Every day in northern Victoria is a clear day — no rain, no clouds. We get beautiful light this side of the mountains.

It would normally be something to enjoy, this spring holiday in the middle of winter. However, we’ve been working with farmers and I’m starting to understand what drought means to them.

“We’re hoping for rain real soon,” we were told a week ago. “There are farmers out there with their fields empty. It’s pretty much the end of the sowing season but they can’t sow anything without water. If they miss this season, it’ll be the second one in a row…”

Jamie and I walked down the corridor of the main building, towards the exit doors. We were suddenly surrounded by a constant tapping.

“What’s that sound?” I said, puzzled.

We arrived at the windows and saw streaks of movement flying down from the sky and exploding on the ground, turning light grey asphalt to dark grey. The dark grey began as splotches but soon turned into a uniform sheen. I saw clouds for the first time in the two months I’ve worked in Shepparton.

“Rain!” I cried, almost in disbelief. “It’s raining!”

“Fan-bloody-tastic!” admired Jamie.

“I’d forgotten what it sounded like,” I murmured.

When we entered the next building, I felt the buzz of celebration.

“It’s raining!” people crowed. “About time! Just in time!”

“There will be a lot very happy people out there today.”

The reason I haven’t posted anything for almost two weeks is that I spent last weekend in Mildura. I took lots of photos, many of which I am happy with. Please have a look at my photo album, From Shepparton to Mildura.

We drove to Leitchville, a tiny town of about 500 people. Why were we in Leitchville? Because it was the nearest town to the middle-of-nowhere place we had to go to. We were there to meet David, who was going to give us a tour of the Pyramid Creek Salt Interception Scheme.

“Meet me in front of the pub,” David had said. “You’ll know which one it is. It’s the main building in town.”

We pulled up in front of the pub and parked alongside another car and a van. On the other side of the carpark, David waved to us. After a short discussion, we hopped into his car and started the twenty minute drive to the Scheme.

For the next two hours, David showed us the structures that they used to control the flow of Pyramid Creek. He took us to the pumps that sucked salty water out of the ground before it flowed into the creek. Jamie and I tasted the groundwater — it was almost as salty as sea water. David then drove us to the evaporation pans: 200 hectares of pooled water, waiting for the sun to evaporate it and leave behind white crystals of salt. The salt is then processed and sold as gourmet salt, amongst other things.

We were almost finished when my mobile phone rang. I was surprised I was even getting reception.

“Hello, Joan speaking.”

“Joan? This is Michael from Avis. Do you have one of our rental cars?”

“Yes, we’ve had it for about two months.”

“Is it parked in front of a hotel?”

I was confused. We had left our hotel in Shepparton this morning. “Um. You mean, a hotel in Leitchville?”

“Yeah, Leitchville. We’ve just had a call from the hotel owner. He’s going to tow your car away in fifteen minutes.”

“Excuse me?”

“He says that you’re parked in a loading zone and a truck is coming to make a delivery. If the car isn’t moved in fifteen minutes, he’ll get it towed away. I’ve got his mobile number. His name is Ryan.”

“Oh.” I racked my brains. “We’re not actually in Leitchville at the moment. I don’t know if we can get there in fifteen minutes. But, look, I’ll deal with it. Could you give me the number?” I scrawled the number down on a media release about the salt interception scheme.

I hung up and called ‘Ryan’.

“Hello, it’s Ryan.”

“Hi Ryan. My name is Joan. Avis called me to say that our car is blocking the way in front of the pub.”

“Yeah, a little silver car? It’s in the loading zone. The beer truck is coming. I need to get it moved.”

“We can get there in twenty minutes,” David murmured to me.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said into the phone. “We didn’t realise. We’ll be there in fifteen, twenty minutes to move the car. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, no worries. The truck will arrive about then.”

“Good, then. I’ll see you soon.”

We wound up the tour and got back to the Leitchville pub in 17 minutes. Jamie hopped out of David’s car.

“I’ll move it and go into the pub to let them know it’s been moved,” he said.

