History in the Making

Geelong will now be in the record books as Premiers 2009 for as long as there's AFL football or interest in it. Grand Final weekend, traditionally the last of September, will go down in my memory for another reason more important to me. At the weekend we had 100ml of rain. The water tanks we had installed last Friday are now full. Ian, Andrew and Dean from Vic Water Plumbing worked through Friday's showers and left before the rain became heavy late in the day.

It's been the wettest September for many years. I haven't kept a tally but I look forward to reading the rainfall figures for the completed month after they are put in the post office window. In excess of 200ml for sure.

Lib and I watched the footy with Ricky Ralph and wife Monica, who invited us for lunch. Monica, a native of Sweden, prepared a super meal with a Swedish theme. We kicked off with a shot of Shnapps followed by beer before entree of pickled herrings in three types of sauces, prawns, potatoes, dill eggs, salad and Jarlsberg cheese and Swedish dry biscuit. After two helpings of entree, and more Shnapps and beer, the main course of meatballs with red wine was equally satisfying, as was the desert of berries, the name of which escapes me just now but they're a common wild berry in Sweden. Monica has fond childhood memories of her family going out to the countryside to pick this berry, and blueberries, which both grow wild in the deciduous forests.

The day ended happily for Rick who is Geelong barracker. Interesting word that, barracker. I heard or read recently that it began in Melbourne, specifically at the MCG or Yarra Park, way back when there was an army or police barracks adjacent. A crowd of soldiers/police would come out to watch the game and congregate, loudly, on that side of the ground, becoming known as the barrackers. The story, attributed to no less than Geoffrey Blainey, said that the term barracker caught on and spread through Australia, then the world, and is now almost a universal term for team supporters at a football match.

With the rain came cold winds from the south and we've lit the fire the last three evenings after a break of a few weeks. Lib's cousin Margaret from California has been touring Vic and NSW visiting rellies and is due here Friday night. Before she left the states she emailed asking what sort of weather could she expect. I replied most likely mild temperatures but with quite a range, suggesting she brings something warm to wear. I'll be interested to hear what she's experienced. I think she was in Sydney for the dust storms.

Wombats

A wombat carcass appeared on the side of Launching Place Rd one day about the second week of August, obviously the victim of a car during the night. Young Pip's nostrils worked frantically as she pulled on the lead towards it wanting to investigate. I let her go up close and have sniff for a few mornings, saying, "That's how you end up if a car hits you."

Snowy showed no interest in the dead marsupial whatsoever, not venturing close, in fact staying at the extremity of her lead in the other direction. After a few days I didn't stop to let Pip look but kept walking briskly on the other side of the road. Approaching each day I was expecting it to have been removed. I know the council pays someone to pick up animal carcasses on the roadside and usually after a day or so they're gone.

This one stayed in the gutter, in fact what's left of it is still there and high on the nose. A few days on, I noticed it's belly torn open, something had been eating its guts, probably a fox or dog which go for the easiest part first. This interested me, as I buy from the vet a bag of seed and grain which I soak in water overnight to ferment before adding to meat for our dogs' dinner. Apparently in nature dogs eat such by means of offal. My hope is that the dogs will have less trouble with diseases like arthritis later in their life. I've observed when mine catch a rabbit the first thing they do is eat it's guts.

Over the following weeks the meat of the wombat carcass was slowly consumed. The weather was cool/cold and decomposition slow. Jan, who walks her dog most mornings told me she'd seen two of the dogs that live nearby having a feed. I thought we lived sufficiently far away, and given that Snow and Pip don't wander far, there was little chance of ours going back there.

Wrong! The day I had the vomiting fit and went the doctor, the boys told me when I got back that our neighbour Rick had called in saying he'd seen Snowy up at the skate park. His daughter Alisha, who had been doing work experience at the kindergarten, alerted him after seeing her as she walked home. Rick, who knows Snowy well, went up to investigate. Snowy seemed disorientated and took off, so he came to tell us. He couldn't be 100% sure it was Snowy, he said. Snowy has siblings around the town that look just like her. The boys drove up in Gord's car and here was Snowy running down the middle of Launching Place Rd., so they grabbed her with some difficulty and brought her home.

