New year's Eve

The forecast temperature high on this new year's eve is 42C, however it was a reasonably cool morning when I walked early after Lib left for work. As is my custom I started Lib's car to warm it before she leaves and young 'Pip' jumped up on my lap as I sat in the car tuning the radio, a routine the little dog has established lately.
There's a giant messmate tree in the neighbour's property directly in front as you sit in the car looking down the drive which turns to the right and exits our property at the eastern end. I noticed this morning that old leaves, more than I'd ever noticed before, were constantly dropping from this tree and flitting to earth as if in the expectation of the very hot day ahead. There was barely a breath of breeze.
My walk was pleasant enough, except for the masses of flies that were thicker than usual and clingy and crawly as if also in expectation of the heat. What a contrast to my morning walks two years ago when I began the habit on new years day 2006, while we holidayed at Blairgowrie at our friend's (John and Raylene) beach house. I walked along the back beach and the ocean breeze kept flies away. Two years I've been walking. Say 700 walks by 4.5 km, about 3150km if you added it up or perhaps from Melbourne to Cairns Qld almost. Let's hope I stay well enough for several more years to keep it up till I can say I've walked the equivalent of round Australia.
After feeding the dogs I thought before it got hot I'd turn over a bit of ground in the vegie garden which previously had broad beans growing. I planted some parsley seedlings that Len Smedley had given me before Christmas. 'Moss triple curled' Len said it was, 'the best for strength and longevity.' I was happy to have them, I always try to have parsley coming on, I use it in all my cooking, in particular my old favourites, the soups, stews, and spaghetti meat sauce. Not to mention omelettes. A handful of parsley and silver beet with whatever makes a quick, simple, nutritious and inexpensive affair.
Lib cleaned out the laundry cupboard recently and found some vegie seeds so I kept at it and put in some spring onion and broccoli seed and a few beans, and butternut pumpkin seeds I'd saved from the slops bucket. I roughed up some groung and threw in a packet of Russell Lupin flower seeds (the packet was dated use before 00 but you never know, they may come up). Gee it was good to have time to do a bit in the garden, beyond just mowing and whipper snipping. I watered all the seeds in, then climbed on the roof to put an old thick blanket over the sky light to help keep the house cooler. All the windows are shut and the curtains drawn, I just hope the wind doesn't pick up which would bring the anxiety of possible bushfires.
I checked the bees quickly yesterday. The heavy nectar flow, probably from clover, that was there last Thursday after the good rain before Christmas, had slowed right down with the heat and dry since. If the hives had filled I was preparing to psyche myself up to extract the honey but they aren't filled and there's no urgency. The frame with less wires I put in, to give some honeycomb to my neighbours, is only about half drawn out and full so I left it there hoping it fills reasonably quickly so it stays nice and white and fresh.
I look forward to 2008 with optimism. Rain is the key. The grass hay season hereabouts has been prodigious. I saw the four mudlark chicks together this morning sitting on the railings around Janice's horse pen. Also, on the bird scene, I can also report that our whipbirds successfully raised another pair of young, the second year in a row, and also at the farm, a whipbird pair raised young bringing great pleasure to Elvie, Meredith and Jod.
I killed my first European wasp nest of the season yesterday. I'll have to be vigilant as 'Pip' is at risk, she goes so hard at everything. To her great excitement she discovered echidnas the other day, fortunately she's no threat or match due to the spikes. I read the other day that Jack Russells are prone to death by snake bite because they attack them with no fear. If she survives this summer she should be right, surely she'll slow down into her second year.

Merry Christmas

Who could have wished for a better Christmas present than 110 ml of rain over the past four days. To anyone who reads my blog, I consider you a valued friend and to all my friends I wish you a happy Christmas and New Year.

