Gout

The big toe on my right foot was sore all Friday. By yesterday morning, after a disturbed sleep, it was excruciating. I limped about all day, slower in even the most menial of tasks, even bookeeping on the computer. The pain is there with the slightest movement.
Make no mistake, gout is a formidable adversary. I was disappointed that my precious Saturday was ruined by pain, resultant incompetance, and fear that the condition may linger for days. I can see how severe pain can lead to depression. I had to miss my morning walk, the first time for the year. I took anti-inflammatory pain killers and read up on gout in my food remedy book.

Quote- "Gout is a form of arthritis in which glass like shards of uric acid jab into joints causing searing pain. For some, the mere weight of a blanket on an inflamed toe can be too much to bear."

This is my second attack within a year, after 55 years thinking it was something for others to worry about. Coincidentally (or not?), the first attack came a week after I began taking blood pressure tablets mid last year. I told the doctor the tablets gave me gout after googling the drug (Avapro-irbesartan) and learning that gout was a side effect in some people. She told me the particular Avapro I was taking did not cause gout, it was another type. What can you do but believe your medical practioner who knows more than you do and is entrusted to reduce your risk of stroke and heart disease?
The food remedy book says purines in food can contribute and advises cutting back on purine rich foods such as liver, kidney, sweetbreads, sardines, anchovies, mackerel, asparagus, mushrooms, and beans. And to drink alcohol only in moderation. Beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages increase the risk of gout attack by increasing the body's production of uric acid and impairing the kidneys' ability to get rid of it. Heavy red wines have the most purines. Drinking more water (10-12 glasses a day) dilutes the uric acid in the bloodstream and helps prevent the formation of crystals.
The food recommended to alleviate symptoms is CHERRIES. I bought a big bag yesterday and have been drinking more water. Today I'm much better, only sightly inconvenienced. Mind you I've kept up the anti-inflammatories. Late yesterday I hobbled about picking bay and laurel foliage, which may seem silly when I had a gout attack but the pain had eased a bit, and I had no way of knowing how I'd be today. I planned to work today, to do half of Monday's huge load on Sunday, as it's a big week due to Valentine's Day.
My thinking was, I was so slow with the gout that I should start Saturday. It probably helped me mentally as well as physically, to get moving and make a start. It could be seen as a disadvantage in being self employed, particularly in fields not highly remunerated, that you can't take 'a sickie', but perhaps it's a blessing. Sheer necessity is a great motivator.

Agonis flexuosa

Our friend Bill would be in Perth now, or close to it. Lib and I, and mutual friends Maria and Louise, local literary magnates, had dinner with Bill and Paula at their Emerald house last Saturday evening. Superb Indian cuisine, fine wine, music,(Tchaichovsky, Joan Baez, Cat Stevens) and cultured conversation (ranging from the collection of semen from men and drone bees to American politics) made the evening memorable. Bill, a poet, writer, artist, musician and philosopher with a quick wit is always great company as is his beautiful wife Paula, who is equally talented.
It wasn't planned as a farewell dinner, as the Perth job came up after the dinner was marked on the calender, but Bill broke the news he was leaving the next day to travel by car to Perth to take up a temporary job for three months, managing a chain of 30 supermarkets in West Australia.
It made me recall my one and only visit to West Australia some four years ago. After landing at Perth airport at about 8.00am., we hired a car and drove out into the treelined streets. We stopped to consult the map in the hire car, having no idea which direction to take. I was struck by the clear blue sky and the brightness of the daylight, but the first trees I noticed were Agonis, which were familiar because there are several in our garden and some at the farm which I planted at the same time. I use the foliage in the few mixed bunches we do, but other than that there's no demand for it. I do like the tree, my tree of the week.
That first night of our holiday we decided to stay at Busselton. We were fortunate to find accomodation in a small caravan park as, unknown to us, it was the Friday night of a long weekend and everything had been booked out by Perth residents escaping the city for the weekend. Just as we approached, apparently, there'd been a cancellation, so we grabbed it for three nights and settled in our cabin, which had a large Agonis growing over it providing welcome shade.
If you've been to Busselton you know that it's located right on the shore of Geographe Bay, a wondrous calm natural haven about 40km long where clear blue skies meet the blue green water where dolphins play, and the white sand dazzles the eyes.
Walking the 100 metres from the cabin right onto the beach was a walk through the camping ground and Agonis trees. These had been pruned and lopped roughly to provided campers easy access to their sites, and to remove limbs that might split off I presumed. It was obvious the Agonis would take hard pruning and actually thrive on it.
The next day we drove a little north and picnicked for lunch in a Tuart forest, and here again the Agonis was plentiful as a second tier understory. I talked to a local who referred to the tree as 'peppermints', a name I'd not heard it called before but logical for the strong scent of the leaves.
It seemed that almost everywhere we went near the coast the Agonis was a predominant tree. At one place, out of Albany, on the way to a magic little bay the name of which escapes me just now, a sign read something like "Fire Hazard Slashing Zone- vegetation is slashed to reduce fire risk", and huge areas of foreshore park had been tractor slashed recently. Most of the regrowth was Agonis about a foot high.
The Agonis is hardy tree of considerable charm, suitable for Victorian gardens, and can be left to achieve its graceful natural weeping form if there's enough room, or pruned hard to keep small if necessary. One of my favourites.

The 'Encyclopaedia Botanica' says,
'Agonis flexuosa' Myrtacae. Peppermint Tree; Willow Myrtle. A native of WA, it is adaptable to most soils and conditions, and is drought and frost resistant.
An evergreen tree it can grow to a height of 14m with a spread of 6m. The stem is long and slender, with graceful pendant branches; the leaves are green, willow-like, with a strong smell of peppermint, and 10cm long; the flowers are white, small, and numerous, occurring in globose heads and appearing in spring. Propogation is by seed sown in spring or by cuttings. Prune back annually after flowering.

There are ten Agonis varieties listed. All are native to WA. I noticed the bees working the Agonis flowers this season. Of course there would not be enough around to provide a honey crop and I wonder if such a honey is produced in WA. I didn't meet a beekeeper over there to ask.
If you read this Bill, while you are in WA, if you run into a beekeeper, can you ask him? Maybe someone in the supermarket business would know.

Remorse

The plumber turned up 5.00pm the next day. I wasn't home, Lib was. He gave her back the whole $260. Lib tried to make him him keep $160 but he wouldn't. She said I'd post it to him, he said he'd send it back. He also brought back the jar of honey. He told Lib I should be careful of my temper, and that I could get myself into serious trouble threatening people.
I've felt sick with remorse ever since. I was justified querying the charge and requesting a refund, but I should have remained calm, even when he became surly and argumentative. I would never try to avoid payment for any goods and services I'd received from anyone. After considerable anguish I decided to the best course of action was to send him a cheque for $160 which I had established would be the fair price for the work. I'd learned this from my plumber friend in Wangaratta, and from another plumber who recently installed our new kitchen sink and mixer, but who was not a gas fitter. He suggested I send a cheque and ask for a receipt so I have proof of payment.
Despite telling the plumber I knew where he lived during our heated argument, I didn't know his address to post him the cheque. So I rang the mobile phone number I had, just after I'd written para 2. There was no one of his name in the phone book in Silvan. He was unreceptive, saying he didn't want my money, he didn't like being a called a liar and a thief, and if he ever heard from me or saw me again I'd be in serious trouble. "Alright, have it your way," I said hanging up.
I didn't use the words liar and thief. I didn't even threaten him directly. I was bluffing, in a brazen and, in retrospect, impulsive and foolish manner, to retrieve $100 I felt I'd been overcharged. With a few words not carefully chosen, but too effective in their intimidation, he concluded there was a possibility I was unhinged and ready to explode like Maria's emu egg. I don't repeat them here, this being a public forum. It's best to forget about it and donate the $160 to a charity.
I've learned a lesson from it. $100 isn't worth upsetting another human being for. Before I engage any plumber or tradesman in a situation where I can shop around I'll first establish all rates and charges before any work happens. I hope my plumber antagonist has learned the same lessons.

On a happier note the electrician came on Thursday to fit the new oven. He charged $70 as he said he would if it was straightforward. This component was priced at $140 in the original Clive Peeters fee. He stayed a little longer to look at my faulty electric uncapping knife and still only asked for $70. I gave him $120 cash and thanked him, saying I was still saving on the original installation quote.
The range hood is my one last hurdle in this kitchen project. I need a cabinet maker as the cupboards need some altering. I've rung one who came recently to cut a new sinkhole in our jarra benchtop. Nearly there.

Australia Day Part Two

After my exhilarating walk in the morning I took Lib breakfast in bed. She asked who was I talking to on the phone earlier. "Nobody, I was out walking though, it may have been the answering machine you heard."
I checked the machine and sure enough a plumber had rang to suggest he came that morning to install a new gas cooktop we'd bought on December 1, and which had been sitting since then in our hall still in its cardboard box, along with an electric oven and rangehood. We'd bought these items at Clive Peeters in Dandenong and paid $408* up front for installation by contracting tradesmen. Allowing two weeks wait on the list we were told they would be installed before Christmas. It didn't happen. When I followed up with Clive Peeters they told me the tradies were busy putting in air conditioning because of the hot weather and our job would be done between Xmas and New Year. It didn't happen. We were then given a firm date, Jan 9. They didn't show. I asked for my for my installation money to be returned and the cheque came last Friday Jan 25.

