The Tree Paddock is a fenced-off stony spoilage dump. Decades ago much of the prime farmland along the Ovens River was dry-dredged for gold. It flipped the soil upside down, and turned some of it into stony wasteland. On some of our property the topsoil was scraped off and sold, and either filled with scrap, or left as a hole.

So one useless desert patch was fenced off from the viable land. The previous owner tried to salvage it by planting native trees, which struggle. Some haven’t died, but it’s tough going.

Next to the Tree Paddock is the secure Goose Paddock. There is a waterhole down one end. Its not a dam…it doesn’t retain water. The water rises and falls to reflect the level of the water table. Now that it’s warming up the waterhole is rapidly depleting.

But that doesn’t stop the long-neck turtles trying to get to it.

A month or two ago weeding in the tree paddock I noticed some broken ceramic pieces. “Odd”, I thought. Then a month later showing a friend the progress of the trees, I saw another one. This time I picked it up, and realized it wasn’t a broken plate, it was the bleached shell of a tortoise.

And today it made sense. Along the fenceline of the Tree Paddock were four Australian long-necked turtles…(not tortoises, despite the stumpy feet, so I read)…trying to get through the fox-proofed fenceline. Their heads fit, but not the shell, and I understood why I kept finding bleached shells on the fenceline.

There looked to be enough room between the barbed wire line and the electrified wire line to reach over and pick it up. Unfortunately not. As I reached for the turtle my shoulder was close enough to the electrified fence to take a charge. Bright sunny day, full power. It felt like someone clubbed me in the back and jaw with a pillowcase full of sand.

I jerked back, and shredded my arm on the barbed wire.

Thirty minutes later, cleaned up and wounds plugged, I travelled along the fence…on the turtle’s side. However, there were only two live turtles. The others had already dried out and died trying to get through. Dodging the nasty bile they exude when feeling threatened, I picked them up and transported them into the Goose Paddock, to finally put them within a short stroll to the waterhole.

Yesterday new twin lambs arrived. Today the mother rejected them.

Initially she only rejected one. She was feeding one, and walking away from the second one. It was already thinner and weaker when we noticed. We tried a few sheep psychology tricks, which included picking up the favoured lamb and giving her the unfavourite. No go. To add to the mix, the mother was the least tame of the flock, who kept her distance at all times. Rounding her up into a pen for a few days would have been a good option, but with the alpaca running interference she was too wary for our amateur herding skills.

I brought the favoured lamb back, and released it at the edge of the mother’s tolerance distance. But instead of running to his mother, the lamb bolted in the opposite direction. I took after him. For a one-day lamb he set a furious pace, and it wasn’t until he ran to the edge of our place and through the neighbours fence and tripped that I caught up. I dropped to my knees and reached through the fence to pick him up.

This time the sweaty cloth hat I was wearing touched the electric fence, picking up a terrific charge. The first I knew about it was being flung, face-down, into the grass.

No blood this time.

I lurched back and this time successfully passed the lamb back to his mother. She rejected him, too, walking off leaving him mewling sadly.

Which is why we have twin lambs in the bathroom, being hand fed.