Sun Too Hot

I left the Adelaide Oval at lunch in the cricket. Australia was all out for 550 odd and Sth Africa 0 for 3 in reply. Six hours in the sun yesterday and two today were all I could stand although I enjoyed the cricket, and especially sharing it with my son Gordon who's a real cricket fan who barracks strongly for Sth Africa.

Gord's favourite player is Jaques Kallis and he didn't let us down with the ball yesterday taking two wickets as first change before he went off with an injury. If the cricket gods were not with SA yesterday I hope they are today and that Jaques is fit to bat and makes a good score for Gord. We came here as it was probably Gord's last chance to see Jaques live, there being no SA test in Melbourne this time and Jaques long career must be coming to an end.

We came over by plane on Wednesday evening. Rob came too. He's staying with his friend Hao till Dec 2 when they fly to Vietnam for a holiday. Hao is moving to Melbourne with work and he and Rob are to share a unit in Nunawading next year. Rob has finished Uni and hopefully will find a job. I'm going to Melbourne first thing next Monday to pick up the key to the unit, and will have to go down again to meet the removalist from Adelaide with Hao's stuff to let him in. Gord and I fly back tomorrow.

I'm in an internet cafe after having a much needed haircut. There are a lot of Asian voices around me and one who must be having trouble with some sort of game keeps yelling out "What the F***".

I'm out of here.

Gavrilo Princip

An email from friend Leigh Candy told me after my last post about the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that it was Gavrilo Princip, a Serb, who got him, so I checked Wikipedia. The motivation was resentment at Austria taking over Yugoslavia. He got the wife with a second shot from a pistol after she instinctively threw herself over him to protect him on 28 June 1914.

Gavrilo and five others set out to kill him when he visited Sareyevo to open a hospital. They lined the streets as the open topped car travelled through. One of his mates threw a hand grenade which the driver saw coming and accelerated away from. It went off under the fourth car seriously wounding two occupants and several onlookers. Later the Archduke was on his way to the hospital to visit the injured when his car stalled right in front of Gavrilo who grasped his opportunity.

Too young to be executed Gavrilo was jailed for 20 years and died in prison in 1917 from complications from a broken arm. He had suffered tuberculosis in prison and was emaciated.

The house Gavrilo lived in was destroyed in WW1, rebuilt and destroyed again in WW11, and again in the 1990's war. What an amazing war history all in one century?

My friend Dirk the painter in Gembrook tells me he visited Yugoslavia in the 1980's He won a big prize offered by a paint company at the paint shop he buys at. He found it a beautiful and friendly place with warm people who'd fall over backwards to help you and show hospitality. He could hardly believe it when later the places he visited were torn apart by the savage war and so many massacred.

Leigh's good woman is Serbian and came to Australia to escape the ravages of war.

None of us has any say in where we are born or the circumstances of the time.

Human Blight

They say that learning about history assists you to conduct yourself better, and I don't doubt it. I have nearly finished reading a book about Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty, as fascinating a story as I have ever read, not least because the mutiny took place in Polynesia and Captain Bligh did indeed discover the 'Fidgee Islands' where we recently holidayed.

I quote the first paragraph of the concluding chapter-

"Liquor, in the end, did for both Bligh and Christian - McKoy's still on Pitcairn, and McArthur's in New South Wales. Bligh's career, and Christian's life, ended in divided, corrupt alcoholic and isolated communities far from home and the forces of law and order."

I recommend Richard Hough's book 'Captain Bligh and Mr Christian, The Men and the Mutiny'  first published by Hutchinson and Co Ltd 1972, Arrow edition 1974, which is the one I read, Lib found it in an op shop and gave it me last birthday. An ripper read, it surprised me completely.

Whilst on history, let me tell something else I came across, in a platypus newsletter. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose assasination in 1914 triggered WW1, visited Mossvale in NSW in 1893.

He was reported to have felt intense joy at shooting a platypus during a three day hunting spree in which he killed 300 native animals including kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, echidnas, emus and koalas.

What can I say?

Can You Believe It?

Last Saturday I burned off a heap of prunings from Hughsie's garden, which had been laying next to a driveway at home here for some months. Allan was alive when I did the job, so I could probably go back in this blog to tell you exactly when it was done, but for now let me guess and suggest last autumn

It was quite a big job, pruning large tree camellias in Allan's neighbours place that encroached over the fence and harboured huge blackberries that came over. Allan teed it up with his neighbour that I should do the reparation, and I did so in three stages, each requiring a trailer load of prunings to be removed. Amongst the camellias was an old lilac and a native shrub with a big head that were also cut back as a matter of common sense.

I dumped the three loads at home to burn in the future after it had all dried out which brings me to last Saturday. The material had all well dried out. The leaves had all browned and fallen off so it was branches and sticks that burned quickly and fiercely with almost zero smoke, the way it should be. It took over an hour to work my way through the pile , throwing on to the fire at a rate to keep it going, but not too hot causing everything it the vicinity to be singed.

Near the bottom was a branch of lilac, about four foot long, with a green shoot on it of about four inches. The constant moisture of the last six months must have encouraged this stick to do a survival of the species thing. There were no roots on the other end, but strong root nodules if that's the correct term. I found a spot to plant it. If it survives and grows I'll be totally astounded, and thrilled to my back teeth.

If it does, you'll find me cutting four foot branches off lilacs late next autumn and planting them as cuttings, to get a row of lilacs with a bit of size to them going, quick and easy. Nature is amazing.

Two Big Ones

The Big Tree at Olive's
 

Sappho Rhodie, Copper Beech, Big Tree



 

The messmate tree, the tree behind the house central in the photo, is one of the oldest trees around here. It may not look it in the photo but it's huge at the base and splits into several trunks reminiscent of a giant octopus. Just about every day on my walks I pay homage to it. I think it would have stood well before white man came to this district and survived the frenzied axe and saw mill days because of it's poor form in terms of millable timber.


It began my friend Olive's demise, about 5 years ago, when it dropped a limb which clipped the corner of her house. Olive had some trauma dealing with her insurance company and the stress seemed to trigger her into dementia or paranoia, a deterioration that was rapid and culminated in heart attack and death, death which she had told me she would self inflict by not eating if ever she could not look after her one acre garden.

In the second photo, the big messmate central and in the background appears incidentally when today I took a photo of Sapho rhodie with copper beech foliage behind, an alluring vision in front of our carport. The big messmate in the background is a superb specimen, younger than Olive's by a good margin I'd say but imposing and a roosting place for the owls I hear at night.

Trees rule. We tamper at our peril. We will be gone. They will reign.