*($408 was the base price I was told, the tradesmen on the day would want another $50 cash for going all the way to Gembrook and more cash if there was any complication in our particular job. This I could understand)

In the meantime I'd found an electrician from Emerald and a gas fitter plumber from Silvan who said they would be happy to install the items in the next week or so. I was pleased the plumber had rang, even though it was Saturday and I'd planned other things, so I rang him back and said "Good on you mate". He was in our kitchen within an hour.
He was a pleasant fellow. Said he thought he'd get this job out of the way before driving down to Lorne to join his wife and kids who were there on holiday. He was packing up two and half hours later when I asked him how much I owed him. He said he hadn't worked it out yet and took his bucket of tools out to his van. I told him I'd got my money back from Clive Peeters and had made sure I had cash at home, knowing he and the electrician were coming soon.
I don't know what it was he had to work out as he gave me no invoice stating labour or parts but he said when handing me the compliance certificate that the charge for today was $260. I don't think he heard me suck my breath in through clenched teeth as I counted out 5x$50 notes and a $10. It was a lot more than the $140 that Clive Peeters had allowed for the cooktop component of the installation but the plumber had explained he had to move the regulator to the next cupboard as the regulations had changed. Frankly I was relieved to have at least one part of the job done and didn't want to think further about the high price. I gave him a jar of honey and a bottle of cold cordial to take with him.
Last night in the bath I rang an old football team mate, a plumber in Wangaratta, and we magged away about life in general. I ran through the drama I'd had over the kitchen appliances including the Australia Day cook top job. My mate said $260 was a days work for him, he'd have charged $100, the going rate in Wang., if it was a straight forward changeover. I explained the regulator had to be moved and he said "So what? That takes 5 minutes. You were ripped off Gunna." All the old footy people know me as Gunna.
This agitated me, getting ripped off that is, so when I hopped out of the bath I rang the plumber and said I wasn't happy with the job- I was overcharged, I want $100 back. The remainder of the conversation became heated and he jabbered on about the plumbers association. "Stick the plumbers association", I said, "I want $100 back." He rang me back later to say he'd have me blackballed so no plumber would come near me in future.
I don't like my chances that the $100 will come, although I did tell him I knew where he lived. At least I can say I got ripped off on Australia Day.

Australia Day

On my walk yesterday, as if on cue, a whipbird lept up from ground cover which was mostly hydrangeas, and perched on top of an old poker flower stem. Less than 10 metres away, he looked at me quizzically, twitched and jerked, then let go his wonderful cracking call. His mate, slightly duller in colour, olivey, lept up into a heath shrub even closer and also looked at me, without answering her mate's call. They remained watching me for a time, unusually, as whipbirds seem to be always moving, before hop hopping off, making their scritchy small talk.
A little further on, just as I left our place, a bronzewing pidgeon flashed arrowlike across in front of me, it's wings beating rythmically, providing its strong flight. With the screeching of white cockies some way off and crows cawing from high, I saw eastern rosellas flying through trees ahead, their bright green rump shining almost irridescently, as it does when they fly.
A good start for Australia Day! Mudlarks, black cockies, crimson rosellas and a solitary willy wagtail were others seen shortly after. It made me think what a wonderful place Australia is.
On my way back a delightful young lady, Fiona, who lives with partner Lance in Captain Petrie's old residence in Quinn Rd., gave me a baking dish full of duck eggs covered by a blue tea towel. Reaching Agnes St., I thought if I saw Allison I'd offer her some eggs, there being so many. A car came down a drive from the high side and stopped, the driver winding down his window to say hello. It was new neighbour John, an elderly Scotsman who recently bought the cottage to escape the contruction noise at his house in Canterbury. The house next door to his has been demolished and a block of units is going up. He and wife Margaret couldn't stand the noise so they bought a get away in Gembrook, in the same street where their daughter lives with another lady. They have a farm in Scotland and spend six months alternately in each country. Despite their advanced years they've renovated the garden with great energy and result.
John told me I'd better ask Margaret if she wanted some duck eggs, so as he drove off I walked into their place to talk to Margaret who was in the garden. She only wanted two she said, one each for her and John, for breakfast a little later, and she put them in her gardening glove. Beneath our feet there were thousands of sugar ants boiling in and out of several holes. She said she had planned to buy some dust to kill them, but wasn't going to now, after seeing the echidna a couple of times, and all his diggings in the bank out the front. There really is something amazing about echidnas, watching them is an experience to cherish, and I could tell Margaret was touched just as I have been lately. Her eyes lit up as she spoke.
A good start to Australia Day!

For The Record

This morning there were 64 white cockies on the ground foraging in the one acre paddock next to what I used to call the 'galah feeding paddock', now known as 'the gouge'. Also there were 16 galahs, four magpies, and several minas. The two horses that I used to give a handful of lush green grass from outside the fence, or a carrot from my bag, are no longer there. Moved to another paddock with more grass I suppose.
At 'the gouge' there were four cockies searching through the chocolate brown earth for God knows what. A bricklayer and his offsider has been putting up the first of the walls of the house for a week or so. The sound of a generator providing power for the mixer can be heard a hundred metres or more away as I approach. The bricklayer's apprentice is young with bleach blonde long hair, lithe body and tanned skin. He wears not hat nor shirt in the blazing sun on hot days. I wonder if somehow his education missed the skin cancer warnings, or is he simply young, vain, and/or rebellious.
A little further on my way up to the town I saw something well ahead on the road that looked like a squashed plastic soft drink bottle from a distance, but was in fact a dead galah, which must have been hit by a car. Restraining 'Pip' who would have loved to chew it, I picked it up off the road and threw it onto the top of a thick photinia which I thought was a more suitable resting place than being pulverised to oblivion by a day's traffic on the road.
In the main street outside St. Silas's church on my way back, young 'Pip' stopped suddenly on the lead. I watched her nuzzling the earth between the gazzanias and noticed some turkey thyme, growing well and spilling out onto the pavement, so I picked a bunch for the lamb shank stew I've just put in the crockpot. 'Pip' pulled on the lead, she wanted to go back to where 'Snowy' was agitated, darting in and around some agapantha plants.
I don't like letting the dogs make me backtrack, it could become a habit with them. I don't mind stopping here and there, they like to sniff and pee. On the main rd. where there's no pavement I have them both on leads for their own protection from cars. On the little dirt roads and in the park I let them run free, and when I get to the station I put 'Pip' on the lead and leave 'Snowy' free till I reach Launching Place road again.
I was expecting a baby rabbit to run out of the garden as 'Pip' and I reached 'Snow' but it was a movement toward the small birch tree that I noticed. Thinking baby bird of some sort, my immediate reaction was to hope neither dog grabbed it, but before I could do anything it reached the trunk and ran up. It was a young bushrat. It climbed to the top of the tree, only about 15feet high, and sat there.
I don't know why, but seeing the rat was soothing, and went someway to lift the annoyance I felt when I read the sticker on the four wheel drive in Innes Rd.
"If it moves, shoot it, if it doesn't move, cut it down, and if it's green, piss on it."
Also soothing was the 30 ml of rain we had last weekend. Lib and I were at Blaigowrie visiting friends so we didn't see it, but after a hot dry month with no rain registering in the gauge, it was lovely to come home to a wet garden.

My tree of the week is the spotted gum, Eucalyptus maculata. There's one down the back at farm which I planted about twenty two years ago. I was cutting grass in that steep section with the whipper a few weeks ago when I took a break and admired the trunk, which is now five feet in diameter. There's one at home of the same age, both purchased at the same time from the state schools nursery in Melbourne when Michelle* worked there. It's nowhere near as big as the one at the farm, not having the benefit of a moist gully to grow in, but it's a handsome tree with its typical smooth white/grey/lemonny trunk.
Spotted gum forest in coastal NSW is some of the most attractive scenically in eastern Australia. It's an important honey source for commercial beekeepers, especially on the south coast where the winter flowering is ideally combined with mild dry stable weather. As you move north it becomes less reliable. I remember when at Gatton college Qld. our instructor placed a test hive onto breaking spotted gum not far from the college. Nectar flowed heavily for a week but as he was about to move an apiary onto the flow he checked again and it had cut out completely, yielding no more.
Its timber is useful for heavy construction, poles, house building and flooring. Being rock hard, it's one of the best for tool handles eg picks and axes, which is I think its major use in Qld., the better stands being more south.
There are a few spotted gums on my walk, mostly medium sized, probably planted about the same time as my two. They must have been popular as a nursey line back in the 1980's. I enjoy seeing this tree, one of the more attractive of the eucys with it's clean mottled trunk and slightly pendulouus smaller branches and leaves.
My book says spotted gum has been grown in many overseas countries with limited success except in the Union of South Africa where it has been grown since 1910 and there are now (1975) several thousand acres established.

* Michelle, the propagator there, would have grown them from seed. I must mention it to her when I see her as she still does gardening for us a few hours here and there. She's now manager of the nursery at the helmeted honeyeater sanctuary at Yellingbo, propagating indigenous trees and shrubs for planting to help the honeyeaters increase their threatened population. She started work with us as a youngster mowing lawns for pocket money while still at school in the late seventies. After leaving school she worked at the farm as a casual for a year or so till she started a nursery apprenticeship. Ten years on the gov't closed the state schools nursery and she was retrenched, became a gardening contractor, again working at our farm.

