Dungarron Highland Ponies

...arrived with a vengence on Thursday 17th. What was said to be a cool change with up to 40mm of rain, became a cyclonic change ripping through at about 2.30pm. Connor and i were in Albury when the clouds startied building up, and we abandoned thoughts of going to the movies when the dust arrived. The past couple of years have seen plenty of dust storms, and they were generally a pretty good indicator of high winds following.  That combined with the chance of thunderstorms and the fact it was 40 degrees was enough to make the trip home in case of fires.

Morgan arrived home from work at 2pm, and had noticed the clouds and for a change parked her car in behind mine instead of under the red gum in the yard ... good choice Morgan. This is where he car normally sits! (The following photos are from the day after the storms.)

Storm was here and gone again in a matter of minutes, but it was a terrifying couple of minutes! Started with everything turning red with dust, that eerie light and muffled sound, and then the wind started, and got stronger, and stronger ..doors slammed open, garage gate slammed open, tried to close it only to be blown off my feet into the car, finally got it wrenched closed as the tiles on the garage roof started flying off. Limbs were falling everywhere, chook house door flew off, the sound of splitting timber could be heard over the howling wind. Steel sheeting tore off the machinery shed, Cloudy went over a fence as a tree in his paddock came down. Rain and debris were thrown across the yard horizontally in what we now know were 107km / hr winds. I headed out with a halter to catch Cloudy but as more limbs hit the ground and hail began to fall it was deemed too dangerous. So we stayed inside, listening, waiting, and in no more that 5 minutes it fell calm and silent (which in itself was pretty eerie and scary!)  after another 5 minutes it was decided it was safe enough to go and catch Cloudy and check all of the other horses (all well and pretty unfazed)

There were (still are) limbs down in every paddock under just aboout every tree. We only lost one whole tree ...

While checking the big mare mob on the creek i did find one casualty .. a barely fledged Blue Heron strutting about on the creek bank making little peeping noises. I hadn't realised that the heron's nested here, and have no idea where or how they nest, but this little guy could only just fly.

The mares are all looking fat and sassy. I normally wouldn't let them get this fat, and they've had so little opportunity to do so in the past couple of years. I just couldn't justify locking them up ...

Flora (BF Kylie), Tammy, and Verona.

Tammy, Gypsy, Romi, Verona

Flora

And have i mentioned how superbly Verona has matured??