There was 'something in the air' this morning. Thunderclap Newman's hit record of the seventies would have been an appropriate anthem for the weekend talkfest. Let's hope something comes of it. I've heard nothing impressive so far, and nothing about rescuing the environment and teaching average Australians about their surrounding flora and fauna and living in harmony with it. If the mud splattered four wheel drive vehicle convoys and trailbikes around Gembrook at the weekend are an indication, there's a long way to go.
The air was cold and misty and perfectly still. To this walker, recovering from three days of gastric flu, it was like an injection of life straight into the vein. Smoke from the DSE/CFA controlled burns mingled with the freshness, bringing a little of the bush. I was breathing fine particles of incinerated understory and the charred bodies of thousands of lizards, echidnas, possums and birds and insects, sacrificed to improve the bush and make it firesafe.
I was so thankful that I felt well again. I worked through the acute stage of my flu on Friday, pumped full of painkillers. We had a busy day, due to Jewish passover I think. I had an order for 50 bunches of pin oak foliage as well as other extras above normal. I climbed a tree at the farm which showed good autumn colour and took off the entire top half to get the fifty bunches. Such exertion when you're crook knocks you about, I was in bed dosed up at 7.30pm without any dinner.
Saturday I'd set to work through the bees to prepare them for winter, the weather forecast being for a fine warm day. I took off five boxes sort of half full of honey and pollen and pinched the head of the failing queen of the poorest hive and united it with the hive which was the swarm I caught in the cemetery in December, leaving me four doubles of reasonable strength going in to winter. By days end I'd extracted the honey, about 40/45 kg.
Lib worked yesterday, so after she left at 6.30am I worked on the vegies for our roast chicken dinner and chopped up swede, carrot, onion, celery, parsnip, garlic and herbs for a spag sauce. I walked for an hour, then browned one kg of mince, sealed the vegies with a minute or two in a hot frypan, and put it all in the crockpot with tomatoe paste, a tin of tomatoes and three chopped home grown to cook on low for 10 hours. I make a helluva good spag sauce.
The boys and I left in Gord's car for the footy before midday to catch the start of the Melb/Carlton match at 1.10pm (oddly). It was a spirited contest when Melbourne hit the front early in the second term. At that point I had to find a toilet and when I returned ten minutes later Carlton was six goals in front. We left at three quarter time, eight goals down.
The smoke seems to have cleared a bit now now, as I look out the window at the currawongs having their annual feast in the fig tree. A few months ago I talked to one of the full time CFA blokes who does much of the burning about here in the autumn. I asked him what was the status of sweet pittosporum in terms of fire hazard, when I was researching a response to the council's war on this tree. He wasn't sure which it was at first but when I described it and explained its commonality he said "Oh yeah, that's really hard to burn, its full of moisture and very little grows under it to provide heat in a burn to get it going."
"Why burn it then. Why not cut it out with a chainsaw and paint the stump with roundup."
"No, that'd be too hard in the bush, easier to get a really hot fire going and get rid of it."
He continued to explain the merit of regularly burning the under growth to generate vigourous new green growth of indigenous flora, to the benefit of wildlife species in the surrounding areas which have new unoccupied habitat to move into. I could see his point, but asked him doesn't the fire also cause the sweet pittopurum to vigourously regenerate, it being a native although not indigenous to this area.
"Yes it does, but we send DSE teams in to spray the regrowth with weedicide so we select what comes back."
I'm not convinced that the management pracices in all this are ideal. It's too hard to root out sweet pittosporums manually in the 21st century with the aid off chainsaws, power winches and weedicide but our predecessors cleared vast areas of native forest with axes, crosscut saws and bullocks in a short space of time. The only sure thing at the moment is that every autumn there's a pall of smoke hanging for up to weeks on end, and a lot preserved DSE/CFA salaries paid on this dog chasing it's tail management. Maybe we should be looking to fire resistant species like sweet pittosporum to grow as protective belts for towns and houses and farm buildings.
I can only hope that something comes of the 20/20 summit.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
The Monterey Pine
I stand open to correction, but as far as I know the common old pine tree around Gembrook is Pinus radiata or the Monterey pine, indigenous to Nth America. There are Bhutan pines at the railway station and the odd baltic pine and Mexican pines in gardens but the common old pine tree is pinus radiata.
I counted them on my walk the other day. The driveway to the first house on the low side of Quinn Rd. has a row of 8 mature trees. I counted 18 young saplings along the roadside here, babies of that row. A little further on, on Launching Pl.Rd. there's a row of 18 along the front of a house where a front fence would normally be. Another hundred metres or so and there are 4 seriously large specimens in each corner of the block where the 'phsyco' house* stands, in the middle of these four dark giants. Then there's another couple on the other side of the road near the JW's. There's 8 or 9 big ones visible in the station woodland, one of which came down in the storm.
That's a lot of pine trees, just on my walking route, and they'll reward me shortly with pine mushrooms at their base. There's another four around the Catholic church in the main street. They remind me that a large specimen some years ago crashed down on the Uniting church in Ure Rd., totally destroying the building. Fortunately there was no congregation in the church at the time, the sinners spared. I'm trying to think of a God/Proddy joke but it would be in poor taste.
To me as a beekeeper, pine trees seemed a waste of space, having no value to foraging honeybees. Recently, I had a bee box, in the flat, posted to me by the equipment supplier. As I nailed the four sides together I noted that it was of course pine wood, being light, soft and easily nailed, resisting splitting.
On Easter Monday on my walk when I reached 'the gouge', a pair of plumbers were preparing to get to work so I went in to have a chat. They were suspicious of my cordiality at first, as if saying to themselves, "What's this dickhead want," but loosened up to answer my questions.
"The walls and roof trusses are pine. The decking joists are treated pine. It's all plantation grown timber. 90 percent of new houses are the same. We're putting batons up today, it's easy to screw into the pine."