“Thanks, Jamie. The guy’s name is Ryan.”

Jamie tells me later that when he went into the pub, it was like a scene from a Western film, when a stranger walks into town.

“I walked in,” Jamie recounted, “and everyone turns to look at me, dead silence. I said, ‘Uh, g’day. Is Ryan around?’ and they all pointed to him.”

For my work in Shepparton, I speak to many farmers and country people. I’ve lived in cities and suburbs my whole life. This is something I have to confess to people so that I can explain my ignorance of basic agriculture, geography of regional Victoria, even Australian slang.

Jamie has been my first line of defence in this new environment. He grew up on a farm in south-western Victoria. Often, I let him do the banter and questioning while I sit back and absorb as much information as I can without revealing my city girl cluelessness.

I am grateful that I have had this opportunity to learn more about rural life. I don’t want to be an ignorant urbanite spouting off about water being wasted through irrigation, over-fertilising of crops or vegetation clearing.

Jamie tells me stories about about growing up on a farm.

“The farm back home isn’t big. We grow lavendar, also some beef cattle. Sometimes when a cow has two calves, she’ll pick one to look after and abandon the other. The abandoned one doesn’t last long. It’s just the natural way of things.

Sometimes, though, when dad felt like it, he said to me and my brother, “Josh, Jamie, if you want, you can look after the calf.”

Josh and I would come back after school every day to feed it. It was really cute, looking up at us with its big cow eyes. We were its ‘mum’. It would come towards me and nuzzle my leg. Every time, it would be looking for my udder.

I would hold my hand like this and it would suck my fingers. You have to be really careful, though. You have to have your hand palm upwards. Cows have strong mouths. If you held you hand like this, with the fingers facing down, the calf would snap your fingers backwards when it sucked.”

Goodness. With my newly acquired knowledge, I felt my giant block of city ignorance chip away just that little bit more.

Family Feud is a game show on TV. It’s like a word association game. The host makes a statement like, “Name something that slips out of your hand easily.” The TV producers have already asked a sample of 100 people this same question and come up with the ten most popular answers. The contestants on the TV show get points if their responses match these popular responses.

I was watching the show for the first time in years last weekend. Bert Newton asked the two teams, “Name something you would put on a snowman.”

“Carrot!” I shouted.

“Carrot,” mum and dad agreed.

“Carrot,” said the first contestant who hit the buzzer.

“Let’s see how our survey said,” Bert drawled. The top box on the screen flashed the word ‘carrot’. “Yes! Carrot was the number one response!”

And so the round went on. Soon, words like ’scarf’, ‘mouth’ and ‘buttons’ appeared on the screen. Nine of the ten boxes were now lit up. The missing response was number four. It was a popular response so in theory, should have been easy to guess. Why were we having such trouble nailing it?

“I’m going to go with ‘arms’,” the final contestant said firmly. It was her team’s last chance to snatch the round from the opposition.

BUZZZZZZZZ. “I’m sorry, it wasn’t arms!” Bert said cheerfully. “That’s too bad. Well, let’s check what that last response was…”

The fourth box flashed…’Nose’.

“Nose?!” mum said indignantly. “You can’t have ‘nose’! We’ve already got ‘carrot’!” Dad nodded. He thought it was wrong, too.

“Mum, it’s not about what’s right or logical,” I said. “You have to think about what other people would say. If you ask a hundred people what you would put a snowman, half of them will say ‘carrot’ and the other half will say ‘nose’.”

Ah, so Family Feud has a lesson for us all. The game isn’t about consistency, correctness, rationality or logic. To win Family Feud, you need to be able to put yourself in other people’s shoes.

This is interesting: the 2006 Public Transport Challenge. It would have been useful when I was in high school. The first time I took the train by myself was at the end of first year uni, when I got a job based in the city. I remember asking strangers in the CBD where Spencer Street station was.

Hehe. It’s now Southern Cross Station.

I was thinking about this a few days ago. When I have kids, I’ll be able to say things such as:

Back in my day, we had tapes, then CDs. iPods came much later. Actually, and I’m showing my real age here, my first single was a record of It’s a Small World After All.

