Well it has been a crazy/busy week since we last spoke. The kids and I had last week in town for the annual Sports for Bush Kids… a week jam packed full of sports from 7am – 5:30pm each day with some of those days reaching 42 degrees. Not pretty people, not pretty. There just happened to be a blow up water park in town the weekend we arrived so we thought the right thing to do was take the kids… I had a go on the slide, very undignified trying to climb up but I took one for the team and gave it a shot.  It wasn’t for me and don’t think it was very good for my neck so I opted out and sat on the sideline in the 43 degree heat.  The water was pretty gross and it was bogan central but gee the kids had a blast.  They were absolutely buggered after a couple of hours so we got the hell out of there.
Anyway, I won’t bang on too much about the sports side of things because you can read all about last years sports week here if you are that way inclined.
At the beginning of the week I was invited to a friends surprise 40th party at our favourite Isa hotel. I do love a good surprise and it was so wonderful to see the shock on her face when we all jumped out at her. So much fun. Hope you had a great night Amanda, it was wonderful to celebrate with you.
It is always so fantastic to catch up with all of our friends in town, the kids have an absolute ball of course and so to the Mum’s. We are total over sharers and sometimes I wonder if we share a little too much, perhaps a little too honest, but I do love to over share and it seems I am not alone. I have such great friends, I feel very lucky, not sure where I would be without them all.
During the week I managed to get my car in for a service and check out the funky loan vehicle they gave me:
Di and I hooned around in this baby all day while the kids were at school for Activity Day. Â We even collected them from school in it. Â God it cracked us up. Â We felt like we were in the CIA. Â It was a Toyota Rukkus (have never even seen one before) and it cornered like it was on rails.
After a week in town we were well and truly ready to pack up and head home to our own beds. I had to hot foot it home so Mr Chardy and the rest of the gang could head into Camooweal for a Movember Party. The kids and I were apparently supposed to look after the station….. because I am so handy and all. Every time Mr Chardy leaves the station something shits itself. It is either the generator, the water supply or something else. And let me tell you people, this time was no different. We passed Mr Chardy on the road and were set to look after the place. At 6pm I fed the foal and did a little bit of a drive around the station to make sure nothing had blown up. One thing I am always paranoid about is the cold rooms. I did a quick check on the kitchen, turned out the lights and got a loaf of bread from the cold room freezer… and that is when I discovered my worst nightmare… the freezer cold room was not feeling so cold. The bread wasn’t as frozen as it should be.
Ohhhhh no… this is just what I needed… welcome home Chards… back to reality with a huge bloody thud… literally a bloody thud because there was blood from the thawed out meat everywhere. Now, lets just get a mental picture happening for you… this is what the freezer cold room looks like:
I had also just ordered a huge amount of frozen goods to do us over Christmas and the wet season… think loads of frozen chooks, ham, salami, frozen vegetables, prawns, chicken fillets etc. The first thing I did was touch the frozen chooks because we all know how long they take to thaw and yep, you guessed it… they were soft = thawed out.  I felt sick and nearly burst into tears, Tom kept saying “it’s ok Mum, it will be ok, we will sort it out”, poor bugger.
Now, trying to be the glass half full kind of girl I decided that the good thing about discovering this disaster when I did was that the goods were still cold. It was still cold in there and nothing had gone bad. Imagine if I didn’t find it until the next day when everything was hot and smelly… I would have been dry reaching my whole way through the clean up.
So Tom and I just got in and started shifting stuff. I fired up the chest freezers on the kitchen verandah and we moved all of the bread and frozen vegetables. We put all of the thawed chickens, prawns and a few bags of sausages into the cold room. I figured I could try and cook as much of it as possible and re-freeze. There was a bit of beef and a load of sausages that I had to just toss out.  We moved everything out and took a huge load to the dump. I then had to hose it all out, there was blood everywhere. This called for a squirt or 10 of domestos and a good hosing. Before long it was sorted and all I could think of was the hours of cooking that was ahead of me.
Another positive was that Mr Chardy had just recently done a killer but had not yet broken it down. Imagine if there was a whole fresh beast broken up and packed in there. So I guess you really do have to look on the bright side don’t you.
On Sunday It was up and at it ready to cook up a storm. Mr Chardy helped me cut up 12kg’s of chicken thigh fillet to make one massive batch of chicken curry. We then tried to eat as many prawns as we could but really there is only so much you can eat or cook in one day. Yesterday the menu read like this: for smoko it was chicken pizza’s, lunch was chicken wraps and dinner I had to roast up 12 chooks.
So in the past couple of days I have managed to cook up around 30 kg’s of chicken. At least I can re-freeze a heap of them: I now have 3 large chicken curry meals and a few roast chicken dinners good to go. God, if only I was this organised before I had babies I would have been set.
Needless to say we will be looking forward to a good feed of beef tonight – rib fillet if you will.
Now it is your turn to tell us about your broken down freezer experiences… I know I am not the only one. And I know this is about the 3rd time this freezer cold room has let us down.
Go – tell us about your disgusting experience where a freezer has lost power.
