We wanted to revisit Tower Hill Game Reserve so we drove east to Port Fairy. There was nowhere in town to park the Motley so we drove on to Killarney where we found no shops but we did find a tiny caravan camping ground behind the sand dunes. Since there were no big sites, we pressed on to Koroit where we had stayed last time we were in this area and settled in to a nice site in the caravan park.
On Saturday we packed a picnic lunch and headed to Tower Hill. The lake is almost empty after the long drought and all the water birds are gone. The magic of the place seems to have been diminished and we were a little sad to see the place in such a state. We parked in one of the picnic grounds but I discovered that we had nothing to drink out of. We had to go back to Koroit, or to Warrnambool or Port Fairy to get mugs. we chose the last and parked, by chance, outside the Port Fairy Lifeline shop. As we went in to see if we could buy mugs we were greeted with "What are the Motley Crew doing here?" The lady from the caravan park was in shopping and recognised us!.
We went to the waterfront to have lunch and parked under the same tree as last time we were here. On that occasion we nearly decapitated the air-conditioner from the top of the Motley parking under a tree with very low branches. They have since taken off the lower branches and there was no problem parking the Little Motley.
The caretakers of the caravan park have instituted a park happy hour every Friday evening but for our stay we have changed that to every evening. It's amazing how much more you appreciate a place when the locals are friendly.
On Monday, we went to the Sheep Dog Trials in the local showground. The dogs on show today were novice dogs, that is dogs which have never won any competition. The performances were, for the most part, very poor which seemed to be because the sheep were very irritable and apt to run of in all directions. Most of the dogs didn't get the sheep through the first two obstacles before the time expired. We spoke to a couple of "workers" as the shepherds are called. The behaviour of the sheep is, we were told, closely related to the ability of the dog. A young inexperienced dog will spook the sheep and make its task more difficult whereas a good dog will keep the sheep calm and make it easier to negotiate the four obstacles within the time limit.
We were fascinated by the competition and keen to see the best dogs perform. Since they will only be performing later in the week, we determined to stay on a few more days in this very pleasant place.
We visited the Sheep Dogs Trials again on Wednesday and saw the amazing "Duck Race". The ducks were a very tall slim breed and were all dressed in silks. A sheep dog kept them together as they paraded to the start and, at the starting signal, hustled them all to the finishing line where they were rewarded with some food. We also watched some of the better dogs working. In the evening, we went back to watch the "teams event", a fun competition where teams of five represented various states. The competition was the same as a normal trial except that each section of the course was worked by a different dog (and worker). The performances were all pretty ordinary except for the "New Zealand" team which performed exceptionally well and scored 92/100. At last we were able to see good dogs working with good "workers". I discovered that the term worker comes from the name of the association which runs sheep dog trialing, the Australian Sheepdog Workers Association.
We watched this competition in the company of the wife of one of the contestants who explained much of the mysteries of the sport. She explained the rukles and the scoring and she showed us how a dog which is "weak" and apt to back away from the sheep when challenged will perform poorly whereas a courageous dog which stand up to the sheep gains control over them very quickly and has far less problems. Clearly there are still "good" and "bad" sheep but one needs to know the quality of the dog in order to understand how "good" or "bad" the the sheep are.