'The International Book of Trees' says of the Monterey pine--
"The Monterey pine is perhaps the lushest and most lordly of the whole tribe. Nature had restricted this incredibly vigourous, but rather tender, plant to a few square miles around Monterey in southern California. Man has changed all that: it's now the chief forestry plant of the southern hemisphere. Results in New Zealand are sensational. In its 5th year there one tree put on 20 feet. Where it's happy the Monterey pine grows vast branches and keeps them densely clad in bright bottle green needles. Even in southern England it grows four feet a year, not even making a resting bud in winter but charging right on, only pausing in cold weather."
Pine needles make good smoker fuel too. Dense cool smoke, and they are convenient to bag. Against the morning or evening sky, pines have a strong, dark presence and their own stately beauty. My tree of the week.
* That house reminds me of the one in which Norman Bates lived in the move 'Phsyco'.
I counted them on my walk the other day. The driveway to the first house on the low side of Quinn Rd. has a row of 8 mature trees. I counted 18 young saplings along the roadside here, babies of that row. A little further on, on Launching Pl.Rd. there's a row of 18 along the front of a house where a front fence would normally be. Another hundred metres or so and there are 4 seriously large specimens in each corner of the block where the 'phsyco' house* stands, in the middle of these four dark giants. Then there's another couple on the other side of the road near the JW's. There's 8 or 9 big ones visible in the station woodland, one of which came down in the storm.
That's a lot of pine trees, just on my walking route, and they'll reward me shortly with pine mushrooms at their base. There's another four around the Catholic church in the main street. They remind me that a large specimen some years ago crashed down on the Uniting church in Ure Rd., totally destroying the building. Fortunately there was no congregation in the church at the time, the sinners spared. I'm trying to think of a God/Proddy joke but it would be in poor taste.
To me as a beekeeper, pine trees seemed a waste of space, having no value to foraging honeybees. Recently, I had a bee box, in the flat, posted to me by the equipment supplier. As I nailed the four sides together I noted that it was of course pine wood, being light, soft and easily nailed, resisting splitting.
On Easter Monday on my walk when I reached 'the gouge', a pair of plumbers were preparing to get to work so I went in to have a chat. They were suspicious of my cordiality at first, as if saying to themselves, "What's this dickhead want," but loosened up to answer my questions.
"The walls and roof trusses are pine. The decking joists are treated pine. It's all plantation grown timber. 90 percent of new houses are the same. We're putting batons up today, it's easy to screw into the pine."
'The International Book of Trees' says of the Monterey pine--
"The Monterey pine is perhaps the lushest and most lordly of the whole tribe. Nature had restricted this incredibly vigourous, but rather tender, plant to a few square miles around Monterey in southern California. Man has changed all that: it's now the chief forestry plant of the southern hemisphere. Results in New Zealand are sensational. In its 5th year there one tree put on 20 feet. Where it's happy the Monterey pine grows vast branches and keeps them densely clad in bright bottle green needles. Even in southern England it grows four feet a year, not even making a resting bud in winter but charging right on, only pausing in cold weather."
Pine needles make good smoker fuel too. Dense cool smoke, and they are convenient to bag. Against the morning or evening sky, pines have a strong, dark presence and their own stately beauty. My tree of the week.
* That house reminds me of the one in which Norman Bates lived in the move 'Phsyco'.
Monday, April 07, 2008
The Outrageous Storm
The day after my last post, when I described seeing 17 black cockies flying in a group, an outrageous storm thrashed the Gembrook landscape and indeed all of the Dandenongs and the southern half of of Victoria.
Black cockies are reputed to be a sign of rain within a few days and I've always felt them to be an accurate indicator, although it may be light rain or showers of not much consequence. I will be interested to note if next time I see a large number in a group there's a storm the next day.
We were without electricity for 32 hours. On the other side of town some people, including Huite and the Smiths had no power for 72 hours. Huite rang me on the Saturday to say his electricity was not yet reconnected and that he and Wilma had spent a lot of time in bed as there was nothing else to do. It was so cold they had get close and personal, refreshing his memory of an earlier time in life when he and Wilma spent a lot of time in bed because there was nothing else they'd rather do. I was amused and encouraged to think of Huite still after it at age 72, even if a blackout was the catalyst.
There was not a lot of rain with the storm. It raged for several hours starting early on the Wednesday. I had to do a road trip with the trailer to Keysborough in Melbourne, taking our mulcher to the manufacturer for an overhaul. It was difficult to keep the carryvan on the road such was the force of the gale, debris flying across the road to make for a scary trip.
We suffered no serious damage. Half an old forked peppermint came down to block our drive and several trees came down along my walk. A large blackwood in the yard of the house below us, two large peppermints along Launching Place rd., a huge pine in the woodland behind the station and the spotted gum opposite the CFA in Innes Rd brought the power lines down. There were many other trees and power lines down around the town. It was a miracle there wasn't more damage to life and property.
Black cockies are reputed to be a sign of rain within a few days and I've always felt them to be an accurate indicator, although it may be light rain or showers of not much consequence. I will be interested to note if next time I see a large number in a group there's a storm the next day.
We were without electricity for 32 hours. On the other side of town some people, including Huite and the Smiths had no power for 72 hours. Huite rang me on the Saturday to say his electricity was not yet reconnected and that he and Wilma had spent a lot of time in bed as there was nothing else to do. It was so cold they had get close and personal, refreshing his memory of an earlier time in life when he and Wilma spent a lot of time in bed because there was nothing else they'd rather do. I was amused and encouraged to think of Huite still after it at age 72, even if a blackout was the catalyst.
There was not a lot of rain with the storm. It raged for several hours starting early on the Wednesday. I had to do a road trip with the trailer to Keysborough in Melbourne, taking our mulcher to the manufacturer for an overhaul. It was difficult to keep the carryvan on the road such was the force of the gale, debris flying across the road to make for a scary trip.
We suffered no serious damage. Half an old forked peppermint came down to block our drive and several trees came down along my walk. A large blackwood in the yard of the house below us, two large peppermints along Launching Place rd., a huge pine in the woodland behind the station and the spotted gum opposite the CFA in Innes Rd brought the power lines down. There were many other trees and power lines down around the town. It was a miracle there wasn't more damage to life and property.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Breathe Deeply The Joy of Life
My mother Elvie went through a box of my father's personal papers, writings, and photos at the weekend. Twelve months have passed since he died last March.
