My long weekend writing

My shovel digs into the gravelly soil

and almost immediately hits a rock.

Dad puts the crowbar under and tells

me to pull it out again. I shovel some dirt

out of the hole. After twenty minutes the

hole is up to my torso and is getting really hard

to reach down and get the rock that has

been dug up by Dad. A rock half the size of the

hole is at the bottom. I drop the

crowbar down again and again sparks

jump off the surface of the glinting rock.  

\Another good hour later and finally the rock budges,

Dad goes and grabs a strap so we can hoist it up.

Afterward I swear angels started singing Alleluia.

Dad measures the hole to see if it’s deep

enough “I’ve got good news and bad news”

says Dad “which one do you want hear” 

“Good news first please” I say 

“Well the good news is the hole is deep enough”

“What's the bad news”

We have to dig three more”

“What all today!” 

“No today and tomorrow”

“Dammit”

4 hours earlier 

“So after the lockdown we're gonna

build a shelter for the food van”,

Dads explaining to me what we're

gonna do today for the second time today

“we need to dig holes and then after

lockdown go to Mitre 10 Mega and

get materials to build it” “Now for a break”. 

My ANZAC writing to a made up Anzac soldier at Gallipoli

Dear Jack

How is it at war, some men come home with no legs

from shells being dropped next to them and others

come back in stretchers with no arms or are all bloody from being shot?

What are the living conditions like in Gallipoli?

What are you doing? Shooting Turks I hope and not getting yourself killed.

Is everything alright? Did you land In the right place

and are you winning the battle to force the Turks out of the war?

If you don’t want to shoot them you’re very noble

but don’t let your commanding officer know that you’re a

deserter because even we know what happens to soldiers who desert,

they get shot don’t they? Is everything going ok we are not

losing too badly are we or are we winning and those people,

the one that have no legs are just unlucky?

Anyway everyone here is great, well not really most of us

are starving because we have to contribute to the war effort

and we never know when it will end. 

Hope you don’t die 

Wish you were here.

Isaac

Dear little brother Isaac

Things are terrible here. We landed 2km’s away from our original landing spot.

Quite a lot of us died on the first day.

For most of the poor lads this was the first combat experience.

We have very little food, the weather is terrible, it's flooding our trenches.

The stench of dead people is terrible, basically the whole place
is a hell hole with diseases everywhere and very little water,

no point in making friends because they quite possibly will get shot the next day.

Everyone says soon we’ll get them but they just keep something back.

You shoot one, two more come back.

It’s like a damn hydra, but to tell you a secret we’re losing at Gallipoli

but it’s incredibly hard to make the general see sense,

until his commanding officer tells him we won’t win

(which is when everyone is dead) he won’t surrender.

Yeah I have seen it happen occasionally,

a soldier will make a break to the water or won’t shoot

anyone and throws his gun away and either the Turks

or the general will shoot him right there, I don’t really know why they do it,

might be they’ve gone mad or just don’t want to do this anymore.

No everyone is getting shot at, it’s not like we're making big advancements,

we're not really moving at all.

Hope I don’t die 

Don’t wish you were here 

Jack

 If this wasn’t a fake letter this

whole letter would have been rewritten to

make the people think everything was ok.

ANZAC biscuits

These are my ANZAC biscuits and recipe
Ingredients:
1/2 Edmond Standard 
1/3 Chelsea White Sugar 
2/3 finely  desiccated coconut 
3/4 rolled oats 
1/2 chocolate chips
3/4 currents
50g  butter 
1 tbsp sea golden syrup
1/2 tsp Edmond baking soda
2 Tbsp boiling water

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line a baking tray with baking paper
2. Mix together flour sugar coconut and rolled oats 
3. Melt butter and golden syrup. Dissolve baking soda in the boiling water and add to butter and golden syrup.Stir butter mixture into the dry ingredients
4. Place level tablespoonfuls of mixture onto cold greased trays   and flatten with a fork. These don't spread as they bake so you can place them close together 
5. Bake for about 15 minutes or until colder. Leave on the tray for 5 minutes then place on a rack to cool 

Anzac day presentation

Making Banana cake

Steps on making banana cake during lock down

1. Measure out 500g of flour and pour that into a bowl 
2. Pour 1 cup of sugar into the flour
3. Measure out 4 table spoons of oil and put that into the same bowl as the flour and sugar mix it all together
4. Stop when the mixture is smooth and creamy 
5. Crack 2 eggs into a bowl and then beat the eggs pour those eggs into the flour and oil mixture 
6. Mash two bananas with a fork put those in the mixture
7. Fold the mixture until it was mixed through 
8. Add chocolate chips into the mixture and mix 
9. Grease the cake pan and put baking paper in the cake pan 
10. Pour the mixture into the cake pan and cook in the oven 
11. Cook it for about 35 minutes at 1 60C
12. Wait for it to cool and then eat

My Family Tree

This is my family tree, at the bottom is me and my brothers Sam and Luke
and then there is my parents and there brothers and sisters, on my Mum's side there is John, Paul, Michael and Maryanne and on my Dad's side there is Gerard, Kathryn, Patracia,Michael and Maree. My Mum's parents were Anna and Vivian and my Dad's where Bruce and Florence. My Mum's mum's parents were Giovanni De Goldi and Dominca Toccarelli
and my Mum's Dad's parents were Harry Pugh and Mary Treacy and my Dads Dad's parents were Sabina Mc Murtrle and Charlie Wallis.

This is my Family Tree hoped you enjoyed it