Heritage Springs

One of Lib's friends from work had a barbecue/party at her house in Pakenham on Saturday night. We organized chauffer Gordon to drive us down and pick us up at midnight. The address was Overland Rise, Heritage Springs, one of the new estates that have sprung up around Pakenham. I looked up my 1998 Melways to get an idea how to get there and of course being a new 'burb' it wasn't listed.
Lib had a small hand drawn map giving rough directions which showed it was somewhere near a Coles store, so after some indecision when we hit the Prince's Hwy, Robbie, who'd come for the ride, said there was a Coles in the new estate back towards Berwick. We did a tour of 'Lakeside', finding Coles, but it was on the wrong side of the road according to Lib's basic map. As we drove round and round looking for Overland Rise without success, I thought we might have well been in Memphis USA judging from the architecture. The streets and houses seemed deserted, no people to be seen. I guessed they were all inside enjoying the air conditioning. "We'll find someone we can ask working in their garden," I said optimistically, sorry I'd agreed to go in the first place.
"What gardens?" Rob said.
At last we saw a young man and his wife leaving a house with a pusher to take a walk, presumably to get baby to sleep. He said we were a long way off course, explaining there was another 'Coles' at Heritage Springs so off we went and found the other 'Coles', which wasn't difficult when we got close, there were a dozen big signs along the road partition advertising its proximity.
Still, we had nothing to help us find Overland Rise, but it had to be close. With the clarity a man not long out of a hot bath, I said, "Let's head towards that hill, it the only one and Overland Rise has to go up it."
We turned down Heritage Drive and all looked at the street names as we approached. There was Stockman's Ct., twice, it must have done a loop and came back, Coolibah Crescent, Damper Drive, and then bingo, Overland Rise.
We found the house. There was very little room in front for a garden but the back yard was a fair size. It reminded me of suburban Mt. Waverley where I grew up, a timber fence 5/6 feet high surrounding the perimeter. Above the fence on the side, just a foot away from it, stood the imposing brick wall of the next house. The evening progressed pleasantly. We explained that we became lost by going to the wrong 'Coles', and learned there were now three 'Coles' in Pakenham.
One lady, she looked younger than me, when I explained this was my first visit to the new estates, told me that she used to drive cattle through here, right where we were sitting, from their farm at Lang Lang to another paddock they owned on the other side of the small hill. "Along the roads?" I asked.
"Some of the way, but other farmers let us through their paddocks. It was all open country."
She was an interesting lady. As a child she and siblings walked 7km to school and back. When she was young she left home to travel round Australia and spent three and a half years getting from Melbourne to Darwin via Perth, working as she went in hotels, orchards, fishing trawlers, aboriginal missions, whatever she could find. She still had itchy feet when she got back so she took off driving north by herself in a '69 Fairlane, taking 3 months to get to Cape York.
Here I am two days later, reconciling the new Pakenham estates. A friend holidaying in a small Mexican fishing village sent me an email saying they were watching the sun set into the Carribean Sea. Makes me want to jump on a plane.
Yesterday I asked Lib about the lady who was off a farm and worked her way around Australia. Lib said, "I don't know her well, that's Tracey, she's a good friend of the Helen whose party it was. She's recovering from heavy chemo cancer treatment."
I would never have guessed. She seemed so strong, confidant, and unphased.

My tree of the week is Eucalyptus pulverulenta. Indigenous to the southern tablelands of NSW, the Silver Mountain Gum is an excellent foliage tree. I've had some growing here at home and at the farm for many years and used the foliage but never really managed the trees properly.
Late last September, when I was visiting a couple of old dogwood trees I pick blossom from each year on the property behind the farm, I noticed a row of 'blue gums' cut back along the drive to the house. The chap who lives in the house, John Rainor, works for Burnley Horticultural College, and when I asked if that foliage was going to waste and if so could I have some, he told me to take whatever I liked, he'd just cut them back as he's doing a thesis on Euc. pulverulenta and the best way to manage them. If they are left to there own device they quickly become straggly and deteriorate. It's best to cut them down hard every year or two in September to about two feet high therefore promoting vigorous new growth.
I was tardy and didn't do mine till early November but they've responded with healthy new growth. As I did this I collected some seed which I dried off in a paper bag and a few weeks ago tossed the seed into a seed bed and to my joy a healthy crop of babies is coming up, the most advanced are just starting to get the second pair of leaves. Nature is wonderful.
John Rainer says that the college is looking for attractive native garden plants they can promote as useful, dry tolerant, and manageable in town and city situation and the silver mountain gum is all of that.

Emu Eggs, Bombs Away

Maria woke at 2.00am last Friday, alarmed at the sound of an explosion in her house. Thinking the explosion must be gas related, she quickly set about finding it. It didn't take long to find the source of the big bang.
More than a year ago, Maria's grandchilren had been wandering in the far reaches of her fifty acres and came back with an emu egg, much to their amusement. The egg sat in a bowl in Maria's living room, a novelty item for visitors, including the grandchildren on subsequent visits.
It was the emu egg that blew, spraying the living room with it it's vile smelling contents. A smell so bad that many hours of cleaning and deodorising had failed to remove. I had no wish to go inside and sample it myself, prefering when finished my little gardening job to decline Maria's offer of a cup of tea and a sandwich. I remember in my youth riding my pushbike from Mt. Waverley to Doncaster with Graeme Edgelow to visit friends of his family who owned a duck farm. There were thousands of ducks both inside the delapidated sheds and wandering outside. There were duck eggs all over the place and once Graeme picked up an egg and threw it at me, which of course began a duck egg fight. All very well till you got hit with an old rotten one. Nothing is quite like the stink. Imagine a large emu egg cooking up to explode during all that hot weather.
Jod was amused by the exploding emu egg story when I told him later. A wicked laugh came over him as he told me of the time when as kids, he and Steve Edgelow, Graeme's older brother, went to the Melbourne Zoo with the intention of stealing emu eggs for their bird egg collections. The mission successful, coming home on the train with a bag containing more eggs than they needed, when the train was between Spencer St. and Flinders St. stations at the bottom end of of Flinders St where the train goes over the bridge, they pelted emu eggs onto the rooves of cars. Imagine some poor bloke down on his luck having to go home with his car splattered and possibly dented and tell his wife the mess was caused by emu eggs that fell from high.

New year's Eve

The forecast temperature high on this new year's eve is 42C, however it was a reasonably cool morning when I walked early after Lib left for work. As is my custom I started Lib's car to warm it before she leaves and young 'Pip' jumped up on my lap as I sat in the car tuning the radio, a routine the little dog has established lately.
There's a giant messmate tree in the neighbour's property directly in front as you sit in the car looking down the drive which turns to the right and exits our property at the eastern end. I noticed this morning that old leaves, more than I'd ever noticed before, were constantly dropping from this tree and flitting to earth as if in the expectation of the very hot day ahead. There was barely a breath of breeze.
My walk was pleasant enough, except for the masses of flies that were thicker than usual and clingy and crawly as if also in expectation of the heat. What a contrast to my morning walks two years ago when I began the habit on new years day 2006, while we holidayed at Blairgowrie at our friend's (John and Raylene) beach house. I walked along the back beach and the ocean breeze kept flies away. Two years I've been walking. Say 700 walks by 4.5 km, about 3150km if you added it up or perhaps from Melbourne to Cairns Qld almost. Let's hope I stay well enough for several more years to keep it up till I can say I've walked the equivalent of round Australia.
After feeding the dogs I thought before it got hot I'd turn over a bit of ground in the vegie garden which previously had broad beans growing. I planted some parsley seedlings that Len Smedley had given me before Christmas. 'Moss triple curled' Len said it was, 'the best for strength and longevity.' I was happy to have them, I always try to have parsley coming on, I use it in all my cooking, in particular my old favourites, the soups, stews, and spaghetti meat sauce. Not to mention omelettes. A handful of parsley and silver beet with whatever makes a quick, simple, nutritious and inexpensive affair.
Lib cleaned out the laundry cupboard recently and found some vegie seeds so I kept at it and put in some spring onion and broccoli seed and a few beans, and butternut pumpkin seeds I'd saved from the slops bucket. I roughed up some groung and threw in a packet of Russell Lupin flower seeds (the packet was dated use before 00 but you never know, they may come up). Gee it was good to have time to do a bit in the garden, beyond just mowing and whipper snipping. I watered all the seeds in, then climbed on the roof to put an old thick blanket over the sky light to help keep the house cooler. All the windows are shut and the curtains drawn, I just hope the wind doesn't pick up which would bring the anxiety of possible bushfires.
I checked the bees quickly yesterday. The heavy nectar flow, probably from clover, that was there last Thursday after the good rain before Christmas, had slowed right down with the heat and dry since. If the hives had filled I was preparing to psyche myself up to extract the honey but they aren't filled and there's no urgency. The frame with less wires I put in, to give some honeycomb to my neighbours, is only about half drawn out and full so I left it there hoping it fills reasonably quickly so it stays nice and white and fresh.
I look forward to 2008 with optimism. Rain is the key. The grass hay season hereabouts has been prodigious. I saw the four mudlark chicks together this morning sitting on the railings around Janice's horse pen. Also, on the bird scene, I can also report that our whipbirds successfully raised another pair of young, the second year in a row, and also at the farm, a whipbird pair raised young bringing great pleasure to Elvie, Meredith and Jod.
I killed my first European wasp nest of the season yesterday. I'll have to be vigilant as 'Pip' is at risk, she goes so hard at everything. To her great excitement she discovered echidnas the other day, fortunately she's no threat or match due to the spikes. I read the other day that Jack Russells are prone to death by snake bite because they attack them with no fear. If she survives this summer she should be right, surely she'll slow down into her second year.

Merry Christmas

Who could have wished for a better Christmas present than 110 ml of rain over the past four days. To anyone who reads my blog, I consider you a valued friend and to all my friends I wish you a happy Christmas and New Year.

C'est La Vie

"As long as there are people on earth, they will be sexually active."
A psychologist/counsellor, who helped me settle some demons more than twenty years ago, made that comment to sister Meredith at a time when she was struggling following the break down of her marriage. It was said in the context of helping her deal with her fear and anxiety for her daughters who were approaching adolescence. Meredith told me about it as I drove her back from a session with the counsellor/friend/mentor. It was a tough time for her, suddenly on her own without the policeman husband and father.
I've thought of the comment many times when trying to come to terms with things in the years since. He could have said, "As long as there are people on earth there will be prejudice and bigotry." What it means to me is that human nature is as it is, and you need to accept things first, as a starting point, calmly and sensibly, and then do your best from there.

My tree of the week is the sweet pittosporum, also known as the tree daphne. We have half a dozen or so on our place. These are mainly large mature trees. I value them highly for their shade, windbreak and fire retardant quality, food and shelter for birds, and the magnificent scent of their flowers in early and mid spring. They are a source of nectar for my honey bees as well as native bees, moths and butterflies. The only downside of their ability to attract feeding birds with their fruit is the subsequent spread of seedlings, however I have found this is a minor problem. One or two maintenance tours of the property a year removing unwanted seedlings by hand pulling, and mowing or whippersnipping at fire tidy up time, does the trick.