I was at a loss to understand why Snow was at the skate park. A few more days on I met another neighbour, Janice, who walks her dogs or rides her bike most mornings. She told me she saw Snowy there a few days ago having a feed of wombat hindquarter, a bit after midday, which was just after I left for the doctor's appt. The sneaky old Snowy. Maybe she was disturbed knowing I wasn't well and followed me. The strange thing was, the day after Snowy was found up the street, when I fed her in the morning, she wouldn't eat her dinner till I turned and left. Normally the dogs sit and wait till I say "OK" before eating. This time Pip woofed in but Snow just kept sitting and watching me. I said OK several times to no avail, but when I began walking away she wolfed in. She must have had the guilts I reckon, or at least I can find no other explanation.

Last week when I arrived at my friend Pat's to do a couple of hours work it was raining. Pat invited me in for a cuppa. As I sat enjoying the chrysanthemum flower tea, Pat was telling about a sick wombat that had been coming around for weeks. Pat's dog Cameron, a young deerhound, harrassed the wombat and it was a difficult situation. Pat rang the sanctuary, wildlife refuge people, the vet, all she could conjure, but as often is the case, nobody can come right then, and later, wombat has gone.

The rain eased and as I picked some bay foliage in the garden before leaving Cameron began barking excitedly and I could hear Pat doing her best to admonish the gigantic young dog, who thinks everything is a game. I twiigged Womby had turned up so I got down from my ladder and went over to see. Poor little wombat was suffering mange badly and seemed blind and deaf. A number of big blow flies were in court around the poxy skin sorers despite the light rain. I felt the poor animal should be destroyed for humane reason.

"Pat can I ring my friend Huit? He has the odd sick wombat at his place and he shoots them to put them out of misery. He may come over."

"Yes, you know where the phone is, I'll keep Cammie away."

Huit came shortly after. He couldn't shoot Womby, he forgot his magazine and therefore had no bullets. We managed to get Womby in a bag and Huit took him home, saying he'd bury him after he shot him.

I left soon after and called at the Post Office to collect the mail. Fellow flower/foliage grower Ron was leaving as I arrived. I hadn't seen him for a while.

"You still doin' the foiage? How's it goin?" he asked.

"It's been pretty tough Ron, demand's fickle and I had a lot of stuff damaged by the heat wave. It's been a tough year really. Are you still trapping the dogs?"

"Yeah, it pays a lot better than growing. My contract with DSE is for about 25-30 weeks. After that the growing's a bit of fun. I do alright at the markets, selling mixed bunches of whatever we can find. The wholesalers don't want to know, but people at markets love 'em. I put out some pokers at the the market, tall as I can get, people say, Gee I'll take them, I've never seen them tall like taht." If I take tall ones to the wholesaler he'll nash his teeth and say he wants them all 80cm stalks or nothing.

"How many dogs do you catch a week Ron?"

"About one a half. You might go three weeks and not get one, then catch four or five the next week. I get a lot of foxes. They send me to and area where there's a problem. I'm in the Acheron valley at the moment. I set 8 or 10 traps each day for a while then do the rounds, always looking for sign."

"So they send you out to where farmers are losing stock?"

"Yeah, that, and wildlife. The dogs eat a lot of wombats, they're easy for 'em, and wallabies. They run down samba deer with teamwork, working in shifts. The deer can outrun 'em but the dogs take turns, till the deer's exhausted.

You'd think with losses to cars, feral and native dogs and disease, wombats would be feeling the pinch, but there seems to be plenty about. The Vicroads warning sign in Launching Place Rd. has a picture of a wombat on yellow background, and underneath the words 'Next 10 km'. Maybe drivers pick up a subliminal message, but I walk and drive past that sign every day and can't remember seeing it, till lately, when wombats have been so obvious to me.

