I'm back too. been busy, been having operations,been gardening still breeding Brahmans,South Devons and commercial Herefords. Quite dry in our area at present had about 18 inches of rain for the year which mostly fell earlier in the year. Our average is about 36/38 inches for a year. We had a very frosty winter but not a bitter one ( for us anyway) We had a cold outburst come through parts of Australia last week dropping snow in areas that have never seen it for 50 or 60 years. We had a top of 7c for the day out lowest top for the whole of winter was 9c. We had flakes of snow, but about 60 ks south of us snow lay on the ground. Our local mountain 4,250 alt had a dusting. Top temp for the day is expected to be 28c for our area but parts of our state will have 34/35c. Most of Australia is hanging out for an early election because they are disgusted with our Prime Minister. The cost of basic things have skyrocketed since the advent of the carbon tax brought in by the present government in july this year. Our dairy farmers are leaving the industry because they cannot survive on 29c a litre they receive for their milk. One of the supermarket chains sells cut price milk for a dollar a litre. We have friends that grow pumpkins that receive 22c per pumpkin and recently supermarkets were charging up to $5 a kilo for the same item. cattle prices have remained quite ok. They could be a little better our current $1 is $1.02 US. Better go and shift a sprinkler, been watering like mad with this dry as I have a garden day here soon.