A Young Trollop

How nice it was to get through to end of last week and get home Friday evening with a weekend ahead with no picking. The customers bowled a bouncer or two but we managed.

During the week Gord had told me he may go to Fountain Gate shopping centre on Saturday and I toyed with the idea of going with him on the bus to do a bit of Christmas shopping. I bought two Myki tickets a few years ago and have never used them so when I was in the newsagents in Emerald on Friday to buy my weekly Tattslotto tickets I asked the delightful Mary to check the Myki cards. She said yes they were still valid until April and they had $20 on them.

So I went with Gord, we caught the 10.57am from Gembrook. Including us there were only four people on it. Another two got on at Cockatoo and then four young girls at Emerald. Two of these sat behind Gord and I and one of them spoke loudly and continuously all the way, every second sentence contained the word "like" and alternately, "fucking". She was about fifteen I guess. It was the only downer to an otherwise very pleasant trip as I was enjoying not having to drive and the scenery offered by the more elevated position from the bus as opposed to a car driver's seat.

When it comes to bad language I'm not usually offended as it is used often in everyday situations and in movies. It is I think an accepted part of today's society but it is usually used with some context to a situation or in emphasis to a point someone is making. This girl just used it constantly as part of her sentence formation. I could only think how terrible it would make me feel if a child of mine spoke like that in a public arena let alone in a more private setting. I can honestly say I have never heard my sons use that word and they are 30 and 29 years old.

I was so glad not to have driven, the car park was packed out and the traffic crawling around looking for spaces was heavy. As we went over the bridge over the freeway it was banked up as far as you could see and static or crawling. Motor City madness.

After Gord showed me where JB HIFI was and I bought two new charge connecting cables for the mobile phones (Lib's no longer worked and she needed to use mine to charge her phone and her Ipad as her cable for that was damaged too), we went our separate shopping ways with plans to be at bustop at 3.10pm to go home. I headed to Myers to look for perfume for Lib first then a bookshop and various stores for odds and sods including socks and underwear which I now have a good stock of new.

A Morrocan lamb burger at 'Grilled' before meeting Gord at the bustop and a relaxed trip got us home at 4pm. The young couple who got on at Cockatoo on the morning trip were also on the return trip. They were quiet and reserved and after they alighted I watched them walk across McBride St hand in hand and I thought of the juxtaposition with the foul mouthed trollop from Emerald. I'd say she'd have bright future in management....of a brothel.

I watched the last few races at Flemington and was happy to see My Survivor get up paying $61 the win $9 the place which gave me a nice profit for the day.  

A Friend in Need

It's raining enough to wash out my planned job this morning at my friends Pat and Mal's place. Pat has had some bad luck lately, the worst of it being a broken foot, two breaks in main bones and foot in plaster to seriously curtail her normal busy gardening.

The rain will clear but I have to move to foliage picking for three customers who come Friday afternoon and Saturday. I went to the post office and found in our mail a letter and Xmas card from my old friend Nicki Bridges at Moyhu. Our friendship goes back nearly forty years to when I lived at Moyhu renting a house on a neighbouring farm.Nick and John showed me considerable kindness often inviting me for a meal or to share a social gathering with them. Nick even had a couple of tries at matchmaking me with local ladies and all in all I have to say it was a very happy time for me the 18 months or so I lived out there.

I went to the post office to post a letter I'd written last night to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. This hand written letter followed a meeting in the Gembrook Community Hall last night between Gembrook residents concerned at the impact the Puffing Billy Masterplan will have on the community, and Puffing Billy CEO John Robinson.

I was home early enough to have a quick bath and put on clean clothes and be up there at 7pm. The meeting slowly progressed with most of the talk being a monologue by the CEO on the virtues of Puffing Billy and its enormous value and potential, and about his own personal history with the organisation. On and on he went, I had to ask the chairperson could he be interrupted so that we could ask a question. My turn came; his answer was that there would be no change to the number of PB events held in Gembrook in the completed Masterplan. This despite his earlier comments that everyone's submission had been considered - I made a submission in early October - no reply as yet - and that as a result of submissions there would be a flow on resulting from the strengthening of the document in the nearly completed final master plan.

At this point I said I was leaving the meeting, I could see no point in me sitting there listening to the CEO spruik about how wonderful he and Puffing Billy was, and that I wanted it recorded how I deeply resented the intrusion to our quiet little rural town, and that I had heard enough bullshit to last me a life time.

As I walked to my car I could hear loud laughter coming from the meeting room and I assume I had created some mirth in the gathering, which if was at my expense, did not make me feel any happier.

I went home and resisted the desire to open a bottle of serious red and slashed down a few Edenvale no alcohol glasses with my chicken schnitzel. Later I went to Facebook and saw a post about how the Victorian Government was to be the first in Australia to initiate legislation to allow assisted dying.

Now I don't think Daniel Andrews is very popular at the moment, especially with the Herald Sun newspaper and radio 3AW, but above that I have to say I admire the man for his courage, and that was the basis of my letter to him, one of congratulations on being a politician with a bit of spine, a commodity in short supply in Australia. Of course I also vented a little of my frustration with the Puffing Billy bullies and PB's entrenchment with councils and governments.

My opinion, which I will repeat loudly at every opportunity, is that PB is a symbol of the industrial revolution. It manipulates authorities with emphasis on Thomas the Tank Engine and Santa Claus and happy children. A smokescreen, literally and figuratively. If we sit back and rely on Chinese tourists coming we will end up like Greece and Italy on the precipice of bankruptcy. We are in a new age of technology and environment restoration and sustainability. Tourism needs to fit this new criteria. Australia is unique for its flora and fauna and magnificent landscape, not for Thomas the Tank Engine or a bloody steam train hooting its way around the hills spewing coal smoke and cinders. We need new industry, new crops, new forests, new ideas, real work opportunities; not 900 volunteers mucking around with a steam train. Imagine what good use 900 people could do in volunteer work for something useful. You wouldn't have a weed or bit of litter in the district. As it is now the feds are throwing $millions to PB and $millions to dubious weed eradication projects somehow mysteriously (to me) linked to bush fire protection. It's all to catch votes, never mind how effective any of it is.

Anyway, Nicki said in her letter she reads my blog and savours it. That made me feel a lot better, even if she said she feels some dissent with my comments sometimes. This post is for you Nick. Thanks for your friendship over the decades.

It has stopped raining, I'd better get cracking.

Good Progress

My friend Vilma rang on Saturday and asked me if I could cut the long grass at the back of her property which was four feet high and thick. My friend Josef has been doing the grass at Vilma's for the last year or so, since he sold his house two doors down and moved in to the separate flat vacated by Vilma's son when he became too ill for Vilma to look after.

She asked if I could also do her lawns as they were long too and she was concerned it was a bit too much for Josef as he has had some health issues of his own lately. Gord came with me and did the lawns while I took to the long rough stuff at the back with the whipper. It was a warm day but Gord and I enjoyed the work and it was nice to see Vilma looking so well and in good spirit. Josef came home while we were finishing and it was good to see him. He and Vilma look after each other and seem to be getting on well. Josef's wife died of leukemia not long before he returned to Gembrook.

While talking to Vilma I looked across to a big green beech tree in the garden of Josef's old house. I had picked foliage from it for a number of years while Josef owned the house, and while he had a tenant renting it while he and his wife managed a motel on Phillip Island. I didn't pick there last season, I didn't want to annoy the new owner by intruding to ask if I could. Vilma told me a young couple with a baby were renting it and she suggested I ask them if I could have some beech foliage.

So on Sunday before going out to Marguerita's to tidy up the broadies I called in and met the young couple who told me yes to come and pick some when I needed it. At Maguerita's I pulled the stakes out that I had put in to tie up the rows and rolled up all the twine onto a reel so I can use it again. That was slow and fiddly but I hated the thought of it going to waste. Marguerita was home and she and I planted spuds in a section of the garden where brocolli had been and finished.

As it happened the phone rang Monday morning and one of my customers wanted 30 bunches of green beech so it was sort of good karma that I could go down the road to Josef's old house and pick the most beautiful lush green beech quickly and easily as the tree was not picked last year so it had plenty on it. They wanted copper beech too and I picked that quickly from another tree I do in Gembrook each year. It was fortunate in that I had a specialist's appointment in Dandenong at 3.30pm so I dropped off my bunches at the farm on the way, after a delay and detour near Emerald with disruption to traffic by what looked like a bad accident. As the road was blocked off at the Monbulk Road corner there was a traffic jam there also and I ended up ten minutes late for the appointment which didn't matter because I still had to wait 20 minutes to see doctor as he was running behind time.

The good news is he was happy with my blood test results, I'm making good progress and was pleased to tell him I have reduced the prednisolone to a quarter of a tablet a day and I'm not relapsing as a result. He said I can drop the pred all together and see how I go, but wants me to stay on the same other medications (methotrexate 2X10mg tabs once a week and weekly Abatacept injection, and he doesn't want to see me till next June but I will have blood test in March and the results will go to him.