Pym David Mathew Cook

I met vet Tom in the main street this morming. I shook his hand and congratulated him on the birth of his first child. Tom was ecstatic telling me about his son who was born on the 7th. I'd noticed an 'It's a Boy' sign in the clinic's window a couple of days ago.

He and wife Kath are both vets and, and as Tom said, are not much good at anything except being vets, at which, he said humbly, they're reasonably good. It was so strange for them to come home with the new baby and look at each other and say, "What do we do now?" It reminded me so much of being a new parent all those years ago and the wonderment and excitement of a new person in your house.

We've had three days of georgeous gentle spring weather and I took my blood pressure this morning and it's fine. When I tested it recently it was more than a little high which worried me as I hate the thought of going to doctors for prescriptions and chemists for pills and all the time reaching for the wallet. I went off my cholesterol and BP pills a year ago and don't want to go back. I'm sure the answer is to keep walking and don't stress about anything. And go easy on the grog.

P.S. GemFred did a lovely job of Christian's drive. It was a large excavation really as it's quite a drop from the block to the road, about 1.5m, but the new drive has a gentle sweeping camber and a lot of the spare earth was spread evenly along the front to make it look like it's going to be well cared for as time passes.

A New Driveway

'Gemfred's' tipper went past me and was pulled up in Quinn Rd. on my way back down the hill this morning, unloading an excavator. Two men were talking before one I recognised hopped into his Hiace van and moved it forward some thirty feet. I noticed a wheel barrow with a spade in it by the side of the road where the van had been. As I came next to the van, the man I recognized as a local who owned the vacant block of land I'd just walked past, was alighting.

"Gidday mate. I've forgotten your name." I thrust out my hand.

"Christian." We shook hands warmly. He had pliers and a spanner of some sort in his other hand.

"We're putting in a driveway. It's great to have something happen at last. It's a start."

"You've got a good day for it. Good luck with it all."

"Thanks, it is a lovely day."

I'll enjoy watching Christian's house go up over the coming months. He told me a while ago when we met in the main street they'd decided to build. He used to live in Launching Place Rd and I'd say hello and have a quick chat sometimes if I saw him when I walked past. They sold their house a year or so ago, maybe two, and moved into a rented house on the Pakenham Rd. He'd told me they owned the block in Quinn Rd but initially they were undecided whether to build or not. A big step, he said, not to be taken lightly.

I've made a number of friends by walking in the morning. I don't know Christian well. I do know he's a motor mechanic, is Chilean by birth, and he seems a good bloke. I'll dropin with a bottle of celebratory wine for them when they move into their new house.

They're Back

It was too good to be true. On Friday morning I saw a number of bell birds attacking a wattlebird in the messmate tree opposite our lower drive. Then yesterday, as I passed under the same tree, came the dreaded pinging sound I've grown to loathe. They're obviously re-establishing their lost territory.

Woe is me. Sad am I. Bugger!

I believe I could see an improvement in the condition of the messmates and peppermints lately. And I'd certainly enjoyed seeing more small birds about including a family of thornbills(?) feeding in that same messmate not long ago.

I read in Tim Low's book 'The New Nature' that at Yellingbow the bell birds are culled to allow the helmeted honeyeater to survive. It's a pity the cull isn't extended to protect our stressed trees over a wider area. I don't like killing anything but I'd gladly volunteer to help. Bell birds really are little bastards.

Vale Joanee

In 1956 my father Lyle's rich aunt, Auntie Clare, bought him a new car, a powder blue FC(?) Holden. To 'run it in', a requirement with a new car in those days, a trip was taken to Queensland. Into Holden crammed Lyle, Elvie, Lyle's brother Geoff and fiancee Joan, Auntie Clare, and Jod (6 or 7) and me (4). I'm told Meredith, who was two years old, stayed with Nanna Wilson, Elvie's mother. It became part of family folklore in the years since how at toilet stops, A. Clare would buy an icy pole for Jod, the apple of her eye. Joan, annoyed that I was excluded, would go into the shop and buy me one.

