Taggerty has entered late Autumn, and what a beautiful season it has been. Foggy mornings and then bright blue skies. While it was late in coming, Autumn has now arrived properly and the trees are dispaying some amazing colours. But all good things must come to an end, and Taggerty Autumn means heading north for me. So over the past few days I have been measuring our trees at Kanumbra, saying goodbye to our colourful trees at Taggerty and also to our sole surviving alpaca Magnet, who now has the back paddock all to himself over the coming winter.

This morning I was up early to finish the possum-proofing of the shed, and was rewarded with a great foggy sunrise.

As I was about to fit the last piece of plywood to prevent possums getting into the shed over winter, I got my answer to the question of where the third possum had gone to over the past few days. He was back in the shed, hiding behind the piece of plywood that I was just about to nail up! So we played a bit of chasings with each other, and eventually he ran out the door.  I then nailed up the plywood and hoped that it keeps them out for winter.

After I finished the possum-proofing of the shed, I moved lots of things (that I had moved out of the shed to do the possum-proofing) back to the shed, I disconnected the batteries on all the vehicles, covered the tractor, cleaned out the fridge and turned off the hot water heater. Hopefully, i haven't forgotten anything.

One thing I didn't get to do this morning was go over and say goodbye to John Woodley, our forestry mate who has been in poor health lately, since he was fully occupied this morning with his carers. However, I will be keeping in touch with him as we continue to flesh out the website we are developing to document his work over 30 years in building his farm forestry and arboreum property (www.taggertyarboretum.com).

Around 11am, Doug and Lynne Walter arrived at our house to take me to the airport. One thing I love about country living, is the willingness of people to go out of their way to help you. For the past 12 years, Doug or Vicki Cooper have got me to and from the airport, a round trip of over 200km, which would be long enough to cover several counties in Europe. Thanks guys!

Check-in at Melbourne Airport is now all self-serve for Singapore Airline flights, including scanning your passport, printing your boarding passes and loading your luggage after putting the sticky tag on it. The flight to Singapore was pretty smooth, and I got to watch Oscar-winning movie Oppenheimer. I can see why it won. One thing I appreciated was the return of the hot towels on boarding, and also the return on the drinks trolley before the first meal. But they still don't know how to make a Scotch&Dry!

Three hours stopover at Changi, which went really quickly, and I was impressed by the new Marrakech Coffee House - quite grand.