It is mid-January at Stanton and a pleasant 25 degrees . at 11:30am. A slight breeze is rustling the trees and nothing much is moving apart from dozens of butterflies zipping around the post and rail fence a few metres from the house. Occasionally a duck splashes on the bottom dam but it is only hal way interested in swimming today.

Sam is asleep under his potato vine bush while his former life interest — black-faced sheep hunker down under a huge Macrocarpa tree, but this is not Footrot Flats. Even the local tiger snake is not interested in playing. It is not preciously hot and curiously the sun does beckon one to venture forth from the shade, fronds from the willow slapping at face and ears urging a quicker departure.

The only sounds heard are a tractor cutting grass in a nearby paddock and birdsong coming from the Macrocarpa line not in opposition to each other, just there. The roses are out and so are the dandelions.

It is an inspiring day with puffy whites in a blue sky. The Stanton Work Calendar is about to be booted up, a pippit of plovers scratching under an apple tree signals the commencement of the year’s activity. It’s low tech. There is much to do but not so the pressure of work as seasonal fun stuff if you see cutting firewood in summer as joyous, the results in winter are in the “quietly satisfied” basket.

Stanton in summer looks out onto brown fields where horses munch on the diminishing lines of green grass and the hills behind look hungry and uninviting. Martin Cash viewing this scene from his refuge above Stanton probably became more interested in meeting new friends at this time (if you get the picture).

There is still no general fire ban which is a blessing, but the bad signs are there, and so the winter growth around the dams need slashing.

A convict will do that one while the lavender and hop vine get a nice haircut. After all even in the country appearances have to be maintained. Garden fencing is now on the work order as a sheep can be viewed pruning a newly planted tree, sheep and blueberries are also not likely to be getting to know each other soon.

The orchard needs plenty of water along with pyrethrum spray on the pear, cherry, almond and hawthorn trees. Peter Cundall likes the natural approach, and snails it seems should get … “the midnight crunch method, carried out after dark with gumboots and a torch, satisfies a base, sadistic urge, and is extraordinarily successful”.

You may have read about Pete’s recent run in with the law. Stanton could use a new convict gardener.

Stanton is a community of travellers who just haven’t really met as yet and it certainly was a living community in 1817 where wheeled ploughs provided the horsepower and encircled the fields with natural fertilizer. The modern lot named Victa and Masport are more problematic and not great company. Some things do not change much over the years. Perhaps after a full day of working the land, building, eating, talking, the original occupants of the new house at Back River may have discussed (over a cup of tea) the latest issue of Blackwoods Magazine, printed between 1817 and 1980. Being sociable souls they may well have responded jovially to the reviews of Wordsworth and Coleridge, OR they may well have sat quietly with a mug of something strong and contemplated the remains of the day. Stanton is like that.

Perhaps tomorrow is a better time to commence the new work regime as music can be heard coming from the house. It is Karen Casey and SOLAS- The Maid on the Shore..now there is a song for Stanton- a woman who steals and sings songs for a living.