In the early sixties, when Elvie had the florist shop, she'd sometimes leave Meredith and me at Auntie Joan's in Ashwood on Saturdays. Anne and Stephen were toddlers. I recall a glass of milk being put in front of Stephen in his high chair. He picked it up and promptly upended it onto the floor. Geoff was off playing cricket and Joan had her hands full looking after her kids but she always good to Meredith and I. We loved her, and were sad when she and Geoff split and she was lost to us.

The split, in 1966, was acrimonious. Joan went to Thailand with a man named Frank, who worked for Ford. Elvie tells me she didn't marry him, but changed her name by deedpoll to match his, and presumably the kids' too. They returned in 1973, living in Brisbane in the then new suburb, Mt. Ommaney. Frank was by now state manager of Austral Motors, the Chrysler dealer in Qld. That summer of 74, I went to study at QAC at Gatton and called at Joan's. While I was there it started to rain, and rain; more than 20 inches from memory was dumped in 24 hours and even more in the mountains to the west, causing the Brisbane river to flood, inundating many suburbs. I was stuck at Mt.Ommaney for some days. Provisions were dropped by helicopter. When the water subsided all the flooded houses and cars were covered by a couple of inches of slimy mud.

I visited Joan again 1977, on a trip to Nth Qld. By this time Frank had progressed to his own business, a second hand car yard, and was handing out match boxes with pictures of topless women on them, advertising 'Frank Tomlin Motors'. Not long after this Joan came home from work one day to find her house empty of the leased furniture. No note, no Frank. It took her weeks to find out that he'd run off to some place in the South Pacific with his secretary, leaving a mountain of debt. Joan was left to raise her now teenage children alone and had to vacate her house.

Joan and I kept in touch by letter and occasional phonecalls through the decades. Lib, myself, and the boys did a road trip to Qld in 1997 staying with Joan, who proudly worked as a sales rep selling plumbing products, the only female in Qld at James Hardie to do so. Her daughter Anne, now a single mum with a toddler and twin babies a few months old, lived with her. Stephen was married and lived in Tasmania.

I last saw her a few years ago. Stephen arranged a stopover in Melbourne to go to the footy while he was taking Joan to his place in Tassy for a holiday. He teed it up with me to knock on the door of the hotel room at a given time to surprise Joan while he'd stepped out 'for some air'. I was invited to Joan's surprise 70th birthday last year in Brisbane but didn't go, much to my regret now.

Joan, a fun loving lady with a great sense of humour and an engaging personality, was fiercely devoted to her children and grandchilren. She had Parkinson's, and learned last April she had lung cancer. The chemo didn't work, and she was told a few weeks ago she had months, not years, to live, after a growth came up on her neck. She had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago. After getting the twins off to school she felt her heart behaving strangely. She drove herself to hospital but it was downhill from there.

At the funeral service it seemed appropriate to me that I sat next to Uncle Geoff who travelled from a holiday at Caloundra, and who had married Joan fifty years earlier. He and Joan were estranged but in recent years Geoff had restored relations with Anne and Stephen without Joan's knowledge. Anne and Stephen were glad Geoff came.

I booked a Jetstar 'light travel' ticket to Brisbane at short notice, with no check in luggage. Into the carry on shoulder bag I hastily packed at 4.30 am on the day of the funeral, I threw a small note book I found in an old toilet bag. At Avalon airport, with a little time before boarding, I opened the notebook to jot down some thoughts. There was a quote on the first page I'd written years ago from a Jimmy Buffet book titled, 'A Salty Piece of Land'. It too seemed to suit the occasion.

"Everything leaves eventually in the physical form, but the memories of good people and good work are timeless."

I Am a Part of All That I Have Met

I sit in the departure lounge at Brisbane airport waiting for the sleek machine bird to take me south. I write at a public computer terminal into which I put some coins, giving me web access. I arrange letters and words, in the best manner I know so that my thoughts are conveyed to you. You know I live, where I am, and what I think by the sequence of the words.

It amazes me, modernity.