I remember when the internet was just getting popular. I was one of the first kids with an e-mail address. I used to be afraid of submitting anything on the World Wide Web so for a long time, I would just look at webpages. I was afraid that I would break something!

When mobile phones just came out, they were huge. We used to call them ‘bricks’. They were even bigger than the landline phones you had at home.

My cousin spent almost $1000 on the very first ever Playstation! What are they up to now, Playstation 11, right?

Do you know why the main hard drive is usually called ‘C drive’? There used to be two slots for ‘floppy disks’. ‘A drive’ was for 3.5″ floppies, which held 1.44 MB. I used those all through high school and university. The ‘B drive’ disappeared a long time before ‘A drive’ did. ‘B drives’ were for 5.25″ floppies, which held only [someone tell me, I can't remember].

There used to be no such thing as unleaded petrol. Everyone used to use leaded petrol, which was bad for the environment.

Did you know that Southern Cross station used to be called ‘Spencer Street’? And way before that, Melbourne Central was called ‘Museum station’.

And they would say, “Wow, mum, you’re so old.”

Hmm. I reckon that I could probably say these things to 10 year olds now and they would say the same thing.

It was the end of the formal part of the Friday luncheon. The speaker was thanked and everyone was invited to stay for drinks.

I knew what ‘drinks’ meant. ‘Drinks’ is a chance to get up and network with people. Have you ‘networked’ before? Sometimes I call it ‘schmoozing‘. You talk to people and somewhere in your mind (it could be at the back or the front), you are conscious of making a good impression because this person could be important to you one day.

It’s scary. If you’re nervous about cold-calling, of introducing yourself to random people, of breaking into conversations that have begun without you, then networking is scary. I think it must be even scarier when you’re a junior engineer and there is no compelling reason for the others in the room to speak to you.

I stood up with my glass and looked around. I sipped. Oh. I was looking at the white table cloth again. I forced myself to look up again and caught the eye of my big boss. Quickly, I averted my eyes. That was the easy option, talking to someone I already knew. My boss probably knew that too. I wasn’t going to burden him with my conversation.

As I hovered by my table, I thought about leaving. Others had. It would stop this feeling of wretched stupidity and awkwardness.

Okay, that’s it.

I turned and walked past other tables, past my boss, past the floor-to-ceiling windows framing the sunset over the Yarra River, and approached two men sitting near the front.

“Hello! Can I join you?” I smiled.

“Sure,” they said.

I pulled over a chair and sat down.

At Friday’s luncheon, I found my name on Table 6 and sat myself next to Ben. Ben works for the management services business group, which is in a different building to where I work. So even though we had worked for the same company for a year, this was the first time we had met. I knew the rest of his team mates, though, and they were all women.

“So Ben,” I said, “Are you the only guy in your team?”

“Joan,” he replied immediately, “it’s been like that my whole life.” I found out that Ben used to be an occupational therapist. “At uni, all the occupational therapy students were girls, so when I started working, I worked with females too. Now that I do communications and sociology, they’re all girls again! I must have the kind of skill areas that are traditionally female-dominated.”

I laughed. “That’s… a weird sitatuion, considering you work for an engineering company.”

“That’s right. There are plenty of men around — I’m just not working with them! Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s all good.”

“Well, I’m an engineer. I’ve always worked with guys and as you probably know, when you get to know people, it’s not like ‘He’s a guy’ or ‘She’s a girl’. They’re just people. Except when they start talking about shoes, right? Then they’re girls.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “I have trouble relating when they start talking about shoes.”

“So, then, do you do something suitably violent and male when you’re not working?” I asked.

Ben brightened. “I do!”

Football, right? I thought. That, or karate.

“Yeah, I do kung fu.”

Bingo.

The problem with having a digital camera and a portable 80 GB hard disk is that you take a lot of photos. There is definitely a risk of thoughtless happy snapping; it’s kind of like being able to eat as much junk food as you like because you have a great metabolism.