Meredith and Elvie were looking at some of the photos at the farm late yesterday while I had a cup of tea after a busy day. As they passed them on to me to see, a strange feeling came over me.
The photos were a snap of about 80 years of family history. They included Lyle as a baby with his mother, aunts who died nearly 50 years ago, football teams, his family home, his young wife, and more recently his children and grandchildren, his cats, the farm, and himself in his later years, looking frail.
Oddly, I felt quite unconnected. Like it all happenned in a dream or in another lifetime separate to mine. I've felt this way before when going back in time, say to visit the old neighbourhood of our childhood, the old school, or catching up with an old girlfriend. Did it really happen? Did little wooden sailing ships cross the oceans to get here, not so long ago? Did nations spend 6 years trying to bomb each other into oblivion, not so long ago? It all seems unbelievable.
When walking this morning it came to me that every day is new, and different. Today the rose of dawn crept over the hill and shone through white mist, sillhouetting pine trunks and limbs like giant dark statues in the light. Sweet water dripped gently to earth. Seventeen black cockies in flock flopped across the sky east to west, unhurried, laconic. Never seen that many together before.
Tomorrow? Breathe deeply the cold morning air, the joy of life.
Meredith and Elvie were looking at some of the photos at the farm late yesterday while I had a cup of tea after a busy day. As they passed them on to me to see, a strange feeling came over me.
The photos were a snap of about 80 years of family history. They included Lyle as a baby with his mother, aunts who died nearly 50 years ago, football teams, his family home, his young wife, and more recently his children and grandchildren, his cats, the farm, and himself in his later years, looking frail.
Oddly, I felt quite unconnected. Like it all happenned in a dream or in another lifetime separate to mine. I've felt this way before when going back in time, say to visit the old neighbourhood of our childhood, the old school, or catching up with an old girlfriend. Did it really happen? Did little wooden sailing ships cross the oceans to get here, not so long ago? Did nations spend 6 years trying to bomb each other into oblivion, not so long ago? It all seems unbelievable.
When walking this morning it came to me that every day is new, and different. Today the rose of dawn crept over the hill and shone through white mist, sillhouetting pine trunks and limbs like giant dark statues in the light. Sweet water dripped gently to earth. Seventeen black cockies in flock flopped across the sky east to west, unhurried, laconic. Never seen that many together before.
Tomorrow? Breathe deeply the cold morning air, the joy of life.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Satin Bower Birds, Wedge Tailed Eagles.
There was a group of 'new' birds in the garden yesterday. I was about to leave to go to the farm and went to the shed for something. Two birds flew away from the shed as I neared, I thought they were currawongs at first as they were quite large, but their backs were olive green colour as they flew away. It seemed they'd been pinching the dog minnies I leave on the sill for my blackbirds.
I had a better look at them when I spotted them in the blackwood in front of the shed where they'd flown. There was a number of them, perhaps five or more, in the top of the tree, chattering and clacking and making various noises unfamiliar to me. Not having my glasses on I couldn't see them very well, so I went inside and came back with binoculars. I managed too get a good look at one and amazingly saw something bright blue and red, but behind a lot of leaves so I couldn't discern what it was, before losing it while I moved, not seeing it again.
When I saw Jod at the farm I described what I'd seen and he immediately said I'd seen satin bower birds. He'd seen them twice only at the farm over the last few years. Only mature males have the satin colour which comes after the seventh year moult, which explains why all the ones I saw were olivey green with a pale chest scalloped brown. He said the red and blue colour I saw may have been something one of the immature males had collected. They love bright colour especially blue which they use to practice building bowers. They build bowers on the ground to impress females but they actually nest in trees in a nest made with a lot of bark. He said they have a beautiful egg streaked in colours.
While we talked he spotted two wedgies soaring high, seemingly playing in the sky, coming close, then parting, before diving back towards each other. He reckons they are getting ready to mate, they breed in the winter and will mate soon. Fantastic!
I had a better look at them when I spotted them in the blackwood in front of the shed where they'd flown. There was a number of them, perhaps five or more, in the top of the tree, chattering and clacking and making various noises unfamiliar to me. Not having my glasses on I couldn't see them very well, so I went inside and came back with binoculars. I managed too get a good look at one and amazingly saw something bright blue and red, but behind a lot of leaves so I couldn't discern what it was, before losing it while I moved, not seeing it again.
When I saw Jod at the farm I described what I'd seen and he immediately said I'd seen satin bower birds. He'd seen them twice only at the farm over the last few years. Only mature males have the satin colour which comes after the seventh year moult, which explains why all the ones I saw were olivey green with a pale chest scalloped brown. He said the red and blue colour I saw may have been something one of the immature males had collected. They love bright colour especially blue which they use to practice building bowers. They build bowers on the ground to impress females but they actually nest in trees in a nest made with a lot of bark. He said they have a beautiful egg streaked in colours.
While we talked he spotted two wedgies soaring high, seemingly playing in the sky, coming close, then parting, before diving back towards each other. He reckons they are getting ready to mate, they breed in the winter and will mate soon. Fantastic!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Sweet Pittosporum
I objected to the council being granted a permit to remove ALL sweet pittosporums from the roadsides a couple of months back. A letter came from the Planning Section of the Cardinia Shire Council last week, saying,
"Your objection to the above planning permit has been considered under delegation and I wish to advise that a Notice of Decision to Grant a Permit has been issued, a copy of which is attached. Your attention is drawn to the appeal provisions on the back of the Notice, in particular:
1. The applicant may seek a review of any condition in the Notice within 60 days of the date of issue.
2.You may seek a review of the decision to grant a permit, or the the proposed condition of the permit, within 21 days of the issue.
Information about Applications for Review may be obtained from the Cictorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, ( address and phone mumber)."
