After my exhilarating walk in the morning I took Lib breakfast in bed. She asked who was I talking to on the phone earlier. "Nobody, I was out walking though, it may have been the answering machine you heard."
I checked the machine and sure enough a plumber had rang to suggest he came that morning to install a new gas cooktop we'd bought on December 1, and which had been sitting since then in our hall still in its cardboard box, along with an electric oven and rangehood. We'd bought these items at Clive Peeters in Dandenong and paid $408* up front for installation by contracting tradesmen. Allowing two weeks wait on the list we were told they would be installed before Christmas. It didn't happen. When I followed up with Clive Peeters they told me the tradies were busy putting in air conditioning because of the hot weather and our job would be done between Xmas and New Year. It didn't happen. We were then given a firm date, Jan 9. They didn't show. I asked for my for my installation money to be returned and the cheque came last Friday Jan 25.
*($408 was the base price I was told, the tradesmen on the day would want another $50 cash for going all the way to Gembrook and more cash if there was any complication in our particular job. This I could understand)
In the meantime I'd found an electrician from Emerald and a gas fitter plumber from Silvan who said they would be happy to install the items in the next week or so. I was pleased the plumber had rang, even though it was Saturday and I'd planned other things, so I rang him back and said "Good on you mate". He was in our kitchen within an hour.
He was a pleasant fellow. Said he thought he'd get this job out of the way before driving down to Lorne to join his wife and kids who were there on holiday. He was packing up two and half hours later when I asked him how much I owed him. He said he hadn't worked it out yet and took his bucket of tools out to his van. I told him I'd got my money back from Clive Peeters and had made sure I had cash at home, knowing he and the electrician were coming soon.
I don't know what it was he had to work out as he gave me no invoice stating labour or parts but he said when handing me the compliance certificate that the charge for today was $260. I don't think he heard me suck my breath in through clenched teeth as I counted out 5x$50 notes and a $10. It was a lot more than the $140 that Clive Peeters had allowed for the cooktop component of the installation but the plumber had explained he had to move the regulator to the next cupboard as the regulations had changed. Frankly I was relieved to have at least one part of the job done and didn't want to think further about the high price. I gave him a jar of honey and a bottle of cold cordial to take with him.
Last night in the bath I rang an old football team mate, a plumber in Wangaratta, and we magged away about life in general. I ran through the drama I'd had over the kitchen appliances including the Australia Day cook top job. My mate said $260 was a days work for him, he'd have charged $100, the going rate in Wang., if it was a straight forward changeover. I explained the regulator had to be moved and he said "So what? That takes 5 minutes. You were ripped off Gunna." All the old footy people know me as Gunna.
This agitated me, getting ripped off that is, so when I hopped out of the bath I rang the plumber and said I wasn't happy with the job- I was overcharged, I want $100 back. The remainder of the conversation became heated and he jabbered on about the plumbers association. "Stick the plumbers association", I said, "I want $100 back." He rang me back later to say he'd have me blackballed so no plumber would come near me in future.
I don't like my chances that the $100 will come, although I did tell him I knew where he lived. At least I can say I got ripped off on Australia Day.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Australia Day
On my walk yesterday, as if on cue, a whipbird lept up from ground cover which was mostly hydrangeas, and perched on top of an old poker flower stem. Less than 10 metres away, he looked at me quizzically, twitched and jerked, then let go his wonderful cracking call. His mate, slightly duller in colour, olivey, lept up into a heath shrub even closer and also looked at me, without answering her mate's call. They remained watching me for a time, unusually, as whipbirds seem to be always moving, before hop hopping off, making their scritchy small talk.
A little further on, just as I left our place, a bronzewing pidgeon flashed arrowlike across in front of me, it's wings beating rythmically, providing its strong flight. With the screeching of white cockies some way off and crows cawing from high, I saw eastern rosellas flying through trees ahead, their bright green rump shining almost irridescently, as it does when they fly.
A good start for Australia Day! Mudlarks, black cockies, crimson rosellas and a solitary willy wagtail were others seen shortly after. It made me think what a wonderful place Australia is.