Other interest for the weekend was a call from Dave Dickson at Emerald in Qld. He and his wife Jodie are cutting Gumby Gumby foliage as a sideline and drying it and milling it to powder and putting it in capsules and selling it by word of mouth and on the internet. Apparently it's an aboriginal medicine good for many ailments. Sunday morning Lib and I went to Akoona Park market at Berwick as I needed a locksmith to get a key cut for my car as one of mine was worn and wouldn't go in the ignition. We found him and it cost me $90. The market was huge and I was most impressed, I had not been there before although Lib goes now and again. It's on every Sunday I think..

Busy Gembrook

Yesterday was 'Thomas the Tank Engine' day in Gembrook. When I say it was 'Thomas the Tank Engine' day, let me elaborate and say it was the Thomas day organised by the Rotary Club of Emerald in conjunction with Puffing Billy Railway. This was changed from a date in October because that date was washed out. There were also four other Thomas days in total organised by Puffing Billy, two in October, and two earlier this month. I'm well and truly Thomased out, not that I attend the event but it is impossible not to be aware of the crowds and congestion and traffic if I venture into the town.

I suppose the large attendance at these events means they are a success, but I query who is the beneficiary. Obviously Puffing Billy and probably the hotel, but it's a great pity, for those of us who appreciate Gembrook's quiet natural beauty for what it is without all the noise and fuss and crowds, that this extravaganza of events has been imposed on our town. Now that we have Thomas out of the way, we are now going to have 4 Santa events in December, two days each on consecutive weekends. We'll have a little break during January and February then there are six more events in March. I'm not sure but I think Thomas is returning for these. Maybe it is Thomas meeting Santa in December as well.

It was also market day being the last Sunday of the month. The market has moved to the Community Centre, I think there was some conflict between the market committee and Puffing Billy. The market has traditionally been held at the the station but this was no longer acceptable for some reason, the specifics of which I know not. The crowd and traffic were horrendous in the town when I was looking for friends who were visiting and wanted to see the market. They said they found the market disappointing. They have recently moved back after 8 years in West Australia and in their travels have seen many local markets.

Today I was working in a garden close to the Puffing Billy line, perhaps 60 or 70 metres away, when the train left Gembrook on it's way back to Cockatoo. The hooting of the whistle split the calm and after the train passed, the hooting continuing further down, the acrid smell of smoke and or cinders enveloped me. I can only hope there were not too many particles deposited in my lungs as I had to continue breathing. I'm glad I gave up smoking 26 years ago. The medication I take for my RA has a side effect of increased risk of lung cancer, so the prescribing specialist suggested I give up smoking (if I smoked).

I was mindful of this today as I breathed in the Puffing Billy smoke/cinders.

Putting The Brakes On

This week has tested me physically and emotionally. On Sunday the weather was warm to hot and I overdid things a little in the afternoon digging over ground at Margeuritas and then more at Hanna's. At the end of the day I was hot in the face and my lips were dry and burning, I probably didn't drink enough water although I did take drink breaks.

On Monday with the temperature going into the high 30's C for the first time in ages I again pushed hard. I picked broad beans at Margeuritas in the morning then got onto the beech. We are three weeks into the beech season and the customers are being difficult in that they are asking for large amounts and a couple of them wanting to come twice a week rather than their customary one pick up a week. My inclination is to try to please them so I go harder. Monday night after the first hot day of the season I was very tired.

Tuesday it rained consistently but I had four people picking up on Wednesday so worked in the rain rushing about gathering everything I could to fill their requests. Last night I was thoroughly drained and unhappy at this situation I'm in so after a good sleep and more rain this morning I headed out to pick broadies at M's again, in the rain, I was soaked again and after a change of clothes and lunch picked a little bit of beech to make up numbers for the late afternoon pick up person. When I got to the farm I was quickly unloading so that I could catch the bank before 4pm when Elvie came out asking me could I pick 20 more bunches of green beech by 6pm as one of the earlier customers complained they didn't get enough and they would come back to get it.

It was still raining. "No way," I said. I was not going to get wet again and frankly it is most unpleasant working off a ladder with the pole looking up into the rain. And dangerous as I'm not young.

So I feel a weight has been lifted. My customers have to realize they will have to take what I can do comfortably without me stressing about numbers and if they don't like it well tough luck. It's up to me to firm mentally and take it slowly or I'll wreck myself between now and Christmas. I can't work as quickly or as long as used to when younger. There's something about beech that seems to work them frenzied. I guess that's because it it so beautiful and prized by florists and there's not enough supply in the market place. Probably I'm selling it too cheaply too and if I was a good businessman I'd up my price 30% and let the market place slow it down for me, but I've upped my price 10% each of the last two years and I do believe in a fair thing and I don't want to be a hard greedy bastard.

There has been some good Karma over this period. Rickyralph turned up on Sunday morning to get some lemons. He brought me a shepherd's pie for breakfast and a bottle of red wine in gratitude for the lemons he comes for every month or so. I picked foliage at friend Sue's garden on Tuesday. She has nine acres of trees and shrubs she and her husband have planted and nurtured over 20 plus years and it's a total joy to see and work in a place as beautiful. And I love picking the broadies (and eating them later) out at Marguerita's farm with rolling hills of hay paddocks and potato fields around me, away from the traffic and the busy roads.

A young girl was killed in a road accident in Emerald Tuesday and it shunts it home.

Put the brakes on.

Out at Margeurita's

Gord and I at Sue's Oct 23 'Art in the Garden' day

 

Some Interesting Numbers

Those who know me know I like to have a little punt on the horses and I did so before we went to Lakes Entrance last Saturday, putting bets on each race of each of the Victorian race meetings over Saturday and Sunday. I'm a small bettor, $1 each way usually and/or place bets at good odds and a few 50 cent trifectas.

I knew I wouldn't be able to hear the races as we are out of radio reception down there for the racing station unless I'm in the car and can pick it up on FM, which of course I'm usually not and I'm busy with other things in any case. I have two accounts with on line betting agencies and I enjoy comparing their odds and selecting the best value. It's interesting checking the results in the evening on the mobile phone or when I get back on the the computer.

When we got back late yesterday arvo I checked my balances to find I'd made a very small profit for the weekend but amazingly both balances were exactly the same...$112.46. If I cast my mind back to 1968 and Dr Dino di Battista was teaching me probabilities in mathematics, the raw odds of this sequence of numbers on both accounts matching would be 100,000 to one. Of course there would need to be some adjustment for the fact that the most I ever put in an account is $100 and the balance of both accounts is usually somewhere between $0 and $200, but not always, I got as high as $800 once on one before taking out $500 to pay a medical bill.That is the only time I have made a withdrawal, the traffic is usually all one way with deposits of $50 or $100, but a deposit usually lasts some weeks and gives me some fun watching the balance go up or down till it needs replenishing.

The other interesting numbers were at the petrol pump. I filled up with Premium UL for the Kangoo at Pakenham on the way down and filled up at the same station on the way back yesterday. The cost was $59 even. I had done 550km driving a van loaded with tools and a roof rack and ladder on top and that seems like an amazingly distance for that amount of money. And when you consider that part of that price is GST, and the excise on the wholesale price is 38 cents a litre if I'm right, then the price of the actual fuel produced and refined far away and transported all the way to my tank is minute for the effect in produces for me.

We cut the grass at the Lakes house and had a couple of great walks. The areas around the house and on our walks were teeming with birds. The highlight was scarlet honeyeaters in the callistemons and blue fairy wrens on the ground not four feet from our boots foraging for insects disturbed by our feet. There'd been a big rain the night before, and the Lake Bunga walk was as beautiful as I'd ever seen it.

Mock Orange

We have been busy picking mock orange blossom this last week or so. It comes with a bit of a rush in late spring and there's plenty of it this year, certainly the good rains have helped. It's a Philadelphus, the variety we have is coronarius, a plant from Southern Europe. It's a deciduous shrub which grows to about 10 feet high and eight wide over time with multiple stems coming from the base which spread and can be divided off in winter. The flowers are profuse and magnificently scented citrus like, hence the common name mock orange.

It's the last of the spring blossom for us, although there's still some Hungarian lilac to be picked as well. My grandmother Nanna Wilson had a mock orange in her garden in Ashburton and when we moved to Emerald we took a plant from that parent. As it is in demand by our florist customers we have grown more plants over the years and now have quite a lot, sometimes too many to pick it all if the weather is hot and it comes out all at once. The great thing about it is that it thrives in dry conditions of summer so needs no watering but it benefits by cold winters which we do have in the Dandenongs. It's a good keeper in water and is pleasant to pick. It's a 'single' flower as opposed to the 'doubles' of many other Philadelphus varieties which in our experience do not keep well as a cut flower.

It was a ripper dogwood season, we picked large amounts of Cornus florida through October. All in all spring has been grand, despite working in the rain and cold, which has no doubt helped the spring blossom. We will shortly move on to picking beech foliage, it's a little slow to firm up due to the lack of warm weather. Sadly my beech trees at home have been decimated by crimson rosellas who have taken to eating the new leaves. They've had a bit of a chew at the farm too. Not much we can do about it, except watch, and accept the financial wack as one of those things. I just hope it doesn't get worse into the future. Birds are very good at adapting and utilizing new introduced food sources. The parents teach their young where the food is and they have a bit of a yearly movement pattern following the available food. The king parrots are good at turning up just when the tomatoes are full. They'll eat them green before we can get one ripe and strip our bushes in a few hours.

