Cygnet isn’t a big town. But it does host a big folk festival, a joyous occasion where mobs of campers arrive carrying guitar cases and fiddles can be heard outside the Schoolhouse Café. I ventured down after getting home from the farmer’s market and listened to a girl and her guitar, and sat on the grass as the town centre resonated to a drum band.

I've had some help in the vegie garden. Two Italians nearly expired in the heat as they dug up some old walkways, with two layers of plastic and two layers of gravel. I’ve found the garden beds too wide to weed. Not that I’m big on weeding, but if you can’t get to them, or you strain your back doing it, it makes the work feel even more like work than pleasure.

The new water tank has arrived, a shiny beast of a thing that will, I hope, start to fill any day now. The old one has been turned into a pig shelter. I learnt a thing or two in the process.

Firstly, I learnt that an angle grinder is a very dangerous, remarkably versatile tool that should cost a lot more than it does and come with a lot of safety equipment. Secondly, I learnt that an angle grinder spews out thousands of sparks and you’re probably best not to use one wearing shorts. And thirdly, which relates to the aforementioned sparks, they’re forbidden to be used outside on total fire ban days.

So, anyway, I managed to put the fire out before it went anywhere and left the job for another day. (I only write this so others won’t be so stupid. I didn’t know it was a total fire ban until the next day, but I should’ve checked and I shouldn’t have used an angle grinder where I did.)

Two angled star pickets (hammered in pointy end down) holds the shelter in place. You see tanks like this all over the Huon. Big ones with firewood stacked under. Others for pigs or chooks or to keep the rain off feed.

My purple carrots are doing well. I’m eating the thinnings. No sign of the radicchio – second time it’s not germinated. I wonder if it’s the seeds, not me. The blueberries are turning blue, but I get only the occasional strawberry. Maybe next year. There are rows of no-dig potatoes and the tops have well and truly shot through the straw. I might bandicoot some of the new potatoes (poke around the edges as a bandicoot would, if it could enter fortress Evans) leaving the plant to produce more.

I skive off one afternoon on Bruny, abalone diving with Nick and a mob. We get five legal sized abs (and five we toss back), which Nick does his usual wok magic on. But there’s a ferry to catch so I grab it as takeaway and sit on the Mirambeena eating abalone and brown rice and spinach from the garden while the others on the ferry wonder where I found such good food.