On my way back a delightful young lady, Fiona, who lives with partner Lance in Captain Petrie's old residence in Quinn Rd., gave me a baking dish full of duck eggs covered by a blue tea towel. Reaching Agnes St., I thought if I saw Allison I'd offer her some eggs, there being so many. A car came down a drive from the high side and stopped, the driver winding down his window to say hello. It was new neighbour John, an elderly Scotsman who recently bought the cottage to escape the contruction noise at his house in Canterbury. The house next door to his has been demolished and a block of units is going up. He and wife Margaret couldn't stand the noise so they bought a get away in Gembrook, in the same street where their daughter lives with another lady. They have a farm in Scotland and spend six months alternately in each country. Despite their advanced years they've renovated the garden with great energy and result.
John told me I'd better ask Margaret if she wanted some duck eggs, so as he drove off I walked into their place to talk to Margaret who was in the garden. She only wanted two she said, one each for her and John, for breakfast a little later, and she put them in her gardening glove. Beneath our feet there were thousands of sugar ants boiling in and out of several holes. She said she had planned to buy some dust to kill them, but wasn't going to now, after seeing the echidna a couple of times, and all his diggings in the bank out the front. There really is something amazing about echidnas, watching them is an experience to cherish, and I could tell Margaret was touched just as I have been lately. Her eyes lit up as she spoke.
A good start to Australia Day!
A little further on, just as I left our place, a bronzewing pidgeon flashed arrowlike across in front of me, it's wings beating rythmically, providing its strong flight. With the screeching of white cockies some way off and crows cawing from high, I saw eastern rosellas flying through trees ahead, their bright green rump shining almost irridescently, as it does when they fly.
A good start for Australia Day! Mudlarks, black cockies, crimson rosellas and a solitary willy wagtail were others seen shortly after. It made me think what a wonderful place Australia is.
On my way back a delightful young lady, Fiona, who lives with partner Lance in Captain Petrie's old residence in Quinn Rd., gave me a baking dish full of duck eggs covered by a blue tea towel. Reaching Agnes St., I thought if I saw Allison I'd offer her some eggs, there being so many. A car came down a drive from the high side and stopped, the driver winding down his window to say hello. It was new neighbour John, an elderly Scotsman who recently bought the cottage to escape the contruction noise at his house in Canterbury. The house next door to his has been demolished and a block of units is going up. He and wife Margaret couldn't stand the noise so they bought a get away in Gembrook, in the same street where their daughter lives with another lady. They have a farm in Scotland and spend six months alternately in each country. Despite their advanced years they've renovated the garden with great energy and result.
John told me I'd better ask Margaret if she wanted some duck eggs, so as he drove off I walked into their place to talk to Margaret who was in the garden. She only wanted two she said, one each for her and John, for breakfast a little later, and she put them in her gardening glove. Beneath our feet there were thousands of sugar ants boiling in and out of several holes. She said she had planned to buy some dust to kill them, but wasn't going to now, after seeing the echidna a couple of times, and all his diggings in the bank out the front. There really is something amazing about echidnas, watching them is an experience to cherish, and I could tell Margaret was touched just as I have been lately. Her eyes lit up as she spoke.
A good start to Australia Day!
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
For The Record
This morning there were 64 white cockies on the ground foraging in the one acre paddock next to what I used to call the 'galah feeding paddock', now known as 'the gouge'. Also there were 16 galahs, four magpies, and several minas. The two horses that I used to give a handful of lush green grass from outside the fence, or a carrot from my bag, are no longer there. Moved to another paddock with more grass I suppose.
At 'the gouge' there were four cockies searching through the chocolate brown earth for God knows what. A bricklayer and his offsider has been putting up the first of the walls of the house for a week or so. The sound of a generator providing power for the mixer can be heard a hundred metres or more away as I approach. The bricklayer's apprentice is young with bleach blonde long hair, lithe body and tanned skin. He wears not hat nor shirt in the blazing sun on hot days. I wonder if somehow his education missed the skin cancer warnings, or is he simply young, vain, and/or rebellious.