In the mail the other day came a 'notice of an application for a planning permit'. The permit is to: remove vegetation (sweet pittosporum) from the Gembrook road reservations, the applicant for the permit is Cardinia Shire Council. Further reading of the notice shows there are 26 Roadsides involved with an average 40 trees per road= approx. 1040 trees. That's a lot of trees to take out in one hit.
Now and again you have to support the underdog so I'll lodge an objection when I have a little free time after Christmas.
It seems to me poor management to completely ignore roadsides for many years then declare war on the strongest species and remove all these in one swoop, disregarding the benefits of this wonderful tree that delight the senses of man, bird, butterfly and bee, not to mention the basic oxygen pumping, carbon removing attributes at a time of worrying climate change.
It's my view that instead of removing all the sweet pittosporums holus bolus there should be a balanced approach based on annual roadside maintenance removing unwanted seedlings and other weeds such as blackberry and ragwort, both of which, as noxious weeds, should not be there at all except for the obvious neglect of roadside reserves for many years.
Sweet pittosporum is considered as an environmental weed in the Cardinia Shire Council. It's only a problem if land is neglected. It's time we learnt to look after the land, not have a war on one particular useful species. How about a bit of regular sensible maintenance.
I'll keep you posted, but I don't really expect them to take any notice of my objection. C'est La Vie.

Messmates, Mudlarks.

Messmate stringybark is my tree of the week. This tree, which began flowering heavily this time last year and produced honey through most of last summer, isn't flowering this year.
Messmate stringybark is an important tree to the timber industry in Victoria and Tasmania mainly but also grows in the ranges of NSW including the northern tablelands. The timber is used for construction, interior finish, and pulp production. It will grow to 150- 225 ft or more in ideal moist, fertile forest conditions.
We have a number of them on our place, maybe 15, without me going around counting them, the largest of them approaching 100 feet high I estimate. A week ago when returning from my walk I saw a mudlark fly into the higher branches of the tallest, then fly across to what looked like a nest. I got the binoculars from inside and sure enough there was the neat, round pee-wee nest with what looked like two advanced chicks.
I watched them for a few minutes every day last week and decided there was three chicks. They were excercising their wings and standing on the edge of the nest and about to fly. I had a busy day yesterday starting work early and finishing late so I didn't get to look till late in the evening before hopping in the tub. The nest was empty and I felt a pang of disappointment that my babies had gone and I hadn't seen them fly, then I saw a parent mudlark fly into the messmate tree and I followed her with the binos. There on a branch of the tree about 20 feet away from the nest were four mudlark chick lineds up in a row, their white chests and beaks protruding over the edge of the branch.
Early this morning they were still in the messmate tree, spaced out, and each one doing little flights of five feet or so across to other branches. Mum and Dad would come now and again with some food for them. After my walk I checked again and they'd left the messmate tree, leaving me again a little dissappointed. Then I saw a parent fly into a dead blackwood tree on the other side of Bond's Lane and there they were lined up again in the bare branches, some thirty or forty feet from the nest. I expect they'll stick around as a family for a time while the parents teach them to forage for their own food.
I told Jod about the mudlark nest last Friday. He said he hadn't seen one of them for ages. He said, "Do you know mudlarks are all over Australia, even in the deserts, and they always build a mud nest." I checked the bird book, he was right, the distribution map of the Australian magpie lark showed all of mainland Australia coloured in.
One of my tree books, 'Forest Trees of Australia'(1975), says of messmate that overseas plantings have given good results in several countries such as the Nilgiri Hills in India, parts of South Africa and in the better rainfall areas of New Zealand.

Grevillea Robusta

My tree of the week is the 'silky oak'. You can't help but notice them at the moment with their fiery splash of orange in the landscape. I've admired several on my walk over the past few weeks, highly visible even at a distance. Returning this morning I stopped to admire the one at the top end of Quinn Rd.
A white cocky was perched in the top branches. Besides the odd squawk, it just sat in the top of the tree, seemingly watching me, as I was it. Another large bird which I made out to be a currawong, was also in the tree quite close to the cocky, but more inside the tree. These birds didn't seem to mind each others company in the slightest, which I was musing over, given that both are aggressive birds, when the currawong approached the cocky closer and closer till they eyeballed. After a second or two the cocky did a spectacular leap and wing flap off the branch theatrically and flew away screeching, as if it feared contracting bird flu.
The currawong took a step across to the precise point on the branch where the cocky was standing and did a huge poo, which splashed it's way earthward through grevillea flowers. It then puffed up its feathers in a self satified manner, seemingly happy to have dropped its load and displaced cocky. It did a big shake, restoring its feathers, and gave a few calls of its own.
Of course the 'silky oak' isn't an oak but a tree-type grevillea which grows naturally in the rainforests of the east, particulary Queensland. It's often planted in gardens as an ornamental, and the timber is excellent for furniture. We have one at the farm which the Punjab brought up from his family home as a seedling of a large tree which was removed, from memory. Three or four years ago it was looking sick and 70% defoliated but it seems to have recovered and has flowered brilliantly this year.
So Punjab, as you are bunkered down in the Yukon in the norther winter, you can take comfort that we've enjoyed the flowering of the silky oak you gave us in 1973. It too, is a popular bird roost.

Dunbar

Jessie drifted in and out of consciousness. Her mind wandered. She thought she was in field hospitals in France in WWI, stroking the foreheads of dying young men. She loved them, she loved many men. She thought she was on Blackrock beach watching her newfound friend Tom Roberts paint. She was ten years old when they met there, beginning their lifelong friendship, and deciding her course as an artist. She loved Tom. She thought she was in Dunbar's garden, in the shade of the copper beech, looking across to the lillium garden in the front, between the chestnut and the Douglas fir. Her favourite place.
Her friend Willy trusted her and told her many things. She watched him helping the gardener. His clothes were rags and he'd not shaved for years. He lived in a hut somewhere in the bush off Monbulk Rd. He pushed a rusty pram in which he carried things he'd scrounged. He was a mystery to others, 'old Sneezewich', but he wasn't old. Jessie knew the story he'd told no other.
She was in Sydney, etching the construction of the harbour bridge. She was in Hermannsberg Mission in 1932, where young aboriginal Albert Namitjira guided her when she painted in the area. She was at school in Switzerland. She was was in Java in 1911, where she'd gone alone via New Guinea discovering the 'artistic vision of the East.' Back in Dunbar's garden she watched as the gardener gave Willy a bunch of carrots.
Willy was once a member of the Vienna Boys Choir. When WW2 was declared on 3 Sep 1939, the day after their final Australian concert in Perth, the 14 choristers were no longer celebrities but, in effect, Australia's youngest prisoners of war. Board and lodging was arranged for them with local families by the Archbishop Daniel Mannix who made them choir of his cathedral.
Willy, with two other boys and choirmaster George Gruber, moved in with Henrietta Marsh at her Brighton home. George and Henrietta quickly became lovers. They travelled to Emerald for passion filled weekends at Henrietta's country residence, Dunbar.
Willy's mentor and choirmaster, who had a wife and two children in Austria, was arrested in March 1941 and charged with having Nazi links. After catching the resourceful George seducing a 17yo girl, Henrietta, vengeful, dobbed him in. He was sent to a Tatura internment camp. Willy "worshipped" George and was shattered by his arrest and incarceration. Willy agitated to have Gruber freed and cheekily sang pro-German songs outside the police station where he had to report weekly.
Willy, aged 15, was sent to an internment camp in Sth. Australia where he was imprisoned with older enemy nationals. His fair wavy hair and youthful good looks resulted in severe indignity. Willy was released after the war and continued to plead for Gruber's release. Eventually he suffered emotional collapse.
Gruber was deported to Austria in November 1947. Willy "went bush" and disappeared. His Austrian family searched, but never found him.
Despite being ready to die, Jessie involuntarily fought for breath in her last hours. When the hand of death closed on her, Willy's secret died with her. Willy, when he heard, mourned. Never again would he see her arresting blue eyes and feel her warmth, gentleness, humour and endearing eccentricity.
Jessie Constance Alicia Traill, one of Australia's leading printmakers, died at Dunbar Private Hospital, Emerald, Victoria, on May 15th, 1967, at the age of 86, having lived an exceptional life dedicated to her art and to her country.

Cindy looked at the sky. Dark, heavy clouds massing, it was 'as black as a dog's guts.' She waited for the honey man. He was coming to prune a large camellia in her garden. She'd contacted him because he used to cut foliage in her parents garden at Emerald before the property was sold in 2005.
Just as the honey man pulled his van up out the front, the rain started. A few drops, then light rain, slowly becoming heavier. They stood looking at the camellia, discussing its pruning, from the shelter of the porch. "It doesn't look like you'll be able to do it today though. Would you like a cup of coffee?"
The rain was now thick and continuous. Cindy and the honey man talked about the good old days and joint acquaintances. Not that they were old friends, but he'd picked at Dunbar for the better part of two decades, as she grew up. Cindy loved the old family home and it was a real shock when her parent's marriage hit the rocks, totally unforseen.
The honey man was interested in the old house and Cindy told him all she knew. It was built in 1927 on foundations of bluestone salvaged from the old Melbourne Town Hall which burned down in 1925. Two huge wooden sliding doors, also salvaged from the town hall, divided the large house into two identical halves for dual occupancy. The builder lived in one half and the children in the other. It was sold to socialite Henrietta Marsh who used it as a guest house named 'Emerald Chalet'.
After the war it was sold and used as a private hospital. Many people died there in the late years of their lives. Growing up, Cindy said she was often deeply moved by the feeling that spirits were present. "Neighbours bought the house," she told the honey man, "potato growers from Gembrook who have a big cool store behind 'Dunbar', and who truck loads of potatos to Dandenong every day to their chip factory, as in fish and chips."
"I always wondered what was back there, having often seen the semi go out in the afternoons over the years."
Cindy said she'd email him some of the stuff she'd found out on the internet about Dunbar. She'd heard the new owners were thinking of demolishing the house and she was looking into how to prevent this. With the rain still coming down he gave up any hope of working on the camellia and left for the twenty minute drive back to Emerald.
After taking a wrong turn in the hilly backstreets of Tecoma, which led to a dead end and enormous difficulty, and damn near a burnt out clutch trying to back the trailer up a steep hill and into a drive with very little manoeuvring space in the pouring rain and gushing gutters, the honey man took a detour to have a look at Dunbar. The last time he was there to enquire whether he might cut some cherry laurel an Italian man on a tractor had given him short shift.
The roof of Dunbar was gone, all the windows and doors removed. All that remained was the bare walls standing eerily. Presumably, waiting for the bulldozer.