"A Fool's Paradise? Well, why not? There is a place for Folly."

Yesterday, north bound, I sat in the girth of the flying beast as it suspended above the clouds, carrying me to the funeral of my much loved Auntie Joan. I wanted to share the grief of my cousins, Ann and Stephen, whom I have known all their lives.

I wondered at the magnificence of design of the A320 airbus. The jet engine. An historic milestone in Man's conquest of nature. Come fly with me. Where did it start? Way back. In the cave. God's first words recorded at the start of the Bible, were, "Let there be light." Perhaps man's first conquest of nature was the torch or lamp, overcoming darkness.

I look out over tarmac and watch QF651 take flight, skywards majestically, Perth bound, taking Joan's relatives over mountains, deserts, plains. Home. After two days traversing two great cities; of concrete, steel, glass, freeways, snarling traffic, touchscreens, crematoriums, we are homeward bound.

"I am part of all that I have met."

I know what Ulysses meant.

The Infected Eppiglottis

On Friday morning I set off for my walk. Not far from my house a neighbour, whom I could hear but not see, called out to me asking me to put my dogs on a lead. I didn't hear what she said the first time.

"What?"

"Would you put your dogs on the lead please?"

"What for?"

"Because it's the law."

I disgraced myself with the rudeness of my response. "I don't give a stuff about the law."

"Obviously."

I said no more and walked on. A few metres further on I felt something in my throat, as if there was something stuck. I tried to clear it with a gentle cough which seemed to make the irritation worsen. I continued coughing to no avail until I couldn't stop, and after a while, about half way to town, it turned to retching then vomiting, back to retching. It was like an auto response to something stuck in the throat and was uncontrollable. I hacked and spewed up all manner internal garbage including plenty of saliva and blood after all the solids had gone and was in quite a state. I felt gripped by some kind of fit and thought for a brief time I was in the act of actually dying. I sat on the park bench in JAC Russell Park for a while as I recovered some composure, and wondered what the devil was going on. I was exhausted. At 7.30 in the morning.

I'd had a bad time in the preceding couple of days. I was involved in a meeting with the council on the Thursday over the tribulations of the Emerald Museum and Nobelius Heritage Park committee. There was much toing and froing of emails between various members and myself in the lead up to this meeting and come meeting time the acrimony of the last few months created tension and unpleasantness. Following the meeting there were more emails Thursday evening and in the end I couldn't sleep and sat up drinking red wine morosely until about 2.30 am. "How did I ever get involved in this?" was the question I kept asking myself, as I took another slash.

Resuming my walk when I felt up to it, I bumped into my wonderful neighbour Allison outside the post office. She told me I'd given her husband Rick a good laugh earlier as he heard my altercation with the other neighbour. Her motherly instincts immediately sensed I wasn't well and she offered to drive me home but I declined her offer, feeling that I would be OK. When you've had a vomiting fit you don't really want to be close to anyone.

I went to the Doctor about midday. He said my throat was badly infected and my epi glottis was enlarged and hanging down giving rise to the feeling that something was stuck in the throat. I'm on antibiotics and other tablets to reduce the swelling. The throat is still giving me curry but otherwise I feel fine. It's the stangest thing.

Here I am two days later about to go to the museum to do my duty on the roster. On my walk today I put my dogs on the the lead when I walked past that neighbour's place. Sometimes you have to eat humble pie to prevent bad blood in the street where you live, and it doesn't hurt me to put them on the lead there. There are dogs in her place that bark aggressively at mine going past and that could be what concerns her, but I wouldn't know.

On the bright side I can't help but feel so pleased that yesterday saw the end of Essendon and Carlton for 2009 as they were bundled out of the finals. And that on top of Hawthorn going out last week and disgracing themselves with poor sportsmanship. I doesn't get much better that. Now today while on duty I can listen to StKilda v Collingwood, hoping for a Saints victory relegating Collingwood to an elimination final next week. How sweet would that be?

I'm glad they found Tim Holding alive. He was very lucky his slide off the mountain wasn't fatal.