C'est La Vie

"As long as there are people on earth, they will be sexually active."
A psychologist/counsellor, who helped me settle some demons more than twenty years ago, made that comment to sister Meredith at a time when she was struggling following the break down of her marriage. It was said in the context of helping her deal with her fear and anxiety for her daughters who were approaching adolescence. Meredith told me about it as I drove her back from a session with the counsellor/friend/mentor. It was a tough time for her, suddenly on her own without the policeman husband and father.
I've thought of the comment many times when trying to come to terms with things in the years since. He could have said, "As long as there are people on earth there will be prejudice and bigotry." What it means to me is that human nature is as it is, and you need to accept things first, as a starting point, calmly and sensibly, and then do your best from there.

My tree of the week is the sweet pittosporum, also known as the tree daphne. We have half a dozen or so on our place. These are mainly large mature trees. I value them highly for their shade, windbreak and fire retardant quality, food and shelter for birds, and the magnificent scent of their flowers in early and mid spring. They are a source of nectar for my honey bees as well as native bees, moths and butterflies. The only downside of their ability to attract feeding birds with their fruit is the subsequent spread of seedlings, however I have found this is a minor problem. One or two maintenance tours of the property a year removing unwanted seedlings by hand pulling, and mowing or whippersnipping at fire tidy up time, does the trick.

In the mail the other day came a 'notice of an application for a planning permit'. The permit is to: remove vegetation (sweet pittosporum) from the Gembrook road reservations, the applicant for the permit is Cardinia Shire Council. Further reading of the notice shows there are 26 Roadsides involved with an average 40 trees per road= approx. 1040 trees. That's a lot of trees to take out in one hit.
Now and again you have to support the underdog so I'll lodge an objection when I have a little free time after Christmas.
It seems to me poor management to completely ignore roadsides for many years then declare war on the strongest species and remove all these in one swoop, disregarding the benefits of this wonderful tree that delight the senses of man, bird, butterfly and bee, not to mention the basic oxygen pumping, carbon removing attributes at a time of worrying climate change.
It's my view that instead of removing all the sweet pittosporums holus bolus there should be a balanced approach based on annual roadside maintenance removing unwanted seedlings and other weeds such as blackberry and ragwort, both of which, as noxious weeds, should not be there at all except for the obvious neglect of roadside reserves for many years.
Sweet pittosporum is considered as an environmental weed in the Cardinia Shire Council. It's only a problem if land is neglected. It's time we learnt to look after the land, not have a war on one particular useful species. How about a bit of regular sensible maintenance.
I'll keep you posted, but I don't really expect them to take any notice of my objection. C'est La Vie.

Messmates, Mudlarks.

Messmate stringybark is my tree of the week. This tree, which began flowering heavily this time last year and produced honey through most of last summer, isn't flowering this year.
Messmate stringybark is an important tree to the timber industry in Victoria and Tasmania mainly but also grows in the ranges of NSW including the northern tablelands. The timber is used for construction, interior finish, and pulp production. It will grow to 150- 225 ft or more in ideal moist, fertile forest conditions.
We have a number of them on our place, maybe 15, without me going around counting them, the largest of them approaching 100 feet high I estimate. A week ago when returning from my walk I saw a mudlark fly into the higher branches of the tallest, then fly across to what looked like a nest. I got the binoculars from inside and sure enough there was the neat, round pee-wee nest with what looked like two advanced chicks.
I watched them for a few minutes every day last week and decided there was three chicks. They were excercising their wings and standing on the edge of the nest and about to fly. I had a busy day yesterday starting work early and finishing late so I didn't get to look till late in the evening before hopping in the tub. The nest was empty and I felt a pang of disappointment that my babies had gone and I hadn't seen them fly, then I saw a parent mudlark fly into the messmate tree and I followed her with the binos. There on a branch of the tree about 20 feet away from the nest were four mudlark chick lineds up in a row, their white chests and beaks protruding over the edge of the branch.
Early this morning they were still in the messmate tree, spaced out, and each one doing little flights of five feet or so across to other branches. Mum and Dad would come now and again with some food for them. After my walk I checked again and they'd left the messmate tree, leaving me again a little dissappointed. Then I saw a parent fly into a dead blackwood tree on the other side of Bond's Lane and there they were lined up again in the bare branches, some thirty or forty feet from the nest. I expect they'll stick around as a family for a time while the parents teach them to forage for their own food.
I told Jod about the mudlark nest last Friday. He said he hadn't seen one of them for ages. He said, "Do you know mudlarks are all over Australia, even in the deserts, and they always build a mud nest." I checked the bird book, he was right, the distribution map of the Australian magpie lark showed all of mainland Australia coloured in.
One of my tree books, 'Forest Trees of Australia'(1975), says of messmate that overseas plantings have given good results in several countries such as the Nilgiri Hills in India, parts of South Africa and in the better rainfall areas of New Zealand.

