There was a party down at the Rec Shed last night that was a little louder than usual - what with fireworks and all. I was a bit worried how those would affect the stallion but he seems to have coped. Some slept over and this morning they were taking pot shots at the hares on the oval - life is never dull in the country. I decided to ignore and just walk the dog in the other direction.

Then into the History Room for a very long day as it turned out. Had a few visitors from Hobart then a bloke pulled up on a push bike and came in an announced he was in the process of buying our two pubs. As far as I am aware, only one of them is for sale, but I humoured him and he settled in for a long yarn. He's the sort of big-talking bush whacker type - currently digging spuds on one of the properties out of town, but (according to him) so loaded he is not only planning to buy half the town, but also a large property out of town that he plans to set up as a Hereford stud apparently. Though later in the conversation about its irrigation systems, the ideas turned to small cropping of root vegetables, garlic and so forth. By the end of the chat he had convinced himself I was deeply enamoured of him, so getting rid of him took some doing without laughing in his face.

You might remember also that I had a talking to from one of our members re the window display and she insisted I talk to the chap who was son of the original proprietor - something I have not bothered to follow up as the display will be going down in a couple of weeks. Anyway, at around 3:15 I spotted him peering in the display window so called out to see what he thought. He came in and gave me a very interesting oral history of the place and I showed him the sources I had used for the bits he did not personally recall (which he accepted). Did you know that Oatlands once had a Nettlefolds outlet? Selling cars to the public! Neither did I.

Anyway, long story short, we then went on to his  career in Council, my own aspirations in the History Room (which he approves - at least to my face) and so forth and by 4:15 I was beginning to think I would never get rid of him. So I pointed out I needed to get the sign in and the flag down which he took as me shoving him out the door. I assured him this was not the case, just me taking precautions no-one else came in and wanted to start 3 hours of research, so he followed me around, still yacking till 4:30 when his wife (god bless her) who had been in the car all along, demanded his presence. Sigh.

Good thing the evenings are staying lighter now or the dog would have been in all sorts of strife. But as it is he has had his walks and I am now contemplating dinner.