There was the stroll in down the driveway to feed the horses and foal. Even the most recent addition to the clan, Quade, got a little ride.

The proud mums

At 1pm on the 9th February 2014 we all came close to knowing someone affected by Victorian fires.  A blaze started on the Calder Hwy close to our McGregor Rd house where we lived in the 90's.  A strong norhterly wind and temperatures in the low 40's again (same day as Norm's triathalon - see next story) guaranteed that this was not going to smoulder out.
The fire headed south along the Calder to Gisborne Sth, and them a southwest change sweep this grass fire straight towards Mel & Mark's property - Phase Park.  The fire sweep around the olive farm (where we had morning tea with Marg on her birthday last Sept) and set a target on Riddell Creek.
Mel's fire plan worked as horses were shuffled into the inner dust bowl paddocks as Elvis flew overhead dropping thousands of litres of water on the paddocks in the path of the racing grass fire.
It eventually swept to the west of the property, took out 3 homes on its way to Riddells Creek where is was stopped just as it was starting to consume the railway sleepers at the station 20km away. 

The team Tri-Train placed 17 out of 35 which was a spectacular result.
Whilst not achieving our target of a ‘top 10’ finish, we are very pleased with the 17 which was a whole lot better than a DNF.
Swim: Norm finished 22 from 35 with a time of 43min 16 secs, which considering there is no age groups, was a very solid performance against at least 75% of the field being under 35 years of age.
Bike: Richard despite some bike equipment failure, picked up 8 places and finished 14th fastest bike time at 3 hours 3mins 26 secs. Richo’s wind pipes still felt like they were burning today. Imagine sucking in the blasting hot air for 3 hours!
Run: With his first race in Australia, Alex understood what a “sunburnt country” feels like. And what about the wind? Although the temperature had dropped by about 10 degrees just as his run began, the wind peaked and it was truly like trying to run whilst pushing a tractor across a paddock. Despite the horrendous conditions, Alex persisted for the teams sake and posted a resilient 2 hours 4 mins 38 secs finishing 22nd. Welcome to Australia Alex! The good news is that it is not usually like that.

Weather was "grueling beyond belief" at 30 degrees at 5.30am up to 38 degrees once the sun came up, mind you it felt hotter than that. The wind speed for the Swim started head on at 20 to 30 knots against the tide, which caused very choppy swimming. For the bike and run, wind speeds had escalated to 30 to 44 knots. The wind was such that it blew down the temporary fencing and also blew some of it around the bike course making it particularly hazardous.