Pat and Carmel

Some sad news came last week. Pat Mahoney, Elvie's great friend, rang to say she was coming up to the farm to visit, as she does before Christmas most years, only this time she broke the news that she was under treatment for lung cancer. Pat had been a heavy smoker for what must be close to 50 years until she bravely gave up the fags four years ago.
She started work for Elvie in her Sth.Yarra florist shop in the early 1960's. It was a pivotal time in our family history. My father, Lyle, who would have turned 82 on the first of December had he not died last March, received an inheritance from a wealthy aunt. He purchased the florist shop, not the freehold, the business, for an absurd sum. Within twelve months he was out of there, the business not delivering what he'd hoped financially, and he no longer able to stand the confinement of four walls each day. Elvie, her three children now at school, had gone to help out in the shop answering Lyle's SOS. She had no background in floristry but this grocer's daughter was an able bookkeeper, had good phone manner, and was a natural tea maker and floor sweeper. And no less importantly, she was a quick learner, adaptable, and had the determination and persistence you'd expect from the offspring of a sergeant of the 57th battalion who'd served more than 1000 days overseas, including the western front, in WW1.
Elvie employed a shop manager/florist, and a junior, a teenage girl named Carmel. The manager brought to Elvie's attention, after some time, that he believed Carmel was helping herself from the till. Elvie sacked her, making no accusations, citing unsuitability. Not long after she discovered it was actually the manager who was rifling the till, so he went too. She employed a new manager, the prickly but efficient, blue rinsed, Ruby Gilbert, and a florist , Pat Mahoney. Ten years of successful business followed.
Pat was a gun florist. A tall, attractive lady who always retained her youthful looks and good humour, she moved into the residence behind and above the shop with her alcoholic husband. Despite the alcoholic husband, who would not hesitate to give his wife a black eye in drunken rage, and the fact that Pat was catholic and a heavy smoker, Elvie and Pat clicked. They needed and supported one and other through many difficult times. Elvie sold her florist business, which had a staff of seven by this time, in the early 1970's, not long after Elvie and Lyle bought the land at Emerald with a vision of growing trees for foliage.
Many years later, mid/late 1980's, one of the shops we delivered foliage to in Melbourne was 'Blossom's of Toorak'. The owner of this business was no less than young Carmel, a generation later. Having known me as a child, she always greeted me warmly and it was a pleasure to go to her shop. To cut a long story short, we stopped delivering to Melbourne in the early 1990's, instead selling to wholesalers who picked up at the farm. This didn't suit Carmel, who couldn't abide the wholesaler's prices. She began driving up to the farm once a week to buy foliage and posies. She'd bring her mother with her for the drive. It was as much a social thing as it was business.
Carmel's mother, we learnt, was not her mother by birth. She used to live across the road from Carmel's family, and having no children of her own she took an interest in her. Carmel's parents were alcoholics who neglected her dreadfully. Her adoptive mother went to her parents one day and asked them could she adopt her, as she'd grown to love the 4 year old girl dearly. Of course Carmel thought of her adoptive mother as real mother, and has looked after her faithfully in her old age. Carmel rang last week to say she couldn't make it, her mother, who in recent months had moved into a nursing home, had died.
Pat's husband died of drink related illness decades ago and Pat has lived in a flat in St.Kilda and works in an opportunity shop. She has one married daughter who was born in the early days at the Sth.Yarra shop.
Carmel never married and lives alone. She's had a florist business all these years, in Toorak, where she pays rent. An amazing achievement. I think she'll probably retire shortly as her lease is due to be renewed.

Trees

My routine varied this morning due to a shortage of time. Lib starts work an hour later, at 8.ooam, every second Thursday when her day isn't working with patients, but catching up on documentation. So when I woke a little later than usual at 6.30am it was too late to get my walk in and still be around to make a cup of tea and discuss the day before she left at 7.30.
After she left I bundled both dogs into the van and drove up to the town, parking at Puffing Billy station and taking off for a short walk along the railway line. This was a quick easy option without the need to have them on a lead. I've been taking young 'Pip' on my walk for the last 10 days now and I have to admit it has tested my patience. She's turning out to be an excellent little dog, but taking two dogs instead of one has detracted from the sheer joyful relaxed bliss of the walk. It's OK on those stretches where I let them off the lead but otherwise both my hands are full and it's hard to stop to pick up a can or other litter without a juggling act. And young 'Pip' changes direction erratically, stops and starts, and even barks at passing cars and leaps at them, and wants to chase every bird she sees. Today
with 'Snowy' and 'Pip' free to run, but still follow me, I was free to look at the trees or the views. A mist hung in the valley, clinging to trees and dripping to the ground. There's a variety of tree types around the station and railway line, evergreen and deciduous, including bhutan, baltic, and radiata pines, cypress, fir, spruce, oaks, elm, planes, tulip trees, poplars, holly, bay, and of course messmates and peppermints, and they enjoy misty mornings. The ground round the base, under the canopy line can be quite wet yet bone dry away from the tree. They're expert at trapping moisture from the air.
Where would I be without trees to keep me sane. I have realized it so forcefully, trees are my major interest in life. The great thing is that just about everywhere you go there are trees to look at and try to identify. They're wonderful things. They give us timber for building, fuel for heating, fruit and foliage for food and beauty, and they suck carbon from the air and produce oxygen.
I'm reading James Michener's 'Texas' and I came to a part where Jubal and Mattie Quimper came across a new tree on their journey through the wilds, a tree with large thorns and rough large fruit, an osage orange. Immediately I remembered seeing a row of trees, unfamiliar to me, along a road out the back of Bendigo some years ago. After some investigation I found out they were the osage orange, Maclura pommifera, a native of Nth America. It's exciting. Apparently the fruit is useless to man and beast but because of the thorns they can make an impenetrable hedge and the hard, flexible timber is prized for making archery bows.
Last week I was in the garden under two Nyssa sylvaticas we have in the back yard and the hum of bees on the inconspicuous flowers was extraordinary. The Nyssa is also a native of Nth America and produces good honey crops in the south of USA, known as tupelo honey. The Quimpers stopped travelling and took up land and built a 'cave house' when they found a place on a river with a lot of bee trees and honey. As coincidence has it I'm currently applying for a grant from the Cardinia council under the shire beautification scheme to purchase and plant 6 Nyssa sylvaticas in Nobelius Heritage Park. The price from Established Tree Transplanters is $187 each for two metre tall trees next winter. I touch wood that the application will be successful. The Nyssa has spectacular autumn foliage, as good as it gets, all the reds through to bold yellow.

Rain Again, Thank Goodness.

I got wet through walking this morning. That's the first real rain since the magnificent 60ml on the 4th of this month. Since then it's been dry, with warm to hot weather and huge numbers of annoying flies trying to crawl into the eyes, ears and nose. There was a few spots and light showers last Sunday but not enough to wet anything properly. We've had 16ml overnight and this morning, and it looks like there could be more showers around.
I've been busy lately at the farm and around the traps cutting grass and picking foliage. We've started on the beech and some of the camellia new growth is firm enough. I picked thirty bunches of Gracie's yesterday. I met her gardener, he said it would be OK if I picked some beech from his place and get some camellia some time. Interestingly I learned in our conversation that he did his nurseryman's apprenticeship at Nobelius Nursery when it was run by Cliff and Arch Nobelius in the 1950's. And, he's been a water diviner all his adult life and is going to call in at the farm in a couple of weeks and try to find a underground stream we hope is there. Not that I'm keen to put in a bore, it would be costly with no guarantees, but it's an option worth some thought.

I looked at the bees on Saturday last. I'd noticed them hunting around the shed for weeks making me think there was a shortage of nectar, for them to be sniffing out the stored combs. I was right, there was very little coming in and the hives had struggled to draw out the foundation I'd put in them late in October as a swarm control measure. I put all my supers of combs out on the hives to stop the wax moths destroying them which isn't ideal when there's no honey coming in but it's either that or start fumigating the stored combs which I don't want to do. Wax moths, or more correctly their larvae, hatch and grow quickly when the nights warm up, and chew through the stored honeycomb searching for protein in pollen. (They could be called pollen moths)
It's not shaping up as a good year for honey but this rain might improve things temporarily with the blackberry and cotoneaster flowering.

Galah Paddock Update

The excavations went for the best part of a week. The machinery, a bulldozer, an excavator, a bobcat and tip truck, have all left. the tip truck carted many loads of topsoil away, not far, because he was back quickly. There's a big gouge now on the high side of the paddock, levelled presumably as the housesite. There's a big depession or hole on the low side of this gouge, perhaps for the septic tank. Then away from the house on the low side of the paddock is another levelled area, I'd say for a large shed.
The galahs were in the paddock next door on the weekend, I counted sixteen. On Monday twelve were sitting on the electricity wires. This morning with all the machinery gone and no human activity they were back in their paddock, browsing through the disturbed earth, looking for whatever they forage for.
There's a blue and yellow portaloo on site ready for the tradesmen who'll soon be working, and a layer of metal (gravel) has been laid on the driveway to the housesite.

Election Market Update

Who would have ever thought that with four days to go to the election Labour would be at $1.25 and the Coalition $4.50? This with a 16 seat majority held by the government.
In La Trobe, Labour's Rodney Cocks has shortened to $1.50 and the sitting member, ex policeman Jason Wood, has drifted to $2.40. I took a little of the $1.50 offered.
In Bennelong, Maxine McKew has come in to $2.20, while the incumbent PM is $1.60
I had another little bite at $2.20. I caught a little of the joint Howard/Costello interview on TV on Monday night. What a comedy act! But unconvincing.
I can't wait till it's over, I'm so sick of politics and so is just about everyone I talk to.