As much as I love birds I am not fond of king parrots or rosellas, they are way too destructive. But the garden abounds with so many birds lately, especially thornbills, spinebills, whipbirds and fantails and some visiting jacky winters. Magpies, butcherbirds, ravens, and currawongs too, and bronze winged pigeons and the usual blackbirds and doves and Indian mynahs. And of course cockatoos and corellas and the odd eagle soaring above like the grand overseer. Jod was happy the other day, he saw a spotted quail thrush at the farm. Probably all this rain has been great for the birds to breed. It's amazing really, these creatures are hell bent on raising young, instinctively, a life's mission, and each building that species' type of nest in a tree or shrub or hollow, or underground say for the spotted pardalote, and following the code of nature as set for them. And in a matter of weeks from egg hatching they can fly and feed. Miraculous. And some of these creatures can fly huge distances in migration, even halfway round the world. I watched a thornbill bathing in a puddle in a tarp I had placed over some wood to keep it dry, not ten feet from where I stood and unconcerned by me. Such a sight would brighten anyone's day.

Puffing Billy Stinks

Puffing Billy is a noisy smoke belching environmental hazard. It's 18 scheduled event days in Gembrook create traffic congestion and destruction of our peaceful rural lifestyle. We don't want it.

Piss off Billy

Glad to be Wrong

Rickyralph visited Saturday a week ago. He looked fit and well, and our conversation revealed that he's comfortable with where he's at. I congratulated him on his recent 65th birthday. Born seven months before me, he was always going to beat me there if he stayed alive long enough, which I must admit I was not always confident about.

You see, as he reminded me on one of his visits not long ago, I once told him he wouldn't make it to thirty. I had forgotten saying this, perhaps we were about 20, but he said that at the time it gave him a jolt and made him think deeply. The reason I had said it to him was that he was such a risk taker, foolhardy if you like, and by that time he'd already had quite a few close shaves. In fact you could say at the time that he was lucky to have survived to that point.

Not that he was on his own in that, I shudder at the recollection of some of my dangerous activities, usually involving alcohol and driving, but also other stupid things that could have led to serious consequences, but didn't thankfully. Many of these incidents were in the company of Rickyralph, and in all truth we were a little crazy. As youngsters we had many irate male adults in our pursuit who left us in no doubt they would have killed us if they caught us.

I think we both got off a bit on the excitement, but it was usually me trying to bring some restraint and caution to a situation while Rickyralph was just full on bold as brass, and often laughing in the face of danger... all go go action.

We discussed some of this and he reminded me of many incidents that I had forgotten about, he has a better memory of our youth and early adulthood than I do. One thing he said was absolutely crazy was the stuntman acrobatic somersaults he used to do off water skiis at high speed, just for the thrill of it and for the amusement of those in the boat who reveled in the spectacular crashes back to the water. He only stopped this after one time nearly crushing his testicles and enduring considerable agony. He concedes now that he was so lucky he didn't break his neck or his spine.

So for two old blokes who are still mates after more than 50 years since meeting, it is of great satisfaction to us that we can meet and laugh and reminisce. We met in 1964 at Malvern Grammar School, Rick was 12, I turned 12 in April. He was a tennis champion at that young age, and became Victorian U14 hardcourt champion. I was into cricket and football, we were both competent at sport, and showed considerable promise academically, enough to be in Set One when we progressed to Caulfield Grammar School in 1966. There were Sets 1-6, each about a class of thirty, which were graded so that each set did maths and science in the same class.

Probably we became closer friends as a result of being in these same set with all the brainy students. We both struggled to keep up, and by 1968 we had become close friends and sought solace and comic relief from a system that did not suit us at all. Our academic performance fell away as did our interest in sport. Rickyralph was full of energy that couldn't be restrained by a classroom, he was always being punished for one reason or another, often much to the humour of both the students and the teachers. A likeable rogue.

He was a handy chess player and joined the school chess team. Odd that. I never have played chess, or tennis for that matter. The school was competing in chess with Korowa Girls Grammar and he fell in love with his opponent, a girl called Penny. Penny's family had a holiday house in Lorne, and as had become our habit to travel to Lorne or Torquay on school holidays, I met Penny's sister Jane and fell head over heels in love. During this time Rickyralph took up surfing and with an older friend from the tennis team who had left the school but had a car and licence we often went to Lorne on weekends in the hope of seeing Penny and Jane who often were there with their parents. Later when Rick got his licence we were down there all the time in his old man's Humber Hawk.

One time prior to that we were hitchhiking down there, we used to catch the train to Footscray I think and get onto the Geelong Road and stick our thumb out. This particular time we were in a car with an absolute loony driver who just went like hell on wheels. I think it was summer of '67 or '68, anyway we got to Lara and there was smoke blowing across the road in a gale and cars were stopped but our bloke kept going even when you could hardly see the road. He just gunned it through the smoke despite the danger of hitting a stopped vehicle. Being young and silly we didn't appreciate the danger we were in. On the way home that same day the whole area was blackened and there were countless dead sheep in the paddocks and a number of burnt cars. Some people were killed and many burnt severely as they tried to outrun the flames of the fast moving grass fire. We must have been one of the last cars that made it through earlier that day thanks to our loony driver.

Rickyralph and I courted Penny and Jane over a few years, sometimes going out as a foursome. We were besotted totally, unfortunately the girls didn't quite have the same feelings and we were rejected time and time again, persisting for a few years during which we thought of nothing much else than these two lovely young ladies, who were to us like goddesses from mythology. We followed them, we spied on them, we plotted, tried everything. Alas, we dipped out. The first cut is the deepest.

But this cemented our friendship. It also led us in a way to discover other adventure, like exploring the coastline and bush, finding waterfalls and cliffs. One day we descended the cliffs near the twelve apostles and went into the cave from the ocean side and into the blowhole. It must have been low tide and a calm day to enable this because I have been there other times when she was blowing hard and it would seem suicide to do that. Often when the girls were not there or we were spurned we'd head out and sit and drink at night listening to the radio, maybe with a campfire. We took up fishing. We both loved the outdoors.

So for some years we were nearly always in each other's company when we could be. I went to a different school halfway through 1968 after being expelled. Our friendship continued after we left school and started working. For the next decade or so we had separate lives employment wise but often coordinated our holidays and we had many memorable trips away.

Our 30's saw us married and raising families and not seeing as much of each other but the bond of friendship is there, even though we don't need each other for support like we did in our earlier days.
Rickyralph has done well. He's still working but is eyeing retirement. After a varied working career he has spent the last 7 or 8 years as a lineman. He drives a crane truck and operates the crane to replace electricity poles and equipment. He works casual for a contracting firm and is paid a very high hourly rate. His parents died quite young. He was particularly close to his father, who would be very proud of him I'm sure.

May my good friend Rickyralph have many more happy and healthy years ahead of him. I'm glad I was wrong about him not making 30.    

Two Torrid Weeks

It's blowing a gale outside, not unexpectedly as the warnings have been coming for 3 days on news reports of severe windstorms. The warnings include the likelihood that many trees will uprooted as the high rainfall of recent weeks will have weakened root systems. Something like that. Enough to spook me when we have  numerous large eucalypts in the proximity of our house.

Trees down in the district means we'll almost certainly lose power. I may not get to finish this post today. The weather for most of the last fortnight has been deplorable with many days wet and cold. I remember last October after we returned from Europe it was dry and warm to hot with some days 30C+. This year it has been rain and more rain, difficult to get work done, and to keep the firewood up. It has only been the last few days that it has warmed sufficiently to not light the fire of an evening. It's set and ready to go in expectation of the next cold snap which may be as soon as today with no power to boot.

I have been afflicted with the flu for the last fortnight. I have not been as sick as that for a long time. It started with the nose thing moved into the throat and gradually worked deeper into the lungs. I have hacked uncontrollably day in day out. The fever consumed me, being freezing cold so going early to bed only to be overtaken by raging night sweat leaving my pillow and singlet and pyjama collar wet with sweat. I have slept this past two weeks in the spare room so as not to destroy Lib's sleep.

As if part of a bigger picture curse on me, many other things have gone wrong during this period. At the height of my fevers there was a Puffing Billy information night, which I was encouraged to attend by PB after my protestations by email at their shifting to Gembrook as their Event Hub, meaning 18 event days  (traffic jams and mayhem) clogging the town, 12 before Christmas, and 6 in March. I sat watching the power point show of all the boxes ticked...money for the scouts helping car parking, money for the school committee for parking on the school oval, money for the CFA by their sausage sizzle, more pizza sales for the pizza shop, more beer sales for the pub, more milk sales for the supermarket, 12000 tickets already sold... I listened for half an hour before standing to interject and tell them they were bringing the rat race to our quiet little town and destroying the quiet rural atmosphere and our peaceful lifestyle which is the very reason we live there.