Grevillea Robusta

My tree of the week is the 'silky oak'. You can't help but notice them at the moment with their fiery splash of orange in the landscape. I've admired several on my walk over the past few weeks, highly visible even at a distance. Returning this morning I stopped to admire the one at the top end of Quinn Rd.
A white cocky was perched in the top branches. Besides the odd squawk, it just sat in the top of the tree, seemingly watching me, as I was it. Another large bird which I made out to be a currawong, was also in the tree quite close to the cocky, but more inside the tree. These birds didn't seem to mind each others company in the slightest, which I was musing over, given that both are aggressive birds, when the currawong approached the cocky closer and closer till they eyeballed. After a second or two the cocky did a spectacular leap and wing flap off the branch theatrically and flew away screeching, as if it feared contracting bird flu.
The currawong took a step across to the precise point on the branch where the cocky was standing and did a huge poo, which splashed it's way earthward through grevillea flowers. It then puffed up its feathers in a self satified manner, seemingly happy to have dropped its load and displaced cocky. It did a big shake, restoring its feathers, and gave a few calls of its own.
Of course the 'silky oak' isn't an oak but a tree-type grevillea which grows naturally in the rainforests of the east, particulary Queensland. It's often planted in gardens as an ornamental, and the timber is excellent for furniture. We have one at the farm which the Punjab brought up from his family home as a seedling of a large tree which was removed, from memory. Three or four years ago it was looking sick and 70% defoliated but it seems to have recovered and has flowered brilliantly this year.
So Punjab, as you are bunkered down in the Yukon in the norther winter, you can take comfort that we've enjoyed the flowering of the silky oak you gave us in 1973. It too, is a popular bird roost.