A little further on my way up to the town I saw something well ahead on the road that looked like a squashed plastic soft drink bottle from a distance, but was in fact a dead galah, which must have been hit by a car. Restraining 'Pip' who would have loved to chew it, I picked it up off the road and threw it onto the top of a thick photinia which I thought was a more suitable resting place than being pulverised to oblivion by a day's traffic on the road.
In the main street outside St. Silas's church on my way back, young 'Pip' stopped suddenly on the lead. I watched her nuzzling the earth between the gazzanias and noticed some turkey thyme, growing well and spilling out onto the pavement, so I picked a bunch for the lamb shank stew I've just put in the crockpot. 'Pip' pulled on the lead, she wanted to go back to where 'Snowy' was agitated, darting in and around some agapantha plants.
I don't like letting the dogs make me backtrack, it could become a habit with them. I don't mind stopping here and there, they like to sniff and pee. On the main rd. where there's no pavement I have them both on leads for their own protection from cars. On the little dirt roads and in the park I let them run free, and when I get to the station I put 'Pip' on the lead and leave 'Snowy' free till I reach Launching Place road again.
I was expecting a baby rabbit to run out of the garden as 'Pip' and I reached 'Snow' but it was a movement toward the small birch tree that I noticed. Thinking baby bird of some sort, my immediate reaction was to hope neither dog grabbed it, but before I could do anything it reached the trunk and ran up. It was a young bushrat. It climbed to the top of the tree, only about 15feet high, and sat there.
I don't know why, but seeing the rat was soothing, and went someway to lift the annoyance I felt when I read the sticker on the four wheel drive in Innes Rd.
"If it moves, shoot it, if it doesn't move, cut it down, and if it's green, piss on it."
Also soothing was the 30 ml of rain we had last weekend. Lib and I were at Blaigowrie visiting friends so we didn't see it, but after a hot dry month with no rain registering in the gauge, it was lovely to come home to a wet garden.
My tree of the week is the spotted gum, Eucalyptus maculata. There's one down the back at farm which I planted about twenty two years ago. I was cutting grass in that steep section with the whipper a few weeks ago when I took a break and admired the trunk, which is now five feet in diameter. There's one at home of the same age, both purchased at the same time from the state schools nursery in Melbourne when Michelle* worked there. It's nowhere near as big as the one at the farm, not having the benefit of a moist gully to grow in, but it's a handsome tree with its typical smooth white/grey/lemonny trunk.
Spotted gum forest in coastal NSW is some of the most attractive scenically in eastern Australia. It's an important honey source for commercial beekeepers, especially on the south coast where the winter flowering is ideally combined with mild dry stable weather. As you move north it becomes less reliable. I remember when at Gatton college Qld. our instructor placed a test hive onto breaking spotted gum not far from the college. Nectar flowed heavily for a week but as he was about to move an apiary onto the flow he checked again and it had cut out completely, yielding no more.
Its timber is useful for heavy construction, poles, house building and flooring. Being rock hard, it's one of the best for tool handles eg picks and axes, which is I think its major use in Qld., the better stands being more south.
There are a few spotted gums on my walk, mostly medium sized, probably planted about the same time as my two. They must have been popular as a nursey line back in the 1980's. I enjoy seeing this tree, one of the more attractive of the eucys with it's clean mottled trunk and slightly pendulouus smaller branches and leaves.
My book says spotted gum has been grown in many overseas countries with limited success except in the Union of South Africa where it has been grown since 1910 and there are now (1975) several thousand acres established.
* Michelle, the propagator there, would have grown them from seed. I must mention it to her when I see her as she still does gardening for us a few hours here and there. She's now manager of the nursery at the helmeted honeyeater sanctuary at Yellingbo, propagating indigenous trees and shrubs for planting to help the honeyeaters increase their threatened population. She started work with us as a youngster mowing lawns for pocket money while still at school in the late seventies. After leaving school she worked at the farm as a casual for a year or so till she started a nursery apprenticeship. Ten years on the gov't closed the state schools nursery and she was retrenched, became a gardening contractor, again working at our farm.