Oh mate! Is the rotten thing fixed yet?
I’ve had my fair share of freezer disasters – there’s nothing like liquified meat to turn you vegetarian for a few days! 🙂
Oh I know, thank god I got it while everything was still cold or I may well have turned vegetarian!!! Not fixed, will need to fly a fridgie out to fix it. The joys!!!
I am, again, in awe of your resilence and “just do it” approach to life. We city-slickers have no idea what country people have to endure. I think it should be mandatory for every city person to spend a month in the outback with families like yourselves to get a true appreciation of what your life is like. It might put a stop to a lot of our whinging and make us far more considerate of our environment. Good luck with the freezer room.
Oh Maggie, you are so sweet, thank you… but really you just do what you’ve got to do… I didn’t really have a choice. Although it does make me secretly smile and laugh to myself when I am down south and people whinge about having to drive 2 hours or think that a 4 hour drive is just the longest drive they will ever have to make when in fact that wouldn’t even get me to town, ha ha ha. It is all about perspective I guess, just what you have to get used to which then becomes the norm.
Oh Chard’s, what a nightmere to come home to that!! I remember when we put the whole leg of a beast in our shed freezer for the dogs. After quite a few months Justo decided the only way to get it out of the freezer would be to turn the freezer off and let it thaw and we could then chop it up for the dogs. So YES we did turn the freezer off, but NO we didnt get it out and chop it up. Needless to say, about a month later it wasn’t the most pleasant thing – we had to get the front end loader and lift the freezer out of the shed and tip it up. You can just imagine what was coming out of it!! There was plenty of dry reaching going on and then it was just as much fun getting the stench out of the freezer!!
I just knew there would be so many stories like mine coming out of the woodwork – but it turns out I was one of the lucky ones… no maggots at least, ha ha ha. xx
Oh Dan! I hate Fridge / Freezer disasters ….. and I could hear that beautiful boy of yours saying ‘it will be ok mum’! I was so overcome at the thought of all that meat – I nearly missed the photo of the Rukkus. Brilliant! Thanks again for the laughs x Jill.
Ha ha ha ha, I am laughing out loud here Jill…. that car cracks me up every time I look at it. Too funny. So great to see you last week. When will I ever see you again?
OMG How devastating . I’m sorry , I would cried too.
We did twice – not ours and nothing like your load. visted my Father in laws when he was away – builders had turned off power in his holiday house during renovations – it was 3 weeks later, Dry retching on purid mince/steak/chicken that had also filled drip tray and pipes. He wasn’t back for 2 weeks so we suffered through it.
I couldn’t eat or cook red meat for weeks.
Fast forward – about 4 yrs ago arrived at his farm and found same thing – though power tripped. He didn’t live there full time but it was well stocked , fridge too – everything was binned.
Happened to us once when we went away for a weekend on our farm . We could salvage a bit and cooked some and gave the dogs a feast fit for a king. We killed a beast and every fridge and portable freezer was full. I made sure the sparky put the new chest freezer on separate circuit in case of power outage.
Gee that all makes me feel very blessed indeed! I knew I needed to look on the bright side. I was soooooo thankful that I found it while it was all still cold. I think I would have just had to set fire to it all if I found it when it was all hot. What bad luck with all of those disasters of yours…. YUCK!!! The power was turned off to our camp kitchen caravan once and there was a freezer full of meat, in the end they refroze it all and then dealt with it…. so disgusting. I don’t think you can ever fully get rid of the smell.
Oh no … that would be up there with one of the worst things to break (I bet it was broken before Mr Chardy left). Well at least when you don’t feel like cooking there is a lot of chicken ready to go.
There is now at least 6 meals ready to pull out of the freezer and each batch will feed at least 6 – 10 people. 🙂
Make sure you keep them for one of our lazy festive season nights Chards!!
It’s always the way, when you are about to head off or arrive home to find some sort of disaster. Same happened here a couple of weeks ago our store cool room decided to die & the house bore sh.. itself as I was about to get in the car to head to town. Thankfully it wasn’t the freezer & we have a second cool room. You drive out, fingers crossed that the place holds up & those in charge can deal with the situation like us. I love how your son is so sympathetic sounds like mine when you feel like a crisis is happening. Now that you have had a big cook up hopefully everyone will be sick of lot’s of food & Chrissy day you can put your feet up & enjoy Happy Day’s 🙂
I knew I wouldn’t be alone with this one. Cold room, bores, generators… they are always breaking down aren’t they! It is just so annoying having to shift everything isn’t it! Maybe I am just lazy. Anyway we got there in the end.
Oh bloody hell what a nightmare that would have been, I would have reacted the same way. Well done for cooking so much of it, but I bet you’re all stuffed! And love how you look on the bright side! xx
Em, we are all so over chicken, ha ha ha.
Oh dear!
As kids my sister and I managed to unplug two chest freezers on our farm. (We weren’t quite as remote as you – our neighbours were about 1/2 hr away)
Dad had just done a kill on a lamb & it was all nicely packed away in the freezer. He realised the next day what had happened. Safe to say he jumped on the two-way & there was a very large “pre harvest” BBQ at ours!
