for it but that's another story. My next stop was Cambridge to view some laptops at Hardly Normal. It was fairly underwhelming but I did get some ideas. On the way out they had a couple of pairs of Gardena, Made in Germany secateurs $5 a pair in the bargain bin. I bought them both! I don't know what I will use them for, cutting my toenails maybe.
Onto Hobart and a fruitless exercise trying to find a park near or at Officeworks with the trailer attached. My one hope was the loading dock but that was filled with a Toll truck. Oh well they won't stop making laptops and next week there will be ones that are better cheaper. It was then onto the southern outlet road and down to Huonville. The road is quite hilly but relatively modern with few bends. It affords a good view of Mount Wellington. Mount Wellington was quite picturesque with its light covering of snow. During the "weather" that we had a couple of weeks back I think this road was closed by snowfall and I garnered the impression it would be a slippery icy road in winter. On the way back I passed a road crew driving along spraying what I guessed was a ice retarding liquid on the road surface,
The Huon valley appears to have 2 industries, wine and apples. The apples are mainly housed under enormous black nets presumably to protect them from critters. They don't seem to use them down our way. Maybe they have more barbarous methods.
The contact at the apple farm was friendly, helpful and competent as he loaded the boxes. I strapped them in and proceeded gingerly out onto the highway stopping to check the straps which required minor retensioning on the first stop but were fine after that. The higher the trailer is loaded the more paranoid I become. The rest of the trip back through Hobart, to Sorell for food and fuel was uneventful arriving back at around 5.
Susan had a busy day with the major tasking being unloading the shipping container to access the kitchen components required for the community kitchen. Looks like I picked a good day to go travelling.
Anything else? We had 3 eggs today from the chickens. That's about it.

cya tomorrow

Cheers Simon