Last Tuesday I had scheduled a Park advisory Group meeting before our NHP committee meeting and the president asked me could I chair the COM meeting as she had a funeral to attend, and another meeting on Wednesday was organised to discuss our brochure with the graphic designer. Feeling totally ill I managed to get through the meetings on Tuesday and got home to find the power was out and when I checked my mobile phone it was nearly out of charge but there was a message from Rob's housemate saying that Rob was in hospital.

AT THIS POINT let me say that I'm resuming this post after some 44 hours. Yes, as I predicted last Sunday the power went off while I was posting, at about 11am. It was out till 3.30am this morning about 40 hours. I had unplugged our two freezers before I went to bed as I didn't want to have them come on while we were asleep and refreeze what may have thawed. Fortunately I heard the power come on at 3.30am, I had trouble getting to sleep and must have been dozing lightly and there's a sort of little beeping noise as the power comes on, enough to alert me. The big stuff eg chicken, lamb leg beef piece and casseroles were still frozen hard but small stuff like little bacon packets were soft so I took them out and put them in the fridge, and plugged the freezers in again. There's a lot things in there like bread loaves and packets of berries and lunch packs which we'll discard when we get to defrost but I wanted to get the freezers on again quickly with as little disturbance as possible but I needed to know what was what in there, was any of it retrievable?

I'll cut this post short as I have much to do now. To fill you in on Rob, he had a kidney infection and was in hospital a couple of days. Lib went down on Wednesday as she was off work and took him home to where he lives in Wantirna. I spoke to him yesterday and he's feeling quite well, the antibiotics seem to have worked. He has an ultrasound booked for this Thursday as they investigate why the infection started. With the power outage we communication problems as our cordless phone and answering machine does not work with no power. The mobiles were not working, towers down. My bacon was saved yesterday because I had an old phone that plugs straight into the wall which Gord and I bought at cash converters for $10. This has auxilary back up from standard triple A batteries if the power is out, and we searched high and low years ago after being caught out one time. As it happened it allowed Gord and I both to complete some important business that otherwise would have caused great inconvenience in Gord's case and some financial loss in my case had we not been able to make a couple of simple calls early in the day.

I started this post to tell you about my horrible couple of weeks, but then I was going on to talk about some good things, namely the fact that Rickyralph made it to 65 years old in that period, and that all the beautiful rain has made the soil in my garden so soft to dig, even near the euc trees, and I have had great joy planting some things into it. And the Bulldog premiership.

So I'll post again soon.

Myths Busted

I grew up in the 1950's and early '60's. On TV I watched the The Happy Hammond Show which was sponsored I think by Tarax soft drinks. Happy always had a bottle of Tarax in hand or close by. Another show featured Peter's Ice Cream with clowns Zig and Zag. The catchphrase "Peter's Ice Cream, The Health Food of a Nation", was forefront.

In later life I was to learn that one of the clowns Zig was convicted of molesting his granddaughter, and Happy Hammond was not always so happy. Nonetheless my childhood included big quantities of soft drink and ice cream.

Later, in my adolescence, the Marlboro man was prominent on TV. Also memorable was the sophistication of  Peter Stuyvesant and Benson and Hedges, not to mention Hoges and "Anyway Have a Winfield" and "Matter of Fact I've got it Now". I took up smoking and alcohol as did most of my peers, this despite the advice and insistence of my parents who were abstainers and bible thumpers. It could be said that I over indulged. I was, in my tender youth, a nicotine addict and alcohol abuser, as were most of my mates.

My parents in 1971 made a life change and sold the family home in Mt Waverley and bought 6 and a half acres in Emerald. They did this (thankfully) because as self employed business people they found the ever increasing traffic stifling and saw a tree change an escape. Emerald was a quiet little country town, a village or hamlet if you like, far removed from the husltle and bustle of choked down by traffic Melbourne which at that time had about 5km of freeway in total. They took the brave decision to "escape the rat race".

They moved to Emerald in 1972. I wasn't with them, I was at Puckapunyal being marched around the parade ground and the bush as a conscript for National Service, where I found myself before I really knew what was what, in the aftermath of some political expedient decision that joining the Vietnam war was a good idea. Yeah, good one that.

There was a Federal election in December 1972 and a change of government, which saw my Army career, which was always going to be short, come to an even shorter conclusion not far into 1973 as the wheels turned. The lesson was how amazingly one's life can be changed by politics, but it was a lesson I really did not absorb till a couple of decades later.

Let's move ahead to the 1980's. I had spent 5 years in the Department of Agriculture as an apiary inspector based in Wangaratta before returning to work in the now thriving family business at Emerald after I married in 1981. We bought a couple of acres in Gembrook, a quiet rural town where land was still reasonably affordable. Mid 1980's my father had a heart attack, a shock to us all as he was a tee totaller and a fit active man. He had 5X bypass surgery and lived another twenty years.

In the 1990's I was concerned about my genetic history and visited a GP to assess my health and risk of heart disease. I was promptly put on a statin drug to reduce cholesterol. There was, after some time, a minor complication with liver function impairment so I wavered, and for some years was on and off the statin drug as my fears either of heart attack or liver damage plagued my mind.

In the meantime the Marlboro Man died of lung cancer, Zig's indescretions were exposed, and the Vietnam War was exposed as a political farce. It came to light, that my father (who died in 2007), suffered kidney damage after a lifetime of high sugar intake.

One day more than a decade ago I was in a car park behind the shops in Emerald when I saw my doctor in her brand new gold Mercedes trying to negotiate the narrow lane way. I decide then that I'd had enough of regular trips to the GP for blood tests and prescriptions and forever putting my hand in my wallet. I went off the statins. At age 64 I have not succumbed to a heart attack, and am thankful for the money I have saved, and the comfort from less worry and living a healthy lifestyle.

Speaking of doctors, I saw this year that a man who grew up in Gembrook applied to council to set up a medical clinic in a house he owned in the Gembrook main street, a house he bought for his mother to live in in her old age. She was a well known and respected lady and after she died her son thought it would be nice if the house could be used to bring a doctor to Gembrook, a basic service denied the town for nearly all the 35 years I have lived here. He was knocked back a planning permit as it was claimed the property did not have sufficient parking spaces.

Here we are now, and Puffing Billy Railway has shifted to Gembrook as it's Event Hub. As many as 400 cars are expected each day for 18 extra days of Puffing Billy Events. The town will be choked down by traffic. My quiet rural retreat of Gembrook is being destroyed. The rat race that my family fled is brought to my doorstep. I cannot believe this is to be allowed.

I extend a message to Jason Wood, our Federal Member for LaTrobe, and to Brad Battin, our State Member for Gembrook (interesingly they are former policemen as they love to remind us). I also include prospective councillors in the upcoming council elections, with apology to the lady candidates.

"PLEASE gentlemen. Grow some balls. Stop cowtowing and sniffing around Puffing Billy for the opportunity of grinning photo shots with the the train, to feather your nest by re election. For the sake of the community please come up with some real ideas to benefit the town and district and not the easy way of trying to look good with the same old unsustainable bulldust."
 

Eleven Days of September

My last post was on the morning of August 31. That same day Lib and I left for Lakes Entrance for some R+R primarily, notwithstanding that my motive in the main was to work on the house, painting and whatever else was needed.

We arrived about 5pm to a cold but familiar house. I can't remember what we did for dinner and it is obviously not important. I do know it was Abatacept injection day and I had taken one with me and I performed the jab and we had an early night.

The next morning we slept in, although as usual I was up about seven to feed Pip and let her out for a pee, after which I went back to bed in blissful awareness that I had no usual work routine and could please myself. About 10am after doing the breakfast routine I was still in my PJ's when a bloke pulled up out front and made his way up the stairs. He was tall and lean and wore a hat and looked all the world like something from 'Old Australia', which those of my vintage would recognize as 1960's or before. A Chips Rafferty resemblance. He introduced himself politely and said he was a handyman doing a job soon on a house above ours and needed to get an excavator in from the road above our block. Could he get the excavator in by going through the bush at the top of our block, through the fence at the top, so that he could get it across our next door neighbour's place and into the yard where he needed to work?

"No objection from me," I said,"but I'm not an owner, my wife and her two sisters own it. They'll need to give the OK. My wife is in the shower and sisters could be anywhere, but I'll contact them and let you know. My main concern would be that we don't want anything that will increase the flow of water in storms from the road above into our property as we have serious problems with storm water in the past." He gave me his card with the contact details.

Lib had no objection but couldn't understand what the guy was talking about so I said "Let's go up and have a look." The scrub was thick and we had to push through it  to get to the road above and examine what we thought 'Chips' was talking about. I rang 'Chips' and he offered to come back and show us, and arranged a time, an hour ahead. So i had an hour to kill and started sanding down the back wall in prep for painting. The back of my head was itchy and I had to struggle to get my hands free while up the ladder to scratch it. It kept up itching, I repeatedly scratched, then found a scab on the back of my head. I picked at it and managed to lift a corner. It would not come. I picked and picked, carefully, in the knowledge common to us all if you go too hard at a scab it hurts. This didn't hurt, but I picked and picked and it would not come, till I made a decision to go hard on it, hurt or no.