So I've got 21 days from 17 Mar to lodge an application for review with VCAT. I rang them, I have to pay $283.20 and submit the application form and then, once a hearing date is set, I have to attend on the day. I don't think I'm in a position to do this, especially as it would probably be a waste of time and money, but I asked them to send me an application form.
I'll make a stategic withdrawal, probably, and try and think of a plan B. Maybe write to the CEO and the councillors suggesting the council is making a grave error to attack this drought hardy, native tree following twelve years of below average rainfall. We should be grateful for its ability to provide cover for the earth, food and shelter for birds, animals and insects, as well as pump oxygen into the atmosphere while sucking carbon out of it, in this era of critical climate change. The trouble is it's one of the councillors who is driving the whole thing.
"Your objection to the above planning permit has been considered under delegation and I wish to advise that a Notice of Decision to Grant a Permit has been issued, a copy of which is attached. Your attention is drawn to the appeal provisions on the back of the Notice, in particular:
1. The applicant may seek a review of any condition in the Notice within 60 days of the date of issue.
2.You may seek a review of the decision to grant a permit, or the the proposed condition of the permit, within 21 days of the issue.
Information about Applications for Review may be obtained from the Cictorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, ( address and phone mumber)."
So I've got 21 days from 17 Mar to lodge an application for review with VCAT. I rang them, I have to pay $283.20 and submit the application form and then, once a hearing date is set, I have to attend on the day. I don't think I'm in a position to do this, especially as it would probably be a waste of time and money, but I asked them to send me an application form.
I'll make a stategic withdrawal, probably, and try and think of a plan B. Maybe write to the CEO and the councillors suggesting the council is making a grave error to attack this drought hardy, native tree following twelve years of below average rainfall. We should be grateful for its ability to provide cover for the earth, food and shelter for birds, animals and insects, as well as pump oxygen into the atmosphere while sucking carbon out of it, in this era of critical climate change. The trouble is it's one of the councillors who is driving the whole thing.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Heat Wave, Freeze Wave
I'm back home, as of last Sunday. Visitors arrived on Monday, stayed for two days and today is my first chance to blog. I'm as flat as a tack, forcing myself to write. I've lost enthusiasm for blogging, mainly, I think, because there's always so much else to do. I've chosen to continue, after thinking half an hour ago that I'd finish up. Don't buckle just yet, I tell myself.
I had to tell you this story. My visitor was Ian Sinclair*, whom I've referred to as Punjab in a couple of posts in the past. He lives in Canada, at Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, near Alaska. He's back in Australia with his 7 yo son for a month's holiday, the main purpose of which was to visit his 89yo mum who lives in a retirement village in Frankston. It's been an emotional time for him. This was the last time he would see his mum, and he wanted his son Jethro to meet her as a boy old enough to remember.
Ian rang me on New Year's Day to wish us Happy New Year, and to say that he was coming to AUS. in March and he'd let us know when he had an arrival date, and when he thought he'd get to us. We heard nothing further, which is not unusual, he doesn't like timetables and just 'turns up'. I had no way of contacting him once he'd left. I couldn't find his mother's phone number in her remarried name of Cantillon**, because, as I found out later, she'd moved into a retirement place. So we went to Lakes hoping he wasn't trying to contact us while we were away, thinking that with Robbie home all would be jake.
Ian called in last Saturday. He'd spent the previous 3 days in the mountains around Big River camping at our old haunts and catching up on eucalyptus scented air. It was hot with near 40C maximums. He and Jethro coped well considering they came from the northern winter and temperatures of more than MINUS 50 degrees in January. Robbie told him we were away and he went to see his mum and returned on Monday evening.
Yesterday before he left we were talking about the March heat wave and the worry of bushfires. I'd just renewed the house insurance and mentioned that I'd meant to check the fine print to make sure our house was covered against bushfires, but forgot in the haste of the last minute. He said he'd checked his because despite all the ice and snow there was still a bushfire threat in summer as there was 21 hours of sun per day in summer, when sunny of course, and the surrounding pine and spruce forests dried out and were flammable because of the volatile oils.
Ian went on to say that insurance companies in Whitehorse have rigid conditions and are as tough as nails. You can't just go away on holiday and leave the house, without making arrangements with neighbours or contractors to inspect it every 24 hours, recording that everything is in order. For example, during freezing and thawing, water and ice is dangerous, pipes can burst and a basement or cellar can catch water and freeze, leaving it filled with 50 tons of solid ice. Claims of $50,000 or $60,000 are not uncommon, when automatic furnaces have failed to keep houses above freezing point.
There was a case recently, Ian said, where a family went away and a tap was left running slowly in an upstairs bathroom, the exact circumstances of which he was unsure. Whatever, the inlet to the tap didn't freeze, but the outlet pipe did, so the water banked up and overflowed and ran onto the floor and throughout. As it hit the gaps, where it would run outside in normal conditions, it froze, so the house slowly filled with water which slowly turned to ice. The house wasn't inspected regularly and filled with water/ice which, expanding as freezing water does, crushed everything and pushed out walls. The house was fit only for demolition, the returning family losing the lot.
* Ian Sinclair attended Mt. Waverley Primary school 1955-1961, as did brother Jod. Ian's younger brother Colin was in my year 1957-1963. Jod was looking forward to Ian's visit and had copied and framed a 4th grade photo from 1959 in which he and Ian were standing next to each other, and which he gave to Ian when we visited the farm Tuesday. Ian and Jod went to Syndal tech and were both in the railways as firemen (trainee drivers) in 1969 when Ian was called up for National Service. After a term in Vietnam, Ian was discharged in 1971, his two years NS completed.
He could not settle in his old job, resigned, and unable to settle into any employment, took off to the Kimberleys. He roamed Australia and Asia for many years, eventually in the company of a Canadian girl, now wife Elke with whom he lives at Whitehorse, in a house they are buying on three acres out of town backing onto pine and spruce bush. At some point he was granted a TPI pension for post traumatic stress and has resisted convention for 37 years. He spends much of the summer fishing and hunting moose. He turns 59 next month. He has another son, Cullen, who is 17 and was born in Nth Queensland.
