Lameroo Part I

We went on a weekend excursion to Lameroo, South Australia organized by Study Adelaide. For this particular trip, the Rotary Club of Lameroo volunteered to host up to 20 students free of charge in their homes and provide meals. Lameroo is out in "the country" where farming is the way of life. It has traditionally been an area raising sheep, cattle and goats but has recently boomed as a potato production region. Other vegetables are grown out there too but potatoes are huge right now. Our host family was Ron and Zona. Ron was a retired farmer and recently sold pieces of his property or handed property down to his sons. They both recently lost their spouses and after knowing each other for 60 years have finally join together as a couple...how sweet. Ron was a talker. You asked him 1 question and got a novel. Zona was very sweet but gave Ron a run for his money. Let's just say we knew who was truly in charge over there. Ron took us on a tour of the farms showing us all of the crops grown in their region. We even went to an "onion shed" where onions were packaged and sold. As you can see below, I worked really hard to pull all of the carrots and Shawn gets all of the glory! Ron had a sweet little ride too. It was a 1955 Mercedes Benz. After spending the morning with Ron, we met the rest of the students to visit one of the sheep shearing farms. We watched the sheep dogs work their magic keeping the sheep in line despite the one sheep that hopped the fence and almost took out one of our new Chinese friends. Other than that, the dogs got an A+. Then we met who was claimed to be the best sheep shearer in South Australia. He had a dry sense of humor and smoked like nobody's business. He let each of us have a turn shearing pieces of the sheep's wool. My heart did go out to the sheep but they really didn't fight at all. I think they knew once their wool got long enough that it would be their turn soon.