It didn't hurt but it came away, and as I brought it around on my finger to observe it I could see that it had legs, and was in fact a scrub tick. Now this gave me some concern because I had heard the horror stories of Limes disease from tick bites, an immune system thing, and my immune system had been giving me trouble with the RA business for two years, and that after a trip to Qld and northern NSW when I was attacked by sand flies and suffered severe allergic reaction which to this day I suspect was a trigger to my troubles.

Lib looked closely at my head and said it didn't look like the head of the tick was left behind in my scalp but without cutting and digging she couldn't be sure. There was swelling almost instantaneously. 'Chips' came back and we sorted that, all that was left was to get Pat and Marg's approval, which we subsequently did. I got the back wall sanded down.

The next day the weather was not good but I did a bit of painting in the morning and at Lib's suggestion as rain threatened we went for a drive. We had lunch at Metung, a delicious pumpkin soup and bread and I made calls to P and M re the excavator guy, leaving messages for them to call me back. We drove out to Sarsfield and visited Shirley Hughes's daughter Debbie's place which is now a B+B named Rural Retreats. Graeme Blakewell, Deb's hub, showed us around the amazing property which is in effect an underground house on top of a hill with wonderful views of the Gippsland Lakes.

We made it back to the house in time for me to give the rest of the back a coat of paint before dark. An hour or so later it started to rain and it rained all night, fortunately the paint had just enough drying time and did not wash off.

The next day I went to Bairnsdale and watched the prelim final between Orbost and Lindenow, a lacklustre game really easily won by Lindenow. I met Phil there and watched the game with him, having learned on the phone the day before that he and Marg had had a blue and he didn't know where she was and he hadn't seen her or heard from her in three and half weeks.There's not much I can say about that situation except that it seems almost unbelievable that people who have been married about 40 years can have a blue a few days before they are going on a planned holiday to Qld and a month before they expect their first grandchild. And this in their comfortable retirement. Weird.

Sunday I sanded and painted the side wall. Monday I painted other stuff, rails and beams, and cut the grass at the back and pruned back encroaching trees on the east side. Monday arvo Lib started the big house clean. She had been crook for a couple of days with nausea. Tuesday we did a final clean and packed and left at 9.45 and were home shortly after 1pm. i went picking bay foliage for wednesday's orders. Wednesday Thursday and Fri were flat out. Friday night I was exhausted and knocked off a bottle of red quick time and fell asleep and missed the the second half of GEE/Haw. So glad with Gee winning result. Hope like hell the Bulldogs can finish the job next Friday and get rid of the bastards.

It has taken all of ten days, but the swelling and soreness from the tick bite has eased right off so I think I'm in the clear.
 

Last Day of Winter

Officially today is the end of winter. August was interesting. Plenty of rain, cold weather, wind, is my main recollection. The demands of work were unrelenting with wholesalers chasing blossom, daphne, pieris, bay and variegated pittosporum in particular, with less frequent requests for trailing ivy, jasmine and variegated box, which, along with the pitto have been difficult as the source has been picked over and is hard to find and needs time to grow.

Many times I have lamented my lot at age 64 to be out in the cold and rain picking, however a hot bath at day's end soon convinces me that it greatly preferable to commuting in heavy traffic and sitting in traffic jams. On my odd trips to greater Melbourne for purchasing or medical appointments I wonder at the mental resilience of the thousands of people around me who do this every day. Not a good way to live.

Melbourne! The world's most liveable city, apparently, was the blurb during August. Strewth! I'd hate to driving around the others. I can't get out the place quick enough.The media was also full of outrage at carjackings, home invasions, street violence, homelessness and ice addiction. Somebody is full of bullshit.

May, June, July and August were all cold here in the hills with above average rainfall. I just squeaked through with the wood supply and I'm glad now to see the odd blowie in the house during the day. As the sun comes out and temperatures rise they become more frequent meaning it's not long before I close off the chimney and forget about carting wood into the house till about next May.

August also saw the coming and going of the Olympic Games. They don't interest me anymore I must say, probably because the drugs in sport thing and the gross commercialization and saturation of sport on TV has smothered it for me, or it could be just old age creeping up on me and my wonder of the natural world and gardens and plants overrides all the hype thrown at me. It did not concern me that expectations of more gold medals were not met. In fact I was glad of it, I don't like the tone of the national supremacy that goes with success at the Olympics.

Also I see Sri Lanka gave us a three nil hiding in the cricket. Again I'm glad of this, so I don't have to cringe at the supremacy antics and lack of humility of the cricketers and reporters that goes with it. On our toilet wall is a newspaper clipping of the Aussies being bowled out for 60 in August last year. That was a beauty.

The squabbling goes on. Same sex marriage, plebiscite, yay or nay. The CFA dispute. Uber v taxis, the crippling national debt. On and on it goes, seemingly no resolutions in sight. I should be like Rickyralph. He deliberately doesn't listen to the news on TV or radio. As the Greek proverb goes, "Nothing worth knowing happens more than a donkey's ride from the village."

Speaking of Ralphie, he nailed me by 2 on the post in the footy tipping. If Collingwood had won it would've been a tie but as it happened Hawthorn's last minute win by a point sunk me. Congrats Rickyralph. It was a neck and neck struggle with a head bobbing finish.

My health is good. I got over that neuralgia head business with a couple of weeks of increased cortisone dose as instructed by doctor. I'm back on reduced dose now and travelling well, a little sore around the ribs shoulders and collarbone but working well, surprising myself sometimes how good I feel. I see specialist Sep 14.

September looms. I'm up for it.  

What Goes Around

Last Thursday morning my phone rang, just before I was about to go to do a small gardening job for a friend.

"Hi Carey, it's Kate. You said a while back you could get me a daphne plant if I wanted one. Do you have one?"

"Yes, I've got one here Kate. I'll drop it around later today."

"How much do you want for it?"

"For you, nothing. It's a present."

"Oh come on why would you do that?"

"Because I like you."

I have been friends with Kate for nearly 20 years. She and her her friend Chris were good friends of my old friend Ida who died some ten years ago. Chris died a few years ago after a short cancer battle.
Kate would be well into her seventies, and has lived in Gembrook all her life. I did a signpost article on her a few years back.

I finished my gardening job and after a think about it I decided I didn't want to give Kate the daphne I had in a pot at home. It was one I struck myself about 18 months ago from some cuttings I put in, and it was the only one that took, out of a batch of about twenty or thirty cuttings. Talking later to my friend Huit, who had propagated daphnes and sold them at the market for decades, I learned that the soil I used was way too heavy which is why I had such a poor strike. I repeated the exercise last summer with Huit's advice and all the cuttings seem to have taken but these are too small to give to Kate. About a year ago Huit brought around two trays of his cuttings for me to look after while he was OS for about a month. He was grateful for me looking after them and told me he would give me some plants later in return for me me looking after them for him while he was away, hence my offer to Kate, knowing I was to get some daphne plants when they were ready.

So I went round to Huit's house. I hadn't seen him for about six months. I had a cup of coffee with Huit and his wife. They are dear friends. They told me they were a little concerned that Huit was suffering loss of memory and had an appointment booked for the next day to investigate it. I asked Huit if he had a couple of daphnes I could buy, thinking he would give me a couple in return for my favour of a year ago. he said yes and he showed me two lovely plants and asked me what I thought they were worth. I said I don't know I was happy to give him what he wanted.

Huit said, "Is $15 too much?"

"Not at all," was my my reply. I parted with $30, thinking well you win some and you lose some, I had left it too long and Huit had forgotten about me looking after the cuttings and our arrangement.

I went round to Kate's and gave her one of them and took the other one home, now having two to plant including my own.

Next day I was busy with various things in the morning, then before I got about my picking, I thought I'd go down to a neighbour's place and have a look at some wood that she, Bronwyn, said I could have when I bumped into her at the post office a month or so ago. I had forgotten about this and had been scrounging wood here and there the last couple of weeks along the roadside to get through to the end of winter. It has been a long cold winter and we've had the open fire going every night for months. This lady is relatively new resident, I met her when I used to walk every morning, she was jogging often, and I learned she had come from Wales after meeting and marrying an Aussie at the Master's games somewhere in Europe. Her husband was an ex VFA footballer who was a top middle distance runner after football and they clicked at first meeting. At that time, two or three years ago, she told me they had some wood they wanted removed and I took it and gave them some honey. At our meeting a couple of of months ago at the Post office she asked me how the bees were going and I explained I'd got out of it really but helped a lady with hers and gave her some Gembrook honey that Leanne had given me from our recent extract, and she followed up with with the offer for me to come and see if the wood was of any use.

The wood was perfect for my needs, good dry wattle to compliment the little remaining big eucy logs I have left. I put five barrows of it in the van, it was quite a long way from the back of the property to where I could park. Bronwyn's husband David (Sheehan) was home and came out and we talked. I remembered him well, he played for Dandenong in the VFA from 1967 into the 1970's, in the halcyon days of the VFA when it was televised live on Sundays after World of Sport. It was top football and entertainment and the competition was tough and brutal between Dandy, Port Melbourne, Preston and Sandringham and others. There's plenty more wood there, and David said if I ring him and arrange a time he'll put it in his trailer and bring it around with his tractor to the front to put straight in my van. How good is that?