At 'the gouge' there were four cockies searching through the chocolate brown earth for God knows what. A bricklayer and his offsider has been putting up the first of the walls of the house for a week or so. The sound of a generator providing power for the mixer can be heard a hundred metres or more away as I approach. The bricklayer's apprentice is young with bleach blonde long hair, lithe body and tanned skin. He wears not hat nor shirt in the blazing sun on hot days. I wonder if somehow his education missed the skin cancer warnings, or is he simply young, vain, and/or rebellious.
A little further on my way up to the town I saw something well ahead on the road that looked like a squashed plastic soft drink bottle from a distance, but was in fact a dead galah, which must have been hit by a car. Restraining 'Pip' who would have loved to chew it, I picked it up off the road and threw it onto the top of a thick photinia which I thought was a more suitable resting place than being pulverised to oblivion by a day's traffic on the road.
In the main street outside St. Silas's church on my way back, young 'Pip' stopped suddenly on the lead. I watched her nuzzling the earth between the gazzanias and noticed some turkey thyme, growing well and spilling out onto the pavement, so I picked a bunch for the lamb shank stew I've just put in the crockpot. 'Pip' pulled on the lead, she wanted to go back to where 'Snowy' was agitated, darting in and around some agapantha plants.
I don't like letting the dogs make me backtrack, it could become a habit with them. I don't mind stopping here and there, they like to sniff and pee. On the main rd. where there's no pavement I have them both on leads for their own protection from cars. On the little dirt roads and in the park I let them run free, and when I get to the station I put 'Pip' on the lead and leave 'Snowy' free till I reach Launching Place road again.
I was expecting a baby rabbit to run out of the garden as 'Pip' and I reached 'Snow' but it was a movement toward the small birch tree that I noticed. Thinking baby bird of some sort, my immediate reaction was to hope neither dog grabbed it, but before I could do anything it reached the trunk and ran up. It was a young bushrat. It climbed to the top of the tree, only about 15feet high, and sat there.
I don't know why, but seeing the rat was soothing, and went someway to lift the annoyance I felt when I read the sticker on the four wheel drive in Innes Rd.
"If it moves, shoot it, if it doesn't move, cut it down, and if it's green, piss on it."
Also soothing was the 30 ml of rain we had last weekend. Lib and I were at Blaigowrie visiting friends so we didn't see it, but after a hot dry month with no rain registering in the gauge, it was lovely to come home to a wet garden.
My tree of the week is the spotted gum, Eucalyptus maculata. There's one down the back at farm which I planted about twenty two years ago. I was cutting grass in that steep section with the whipper a few weeks ago when I took a break and admired the trunk, which is now five feet in diameter. There's one at home of the same age, both purchased at the same time from the state schools nursery in Melbourne when Michelle* worked there. It's nowhere near as big as the one at the farm, not having the benefit of a moist gully to grow in, but it's a handsome tree with its typical smooth white/grey/lemonny trunk.
Spotted gum forest in coastal NSW is some of the most attractive scenically in eastern Australia. It's an important honey source for commercial beekeepers, especially on the south coast where the winter flowering is ideally combined with mild dry stable weather. As you move north it becomes less reliable. I remember when at Gatton college Qld. our instructor placed a test hive onto breaking spotted gum not far from the college. Nectar flowed heavily for a week but as he was about to move an apiary onto the flow he checked again and it had cut out completely, yielding no more.
Its timber is useful for heavy construction, poles, house building and flooring. Being rock hard, it's one of the best for tool handles eg picks and axes, which is I think its major use in Qld., the better stands being more south.
There are a few spotted gums on my walk, mostly medium sized, probably planted about the same time as my two. They must have been popular as a nursey line back in the 1980's. I enjoy seeing this tree, one of the more attractive of the eucys with it's clean mottled trunk and slightly pendulouus smaller branches and leaves.
My book says spotted gum has been grown in many overseas countries with limited success except in the Union of South Africa where it has been grown since 1910 and there are now (1975) several thousand acres established.