Dunbar

Jessie drifted in and out of consciousness. Her mind wandered. She thought she was in field hospitals in France in WWI, stroking the foreheads of dying young men. She loved them, she loved many men. She thought she was on Blackrock beach watching her newfound friend Tom Roberts paint. She was ten years old when they met there, beginning their lifelong friendship, and deciding her course as an artist. She loved Tom. She thought she was in Dunbar's garden, in the shade of the copper beech, looking across to the lillium garden in the front, between the chestnut and the Douglas fir. Her favourite place.
Her friend Willy trusted her and told her many things. She watched him helping the gardener. His clothes were rags and he'd not shaved for years. He lived in a hut somewhere in the bush off Monbulk Rd. He pushed a rusty pram in which he carried things he'd scrounged. He was a mystery to others, 'old Sneezewich', but he wasn't old. Jessie knew the story he'd told no other.
She was in Sydney, etching the construction of the harbour bridge. She was in Hermannsberg Mission in 1932, where young aboriginal Albert Namitjira guided her when she painted in the area. She was at school in Switzerland. She was was in Java in 1911, where she'd gone alone via New Guinea discovering the 'artistic vision of the East.' Back in Dunbar's garden she watched as the gardener gave Willy a bunch of carrots.
Willy was once a member of the Vienna Boys Choir. When WW2 was declared on 3 Sep 1939, the day after their final Australian concert in Perth, the 14 choristers were no longer celebrities but, in effect, Australia's youngest prisoners of war. Board and lodging was arranged for them with local families by the Archbishop Daniel Mannix who made them choir of his cathedral.
Willy, with two other boys and choirmaster George Gruber, moved in with Henrietta Marsh at her Brighton home. George and Henrietta quickly became lovers. They travelled to Emerald for passion filled weekends at Henrietta's country residence, Dunbar.
Willy's mentor and choirmaster, who had a wife and two children in Austria, was arrested in March 1941 and charged with having Nazi links. After catching the resourceful George seducing a 17yo girl, Henrietta, vengeful, dobbed him in. He was sent to a Tatura internment camp. Willy "worshipped" George and was shattered by his arrest and incarceration. Willy agitated to have Gruber freed and cheekily sang pro-German songs outside the police station where he had to report weekly.
Willy, aged 15, was sent to an internment camp in Sth. Australia where he was imprisoned with older enemy nationals. His fair wavy hair and youthful good looks resulted in severe indignity. Willy was released after the war and continued to plead for Gruber's release. Eventually he suffered emotional collapse.
Gruber was deported to Austria in November 1947. Willy "went bush" and disappeared. His Austrian family searched, but never found him.
Despite being ready to die, Jessie involuntarily fought for breath in her last hours. When the hand of death closed on her, Willy's secret died with her. Willy, when he heard, mourned. Never again would he see her arresting blue eyes and feel her warmth, gentleness, humour and endearing eccentricity.
Jessie Constance Alicia Traill, one of Australia's leading printmakers, died at Dunbar Private Hospital, Emerald, Victoria, on May 15th, 1967, at the age of 86, having lived an exceptional life dedicated to her art and to her country.

Cindy looked at the sky. Dark, heavy clouds massing, it was 'as black as a dog's guts.' She waited for the honey man. He was coming to prune a large camellia in her garden. She'd contacted him because he used to cut foliage in her parents garden at Emerald before the property was sold in 2005.
Just as the honey man pulled his van up out the front, the rain started. A few drops, then light rain, slowly becoming heavier. They stood looking at the camellia, discussing its pruning, from the shelter of the porch. "It doesn't look like you'll be able to do it today though. Would you like a cup of coffee?"
The rain was now thick and continuous. Cindy and the honey man talked about the good old days and joint acquaintances. Not that they were old friends, but he'd picked at Dunbar for the better part of two decades, as she grew up. Cindy loved the old family home and it was a real shock when her parent's marriage hit the rocks, totally unforseen.
The honey man was interested in the old house and Cindy told him all she knew. It was built in 1927 on foundations of bluestone salvaged from the old Melbourne Town Hall which burned down in 1925. Two huge wooden sliding doors, also salvaged from the town hall, divided the large house into two identical halves for dual occupancy. The builder lived in one half and the children in the other. It was sold to socialite Henrietta Marsh who used it as a guest house named 'Emerald Chalet'.
After the war it was sold and used as a private hospital. Many people died there in the late years of their lives. Growing up, Cindy said she was often deeply moved by the feeling that spirits were present. "Neighbours bought the house," she told the honey man, "potato growers from Gembrook who have a big cool store behind 'Dunbar', and who truck loads of potatos to Dandenong every day to their chip factory, as in fish and chips."
"I always wondered what was back there, having often seen the semi go out in the afternoons over the years."
Cindy said she'd email him some of the stuff she'd found out on the internet about Dunbar. She'd heard the new owners were thinking of demolishing the house and she was looking into how to prevent this. With the rain still coming down he gave up any hope of working on the camellia and left for the twenty minute drive back to Emerald.
After taking a wrong turn in the hilly backstreets of Tecoma, which led to a dead end and enormous difficulty, and damn near a burnt out clutch trying to back the trailer up a steep hill and into a drive with very little manoeuvring space in the pouring rain and gushing gutters, the honey man took a detour to have a look at Dunbar. The last time he was there to enquire whether he might cut some cherry laurel an Italian man on a tractor had given him short shift.
The roof of Dunbar was gone, all the windows and doors removed. All that remained was the bare walls standing eerily. Presumably, waiting for the bulldozer.