Oh my goodness… that makes me feel better, ha ha ha. I was in a bit of a state on Saturday when I found it, then I slapped myself and thought it could definitely be worse… thank goodness the fresh killer hadn’t been cut up yet and frozen… unlike yours when you were a kid.
Oh why is it just when we want to stop and relax, all hell breaks loose, haha!!I hope the kids werent driving you crazy during the clean up, that wouldve been enough to drive you batty!! Sounds like you had a willing helper though, what a good lad. So good that you were able to rescue some meat, even if it was just 50,000 kg of chicken lol! I love the line up chooks and their attractive ‘lovely legs’ ! They almost look happy to be cooked. You mustve looked a sight hooning around in your gangster wheels through town! I remembering gagging whilst removing warm meat from our freezer once, i think we had a bad storm and lost power. 😊
I know Miss Twinings. Just when you think you have it all under control… bam … something goes wrong. I just had Tom helping me and he was a big help, the other boys were here at the house. Oh I would have definitely been doing more than gagging if I had found that when it was warm… thank goodness I got to it when I did.
Abslutely haha! Also, btw, on you chicken pizza (which looks really yum), do u put bbq sauce on top or something, looks really nice!? Thx.
I sure do, a good squirt of BBQ Sauce – so yummy!
I am totally impressed that you roasted TWELVE chooks. I am feeling quite panicked about having 4 extras for Chrissy lunch this year and I’m going to have to roast not one…..but TWO chooks….AT THE SAME TIME!! I don’t cope well with more than four at the table so I am always impressed how many you cook for. We have a freezer in our basement and last month one of the kids left the door open for 2 days causing us to loose pretty much everything. Not a patch on what you lost but hubby had brought some yummy scallops, prawns and snow crab back from Sakhalin on the other side of Russia which all went into the bin.
Oh don’t feel overwhelmed about doing 2 chooks, you will be right, it is a cinch. Whack some melted butter on those bad boys and cook – easy! And as for your freezer disaster… that is terrible. It is just such a waste isn’t it. You had some very yummy stuff in there too. What a shame.
Our freezer disaster was the bait freezer. Thankfully DH dealt with it, taped the freezer up and took the lot to the tip. The freezer was given to us so that was okay but it was a lot of bait to lose and replace.
Another disaster was going away for a week camping and coming home to find the house full of blowies because every fish in our large fish tank had died
Oh Dee, how disgusting. I would have definitely done the same – taped it up and tipped it out… yuck. I don’t think you could ever get the smell out. How gross. And as for the fish tank disaster… I feel sick just thinking about it. Holy cow. I am definitely lucky that I found mine when I did.
We had the opposite problem to yours once. It was just after Miss G’s 18 birthday party and there was still a lot of alcohol in the coolroom and it froze. I opened the back door onto the verandah and it smelt like a brewery. When I opened to coolroom there was glass beer and heaven knows what everywhere. So that was fun to clean up also. You are right – these things always happen when everyone is away. The pump is always my worry. Good luck with all the cooking. As though you don’t have enough to do already and half the number of people to eat it all now.
Oh no – I would have cried just thinking about the wasted alcohol, ha ha ha ha!!!!! What a mess that would have been. You just wouldn’t have known where to start. At least I now have lots in the fridge for when my family arrive, we can kick back and relax. 🙂
Hi Dan
I’m really enjoying reading about all your adventures, it’s a great break from the kids & the school room!
I nearly had a freezer disaster a few days ago, grabbing bread that was soft was not a good start to the day……but we have had kids leave the door open in the past so I just figured that was what had happened the day before but in having to grab another loaf that night and finding the bread was still soft I knew something wasn’t right so hubby had a look and realised that he had unplugged it!!! Crisis averted…this time 🙂
Enjoy the school holidays, I know I will 😊
Sounds very similar to my near disaster!!! Glad you managed to catch it before everything got hot and yucky. Great to hear from you and so glad you are enjoying the read. Have a great Chrissy. x
I’m hearing you! We went away for 4 days once and one of the appliances had tripped the power and you can imagine the smell after 4 days of unfrozen rump, fillet, chicken and fish. Lucky it was only a small chest freezer but god I can still smell it. I still laugh about it as my husband has a weak stomach and he vomited when we opened the door. You were so lucky it hadn’t got to that stage and able to save most of the meat. What a mammoth job though in having to cook everything.
After reading all of my readers stories about gross hot off meat in freezers that had been off for days it really does make me feel better – so thanks for that. How disgusting, I would have been right there with your husband I think. Oh god, just the thought makes me feel ill. At least I was able to salvage lots of it.
Ohh noo the sausages. We have 2 x 700 litre freezer a 500 upright freezer and 2 x 500 litre fridge freezers plus the cold room. They get checked every couple of days and we have had our share of “this doesn’t feel cold enough”‘s. My family are from town and just dont really appreciate the time and love we share with our freezers. Hope you have been getting some rain that we have been missing out on.
It is a battle isn’t it Maria. Not getting the rain at home yet but hopefully it is making it’s way there now.