* Michelle, the propagator there, would have grown them from seed. I must mention it to her when I see her as she still does gardening for us a few hours here and there. She's now manager of the nursery at the helmeted honeyeater sanctuary at Yellingbo, propagating indigenous trees and shrubs for planting to help the honeyeaters increase their threatened population. She started work with us as a youngster mowing lawns for pocket money while still at school in the late seventies. After leaving school she worked at the farm as a casual for a year or so till she started a nursery apprenticeship. Ten years on the gov't closed the state schools nursery and she was retrenched, became a gardening contractor, again working at our farm.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Heritage Springs
One of Lib's friends from work had a barbecue/party at her house in Pakenham on Saturday night. We organized chauffer Gordon to drive us down and pick us up at midnight. The address was Overland Rise, Heritage Springs, one of the new estates that have sprung up around Pakenham. I looked up my 1998 Melways to get an idea how to get there and of course being a new 'burb' it wasn't listed.
Lib had a small hand drawn map giving rough directions which showed it was somewhere near a Coles store, so after some indecision when we hit the Prince's Hwy, Robbie, who'd come for the ride, said there was a Coles in the new estate back towards Berwick. We did a tour of 'Lakeside', finding Coles, but it was on the wrong side of the road according to Lib's basic map. As we drove round and round looking for Overland Rise without success, I thought we might have well been in Memphis USA judging from the architecture. The streets and houses seemed deserted, no people to be seen. I guessed they were all inside enjoying the air conditioning. "We'll find someone we can ask working in their garden," I said optimistically, sorry I'd agreed to go in the first place.
"What gardens?" Rob said.
At last we saw a young man and his wife leaving a house with a pusher to take a walk, presumably to get baby to sleep. He said we were a long way off course, explaining there was another 'Coles' at Heritage Springs so off we went and found the other 'Coles', which wasn't difficult when we got close, there were a dozen big signs along the road partition advertising its proximity.
Still, we had nothing to help us find Overland Rise, but it had to be close. With the clarity a man not long out of a hot bath, I said, "Let's head towards that hill, it the only one and Overland Rise has to go up it."
We turned down Heritage Drive and all looked at the street names as we approached. There was Stockman's Ct., twice, it must have done a loop and came back, Coolibah Crescent, Damper Drive, and then bingo, Overland Rise.
We found the house. There was very little room in front for a garden but the back yard was a fair size. It reminded me of suburban Mt. Waverley where I grew up, a timber fence 5/6 feet high surrounding the perimeter. Above the fence on the side, just a foot away from it, stood the imposing brick wall of the next house. The evening progressed pleasantly. We explained that we became lost by going to the wrong 'Coles', and learned there were now three 'Coles' in Pakenham.
One lady, she looked younger than me, when I explained this was my first visit to the new estates, told me that she used to drive cattle through here, right where we were sitting, from their farm at Lang Lang to another paddock they owned on the other side of the small hill. "Along the roads?" I asked.
"Some of the way, but other farmers let us through their paddocks. It was all open country."
She was an interesting lady. As a child she and siblings walked 7km to school and back. When she was young she left home to travel round Australia and spent three and a half years getting from Melbourne to Darwin via Perth, working as she went in hotels, orchards, fishing trawlers, aboriginal missions, whatever she could find. She still had itchy feet when she got back so she took off driving north by herself in a '69 Fairlane, taking 3 months to get to Cape York.
Here I am two days later, reconciling the new Pakenham estates. A friend holidaying in a small Mexican fishing village sent me an email saying they were watching the sun set into the Carribean Sea. Makes me want to jump on a plane.
Yesterday I asked Lib about the lady who was off a farm and worked her way around Australia. Lib said, "I don't know her well, that's Tracey, she's a good friend of the Helen whose party it was. She's recovering from heavy chemo cancer treatment."
I would never have guessed. She seemed so strong, confidant, and unphased.
My tree of the week is Eucalyptus pulverulenta. Indigenous to the southern tablelands of NSW, the Silver Mountain Gum is an excellent foliage tree. I've had some growing here at home and at the farm for many years and used the foliage but never really managed the trees properly.
Late last September, when I was visiting a couple of old dogwood trees I pick blossom from each year on the property behind the farm, I noticed a row of 'blue gums' cut back along the drive to the house. The chap who lives in the house, John Rainor, works for Burnley Horticultural College, and when I asked if that foliage was going to waste and if so could I have some, he told me to take whatever I liked, he'd just cut them back as he's doing a thesis on Euc. pulverulenta and the best way to manage them. If they are left to there own device they quickly become straggly and deteriorate. It's best to cut them down hard every year or two in September to about two feet high therefore promoting vigorous new growth.
