Mildura Trip

I'm in Swan Hill. In a motel by myself. Its a little lonely but nice and quiet. I drove all day yesterdah to get to Mildura. I visited An elderly couple Bert and Shirley Penny and stayed with them last night. They were youth leaders in 1946 when Doug Twaits went there to be director of the Community Youth Group run by the council. Lovely people I felt totally comfortable. Went to Robinvale today. Met the daughter of  Henry Buchhecker. Henry was Doug's best mate and was in the 2/7th batallion with him. Doug was captured by the Germans so was Henry but Henry escaped and his was helped by Cretians. He and two New Zealanders stole a fishing boat and rowed across the Mediterranean to Nth Africa. Doug was sent to Austria and was interred for nearly four years.
this is hard writing on my move phone.
Bye for now.

Rickyralph Rides

Rickyralph, my good friend of 51 years, tipped up on Saturday morning. We shared my brunch. We talked, for 3 or 4 hours. It was good to see him and talk to him. Afterwards I felt fantastic. It was a clear late autumn day as still as you like and I went about my chores lighthearted and happy. There were few motorbikes on the main road. They must have all gone to some bike event elsewhere perhaps. The was stillness and silence.

How good is it? That one you have known so long arrives to see and talk to you. Fifty years is nothing. We are connected. I was talking to Lib about him that very morning before she went to work.

He told me a sad story. His relationship with his sister Sue was severed more than a decade ago, they do not see each other or talk. When I was a teenager I very much liked Rick's sister Sue, who in my adolescent eyes was so attractive. She was married with a couple of young kids. I have not seen her in probably 45 years.

She rang RR last year, before ANZAC Day, to ask him could she borrow their father's medals so that members of her family could march in the parade. These medals were bequeathed to Rick, he was his father's only son. Their father Dick served in the 2/2nd pioneers and was shot in the knee at El Alamein. For the rest of his life he walked with a stiff leg that would not bend at the knee. He died suddenly of heart failure in the early 1980's. He would have turned 100 last year.

Initially RR thought no, he's not letting his dad's medals out, then he had a change of heart and said yes. He took the medals around to his sister's house. His sister's husband said he would return them. A week or so after ANZAC Day the medals had not come back. Rick rang sister Sue. There was some acrimony over the ownership of the medals but it was agreed that that Rick could come and get them. When he did there was a set missing. Sue had loaned them to her son. Rick hit the roof, paying out on Sue for all his pent up emotion brewed over years and years.

I told RR that this story was ugly. He went on to say that Sue's daughter Mandy subsequently died of a brain tumour and that because of the incident he didn't feel he could go to the funeral. He sent a card. He learned later that had he gone to the funeral he would have been asked to leave.


In his card he included a quote -

" If I should die and leave you here awhile,
  Be not like others sore, undone who keep
  Long vigils by the silent dust and weep.
  For my sake turn again to life and smile,
  Nerving thy heart and trembling hand to do,
  Something to comfort other hearts than thine.
  Complete these dear unfinished tasks of mine,
  And I, perchance may therein comfort you. "

                                                             Anon

He told me this on Saturday and sent me the quote at my request.  In the discussion I told him of something I came across on the net, about thought process, the theme being fifteen things to leave behind to improve your happiness. I said I'd send it to him. I know he reads my blog so I list them here.

1. The need to be right
2.The need to control
3. Blame
4. Self Defeating mindset
5. Beliefs of what is possible/not possible
6. The need to complain
7. The luxury of criticism
8. The need to impress
9. Resistance to change
10. Labels
11. Fear
12 Excuses
13.The past
14. Attachment
15. Living to other people's expectations

There were explanations to these which I didn't have time to write down from the audio but it is fairly self explanatory and probably better left to think about anyway.

I told Rick he should try to heal the wounds of the relationship with his sister. Not overtly, but slowly bit by bit, send her now and again a saying, a poem, a gesture. Even if he never sees her again , he should let her know that he would like to heal the rift.

Alexandra vs Gembrook

Gord had missed selection for the Gembrook ressies the last couple of weeks and the team had won both games so he hadn't managed to force his way into the team for last Saturday. He wanted to go to Alexandra anyway to show support. I had said I would go with him if he was picked to drive his car back if he was injured. He wasn't picked but I decide to go with him anyway as I was a bit worried about him driving all that way and back by himself when he doesn't have the best sense of direction and there and back is a long way. It is not as if I don't have plenty to do at home, and knowing I was on museum duty Sunday, the weekend was a write off but there you go, once I had decided and adjusted my thinking around it there was no hardship in it, just the prospect of a day off and a drive in the country.