I left there and drove down to another friend's place down Collie road. He has several daphne bushes down towards the bottom of a gully that I have picked flowers from for a few years. Sometimes the frost spoils the flowers as it falls heavy down the gully. But not this year, despite the cold and wet there's been little frost. My daphne is all picked out but this comes later because of the cold site. I picked 12 bunches, to follow the 20 each of the last couple of weeks and some blue gum and banksia as well.

It was just one of those good days when all falls into place. While I was a bit miffed at parting with $30 for Huit's daphnes the previous day I was totally blown away by the goodwill of good people straight after. This is a common thing for me. Generosity is a beautiful thing. The more you give, the more that comes back, sometimes indirectly, sometimes later, but it is a truism.

By the way, after three doctors visits and increasing my cortisone dose (temporarily) on advice, my headache went away and I'm fine and dandy. I know not if the headache was related to the RA or the reduced cortisone dose of a couple of weeks ago. I see the specialist mid September, before which I will have reduced cortisone again and we'll tell him about it and see what he says.

  

One Degree C

I stepped outside this morning a little after 6am. The thermometer said it was 2C on our deck. I went back inside and did the breakfast thing as Lib was going to work. Juice, muesli with fruit, toast and peppermint tea.

As we ate breakfast, Lib was full of instructions. Ring the doctor, make appointment, tell him you have had a headache for three days, tell him you have RA, tell him you had suspected temporal arteritis a few years ago, tell him you had shingles twice and the symptoms were similar.

My head sang with electric shock every ten or so seconds. I took two panadols, to follow the panadeines and ibuprofens I had been taking for the last couple of days. When she left I went back outside and checked the thermometer, it was now 1C. I went back to bed and lay quietly after saying a prayer that the the pain would stop.

Thank God it did. I woke again at 9.30am. The sun was shining. It was like medicine. I did the laundry, set the fire, did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, made the bed. In between I rang the doc. Mine couldn't see me till next Tuesday, Brother in law Rog was booked out till mid August. I found one with an appointment free at 4.45pm.

After taking a 400mg ibuprofen when the head whacking started again, I got about my work. No pain, feeling great, I picked foliage and daphne and bay dropped it at the farm before my appointment. Doctor seemed unphased, asked questions, was interested in my history.  He offered no answer, I didn't expect he would. Suggested I have blood test tomorrow (pathology was by now closed), as I expected he would.

So to patholgy tomorrow for blood test. Doctor again on Monday to see results. I'll keep you posted. Is it related to the RA? Or is it a recurrent freak show to the shingle thing of the past, or the head splitting suspected arteritis episode. I don't know... I'll bet they won't either. and I'll bet no one will be any the wiser when, hopefully, things have returned to normal .

But I had to go to the doctor, the shingles thing can deteriorate the longer it is left, it can seriously affect the brain, they can arrest it if they get it early. He didn't go that way. I have no choice but to play it out.

I'll let you know.

Ugly Sign

I parked today in in Gembrook's main street, as I often do, to buy something at the local IGA or go to the post office newsagency There, right in front of me, planted in the strip between the road and the footpath is a large sign telling me of the bushfire rating of the day. It's in the form say, of a fuel gauge on your car dashboard, but instead of a needle that indicates the level of fuel in your tank from empty left, to right to full, this one goes from low, green, through to red with black stripes for Code Red. In between are the ratings, moderate, high, severe, extreme.

Today the sign indicated that that the fire risk today was low. Tell me something I didn't know! of course it has shown me this every day for July, and for all of June, and all of May, and most of April. Before that I don't recall, I guess that for March, Feb, Jan and Dec, the needle moved around from low through to extreme, someone would have manually moved it when necessary as it has no automated ability to move according to the weather conditions.

Gembrook is not alone with this sign. I have seen them situated in just about every country town the length and breadth of Victoria. I have often wondered about the total cost of this and who pays for it, although I'm sure that ultimately it's the tax payer.

My point is this - it's a total waste of money, besides being an ugly affliction to the streetscape.

Do I really need to be told today that today was a low bushfire rating? And when it is a hot day come December and the wind picks up, do I really need to be told that the bushfire rating is high? And what if it's 45C with a howler gale? Do I need the sign to tell me it is extreme? And if there's smoke in the nostrils and ash dropping, the code red indicator may be a little late!

Every man woman and child should be well aware of fire danger without the need of a sign to tell us. There's something terribly wrong if we need to go see a sign to tell us. And all this stuff about bushfire strategy plans is very suspect. The instinctive thing is to not be downwind in bush land on a hot windy day, and if there's the smell of smoke or sign of smoke in the distance, get the hell away from timbered areas and into cleared farmland, or the concrete jungle.

It's seems simple to me. No need for the ugly expensive signs. And no need for all the in-fighting we've seen with the CFA and the unions and government policy. The common enemy is the bushfire and it needs united effort of the highest management quality of all resources. All this bickering makes me sick. It's silly squabbling over the spoils of the war chest, the multi billion dollar war on bushfire, most of which is wasted money. I don't care who's in charge so long as the chain of command and the intelligence is the best possible.

It should be automatic that all of us are watching the horizon and smelling the air on a hot day and make sure we are not in the path of a potential fire storm.

No need for those silly bloody ugly signs.

 

A Big Week

From Shirley's place

It was indeed a busy week. Detail would bore you. I picked, weeded, pruned, wrote. Today I rested, pretty much. I did the household things I normally do and finished pruning Lucy Pepi's roses and whipper snipped her back lawn.

Spring is coming with a rush. Japonica, witch hazel, daphne, it's all go.

I am pleased to say I am working well. I have little pain since I went on the Abatacept weekly injections, combined with the methotrexate and low dose cortisone I'm almost pain free and have enthusiasm and surprise myself with my vigour.

I love this pic of little Pip. And luculia on a winter's day, and gardenia from Shirley Hughes now at our front door.

In my van with the autumn foliage

Scented beauty

The Good the Bad and Rickyralph

Let's start with Rickyralph. He's now level pegging with me in the footy tipping.  He tipped Hawthorn and I Sydney last weekend. The Hawks stole it with a bit of help from the umps.

Now the Bad. Melbourne has lost 14 games in a row to the Saints, and 24 of their last 25 at Etihad Stadium. Damning stats.

The Good? I took Rickyralph's tips for a 9 multiple, as well as mine, but in each I had a saver with Port Adelaide as well as North, as I reckoned Port might get up. So I was almost barracking for the Saints to beat Melbourne on Sunday, and one of my 4 tip nines, $5 each, came in paying $179 for my $20 outlay. At least I was happier than usual when my team loses, which is often.

Election

My prediction of a landslide LNP coalition victory was certainly wrong and it seems the event has got us nowhere. For my part I voted at about lunchtime at the local primary school after standing in a queue. The best part about it was seeing and talking to my friend Dulcie who was handing out Greens voting pamphlets.

The Emerald Secondary College had sausage sizzle going but I didn't see one person buy a sausage, the people on the queue were not in the mood for them at $2.50 each and $1.50 for a can of soft drink. there were many people I had never seen before including a mum and dad in front of me with three rowdy kids. The bloke bent over to pick up his demanding toddler every second minute then put it down again, each time his bum crack exposed, the mum, whose hair at the ends was died bright pink, was speaking very loudly to the other two in banal kiddie speak and I was finding it all hard to take. There was woman with purple hair, blokes with grotty track suits and sneakers and baseball caps, and shaved heads and bits of metal stuck in lips ears top and lobes or eyebrows. Another pair of parents with metal facial paraphenalia and black clothes attended a baby in a pram, the mothers arms and the backs of her hands heavily tattooed.

It was  relief to see my friend Barbara come out of the voting area, she spotted me and came over to me. I noticed she had a handkerchief in her mouth covering her lower lip and realized straight away she had not found her lower teeth. Mum told me she had called in top pick up a posy last Friday at the farm and she was distressed because she had lost her lower teeth somehow and was upset and couldn't really talk properly with mum. Barb told me the posy was lovely and she had the box and tin it was packed in in her car and if she could give it to me it would save her taking it back to Elvie. I said yes and followed her to her car after asking the bloke behind me if he would let back in the queue in a few minutes.

The day had started badly when Lib on her way to work was distracted trying not to spill her cup of tea and got her front wheels off the gravel and slid nose first into the shrubbery, thoroughly bogging her car. She took Ian's Subie instead and I rang her work to say she'd be a few minutes late. It was dark still and cold and wet,  and besides not being able to see I couldn't have got the car out easily anyway so I pretended it wasn't there and got on with the laundry before going to back to bed for an hour or so.