** Ian's mum married Reg Cantillon, who lived about 5 houses up from us in Mt Waverley with his wife (who died later) and family which included twin girls who were in Ian and Jod's year at school. Their older brother who became a mechanic died as a young man when a car he was working on fell off the jack and crushed him. Ian's father died in the summer of 1971/1972 of a stroke while recovering in hospital from a minor operation. It was the day Garfield Sobers made his famous 254 for the rest of the world team against Australia. Ian told me this visit that he said to me while we watched the cricket, "Dad died last night." I had said, "Should you be here?" He remembered answering, "Why not?" Don Bradman said Sober's innings was the best he'd ever seen.
I had to tell you this story. My visitor was Ian Sinclair*, whom I've referred to as Punjab in a couple of posts in the past. He lives in Canada, at Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, near Alaska. He's back in Australia with his 7 yo son for a month's holiday, the main purpose of which was to visit his 89yo mum who lives in a retirement village in Frankston. It's been an emotional time for him. This was the last time he would see his mum, and he wanted his son Jethro to meet her as a boy old enough to remember.
Ian rang me on New Year's Day to wish us Happy New Year, and to say that he was coming to AUS. in March and he'd let us know when he had an arrival date, and when he thought he'd get to us. We heard nothing further, which is not unusual, he doesn't like timetables and just 'turns up'. I had no way of contacting him once he'd left. I couldn't find his mother's phone number in her remarried name of Cantillon**, because, as I found out later, she'd moved into a retirement place. So we went to Lakes hoping he wasn't trying to contact us while we were away, thinking that with Robbie home all would be jake.
Ian called in last Saturday. He'd spent the previous 3 days in the mountains around Big River camping at our old haunts and catching up on eucalyptus scented air. It was hot with near 40C maximums. He and Jethro coped well considering they came from the northern winter and temperatures of more than MINUS 50 degrees in January. Robbie told him we were away and he went to see his mum and returned on Monday evening.
Yesterday before he left we were talking about the March heat wave and the worry of bushfires. I'd just renewed the house insurance and mentioned that I'd meant to check the fine print to make sure our house was covered against bushfires, but forgot in the haste of the last minute. He said he'd checked his because despite all the ice and snow there was still a bushfire threat in summer as there was 21 hours of sun per day in summer, when sunny of course, and the surrounding pine and spruce forests dried out and were flammable because of the volatile oils.
Ian went on to say that insurance companies in Whitehorse have rigid conditions and are as tough as nails. You can't just go away on holiday and leave the house, without making arrangements with neighbours or contractors to inspect it every 24 hours, recording that everything is in order. For example, during freezing and thawing, water and ice is dangerous, pipes can burst and a basement or cellar can catch water and freeze, leaving it filled with 50 tons of solid ice. Claims of $50,000 or $60,000 are not uncommon, when automatic furnaces have failed to keep houses above freezing point.
There was a case recently, Ian said, where a family went away and a tap was left running slowly in an upstairs bathroom, the exact circumstances of which he was unsure. Whatever, the inlet to the tap didn't freeze, but the outlet pipe did, so the water banked up and overflowed and ran onto the floor and throughout. As it hit the gaps, where it would run outside in normal conditions, it froze, so the house slowly filled with water which slowly turned to ice. The house wasn't inspected regularly and filled with water/ice which, expanding as freezing water does, crushed everything and pushed out walls. The house was fit only for demolition, the returning family losing the lot.
* Ian Sinclair attended Mt. Waverley Primary school 1955-1961, as did brother Jod. Ian's younger brother Colin was in my year 1957-1963. Jod was looking forward to Ian's visit and had copied and framed a 4th grade photo from 1959 in which he and Ian were standing next to each other, and which he gave to Ian when we visited the farm Tuesday. Ian and Jod went to Syndal tech and were both in the railways as firemen (trainee drivers) in 1969 when Ian was called up for National Service. After a term in Vietnam, Ian was discharged in 1971, his two years NS completed.
He could not settle in his old job, resigned, and unable to settle into any employment, took off to the Kimberleys. He roamed Australia and Asia for many years, eventually in the company of a Canadian girl, now wife Elke with whom he lives at Whitehorse, in a house they are buying on three acres out of town backing onto pine and spruce bush. At some point he was granted a TPI pension for post traumatic stress and has resisted convention for 37 years. He spends much of the summer fishing and hunting moose. He turns 59 next month. He has another son, Cullen, who is 17 and was born in Nth Queensland.
** Ian's mum married Reg Cantillon, who lived about 5 houses up from us in Mt Waverley with his wife (who died later) and family which included twin girls who were in Ian and Jod's year at school. Their older brother who became a mechanic died as a young man when a car he was working on fell off the jack and crushed him. Ian's father died in the summer of 1971/1972 of a stroke while recovering in hospital from a minor operation. It was the day Garfield Sobers made his famous 254 for the rest of the world team against Australia. Ian told me this visit that he said to me while we watched the cricket, "Dad died last night." I had said, "Should you be here?" He remembered answering, "Why not?" Don Bradman said Sober's innings was the best he'd ever seen.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Lakes
It great to be on holiday. I just emailed an apology for not attending tomorrow's museum meeting.
This morning we walked at Shelley Beach with the dogs. It was young Pip's first look at the ocean. She tore into the water then got a hell of a fright when a wave hit and dunked her. She didn't go in again.
It's so nice to see seagulls, black swans, people relaxed lying on the foreshore grass eating ice cream cones, and picking up shells and stones worn smooth.
This morning we walked at Shelley Beach with the dogs. It was young Pip's first look at the ocean. She tore into the water then got a hell of a fright when a wave hit and dunked her. She didn't go in again.