I was tardy and didn't do mine till early November but they've responded with healthy new growth. As I did this I collected some seed which I dried off in a paper bag and a few weeks ago tossed the seed into a seed bed and to my joy a healthy crop of babies is coming up, the most advanced are just starting to get the second pair of leaves. Nature is wonderful.
John Rainer says that the college is looking for attractive native garden plants they can promote as useful, dry tolerant, and manageable in town and city situation and the silver mountain gum is all of that.
Lib had a small hand drawn map giving rough directions which showed it was somewhere near a Coles store, so after some indecision when we hit the Prince's Hwy, Robbie, who'd come for the ride, said there was a Coles in the new estate back towards Berwick. We did a tour of 'Lakeside', finding Coles, but it was on the wrong side of the road according to Lib's basic map. As we drove round and round looking for Overland Rise without success, I thought we might have well been in Memphis USA judging from the architecture. The streets and houses seemed deserted, no people to be seen. I guessed they were all inside enjoying the air conditioning. "We'll find someone we can ask working in their garden," I said optimistically, sorry I'd agreed to go in the first place.
"What gardens?" Rob said.
At last we saw a young man and his wife leaving a house with a pusher to take a walk, presumably to get baby to sleep. He said we were a long way off course, explaining there was another 'Coles' at Heritage Springs so off we went and found the other 'Coles', which wasn't difficult when we got close, there were a dozen big signs along the road partition advertising its proximity.
Still, we had nothing to help us find Overland Rise, but it had to be close. With the clarity a man not long out of a hot bath, I said, "Let's head towards that hill, it the only one and Overland Rise has to go up it."
We turned down Heritage Drive and all looked at the street names as we approached. There was Stockman's Ct., twice, it must have done a loop and came back, Coolibah Crescent, Damper Drive, and then bingo, Overland Rise.
We found the house. There was very little room in front for a garden but the back yard was a fair size. It reminded me of suburban Mt. Waverley where I grew up, a timber fence 5/6 feet high surrounding the perimeter. Above the fence on the side, just a foot away from it, stood the imposing brick wall of the next house. The evening progressed pleasantly. We explained that we became lost by going to the wrong 'Coles', and learned there were now three 'Coles' in Pakenham.
One lady, she looked younger than me, when I explained this was my first visit to the new estates, told me that she used to drive cattle through here, right where we were sitting, from their farm at Lang Lang to another paddock they owned on the other side of the small hill. "Along the roads?" I asked.
"Some of the way, but other farmers let us through their paddocks. It was all open country."
She was an interesting lady. As a child she and siblings walked 7km to school and back. When she was young she left home to travel round Australia and spent three and a half years getting from Melbourne to Darwin via Perth, working as she went in hotels, orchards, fishing trawlers, aboriginal missions, whatever she could find. She still had itchy feet when she got back so she took off driving north by herself in a '69 Fairlane, taking 3 months to get to Cape York.
Here I am two days later, reconciling the new Pakenham estates. A friend holidaying in a small Mexican fishing village sent me an email saying they were watching the sun set into the Carribean Sea. Makes me want to jump on a plane.
Yesterday I asked Lib about the lady who was off a farm and worked her way around Australia. Lib said, "I don't know her well, that's Tracey, she's a good friend of the Helen whose party it was. She's recovering from heavy chemo cancer treatment."
I would never have guessed. She seemed so strong, confidant, and unphased.
My tree of the week is Eucalyptus pulverulenta. Indigenous to the southern tablelands of NSW, the Silver Mountain Gum is an excellent foliage tree. I've had some growing here at home and at the farm for many years and used the foliage but never really managed the trees properly.