I baked some Cippollini onions in prep for our visitors coming the next day, to add to the numerous dishes Lib had prepared, and bought a tomato and bacon quiche at the bakery as instructed and also a chicken breast which I cut up into small pieces and baked in the oven with the onions. These dried out meat treats I give to Pip at different times and a batch lasts a few weeks. I set the fire and organized wood for a few days and before I knew it Lib was home from work. I found a tow rope and managed to pull Lib's car out forwards with the Subie in low ratio after cutting away shrubbery. There was little damage, just a busted headlight protector.

I didn't watch must of the election count on TV, I watched a bit of footy and fell asleep in the chair.
My prediction may have been wrong but I do think our nation is in serious crisis. Turnbull talks of 'Jobs and Growth' but the only businesses proliferating around this district are coffee shops, pizza shops or real estate agents. Jason Wood has promised money to do up the local footy club rooms, and those at Officer, and has pledged $5mil to Puffing Billy to set up a Heritage Centre at Emerald Lake Park to attract hordes of Chinese tourists (the last thing I want to see I might add) - pork barreling at it's best, like the $8million Police station and the $2mil firestation at Emerald from the Libs after the state election before last.

Hopefully the phone will be a little quieter now that politicians and survey seekers will be taking a break. The calls will now be from the multitude of charities that are forever seeking money. The media was full of tales about beggars in Melbourne recently, homeless people camping and asking for money. These charities are sophisticated beggars, always wanting money. The telemarketers rattle of their spiel with hardly a break for breath, the theory is - "keep em on the line, make em think they've taken up your valuable time as you crusade for good, they'll give you something if you you make em feel they've used up your valuable time."

Just like the car salesmen tactics described brilliantly in Stienbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath', which I'm re reading now after 40 years, and realizing how relevant the theme is in today's world. The telemarketers work on commission just like the car salesmen.

There's something seriously wrong with government in this country and we are in a real mess. And now we have Pauline Hanson back! What does it say about us?

  

Normie's Yellow Rose

Normie's Rose; 10 days after the funeral service it still is beautiful. Norma's favourite flower was the yellow rose and her casket had them dominating and we were invited to take one home.

Nearly There

Next Saturday we finally reach election day after the longest campaign in my recollection.

My phone rings daily, my mailbox is full of election stuff, Jason Wood's photo with Malcolm Turnbull looks at me everywhere I drive, and the radio talkback is constantly going on about it, and it is in every newspaper front and square.

It looks to me that it will be an annihilation. Turnbull will be returned and Labour will be decimated, perhaps the ruination of the Labour Party forever, maybe it is totally finished.

As disappointing as Turnbull is to me, it was a master stroke to get rid of Abbott. Abbott gave Shorten some chance.

So, my call is early. Labour is finished. It does not surprise me. Unionism is finished.

Sadly, it is a comedy of uselessness. Australia is cruelled by greed and laziness.

A country driven to point of ruin by self interest greed and laziness.

On a Winter's Day

I woke this morning and went outside to relieve the full bladder to be enthralled by the jousting magpies whose warbling and acrobatics have delighted me all this month.

It must be the first sign of spring as these beautiful native birds presumably are asserting territory in the prelude to the mating season. A group of about 8 birds have been darting and chasing in twos or threes from tree to tree in spectacular competition accompanied by magnificent song during interludes when resting in perches.I think it must be parent birds chasing away young from last year's breeding prior to this years, as I believe happens.

There was plenty of sunshine this morning to cheer the spirit of this pilgrim as I soaked up the luxury of a day at home after a tough week. On Thursday I woke and opened the back door to find only one gumboot where there should have been two. Must be a neighbour's dog doing devilment was my conclusion, the same creature that regularly pulls things out of the recycling box at the back door during the night, chewing up yoghurt containers and foil that has had food traces in it.

Gord and I went to 'Blossoms' funeral that same day, at the Springvale Crematorium starting 11.15am. I'm glad we went. She was a good friend. I'm saddened that I will not see her again. Norma had said what she wanted at her funeral service and I was a little disappointed for two reasons. Firstly there was no mention of her marriage to Henry and her time at Emerald which was about a decade, and secondly, the concluding song at the service was 'My Way' by Frank Sinatra. I would have preferred something better, if you listen closely to the lyrics of that song it is not a nice song, it is a selfish construct, and I read somewhere it is the no 1 choice for funeral service songs. Normie could have done better surely. Nevertheless I teared up a bit.

From there we went on to Mentone pick up some beekeeping supplies in prep for next spring. It rained all the way and the traffic was horrible. We late lunched at Parkmore shopping centre then went to FTG where I bought some new 'Oliver' work boots and then on to Lowes at Knox where Gord wanted something or other. All the way traffic horrible. Melbourne is a hell hole. I finished in Tecoma for a massage and Chiro adjustment and got home in the dark after what seemed like a whole day driving in traffic, which it was really. Exhausting.

Friday was not the quiet recovery I hoped for. Orders came in at 10.30am for a whole lot of stuff extra to what I had already known about and planned to do at leisurely pace. Therefore followed 7 hours of picking top pace no break to speak of in drizzly shitty weather. Completing that we went to Monbulk to pick up the take away Chinee for dinner and to shop at Aldi and the green grocer, and drive home in the dark and drizzle without my glasses which I had left at home. Exhausted again.

Sadly, there was another vanishing incident to outdo the gumboot of the previous day. I do like dim sims, steamed Chinese home made ones. I bought 6, two entrees of three each, so that I would have some for left overs to have with the fried rice and noodles that are always left over for the day or two following. Well, after taking a drink of white wine and getting in my footy tips to Rr and placing a few footy multibets I took a bath. I'd seen Gordy eat a dim sim and his spring rolls before heading to the bath then when I came out I had a plate of SFrice and Singapore noodles and checked where the dim sims were, yes fine in the fridge, I'd have them tomorrow. Now I do like Chinese food but my tastes are simple... dim sims, fried rice, noodles. I leave all the other sloppy stuff to others, I'm happy to leave all that.

I was completely peeved when I went to get a dim sim or two yesterday to have with the left over rice. Lib took them to work for lunch and of the whole 6 I bought I had narry a one. The others had eaten the prawn entree and the spring rolls and all my dim sims to boot. I was left with all the sloppy stuff.

Fried up in the pan though it was pretty good.

Footy Tipping

Well were almost to the halfway mark of the season.

I'm pleased to say I'm leading our home comp, on 70. Gord is next on 69, Rickyralph is 67, and Lib brings up the rear on 58. Rickyralph keeps banging away but has so far not been able to to bridge the gap on me that I established early on.

The funny thing is that he tipped 9 last week and caught up on me one as I only had 8, but because my tip was speculative on Melbourne beating Hawthorn, which didn't happen, I put $5 on Rr's tips with Sportingbet and collected $88 for the 9 multiple.

Cheese

The crisis in the dairy industry has made big news recently and I sympathize greatly with dairy farmers. I heard it said somewhere in the media that we should all make sure we buy Australian milk in order to support the dairy industry.

We don't buy a lot of milk but I have never even considered that the milk we buy is from anywhere other than Australia. It is incomprehensible to me how or why we would import milk when we have so much of it here, and if we did how it could be competitive on price after travelling from overseas.

It has also been said we should eat more cheese and i have been doing my best. Cheese I love and I snack on it most days when I come home from work with a few dry biscuits. Also it is my habit to put grated cheese over certain left over meals say like tuna rice or risotto as I heat in the pan with a sprinkle of cayenne pepper. Mumma Mia! Grilled cheese on toast with or without tomatoes is also a treat, melted cheese is a delight.

And there are so many types of cheese to enjoy. I adore grated Parmesan on my spaghetti sauce and don't mind some blue vein now and again.

And let's not forget that great companion to cheese - wine.

Oh how I'm looking forward to getting home tomorrow night to enjoy the open fire and some Friday night wine and cheese. Even a terribly dead and boring footy match like Essendon and Hawthorn will not be able to spoil that.

Vale Normie

The phone rang today, my mobile, at about 3pm. As it rang I was taking out the cards in the bottom draw of our kitchen with the intent of writing a birthday card for my friend Norma who was to turn 79 years old next Thursday the 9th of June. It has been a custom of Norma and I to send each other a tattslotto ticket and a card on our birthdays for the last twenty years or so. I thought I'd post it on my way up to watch the last quarter of the local footy, to save me having to do it next Monday and risk forgetting.

The mobile phone was in my office and I quickly dropped the stack of cards I'd taken from the drawer and managed to take the call before the caller hung up. It was my friend Craig, a young man of great quality whom I met through Norma some 20 plus years ago, and who through all that time I have had business dealings to our mutual benefit albeit on a small scale. He was a young man just left school when I met him, and with his young lady companion Leanne was embarking on a career in the nursery industry. They married and started a wholesale tube sale business on line and have gone on to great success and have two children. I regularly get plants from Craig, and he regularly takes cuttings at the farm and NHP. No money changes hands, our dealings are on a favour basis in the best of spirit.

Craig told me he had received word from his mother that Norma died on Friday. In the card I was about to write her I was to say that we, Gord and I, would be down to visit her in the next week or so. It has been my habit to visit her a couple of times a year. Gord and I last visited in February, after she had moved from Banyule to Balwyn after the subsidized housing she was in sold up for development and she had to find somewhere else, this time a Catholic church residence, a tiny flat.