It's so nice to see seagulls, black swans, people relaxed lying on the foreshore grass eating ice cream cones, and picking up shells and stones worn smooth.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Holiday
We're off to Lakes today. Till Sunday. Lib, me, Gord and two dogs. Rob is staying home as he has Uni and will water my plants in pots and the vegies. It could be interesting. A dog holiday! But a change of scenery is inviting and I plan to read a lot and write 3 letters, two to friends who don't access computers and therefore don't read this blog, and one to a 'celebrity' whom I've never met but I'm going to ask for an interview as the kickstart for a story I hope to write. It's a five year plan but if I don't show a little courage and kick it off, it won't happen.
There's an internet cafe at Lakes so if I can escape the dogs for a time I'll do a post from there.
There's an internet cafe at Lakes so if I can escape the dogs for a time I'll do a post from there.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Fay Gerber's Dogwoods
Almost three years ago, on a hot summer's day, I had an appointment to meet Fay Gerber in her Emerald garden at 10.00am. I'd been helping Fay for a couple of hours here and there for some months. I could see vehicles near the house when I arrived, a team of plumbers was finishing a new roof job and putting up new spouting. Fay lives in Melbourne and it wasn't unusual for there to be some work or other happening when she came to stay at Emerald for a few days, the house being perhaps seventy years old, maybe more. It had been recently painted and was well kept.
Fay was no where to be seen as I pulled up. The plumbers were making plenty of noise banging, drilling and cutting. I spoke to the boss who said the last time he saw Fay, not long ago, she was on the ride on mower so I walked slowly from the house looking for her, hearing no mower engine. A short time later I saw her bright blue shirt and wide straw hat as she sat on the grass in the shade of a large tree rhododendron, the mower beside her. She was facing away from me and motionless as if in deep meditation.
Fay, a delightful lady about 80, had retained her wit and charm, and was still attractive despite her advancing years. I had known her for over 20 years, and whilst it might be an unusual place for an 80 yo lady to sit on a hot day, she is slightly eccentric, so I was not surprised or alarmed. As well as gardening, her hobbies are wood sculpture and jewellery making, and she is well read and articulate.
"Are you alright Fay", I called out as I approached her from behind, not wanting to give her a fright by being too close when she became aware of me.
"Hello Carey, yes, I'm fine, I'm having a little rest. I fell off the mower, it almost tipped over and my leg is painful. Could you lift me a little so I can move it?"
She told me how to lift her by putting my arms under her armpits from behind. She winced as she moved then asked me to let her sit again, saying she was sure the pain would ease shortly.
We sat on the grass and she told me her girls musn't hear how this happenned or they'd stop her mowing. She described how the mower tipped up and explained she was lucky it didn't end up on top of her. She loved that old mower. It'd been playing up, a few times she'd asked me to start it for her when I was there, and once to get it into the back of her Camry wagon to take to a repair man.
After a while Fay decided we should get her into the house, the back door of which was some forty metres away. I lifted her again, and with her leaning against me, we inched our way to the house, not an easy thing side by side as we had to manage a narrow path with stone edges and some steps. She didn't want to get assistance from the plumbers, thinking there was not really a way for them to help and wanting as little fuss as possible.
Once inside we had a cup of tea and talked about my impending holiday to Peru. She rang her daughter and explained she'd had a fall. Before I left she insisted that she pay me for my time, although I'd done no gardening. I rang her a few days later to see how she was. She was in hospital with a fractured femur, a hairline fracture, but serious nonetheless.
I haven't seen Fay since. She is fit and well. We spoke on the phone recently, mainly about me doing a restorative prune on her precious 'Captain Rawes' reticulata camellia. One of her daughters and her husband comes to Emerald to mow the grass and do gardening, but I often think of her, especially in the spring when I pick dogwood blossom there, or anywhere for that matter. We have two rows of flowering white dogwood at the farm, and there are three nice trees at home, which came originally from Fay's garden. Her father's old trees had low branches that touched the ground some distance from their trunk, and here, kept moist by the their own autumn leaves, these branches had 'layered', that is, developed roots and thus starting a new young tree as it sprouted vigourous new shoots above where it rooted. Fay called these 'suckers'. She wanted these 'suckers' removed, and we potted them into big pots and planted out two rows at the farm twelve months later, nearly twenty years ago.
I first met Fay back in the 1980's, when our livelihood came mainly from growing herbs and supplying restaurants. I was always short of rosemary, one of the more popular restaurant lines, and one of our pickers told me about a row in a propery in Mary St. One Sunday, I saw a lady in the garden as I drove past and stopped and introduced myself, asking if it might be possible for me to pick some rosemary. I picked rosemary there regularly and we became friends. She asked me did I know anyone who would do some gardening for her. From then on, Rick, Max, and Dirk, who all worked at our farm at some time, did gardening work for Fay when they were seeking odd jobs. When Dirk left us after 10 years, aged 25, to study environmental science as a mature age student, Fay leant him the money to buy his books. He's now a supervisor for Melbourne Water.
Fay's property in Emerald is an acre or two on the edge of the main commercial precinct. Surrounded by mature trees, it's tucked away. People driving past on the main road wouldn't realise there's a piece of Emerald history sitting there untouched by the rampant progress of recent decades. Sometimes when I'm there picking in the solitude I feel I've walked back in time. Twisted and gnarled magnolias line the drive, and mature conifers, oaks, dogwoods and rhodies provide the feeling of seclusion and contrasting rich greenery. The only give away is the the traffic noise from the road.
Fays father planted most of the trees. His name was Carter, a passionate gardener well known for his propogation of yew trees. This of course sixty or more years ago, some wonderful old yew trees still thrive. Self sown baby yews come up all about where no mowing is done, and several of these thrive at our house, given to us by Fay in a winter some years ago.
My friend Doug Twaits, who died some years ago aged 86, knew Mr. Carter, and Fay when she was a girl. He told me once that the old pine tree on the lower corner of the property was there in the 1920's, large enough even then for his family to picnic under on hot summer days when they came up from Melbourne. When I go to the garden in late October to pick dogwood, that variety flowering two weeks after the other cornus florida trees purchased from nurseries, I always look at the old pine and have a mental picture of Doug as a boy with his family picnicking there. That's how Fay's garden affects me.