Hipocrites

It has been logically asserted that we're all hipocrites and hipocrisy is an essential basis of civilization, as a lubricant for the smooth running of private and public life. I don't disagree, however it should be considered that there are degrees of hipocrisy and the consequences of the different forms vary greatly from beneficial to extremely damaging.
There are probably numerous times every day when I conceal my real thoughts and emotions in the interests of tact and good manners. In so doing I maintain good relations with other people including family, friends and neighbours. Call it diplomacy or common sense, but without it I'd quickly become odious, obnoxious and objectionable to those around me, and therefore counterproductive. A bit like brother Jod on a bad day.
Now I don't say that to criticize Jod. Readers who have known Jod will understand me clearly, others may not, but I was discussing this very thing with my alter ego, sister Meredith, during the week. Bear in mind that for all of our respective 55 and 53 years we have shared Jod as older brother. For the first almost 20 years of our lives we lived in the same family home and for much of this time he was the archetype tyrranical bully.
Meredith's first husband was a local policeman. The marriage lasted ten years before Meredith left and, after some more years, a divorce was finalized. There was pain and trauma in that block of years and we, i.e. Meredith and me, have an insightful if somewhat cynical view of the police force. We discussed briefly last week the front page controversy raging in the Victorian Police Force, which has resulted in the resignation of two assistant commissioners and the suspension from the force of the head of the police association, amidst allegations of corruption and tipping off murder suspects.
Meredith told me that in the early 1980's she remembers one of the leading characters in the present controversy being awarded a police valour medal for shooting a dangerous criminal. His partner in the car at the time was the 'Toff'. The 'Toff', later to go on to the special operations group, was an Arnie Shwarzeneger body builder type and a gun freak. He was ultimately sacked from the force over a serious sexual indiscretion but he's in this story because he was married to a policewoman who worked at the same local station as Meredith's husband. (They are now divorced and to complete the musical chairs the 'Toff's ex wife is now married to Meredith's ex husband.)
Meredith, on the subject of hipocrisy, asked me did I remember the time in the early 80's when the new sergeant at the police station where Meredith's husband and 'Toff's wife worked was trying to find them during one night shift. The sergeant was straight, and therefore hated by the less than straight staff under him. He tried his best to get Meredith's husband and 'Toff's wife to do some work but hit the proverbial brick wall. There was a prevailing notion at the station, not shared by the sergeant, that if you were a 'twenty year man' you didn't have to actually do anything.
On this occasion, the sergeant became so frustrated, and worried, that he couldn't contact his senior constables on the car radio, he organized a car from another station to look for them. They were found inside the home of another policeman, who was off duty, where they couldn't be contacted on the radio because the car was unattended. This enraged the sergeant, who ordered 'Toff's wife to be breathalyzed, her being the listed driver that night. She was well over .05 and was charged internally with misconduct. There was a hell of a hullabulloo at the station but the sergeant stood his ground and proceeded, but somehow at the subsequent internal hearing there was no penalty.
We might all be hipocrits, but there's hipocrisy, and there's hipocrisy. Another contrast with the harmless type is that in recent times of Richard Pratt and Steve Vizard, found guilty of price fixing and insider trading, to skim hundreds of millions of dollars, while shining in the glow of philanthropy.

Galah Paddock Excavation

Well, I've been dreading it, but yesterday morning Nov 13 there was a bulldozer in my galah paddock pushing the rich chocolate brown earth into a heap. Last week fresh pegs went up, so I knew something was imminent. This morning an excavator was there as well, some serious earthmoving was underway.
My view into the Shepherds Ck west branch valley (beginning with three springs amongst trees to the left of the photo), which I've enjoyed so many times over the nearly two full years that I've been walking in the morning, will never be the same again. Sad for me.
But I musn't be hypocritical. I live in a house myself, and twenty six years ago I hired a bulldozer to knock down a heap of trees and scrub on our block to clear our house site. That no doubt was a sad day for some people, and birds and animals, who liked it the way it was before my house was built.
The thing is, I conclude, at some point we have to have less growth, no more houses, people, and all the cars, iron and concrete that comes with it. With the climate change factor it has to be sooner rather than later.
I'm voting 'Green' at the federal election on Saturday week. God, I wish more of our politicians could think like Bob Brown. And I say that with no intention of blasphemy. I mean it and pray to God for it. What about China?, you might ask. Well, as Kevin 07 says, we have to set an example. And, the Chinese have at least taken serious and effective measures to reduce population.

The Humble Blackbird

I tossed in a fresh bone and locked little dog 'Pip' in the laundry with a hot water bottle wrapped in its favourite blanket, and took off down the steps. This morning I felt full to bursting with energy, wanting to power my way up the Quinn Rd. hill. 'Snowy' took off ahead of me as if sharing my impatience to scan the horizon from the top of the hill.
Just as I threw the carry bag up over my shoulder and felt the rhythm of my trekking boots taking over, I saw two blackbirds flitting around the window of the shed. I'm sure they were trying to catch my eye, fearful I'd forgotten them, which I had till I saw them. Every morning I put a handful of mini dog yummies on the windowsill of the shed and at a couple of other strategic places. The blackbirds love them and are there waiting every day. They come up close and almost take the titbits from your hand, as bold as you like.
On the weekend I disturbed a blackbirds nest. It had 3 speckled blue eggs inside and I had to remove it from my burning heap so it wasn't incinerated when I burn the heap, which I'll do in the next few days before the fire restrictions come in on the 12th of November, as has been advertised. I was glad it didn't have fledglings, I would have had to abandon plans to burn and have a dry firehazard heap there all summer. Even disposing of the eggs didn't come easily to me, the birds are a part of the garden and the whole ecosystem that keeps us alive and I have affection for their effort to raise young.
It made me think of Paul, a fellow who lives adjoining Nobelius Park. We had a discussion about blackbirds, and birds in general, a few weeks ago. Paul is a 'greenie'. He loves the natural environment and he approached me in the park to ask what vegetation was being removed. I'd put a sign up, in conjunction with the council, advertising the removal of vegetation and inviting objections. He approached me wanting to know what vegetation was to be removed and when I answered that in the short term the first things to go were the three Japanesese cedars near his place he asked could this be delayed because there were butcher birds nesting there at the time, could we wait till the fledglings had left the nest.
I replied this would be no problem, there was no urgency. I told him that once this permit to remove vegetation was obtained it meant that the vegetation management plan had been approved by council's planning section, which meant that over a period of years, as funding allowed, we would remove more things due to overcrowding, inappropriate siting, etc, without having to obtain a permit each time. I pointed to a prunus niger tree nearby suggesting it as an example.
Now you learn something every day. Paul said he'd be sorry to see the prunus go because the leaves were a good food supply for the ring tailed possums which had drays in the Thujya nearby. We went and looked and saw a blackbird's nest as well. I said "Actually Paul this Thujya is probably to go eventually, as this area in front of the packing shed is zoned for open vista, meaning there will be low growing plantation. The Thuju grows very large and will block the vista."
He said he understood the need to have a longterm plan but before anything was removed, could I let him know so that if the possums were in that dray he'd move them gently to another dray before the tree removal. He said he was unconcerned about the blackbirds, they were an introduced English bird and should not be here at all. He regularly searched the park for their nests and destroyed them.
This struck me as a bit odd. If the blackbirds shouldn't be here because they aren't native, neither should the Japanese cedars, which provided nesting sites for butcher birds and others, the prunus, which give food to ring tails, and the thujyas, where the ringtails nest.
I told him this, and added that if you followed that logic through, he and I shouldn't be here either as our origins are European, and the impact of our population has been devastating to just about everything indigenous over 150 years.
He saw my point, and we agreed that it's very important to maintain wilderness areas without European species and to preserve large areas of native indigenous bush but this couldn't apply to the whole country if you wanted to house and feed 20 million people.
The humble blackbird plays a part in the whiteman's food chain, establishing itself along with us, in our gardens. It has a role to play eating grubs and insects and I'm sure has a beneficial role in the scheme of things. I know they are territorial but so is nearly everything. I'll keep feeding my brave little blackbirds.

Money Talks

Rain, sufficient today to prevent my morning walk for the first time in months, may well be tinkling on the iron roof, but it's the whispers from the betting markets that I'm hearing.
Last week I put $10 on Maxine McKew to rid the Australian parliament of you know who on election day, 24th November. The price at Lasseter's Sportsbook was $2.30 for a dollar, a bit lean I thought, but I like the lady's pluck, and this election promises to be the most interesting in a long time. So I win $13 if bold Maxine makes history. I liked her when she did Lateline, admiring her poise with political heavyweights. She's lost some personal appeal to me now she's a politician, but I still think she's a bit of alright.
The news bulletin this morning gave the results of a poll in Bennelong which indicated she was the preferred candidate on first preference, 48% to $47%, so I checked Lasseter's again and she'd drifted, surprisingly, to $2.40. I went to Centrebet, they have her at $2.60. I couldn't resist and put on another $10. So in total, so far, I'm risking $20, a chance to win $29. GO MAX BABY, I wish you well over the next three weeks and I'm trusting that your background journalistic professionalism will prevent gaffes, unlike nudenut Garrett.
I looked at the other NSW seats and according to the betting there are only three marginal or close- Centrebet has Page $1.83 Lib/$1.87 Labour, Paterson $1.50 Lib/ $2.40 Labour(hardly marginal) and Robertson $1.77 Labour/$1.95 Lib. Lasseter's has them Page $1.80/$1.90, Paterson $1.60/$2.20, and Robertson $1.80/$1.90. The other seats are shoe-ins if you believe the money.
In Victoria much the same applies. Our electorate, La Trobe, is the closest at $1.80 Lib/$1.90 Labour, then there's McMillan and Deakin both $1.72 Lib/$2.00 Labour, and Corangamite $1.65 Lib/$2.10 Labour. It's already over in every other seat if the market's got it right.
I haven't looked at the other states, but on the election result, the betting is Labour at $1.28 and the Coalition $3.50. Much can change in three weeks, the serpent pit is writhing, but that price is a compelling indicator that we may well have a change of government.
Should it happen I will be happy on election night to visit my friend Maria with a good bottle of red to drink in celebration. Maria, my writing teacher, has a strong interest in politics and a dislike for you know who and his politics. She has offered open house on election night. As I look out the window at the rain belting down I'm reminded of my wish, at the end of October, for a wet November. I'm sure Maria's wish for November would have been for the downfall of the Howard regime after 11 sad years during which social justice and much of what Australians were once proud has been degraded and diminished, while the rich and powerful and greedy have raked it in.
As for me, I'm for the Greens. Nature and the environment is my scene, for the good of us all, longterm. Raise taxes I say, especially at the higher income end, to protect the environment and help the needy. My second preference will go to Labour candidate Rodney Cocks. We need change and a new vision.
Aussies be brave!