Norma had a florist shop in Armadale through the 1970's My father used to sell posies and vegies to her on his deliveries. She married foliage grower Henry from Emerald in the 1970's and lived with him at Emerald in the 1980's after she concluded her business. She visited the farm regularly to buy vegetables and we picked foliage and flowers on their property.

In the early 1990's Henry took ill, Normie went to court, to go for an out of time settlement 19 years after their marriage as they had separated within one year, lived apart for some time then got back together although divorced. It was an an ugly situation with great acrimony between Norma and her husband's daughter, her step daughter. I could write much about the dramatic events at the time which involved me coincidentally but there is no need for it in this post.

Norma came out of it with a pay out which was taken out almost completely by $110,000 legal costs and she was basically penniless for the last twenty years or so, living on a pension and paying rent.

She was a powerful personality who pushed me to the limit of my patience at times but through it all she was a great friend who offered her best wisdom even if it was sometimes a little overbearing. But she was always there as a friend, on the phone, and when I visited. She was a brilliant cook, her soups were magnificent and she taught me much. She was a raconteur and had an interesting life. In the late 1950's she went out with Big Bob Johnson, Melbourne ruckman and forward, and she was friends with Bart Cummings and cricketer Keith Miller.

I will miss her greatly. She has been there to pump up my tyres for such a long time, and I'm very sad that I'll not see her again. Not on his plane anyway.

Count Your Blessings

On the phone a couple of weeks ago I asked a lady friend to have lunch with me. She declined as she had an appointment on the day I was suggesting and couldn't make it. I was disappointed, but it was important that I had made the invitation, for reason that I will explain.

There was nothing in my invitation of a picnic in the park that could be seen as untoward. The lady is a casual friend whom I have known for some years. I first met her through an involvement I have in a local organization which caused us to liaise now and again and see each other incidentally over a period of years. Our contact was cordial, polite, respectful, pleasant if I think back, she is one of those people you are always pleased to see, who leaves you feeling a little better about the day and the world in general.

Years passed and our involvement ceased on an organizational level but we bumped into each other shopping every couple of months or so and always had a yarn in a warm friendly exchange. The lady, younger than me by a decade or so, had an interesting local family history and in her own right her life story justified me to ask her if I could do a profile on her for Signpost magazine. She agreed and it was on the agenda but I didn't get around to it before I stopped writing for Signpost at the end of last year.

A couple of months ago we met shopping in Woolworths and I apologized for not having followed through and explained that I had ceased doing the Signpost articles. She was not concerned, and told me that her mother, who would have been an important part of the story, had died recently.

I then said that I had not got around to doing a profile on her good friend's father either, I had asked him about it once and he was reluctant but told me to try him again later when he didn't have so much on. She asked did I hear about her good friend. I said no.

"She died on Christmas Eve".

This floored me. She went on to say that her friend woke up with a splitting head ache and after no improvement she sought medical assistance but before any could happen she collapsed and an ambulance was called but she died quickly from a massive stroke, aged about 50, leaving a husband and teenage family. My friend and this lady were close friends, and both were part of the organization that I had dealt with over a number of years as mentioned above.

As we continued our chat in the supermarket she told me she had had a terrible time. Her mother died, her friend died shortly after, then her husband walked out on her, all in a matter of a couple of months. Apparently her husband, a policeman, had been having an affair for years and leading a double life unknown to her totally until he walked out, leaving her with two teenagers. Worse still, he was behaving with animosity and intimidation over the nuts and bolts of the separation.

I could scarcely believe all that I was hearing as this lady friend had always been of such pleasant nature and warm character, and her family situation as read by me was of perfect harmony and good citizenship. She teared up while telling me about it and we hugged and said that we must have lunch and a walk in the park where we had been involved in community affairs over a decade or so. I said this as a gesture of friendship, with understood but unspoken offer of counsel to help her through her trials.

As weeks went by I rang her a couple of times to arrange a picnic lunch but she was not home. Gord kept reminding me to do it, he was with me when we had met in the supermarket and he was as equally moved as I was by the lady's misfortune. Eventually I found her home but the day I suggested was unsuitable to her. I'm sure my offer was appreciated and served its purpose as a show of support and friendship and I must contact her again soon.

I hope she comes through it OK. Life can be a real bastard.

I count my blessings for my good fortune.

Goodbye to Autumn

The weather changed two or three weeks ago and we lit the open fire, as we have every night since. It's a great thing and especially so when firewood supply is no problem and the wood you have stored is well seasoned and dry from the rain. Not that I'm on top of it totally, there's a lot of wood exposed to the weather, I haven't yet got it all under cover in the shed but have had some there and some under tarps so I'm OK for now. There's dry spell forecast now for a few days and my plan is to barrow a lot of wood into the shed for the next month or so. I would have done it this weekend but I took the day off yesterday, at Lib's urging, to go with Gord to Powelltown to watch the Brookers, and I did museum roster today.

Gord wasn't playing, he has been training but is only offering his services if they can't get the numbers. So far the ressies have had enough. I felt it would do me good to go with him yesterday. I have been to Powelltown with him the last two years, two years ago it was his first game I think. I love the drive to there. There are some beautiful trees along the way, even the messmates somehow look better along the road nearing Powelly.

We arrived shortly before quarter time in the ressies. Gembrook had 3 goals 2 on the board and Powelly 5 behinds, which was the score at the break, The second quarter was all Poweltowns as they caught up on the scoreboard and really should have gone in well ahead at halftime but missed many shots. Gembrook were fumbling and looked quite inferior. I bought a meat pie at the canteen and a coffee. The pie was so hot I had trouble eating it without burning my mouth. I did burn my mouth. The lady put milk in the coffee without me asking for it, it was luke warm and insipid but the cost of both was $5.50, not bad hey.

The third quarter was much like the second, Powelly on top but not dominating the scoring. At the last break Gembrook was behind by a small margin. On top of the reserves ladder, Gemmy had to pull something out, The last quarter was a hard slog. Halfway through the quarter after two or three desperate acts I called early, they would win, and they did. I had a pasty during this. it was red hot like the pie but with lots of sauce and me going out the back away from the throng i ate it slowly in peace, this time with a straight black tea from a tea bag. Another $5.50 well spent.

The senior game kicked off and Gembrook looked ordinary. It's quite stark the contrast between the ressies and the seniors. It's obvious straight away that the standard of footy is higher, and some of those on the field are actually very good. Again, Gembrook did not look convincing, at half time scores were about level and with a number of Powelltown players looking confident and competent, it looked to me like the home side would win the game.

I went inside the Powelltown clubrooms at half time, not the changerooms, but the social room with all the pictures on the wall of past premiership teams, cricket and football. I was looking for an old teammate of mine from the early 1970's, Allan Warburton. He was a carpet layer, and just how I got onto him I don't know but he installed the carpet in our house extension in 1985. He said he was still playing footy for Poweltown. I had well and truly given it away by then. I found no mention of him on the walls which did not surprise. Al would have been at the end of his footy when he played there and while he was a good strong ruck rover he wasn't a star, although on his day he could dominate. His brother Lloyd was captain coach of Ormond Church of Christ in 1971-73. Lloyd was an excellent full forward, ex captain of Melbourne U19's. He kicked 150 goals in our premiership year of 1971 in the modest Eastern Suburbs churches League E grade. He was only 5 foot 9 inches in height which prevented him going on in the VFL as he was a genuine full forward type player but he had big strong hands and an excellent lead, very hard to stop. We had a good team in a competitive comp which had some excellent players despite its lowly status. We were runners up in D grade the next year and just missed the finals in C grade the following after a season mauled by some ugly brawling and fighting incidents on field after which the club wound up. I had three happy years of footy and social life there and didn't play again until 1978, except for some games at Qld Ag College in 1974 in their inaugural team in the SE Qld comp. Many of the players in that team were new to Aussie rules and we were poleaxed most games, once by 50 goals against Aviation, a team from the Oakey Army Aviation base which was comprised mostly of blokes from the south who'd played Aussie Rules all their lives. It was humbling and embarrassing but I have fond memory of it and the brave effort of my teammates who were on a hiding to nothing but loved it.

I have gotten away from my point but that is the beauty of blogging, you can do that. After half time Gembrook gained the upper hand emphatically and kicked eight goals to nought in the third quarter. It was impressive with hard working little blokes driving forward and strong defenders sending the ball back. The best of it was when big Clarky, the 36 or so year old co coach getting a lovely tap at a centre bounce down to a running captain Ricky Causer whose long well placed kick to full forward where Andrew Ship took a hanger from behind. Just classic footy. Shippy didn't kick the goal he gave a little pass to someone very close. It broke the back of the opposition.

Gord and I drove home slowly so as to minimise the chances of hitting a roo or wallaby, one of which jumped across the road in front of us quite close, and after Lib's altercation with one a couple of weeks ago I didn't want to be putting in another insurance claim.

It was nice coming home to a roaring hot fire that Rob and Lib had going when we got back after a little shopping in Yarra Junction. I had set the fire in the morning, which will be my habit most days if not all for the next three months or so.