Late last September, when I was visiting a couple of old dogwood trees I pick blossom from each year on the property behind the farm, I noticed a row of 'blue gums' cut back along the drive to the house. The chap who lives in the house, John Rainor, works for Burnley Horticultural College, and when I asked if that foliage was going to waste and if so could I have some, he told me to take whatever I liked, he'd just cut them back as he's doing a thesis on Euc. pulverulenta and the best way to manage them. If they are left to there own device they quickly become straggly and deteriorate. It's best to cut them down hard every year or two in September to about two feet high therefore promoting vigorous new growth.
I was tardy and didn't do mine till early November but they've responded with healthy new growth. As I did this I collected some seed which I dried off in a paper bag and a few weeks ago tossed the seed into a seed bed and to my joy a healthy crop of babies is coming up, the most advanced are just starting to get the second pair of leaves. Nature is wonderful.
John Rainer says that the college is looking for attractive native garden plants they can promote as useful, dry tolerant, and manageable in town and city situation and the silver mountain gum is all of that.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Emu Eggs, Bombs Away
Maria woke at 2.00am last Friday, alarmed at the sound of an explosion in her house. Thinking the explosion must be gas related, she quickly set about finding it. It didn't take long to find the source of the big bang.
More than a year ago, Maria's grandchilren had been wandering in the far reaches of her fifty acres and came back with an emu egg, much to their amusement. The egg sat in a bowl in Maria's living room, a novelty item for visitors, including the grandchildren on subsequent visits.
It was the emu egg that blew, spraying the living room with it it's vile smelling contents. A smell so bad that many hours of cleaning and deodorising had failed to remove. I had no wish to go inside and sample it myself, prefering when finished my little gardening job to decline Maria's offer of a cup of tea and a sandwich. I remember in my youth riding my pushbike from Mt. Waverley to Doncaster with Graeme Edgelow to visit friends of his family who owned a duck farm. There were thousands of ducks both inside the delapidated sheds and wandering outside. There were duck eggs all over the place and once Graeme picked up an egg and threw it at me, which of course began a duck egg fight. All very well till you got hit with an old rotten one. Nothing is quite like the stink. Imagine a large emu egg cooking up to explode during all that hot weather.
Jod was amused by the exploding emu egg story when I told him later. A wicked laugh came over him as he told me of the time when as kids, he and Steve Edgelow, Graeme's older brother, went to the Melbourne Zoo with the intention of stealing emu eggs for their bird egg collections. The mission successful, coming home on the train with a bag containing more eggs than they needed, when the train was between Spencer St. and Flinders St. stations at the bottom end of of Flinders St where the train goes over the bridge, they pelted emu eggs onto the rooves of cars. Imagine some poor bloke down on his luck having to go home with his car splattered and possibly dented and tell his wife the mess was caused by emu eggs that fell from high.
More than a year ago, Maria's grandchilren had been wandering in the far reaches of her fifty acres and came back with an emu egg, much to their amusement. The egg sat in a bowl in Maria's living room, a novelty item for visitors, including the grandchildren on subsequent visits.
It was the emu egg that blew, spraying the living room with it it's vile smelling contents. A smell so bad that many hours of cleaning and deodorising had failed to remove. I had no wish to go inside and sample it myself, prefering when finished my little gardening job to decline Maria's offer of a cup of tea and a sandwich. I remember in my youth riding my pushbike from Mt. Waverley to Doncaster with Graeme Edgelow to visit friends of his family who owned a duck farm. There were thousands of ducks both inside the delapidated sheds and wandering outside. There were duck eggs all over the place and once Graeme picked up an egg and threw it at me, which of course began a duck egg fight. All very well till you got hit with an old rotten one. Nothing is quite like the stink. Imagine a large emu egg cooking up to explode during all that hot weather.
Jod was amused by the exploding emu egg story when I told him later. A wicked laugh came over him as he told me of the time when as kids, he and Steve Edgelow, Graeme's older brother, went to the Melbourne Zoo with the intention of stealing emu eggs for their bird egg collections. The mission successful, coming home on the train with a bag containing more eggs than they needed, when the train was between Spencer St. and Flinders St. stations at the bottom end of of Flinders St where the train goes over the bridge, they pelted emu eggs onto the rooves of cars. Imagine some poor bloke down on his luck having to go home with his car splattered and possibly dented and tell his wife the mess was caused by emu eggs that fell from high.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)