Mary

October is nearly done and dusted. I didn't get my wish for a wet month. I've had some highlights though, notably-

1. Picking dogwood and philadelphus (mock orange). I'll expand on this another time.

2. Watching young Ella (niece Annie's 3yo daughter) run to Jod and leap into his arms. Again, this is worthy of a blog post on its own another time.

3. Seeing the beech trees come into new leaf.

4. Calling on Mary yesterday and having coffee with her.

I had a phone call Sunday morning from Blossom, who'd had a call from Mary. Mary told Blossom that she hadn't seen me for ages and she missed me and she wondered if I was alright, and also that she had a friend who wanted to buy some honey. I told Blossom to tell Mary I'd call on her tomorrow, yesterday. Mary has never rung me direct. I don't know why.
Mary lives in Emerald. I have known her for some 15-20 years and I call on her every 3 months or so and give her a pot of honey. I first met her when I was picking rosemary in the front yard of a house in Kings Rd. A little lady walking down the footpath stopped to ask me what I was doing. She was dressed in black and wore a head scarf pulled tight over silver hair and spoke softly with a European accent. She explained that she used to pick rosemary where it protruded through the fence as she went past, but she didn't need to now, as she planted a cutting in her garden and now she had her own. I was welcome to come and pick some at her place if I wanted to, she said.
I next met Mary at Blossom's place. Mary was of Polish origin and both ladies had been married to Polish men. They were friends who supported each other over many years, a friendship forged by the harsh bond of having alcholic husbands. Mary was a widow, having escaped her violent husband some years earlier and hiding through winter in another friend's garage. Blossom's ex husband also died and she moved away but the two ladies, despite numerous grave health difficulties over the years, support of each other in spirit by phone.
The coffee was strong yesterday and the mug filled to the brim. A plate of ginger biscuits and two slices of almond bread was put in front of me and Mary talked, glad to have company. I gave her two jars of honey and, having more in the van, asked her who it was that wanted to buy honey. She said a Polish name, adding that there was not really an English equivalent, but it was like 'Joanee'.
I asked where 'Joanee' lived and Mary said Altona, and that she comes up to visit a couple of times a year.
"How do you know 'Joanee'?"
"She was on the boat from Germany with me in 1949. She's Polish also but we'd been in Germany for nearly ten years after being sent there to work in 1940. I was fifteen. It was no good going home to Poland after the war. Many who went back were packed straight on to trains and sent to Siberia."
As soon as I'd drunk the coffee my mug was refilled and Mary continued. I knew most of her story. She was sent initially with her three year old daughter to Bonegilla migrant camp and then Maribynong migrant hostel where she met her husband who was to father her other four children. Her eldest son, Joseph, followed in the footsteps of his father, also becoming alcoholic. Much to Mary's misfortune, after the father died the son came to live with her, which inflicted on her more than another decade of abuse. He drank himself to death two years ago. He was the same age as me, and a strikingly handsome young man studying phsycolgy at Monash when we first moved to Emerald. He took sister Meredith on dates a couple of times.
Mary showed me photos of Joey's grave in Macclesfield cemetery. The headstone was made by a family friend who worked at a stonemason's in Darwin. He grew up playing with Joey in Sunshine and was a lifelong friend. He too had a problem with alcohol but beat it, and he often asked Joe to come to Darwin and stop drinking, offering to help him beat it. When he heard Joe died he made the headstone and came with it all the way from Darwin at no cost to Mary.
I asked Mary once did she mind me calling her Mary when everyone else called her Maria (Blossom introduced her to me as Mary). She said no she didn't mind at all. She liked it. The father of her first child in Germany called her Mary, she said, and I reminded her of him. He was to marry her but his wife, thought dead, reappeared.
Mary found a photo to show me of herself and her daughter taken in 1950 not long after arriving in Australia. A photo of a pretty young lady with a ready warm smile, the same smile that still comes so easily. I'll visit her again soon.

Oh for a wet November!

Kids Fun Run with 'Thomas' (Get 'em Young)

When I reached J.A.C. Russell Park at 7.00am on my walk yesterday, Sunday, there was a hive of activity in progress. Barrier signs 'Road Closed' were placed across Inness Rd. and vehicles were unloading equipment such as an inflatable jumping castle and market stall tents.
The whole scene made me comment to Merle, who works for Puffing Billy, "I'll have to stay out of town today to avoid this lot."
"Why don't you come up about ten o'clock," countered Merle, "the kids love it, they have a great time." I walked off saying I had a lot to do but would see how I go, but had no intention of going anywhere near it.
Around the corner I met Norm Smith, as I often do, and I said to Norm, "Listen mate, am I getting to be a grumpy old stick in the mud, or am I right to be annoyed by this fun run hoo ha?"
Norm is not a big Puffing Billy fan, but he replied thoughtfully, "Oh Well, I suppose it's a bit of fun for the kids and brings a bit of business to the take away food shops and the pub."
This morning on my walk, with the benefit of a day to think about it, when I got to J.A.C. Russell Park there was a row of garbage bins lined up ready to be picked up and litter on the ground around them. I picked some up on my way past, including a number, dozens, of tickets printed 'Action Events Admit one'. On the back of the ticket in bold print, were the words, YOU ARE HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE ORGANISERS ACCEPT NO RESPOSIBILITY FOR PERSONAL INURY OR PROPERTY DAMAGE.
Well, well, I thought, nice to see the organisers observing legalities.
I met Merle again and greeted her with the comment, "There's a lot more litter for me to pick up this morning Merle." As I spoke I was pouring coke, from a Coca-Cola bottle I'd picked up, into the garden adjacent to the station.
"Did you come up and watch?"
"No Merle, it's not my scene. I'm trying to get my head around it. I'm going home now to write down my feelings, while it's fresh."
"At least it gets the kids exercising," she came back.

So this is for Merle. It's not my habit to tip a bucket on do gooders like the Rotary Club, especially when 'proceeds are going to provide specialist medical equipment to Monash kids to help change the lives of some very special children', but I'm sticking to my guns.
I looked at the fun run website. Six fun runs, two for children 2 years and under, the other four graduating upwards in age to 9-12 year olds. The website showed scores of children with numbers across their chests running between plastic tape like sheep in a race, excited by a steam engine done up to look like the farcical British TV cartoon character and swooped on by by Puffing Billy for commercial promotion. Every fun run entrant, (entrance fee $15) receives a 'show bag' containing lollies and other 'goodies'.
If we need to do this to get kids exercise then something is terribly wrong. This is training children to behave herdlike. We are at risk of turning into a nation of idiots, that feeds unceasingly on big 'events' and entertainment.
As it said on the ticket, YOU ARE HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Exochorda or Pearlbush

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the brilliant yellow flowering forsythia. I would also have mentioned the pearlbush or exochorda which was also flowering at the same time, and still is, but I couldn't remember its name so I didn't mention it. I asked Laurie Begg, who gave me the plant in the first place.
Our house faces the northeast, on a gentle slope, and the forsythia is at the east end, say at about one o'clock from the corner, and the pearl bush at the other end, say at eleven o'clock from that corner. Just as I'd never seen the forsythia so spectacular, the same has to be said for the pearlbush. It's been a 10ft. ball of white for weeks. I remember cutting it back hard, to about 5 feet high, February before last. The flowers are on the new growth since, all the way along the 5 feet or so which has grown from the old wood in every direction, creating a spherical effect. I'll cut it back hard again soon, now it's almost finished flowering, and wait expectantly for a repeat show next spring.
Prior to this spring I had little regard for it, thinking it was in the way, a vigorous grower needing pruning, with flowers not keeping in water, so no good as a cut flower. I've changed my opinion, it's well worth the space, and the pruning, just for it's show. I looked it up in the book. It's a native of China, as is the forsythia. So many of our ornamental plants originate from China.

Cantaloupe

I bought a cantaloupe yesterday at the fruit shop, first one for months. They became too expensive for me during winter, reaching $7 or $8 each. I noticed they were $4.99 yesterday so I took one home as a special treat. I cut it up after my walk today and ate a good whack of it chopped up on my muesli. Man it was good! I store the rest of it in the fridge in a large snap tight plastic container and it will last me 4/5 days. Soon, as the weather warms and the season progresses they'll be cheaper and I'll eat cantaloupe everyday. I love it.
My cantaloupe habit began in 2005. On our way to Peru we stopped in Santiago Chile for two days and one night. We stayed at the Fundador Hotel in the city centre and breakfast was an extravagant buffet style with any amount of fresh fruit. The same applied throughout Peru, breakfast included loads of fruit and cantaloupe was my favourite. When we came home it was cheap in the fruit shops and eating it at breakfast reminded me of our wonderful trip. Still does.