We left about 10 am, travelling the back way through Healesville and up the Black Spur. we arrived in Alex shortly before midday just in time to catch the butcher where I bought three scotch fillet steaks for dinner as per instruction from Lib who left for work at 6.35 am. It was a good drive and I was enthralled the whole way by the magnificent trees on the roadside; messmates and peppermints to start, manna gums mountain greys,  oaks, mountain ash, then as we went north of the divide box trees and red gums as well. Trees are so beautiful, more and more so as I get older.

The game had just started as we drove into the reserve and I was struck by the trees around the ground, notably a an American redwood near to where we parked and oaks and cypresses. The oaks had lost nearly all there leaves but were still beautiful. I indulged in a pastie and dim sims from the kiosk and a styrene cup of black tea and soaked up the atmosphere of country footy. There is nothing better. The net ballers were going at it on the court nearby and I followed up with a hot dog with sauce and mustard and another cuppa.

The ressies got done like a dinner and as the senior game started i was a little tired so i stretched out on the back seat with my legs dangling out the open door and had a little sleep while Gord fraternised with some of his mates. We left at half time to buy a lettuce as per the bosses instructions, then coming back to the ground on our way past to go home we saw the seniors had extended their two goal half time lead to five so off we went home this time via Yea and Yarra Glen. The downer for the day was listening to Hawthorn flog Melbourne by 105 points.

We arrived home at about 6pm. Lib had lit the fire which I had set earlier and we enjoyed a lovely evening after a dinner of steak, chips and salad. It had done me good to get a change of topography
and scenery and the magnificent sunny day and the wonderful scenery will stay long in my psyche. It was a good decision to have the day off. It was a real tonic after the icy wintry miserable week we had.

Carey and redwood tree

Pests on the Wing

I wrote this last night and submitted it for my Gembrook column to Signpost mag June edition.

Pests on the Wing

On a clear afternoon in early May I was enjoying planting out some seedlings at Emerald when a large flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos arrived, flying at height over my head one way, then back the other and all the time screeching to each other as if in argument about where to roost. They settled in tall eucalypts some distance away but the screeching continued. After a while the flock, which must have contained hundreds of birds, dispersed and smaller groups flew about at low altitude landing spasmodically in shrubs and smaller trees close to me, squawking and carrying on menacingly. The noise was irritating and continued all the while I was working, depriving me of peace and quiet, and frankly my work became unpleasant.

‘A Field Guide to Australian Birds’ says of the voice of this cockatoo, “A harsh, raucous screech terminating with a slight upward inflection; also a variety of guttural screeches and shrill squawks.”

These cockatoos are about in far greater numbers now than in previous times. Doug Twaits in his Field Guide to the birds of the Emerald and Gembrook Districts compiled in 1998 said, “Like the Galah, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos in the last 20 years have moved into the Emerald and Gembrook grids in increasing number. Their status has changed from rather rare, in that time, to common, breeding residents.”

Genseric Parker in ‘Forest to Farming – Gembrook: an early history’ in 1995 wrote, “Although this area is not the natural home for the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, several years ago a pair nested in a big tree along the Wallace Creek at the bottom of our property and brought out three young ones. In the following years the same pair has continued to nest.”

They are certainly well established in the area now. They are destructive to fruit crops and can even attack timber in houses at times I’m told. I will have to put up with the dreadful noise.

At least there seems to be fewer rabbits about lately. And there were few flies this summer gone. And the rats and mice did not come into the house with the cold weather like other years. The mozzies were bad, and the European wasps, but the May cold snap knocked them out. We take the good with the bad. Pest populations go up and down, often before we are aware, but I can’t see the cockies leaving.

I was telling Jod about  it today and he said when he was in the fireman job on the railways he and his driver hated seeing flocks of white cockies on the line ahead especially on a bend. They gathered in the thousands sometimes eating the wheat that fell from railway trucks from freight trains. Their beaks were so strong they disturbed the ballast under the rails in their efforts to dig out the seed and therefore the next train was badly shaken by instability and risked derailment unless they slowed down. It was a cause of serious track maintenance.