It took me a while getting to it, but my tree of the week is the flowering dogwood. Why choose February to talk about flowering dogwoods? The other day I was scratching around on hands and knees cutting and painting blackberry plants with roundup in the wild scrubby area behind the beehives and I came across two young self sown dogwoods. It made me happy. I've collected fruit from the dogwoods many times and tried to grow them from seed, never having success. I layer a few every other year by pinning the branch down and tossing some dirt on it. As well as the beautiful blossom we also use our dogwood trees for autumn foliage, the colour ranging from yellow to orange through to deep red.
Cornus florida-- American Boxwood, a native of USA, it's adaptable to most soils and positions, and is frost resistant but drought tender. a deciduous tree it grows to a height of 10 metres witha spread of 3m. The leaves are opposite, ovate-acuminate, short petioled, 10cm long, dark green above and pale green on the undersurface; the flowers are small and white or greenish yellow, occurring in terminal clusters and surrounde by large white or pink bracts; the fruitare brilliant, glossy red berries.
Propogation is by seed, cuttings, layering or grafting. The Delaware Indians boiled the inner bark of the tree, using the tea to reduce fevers. (Encyclopaedia Botanica).
If I was doing a list of my favourite people, Fay Gerber would be high on it.
Fay was no where to be seen as I pulled up. The plumbers were making plenty of noise banging, drilling and cutting. I spoke to the boss who said the last time he saw Fay, not long ago, she was on the ride on mower so I walked slowly from the house looking for her, hearing no mower engine. A short time later I saw her bright blue shirt and wide straw hat as she sat on the grass in the shade of a large tree rhododendron, the mower beside her. She was facing away from me and motionless as if in deep meditation.
Fay, a delightful lady about 80, had retained her wit and charm, and was still attractive despite her advancing years. I had known her for over 20 years, and whilst it might be an unusual place for an 80 yo lady to sit on a hot day, she is slightly eccentric, so I was not surprised or alarmed. As well as gardening, her hobbies are wood sculpture and jewellery making, and she is well read and articulate.
"Are you alright Fay", I called out as I approached her from behind, not wanting to give her a fright by being too close when she became aware of me.
"Hello Carey, yes, I'm fine, I'm having a little rest. I fell off the mower, it almost tipped over and my leg is painful. Could you lift me a little so I can move it?"
She told me how to lift her by putting my arms under her armpits from behind. She winced as she moved then asked me to let her sit again, saying she was sure the pain would ease shortly.
We sat on the grass and she told me her girls musn't hear how this happenned or they'd stop her mowing. She described how the mower tipped up and explained she was lucky it didn't end up on top of her. She loved that old mower. It'd been playing up, a few times she'd asked me to start it for her when I was there, and once to get it into the back of her Camry wagon to take to a repair man.
After a while Fay decided we should get her into the house, the back door of which was some forty metres away. I lifted her again, and with her leaning against me, we inched our way to the house, not an easy thing side by side as we had to manage a narrow path with stone edges and some steps. She didn't want to get assistance from the plumbers, thinking there was not really a way for them to help and wanting as little fuss as possible.
Once inside we had a cup of tea and talked about my impending holiday to Peru. She rang her daughter and explained she'd had a fall. Before I left she insisted that she pay me for my time, although I'd done no gardening. I rang her a few days later to see how she was. She was in hospital with a fractured femur, a hairline fracture, but serious nonetheless.
I haven't seen Fay since. She is fit and well. We spoke on the phone recently, mainly about me doing a restorative prune on her precious 'Captain Rawes' reticulata camellia. One of her daughters and her husband comes to Emerald to mow the grass and do gardening, but I often think of her, especially in the spring when I pick dogwood blossom there, or anywhere for that matter. We have two rows of flowering white dogwood at the farm, and there are three nice trees at home, which came originally from Fay's garden. Her father's old trees had low branches that touched the ground some distance from their trunk, and here, kept moist by the their own autumn leaves, these branches had 'layered', that is, developed roots and thus starting a new young tree as it sprouted vigourous new shoots above where it rooted. Fay called these 'suckers'. She wanted these 'suckers' removed, and we potted them into big pots and planted out two rows at the farm twelve months later, nearly twenty years ago.
I first met Fay back in the 1980's, when our livelihood came mainly from growing herbs and supplying restaurants. I was always short of rosemary, one of the more popular restaurant lines, and one of our pickers told me about a row in a propery in Mary St. One Sunday, I saw a lady in the garden as I drove past and stopped and introduced myself, asking if it might be possible for me to pick some rosemary. I picked rosemary there regularly and we became friends. She asked me did I know anyone who would do some gardening for her. From then on, Rick, Max, and Dirk, who all worked at our farm at some time, did gardening work for Fay when they were seeking odd jobs. When Dirk left us after 10 years, aged 25, to study environmental science as a mature age student, Fay leant him the money to buy his books. He's now a supervisor for Melbourne Water.
Fay's property in Emerald is an acre or two on the edge of the main commercial precinct. Surrounded by mature trees, it's tucked away. People driving past on the main road wouldn't realise there's a piece of Emerald history sitting there untouched by the rampant progress of recent decades. Sometimes when I'm there picking in the solitude I feel I've walked back in time. Twisted and gnarled magnolias line the drive, and mature conifers, oaks, dogwoods and rhodies provide the feeling of seclusion and contrasting rich greenery. The only give away is the the traffic noise from the road.
Fays father planted most of the trees. His name was Carter, a passionate gardener well known for his propogation of yew trees. This of course sixty or more years ago, some wonderful old yew trees still thrive. Self sown baby yews come up all about where no mowing is done, and several of these thrive at our house, given to us by Fay in a winter some years ago.
My friend Doug Twaits, who died some years ago aged 86, knew Mr. Carter, and Fay when she was a girl. He told me once that the old pine tree on the lower corner of the property was there in the 1920's, large enough even then for his family to picnic under on hot summer days when they came up from Melbourne. When I go to the garden in late October to pick dogwood, that variety flowering two weeks after the other cornus florida trees purchased from nurseries, I always look at the old pine and have a mental picture of Doug as a boy with his family picnicking there. That's how Fay's garden affects me.