Allan and Shirley Home

My friends Allan and Shirley returned after 3 months in Queensland last week. They go up most winters, staying with their daughter who owns a florist shop at Noosa. I've mowed their lawn at Avonsleigh for years and do odd gardening jobs eg. cutting back and pruning.
There was quite a bit of work to do this winter. They wanted a number of large rhododendrons in the front garden and a golden cypress in the the back reduced as well as the usual maintenance, so when it was done they owed me a tidy sum. An hour here and there adds up over three months.
Almost every time they go there's a drama of one sort or another, usually involving Allan's health. The only winter since I met them that they haven't gone up there was a few years ago when Allan was recovering from a brain tumour operation. The Queensland sojourns are plagued by heart attacks, respiratory infections, and other buckshees, the particulars of which escape my recollection.
On the weekend they were due to return, by train, as for two years Allan's doctors have said that flying is too risky for him, he rang me from Noosa to explain they'd be delayed about a week. This time Shirley had gotten sick with a chest infection three days after they arrived. It turned into pnuemonia, she spent several weeks in hospital where her heart gave complications so the whole trip was dominated, again, by medical drama. Shirley was not well enough to travel home by train so another daughter flew to Qld. and drove them home in a hire car.
After mowing the grass last Thursday afternoon I enjoyed a couple of glasses of red wine with Allan and Shirley as they ran through the whole story. We all agreed that Queensland is that sort of place, a land of extremes of climate and where drama and surprise is always close. Expect the unexpected.
Allan then said that when he first came to Australia in 1949 as migrant from England he landed first in Brisbane and stayed at the migrant hostel at Kangaroo Point under the Storey Bridge. He walked the streets looking for work and after a period of no success he landed two in one day. He took one as a stores clerk with the Queensland British Food Company because they offered to fly him to Rockhamton and, being an ex RAF man during WW2, a plane trip appealed to him. He spent most of the war attached to Australian units in England and Scotland and therefore had many Australian mates, which is why he chose to migrate to Australia. He was an armourer, which meant his job was to make sure the machine guns and amunition were in good order before the planes took off.
The Qld. British Food Co. was a joint government venture set up to provide food to help end the post war shortage in Britain. Allan worked at a large farm at Peak Downs where they were growing 96,000 acres of sorghum in the rich black central Qld. soil. Thirty tractors worked together to plant the crop which was to be fodder for pigs on another farm. As bad luck would have it, a big frost burnt much of the crop, then shortly after it rained solidly for a week, the first rain Allan had seen in months. The crop turned black, ruined.
Allan could not stand the humidity for one more day and took off, heading south to stay with a mate in Melbourne. The rest I know. In short, he went to Lorne for a brief holiday before looking for work and walked into the Pier hotel where he met Shirley, who was on holiday with two of her nursing friends. He worked for some years as a cost clerk with a fuel company before starting with BP where he progressed to area marketing manager, working in rural Victoria till retirement, which led him to Avonsleigh after a twelve month world trip.
He's 85 now. Despite his health troubles over the years he's sharp mentally, a great conversationalist. The 'gift of the gab', stood him in good stead throughout his working life. It's something he acquired in the RAF, he says, where he needed to relate to people from all walks of life.
I look forward to mowing the lawn and enjoying the odd glass of red through the season.

I Wish

Three times only this September I've walked early in light rain. With 26 days done it's looking unlikely there'll be more, although the forecast is for showers over the next few days. Often when they say that it doesn't happen. The rain we did have was most welcome after a drier than usual August but it was light rain only. I think about 30 ml for the month so far, if that. We haven't had the heavy spring rain we need. Oh, for a wet October.
Despite the dry, gardens are blooming marvellous. Cherrys are in flower and apples are breaking. Oaks are getting new leaves, as are liquid ambers, elms are flowering thier lovely pale green, pines have their soft light finger shoots. The spud farmers are out rotary hoeing their recently poughed paddocks. If your view of the world was restricted to my walk, without regard to the water levels of the reservoirs or the plight of croppers and irrigators in places less fortunate, you'd think we lived in a lush green paradise.
But if rain doesn't come soon, we're in for a long, horrible summer, with dwindling water supplies to keep new plantings alive. This is scary. Lib's sister Pat rang from Bendigo on the weekend and said it's like a desert there. Many farmers are going to the wall after good autumn rains gave hope and optimism.
Oh, for a wet October.

September Action

I've never seen the forsythia flower so brilliantly. A blaze of bright yellow, 8 feet high and the same across, it has lit up the garden for the last 3 weeks. Spectacular. It's the one with the larger flower, that flowers after the smaller flowered type, and holds back longer shooting leaves. We first acquired it taking cuttings from a plant at 'Blossoms' old place in Emerald. Good old 'Bloss' knew her ecka.
And I don't think I've ever seen the camellias flower so abundantly. It really has been a wonderful spring show. The stachyurus and the magnolias were magnificent. The air is now filled with the scent of sweet pittosporum blossom and the buds on the dogwoods and lilacs are swelling. They're heavily budded and I anticipate another great show, one of the early white dogwoods is already showing.
I had a look at the bees on Saturday. They were doing well, good strong doubles full of bees and hatching brood, drones included. Given that drones take 24 days to hatch from the laying of the egg, the queens must have thought things were shaping up well during that burst of warm sunny weather in the second half of August. I put a third box on each to give them more room.
Yesterday I was busy cutting back the lemon and lime trees, and I cut out the grapefruit altogether. One fruit in all these years and nothing last year isn't good enough. I planted a group of 11 daphnes where they'll get morning sun and afternoon shade and mowed most of the grass.
As for the footy, next Saturday Geelong and Port Adelaide will slug it out for premierhip glory. It's all the talk. Geelong are strong favourites. Tonight it's Brownlow Medal night. Lib asked me to put $20 on Port's Chad Cornes which I did on the computer (I have an account with Lasseter's Sports and also Centrebet) at 7 to 1 so I'm hoping he wins.
Silvan beat Woori Yallock in the grand final of the local footy and I also notice the Wangaratta Magpies beat Nth. Albury, to take out it's first OM flag since 1976. I watched that game at the Wang showgrounds 31 years ago, when I lived there. Twinkle toed captain Des Steele danced his way up and down the ground at his ballerina best as they triumphed over arch rivals Wang Rovers.

When I Woke Up This Morning

I woke at 6.00 am, becoming aware my hand was on my penis. A male thing, I guess. It was reassuringly warm and plumpish. That first ever 'limp experience' recently was nothing to worry about, surely. I thought of September 35 years ago, at Puckapunyal, in the first weeks of national service training, where at 0530 some oafish buffoon NCO would come stomping through the hut, polished boots cracking on polished linoleum, yelling "PARADE 8, PARADE 8, HANDS OFF THE COCKS AND ON WITH THE SOCKS." It was freezing most mornings, the night seeming to have disappeared in two seconds. A wattlebird annoyed one recruit, waking him every morning with raucous 'chokking' outside his window, well before reveille. A flowering callistomen drew the bird to that spot each dawn.
I could hear the dogs playing on the lawn. Old 'Snowie' and young 'Pippa' get on well now and start early, romping around on the back lawn behind our bedroom window. It was the play growl I could hear, they running up and down competing to bite each other on the neck. Through this noise Mr. and Mrs. Whippy called to each other. Yes, our eastern whipbirds are back, not seen yet this season but heard daily, loud and clear. It's a wonderful sound on a Sunday morning, when you don't have to get up immediately. I lay snug and warm listening to the whipbirds, the wattlebirds, bellbirds, currawongs, magpies, blackbirds, and others I could not distinguish that made up the full concert.
On my walk I saw Harry talking to another man near the top of the hill on the main road. I hadn't seen him for a couple of weeks, and being Sunday I knew he was on his way back from the cemetery, where he visits his son's grave. His son died in a truck accident some 20 years ago. As he broke from talking to the other man and started walking towards me I could tell all wasn't well with him as his gait was slow and restricted.
He greeted me warmly, and I asked him how did the funeral go. Last time we spoke he told me a friend's wife had died of leukemia. He said it was sad, and added that he went to another funeral last week, that of Lettie from Station Rd. He said that was Heinz he was talking to just now, Lettie's husband. The first funeral was for a wife of one of Harry's 'Club 52', which is the group that has met regularly over 55 years, having migrated to Australia by ship in 1952. Of the 30 or so men originally in the club, seventeen have died, 3 are widowers, and there are 8 widows who attend. "There are a lot of funerals these days", he said.
Lettie and Heinz were not members of Club 52 but Harry knew them well. Lettie had bone cancer for 13 years and was the Peter McCallum clinic's longest serving patient. She regularly had chemo to keep the cancer under control but the treatment caused a blood clot in her stomach and despite an operation, she died.
A cold breeze was blowing, Harry said he'd better keep moving, he had a crook back, which explained his stilted walking. As we parted I said how good it was lying in this morning listening to the birds. Harry said he listened to them too and he loves to hear them when he wakes.

What a Week!

It started badly last Monday morning. I noticed my neighbours' burning heap still smouldering as I went for my walk. They'd burnt off on the weekend on the burnsite on Bond's lane, taking advantage of the dry weather. It'd been a good burn, with just an old stump now flickering flame with a gust of wind. There was plenty of heat still in the ashes so I decided to drag my prunings from the fruit trees onto it after breakfast.
This done I went off to pick camellia bunches at Keith's and Huite's and returned before lunch to stoke the fire, that is, throw in sticks that fall outside the fire into the middle. Somehow while doing this a sharp stick burning at one end must have caught as I was throwing in an armful. The hot end stabbed me in the soft inner part of the right upper arm, below the bicep. Painful? Yes.
After lunch the bee stung me in the left eyebrow so the rest of the day was less than comfortable as I worked cutting laurel from the top of Steve's hedge, straining feet and lower legs balancing on the ladder, and hands, upper arms and shoulders reaching and twisting to bring the prunings down with the pole cutters. It was warm and windy, I forgot to take a drink and soon had a fierce thirst. I was buggered by the end of the day. It was in the bath later that my eye swelled up as a reaction to the bee sting.
Tuesday morning I was OK, if not full bottle. It was picking at Huite's again that I first didn't feel well. He was following me around, talking, and annoying me without meaning to. I had no energy. Huite suggested I look at his plum tree which was about to flower and his pieris bush at the back of the shed. I kept polite, despite wanting only to get out of there, and pushed on and picked the plum blossom and the pieris. It was a tough couple of hours. The rest of the day was the same, I dragged myself through at slow pace.
The nature of my ill feeling revealed itself that night. Gastric flu. I was sore all over and crook in the guts. Most of Wednesday I spent in bed, till I had to get up to meet the bloke the council was providing to help me the next day. Thursday was the big tree planting day in Nobelius Park. There were many hiccups. Some trees delivered were the wrong trees, some meant to be delivered at 1.00pm came at three, my helper had to leave before three so it was a long hard day. All the while the wind blew angrily, and being so dry lately made watering important. Friday I felt much better but crashed again in the evening and was crook in bed again Saturday. Sunday things picked up and I did some mowing.
Noone else in the house had the gastric flu. I'm suspicious that the bee sting had some influence. Perhaps all my antibodies went to fight the bee sting, leaving me vulnerable to the other thing. It's nice to be recovered now, and reflect that the week from hell I endured was better than being stung in the chest by a stingray barb. Steve Irwin died a year ago.