Election day 2025

 Unlike 2022, where we voted in Wooragee to beat the queues in Beechworth, we had planned to go to the farmers' market for some fresh veggies and artisan bread, and the loop back and vote in town.

Didn't quite work out like that, we'd stayed up watching a movie on SBS, it was definitely cold, not chilly when we woke up so yadda, yadda, we were a bit late getting going.

In fact it was nearly eleven by the time we had got our act together, by which time we reckoned most of the good stuff would have gone from the market, and it was late enough for there to be a serious queue at the polling station.

So we had ourselves a morning out.

Drove up the hill to Stanley and voted - a good choice, as when we drove past the polling station in Beechworth the queue was a 100m or more long.

In contrast there were only ten or so people in front of us at the Stanley sports ground, so we chatted to people waiting to vote, and then did our democratic duty.

The Stanley volunteer fire brigade had a barbecue going and were selling democracy sausages (your choice of BBQ or tomato sauce) at $3 a pop to raise funds, but we passed and drove up to the little cafe the other side of Stanley for a coffee and a sausage roll and to pick up some local organic veg - while they didn't have any tomatoes on display we asked the owner if she had any.

Well, she did. She'd picked the last of the cooking ones the day before and brought out a bucket of them for us to pick through to find any suitable for a salad.

So we sat outside in the sun with our coffees and sausage rolls, and talked about what we would plant in our own garden this year.

Then we drove back to the centre of Stanley - like everywhere round here it had been a gold mining settlement, then a small farming town, and now is more of a tree change sort of place, though there's still a local orchard industry, and unlike Wooragee still has a pub that's kept going by turning itself into a gastropub, and not staying a utes and dogs sort of place.

Stanley's not very big, but we stopped off to go to the local art group show in the hall next to the Athenaeum - a small show, but some work by very talented people.

Then home (past the queue at the Beechworth polling station which was just as long as before) to sit in the sun and read...