Recently we’ve been going out for the day scoping out places that might repay a visit, places such as local museums, abandoned town sites and the like.

We might pretend that this is related to our interest in local history but in truth it’s because we have builders, and sometimes they take over the house with machines and noise, and the simplest thing is to give them the keys for the day, and go for a drive.

Now if we were organised we could take a picnic, but we never are so we usually end up having lunch at a bakery in a small country town.

People in country bakeries are universally friendly and usually want to know your business, so we give them the abbreviated version of having builders in to renovate the bathroom, and usually they commiserate and we move on.

Not yesterday. After wanting to know what we were doing and where we were from, the bakery person gave us a curve ball.

‘My Tamsin’s going to Beechworth for the nipple’

I was sure she hadn’t said what I thought she had. And, in Australia it sometimes seems that everyone is from somewhere else and eccentric English pronounciation is not unusual. Best thing is to appear interested and hope things will explain themselves.

“Oh yes?”

‘Yes, there’s lots of girls going from all over for the nipple this weekend’

At this point I had a brain freeze. Ever since Ned Kelly was arrested at Glenrowan in the 1880’s Beechworth has been a sedate kind of place. All I could think of was a ‘free the nipple‘ demo disrupting the Saturday farmer’s market.

But then it all became clear:

‘There’s a big college nipple competition with teams from Bright, Thurgoona, Chiltern and all over.’

And then it clicked. The lady was saying netball, not nipple …