Pat and Carmel

Some sad news came last week. Pat Mahoney, Elvie's great friend, rang to say she was coming up to the farm to visit, as she does before Christmas most years, only this time she broke the news that she was under treatment for lung cancer. Pat had been a heavy smoker for what must be close to 50 years until she bravely gave up the fags four years ago.
She started work for Elvie in her Sth.Yarra florist shop in the early 1960's. It was a pivotal time in our family history. My father, Lyle, who would have turned 82 on the first of December had he not died last March, received an inheritance from a wealthy aunt. He purchased the florist shop, not the freehold, the business, for an absurd sum. Within twelve months he was out of there, the business not delivering what he'd hoped financially, and he no longer able to stand the confinement of four walls each day. Elvie, her three children now at school, had gone to help out in the shop answering Lyle's SOS. She had no background in floristry but this grocer's daughter was an able bookkeeper, had good phone manner, and was a natural tea maker and floor sweeper. And no less importantly, she was a quick learner, adaptable, and had the determination and persistence you'd expect from the offspring of a sergeant of the 57th battalion who'd served more than 1000 days overseas, including the western front, in WW1.
Elvie employed a shop manager/florist, and a junior, a teenage girl named Carmel. The manager brought to Elvie's attention, after some time, that he believed Carmel was helping herself from the till. Elvie sacked her, making no accusations, citing unsuitability. Not long after she discovered it was actually the manager who was rifling the till, so he went too. She employed a new manager, the prickly but efficient, blue rinsed, Ruby Gilbert, and a florist , Pat Mahoney. Ten years of successful business followed.
Pat was a gun florist. A tall, attractive lady who always retained her youthful looks and good humour, she moved into the residence behind and above the shop with her alcoholic husband. Despite the alcoholic husband, who would not hesitate to give his wife a black eye in drunken rage, and the fact that Pat was catholic and a heavy smoker, Elvie and Pat clicked. They needed and supported one and other through many difficult times. Elvie sold her florist business, which had a staff of seven by this time, in the early 1970's, not long after Elvie and Lyle bought the land at Emerald with a vision of growing trees for foliage.
Many years later, mid/late 1980's, one of the shops we delivered foliage to in Melbourne was 'Blossom's of Toorak'. The owner of this business was no less than young Carmel, a generation later. Having known me as a child, she always greeted me warmly and it was a pleasure to go to her shop. To cut a long story short, we stopped delivering to Melbourne in the early 1990's, instead selling to wholesalers who picked up at the farm. This didn't suit Carmel, who couldn't abide the wholesaler's prices. She began driving up to the farm once a week to buy foliage and posies. She'd bring her mother with her for the drive. It was as much a social thing as it was business.
Carmel's mother, we learnt, was not her mother by birth. She used to live across the road from Carmel's family, and having no children of her own she took an interest in her. Carmel's parents were alcoholics who neglected her dreadfully. Her adoptive mother went to her parents one day and asked them could she adopt her, as she'd grown to love the 4 year old girl dearly. Of course Carmel thought of her adoptive mother as real mother, and has looked after her faithfully in her old age. Carmel rang last week to say she couldn't make it, her mother, who in recent months had moved into a nursing home, had died.
Pat's husband died of drink related illness decades ago and Pat has lived in a flat in St.Kilda and works in an opportunity shop. She has one married daughter who was born in the early days at the Sth.Yarra shop.
Carmel never married and lives alone. She's had a florist business all these years, in Toorak, where she pays rent. An amazing achievement. I think she'll probably retire shortly as her lease is due to be renewed.