My only redeeming feature is that I’m not shy about deleting photos. I’ve deleted about 370 and I was happy with around 700, which is a two-thirds strike rate. It makes me feel better when I delete lots; the average quality of the remaining photos increases with each mediocre shot I send to the recycle bin.

I have finally gone through all my photos from the trip to England and France and here are some of the fruits of my labour. Don’t worry, I’m not going to subject you to a holiday photo slideshow — you know the kind, where the most interested person in the room is the one who went on holiday.

On Monday morning, we drove up to Shepparton. I was packed and ready for a week away. Late in the morning, David called.

“Joan? I really need some support for a meeting tomorrow morning. I’m running a risk workshop for a water retailer. Can you come with me?”

“Hmm, David, I’m in Shepparton at the moment. Isn’t the meeting in Melbourne?”

“I talked to Paul and he said that as long as you can physically make it back here, then you could help me out. Joan, please, do you think you can do it?”

I heard the worry in his voice. “Okay, David. I’ll be there. I’ll figure it out.”

I put my phone down and took a deep breath. How was I going to do this? Jamie needed the car in Shepparton… I would have to catch the bus to Murchison then a train to Melbourne.

Fortuitously, I found out that my boss in Shepparton, Vanessa, was driving to Melbourne to attend the Environment Industry Dinner. This $145-per-head event is the biggest event on the environment calendar. Generally, only important people get to go. Vanessa was going as a guest of my company. She agreed to give me a lift back to Melbourne that evening.

As we approached the city, Vanessa asked, “Do you want me to drop you off at Flinders Street station?”

“No, I think it’ll be more trouble than it’s worth. It’s close to peak hour. Just drive me to the MCG, where the dinner is, and I’ll catch a train from Richmond station. It’s nearby.”

When we got to the MCG, Vanessa offered to let me out but there were cars behind us, waiting to enter the carpark so I gestured her to drive on. “I can find my way back once you’ve parked.”

Getting to the underground carpark was like running a maze. In the end, I loaded myself up with my rolling luggage, handbag and backpack, and followed Vanessa to the lift. She said, “There should be a way out from the ground floor.”

Unfortunately, at this time of night, all the exits were locked. We spent 20 minutes searching for a way out. “Maybe I should just go with you to the dinner and I can get a staff member to show me an exit,” I suggested.

At last, we found a turnstile that allowed people to exit but not come back. What a drama! Finally! I squeezed through, dragging my luggage behind me. Waving goodbye to Vanessa, I was about to orientate myself towards Richmond Station when a woman approached.

“Excuse me, can you find a way in? I’m trying to get to the Environment Dinner.”

“Sorry,” I replied. “I just found a way out and I’m leaving… Oh my god! Jan!”

“Joan!” she gasped. I hadn’t seen Jan for three or four years! As a student, I worked for her when she was the Sustainability Manager at one of the Big Four banks. Only a month ago, I had tracked her down again and emailed her, saying that I was working in Shepparton but when I came back, we could catch up for coffee.

“This is amazing, Joan! What a coincidence!” Jan marvelled. “You’re here for the Environment Dinner, of course?”

“Actually, I just got a lift back from Shepparton with Vanessa.” Vanessa waved from behind the glass doors. “I’m on my way to Richmond Station.”

“Well, would you like to come to the dinner?” Jan asked. “We have a spare spot. Literally two hours ago, one of the people who was meant to be on our table realised he had double booked himself and pulled out. I’ve called so many people but no one could make it. It looked like we were going to have an empty seat at our table.”

I broke into a huge smile. “I’d love to come!”

I knew that Jan now worked for my company’s biggest client. This meant that, at no cost to me, I would be sharing a table with the managing directors and board members of my company’s biggest client at an exclusive event — all on a night I was supposed to be in Shepparton!

I put my luggage into the cloak room. My boss was surprised but pleased to see me. I got a tour of the MCG. I ate delicious organic food. I drank organic champagne. I met important people. Important people met me. I had an awesome time.