It took me a while getting to it, but my tree of the week is the flowering dogwood. Why choose February to talk about flowering dogwoods? The other day I was scratching around on hands and knees cutting and painting blackberry plants with roundup in the wild scrubby area behind the beehives and I came across two young self sown dogwoods. It made me happy. I've collected fruit from the dogwoods many times and tried to grow them from seed, never having success. I layer a few every other year by pinning the branch down and tossing some dirt on it. As well as the beautiful blossom we also use our dogwood trees for autumn foliage, the colour ranging from yellow to orange through to deep red.
Cornus florida-- American Boxwood, a native of USA, it's adaptable to most soils and positions, and is frost resistant but drought tender. a deciduous tree it grows to a height of 10 metres witha spread of 3m. The leaves are opposite, ovate-acuminate, short petioled, 10cm long, dark green above and pale green on the undersurface; the flowers are small and white or greenish yellow, occurring in terminal clusters and surrounde by large white or pink bracts; the fruitare brilliant, glossy red berries.
Propogation is by seed, cuttings, layering or grafting. The Delaware Indians boiled the inner bark of the tree, using the tea to reduce fevers. (Encyclopaedia Botanica).
If I was doing a list of my favourite people, Fay Gerber would be high on it.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Squish
It's great to be alive, when you can walk in the cool morning air, then spend ten minutes doing the rounds of the broccolli plants, destroying green cabbage moth caterpillars with thumb and finger. I don't like killing anything, I even avoid stepping on snails or ants these days, but I feel no sympathy whatsoever for cabbage moth caterpillars. Rescueing young brassicas from their voracious evil is most satisfying.
I sowed the broccolli seed on New year's Day, along with some spring onions and lupins, whose seed packets were of the supermarket variety and past their useby date, by eight years in the case of the lupins. The spring onions didn't come up at all, but there are 7 Russell lupin plants that survived the heat and rabbit attack and there was a good strike with the broccolli. I gave some seedlings to Huite and Harry and there's about 20 plants in our small vegie garden protected from the rabbits by sheets of corrugated iron forming a fence.
Some of these plants are nearly a foot high and without control of cabbage moth caterpillars they'd be decimated. As the cool weather comes the problem eases, and into winter when the broccolli is still cropping, hopefully, it's too cold for the moths. I try to get parsley, broccolli, and silver beet growing in late summer/ autumn so that there's fresh vegies to pick in the winter.
Thinking that my first broccolli might be the hybrid type that produces big heads and then nothing much to follow, I sowed a tray of non hybrid seed a few weeks later. This is the old fashioned type that gives small multiple heads but goes on producing for several weeks. These plants are smaller yet of course, and not having room inside the rabbit fence I've planted them here and there around the garden. Some have been lost to rabbits, others I put little guards around, and others still are doing well without protection in places the rabbits don't frequent. The dogs don't stop the rabbits, they catch so few, and then at night when they're in their kennels the rabbits have free reign.
I put in another tray of seed last week, which is just coming up, again a non hybrid variety, but a different type. We should have plenty of broccolli for the winter. The tomato plants are massive and loaded with fruit but none are ripe yet as I got them in late. There should be plenty for March and April. There's zucchini and button squash ready to pick and the butternut pumpkin vines have taken off and there's a few small pumpkins formed. And there'll be beans soon.
The pumpkin seed planted on New years day, which I saved from the vegie scraps bucket, came up, and the young plants are growing well, but I think it was too late to hope that they will produce pumpkins, especially as the weather has turned cool and has a real autumn feel to it. There's some shrubs showing autumn colour and there's a lovely lot of pink autumn crocus flowering.
On the weekend I cut up a tree that fell some time ago, and split the rounds for firewood. There wasn't a lot of urgency this summer as there's still dry wood left over from last winter. I'm looking forward to winter, and in the meantime we have the autumn, a time to admire nature and straighten up. And I'm having fun squishing caterpillars.
I sowed the broccolli seed on New year's Day, along with some spring onions and lupins, whose seed packets were of the supermarket variety and past their useby date, by eight years in the case of the lupins. The spring onions didn't come up at all, but there are 7 Russell lupin plants that survived the heat and rabbit attack and there was a good strike with the broccolli. I gave some seedlings to Huite and Harry and there's about 20 plants in our small vegie garden protected from the rabbits by sheets of corrugated iron forming a fence.
Some of these plants are nearly a foot high and without control of cabbage moth caterpillars they'd be decimated. As the cool weather comes the problem eases, and into winter when the broccolli is still cropping, hopefully, it's too cold for the moths. I try to get parsley, broccolli, and silver beet growing in late summer/ autumn so that there's fresh vegies to pick in the winter.
Thinking that my first broccolli might be the hybrid type that produces big heads and then nothing much to follow, I sowed a tray of non hybrid seed a few weeks later. This is the old fashioned type that gives small multiple heads but goes on producing for several weeks. These plants are smaller yet of course, and not having room inside the rabbit fence I've planted them here and there around the garden. Some have been lost to rabbits, others I put little guards around, and others still are doing well without protection in places the rabbits don't frequent. The dogs don't stop the rabbits, they catch so few, and then at night when they're in their kennels the rabbits have free reign.
I put in another tray of seed last week, which is just coming up, again a non hybrid variety, but a different type. We should have plenty of broccolli for the winter. The tomato plants are massive and loaded with fruit but none are ripe yet as I got them in late. There should be plenty for March and April. There's zucchini and button squash ready to pick and the butternut pumpkin vines have taken off and there's a few small pumpkins formed. And there'll be beans soon.
The pumpkin seed planted on New years day, which I saved from the vegie scraps bucket, came up, and the young plants are growing well, but I think it was too late to hope that they will produce pumpkins, especially as the weather has turned cool and has a real autumn feel to it. There's some shrubs showing autumn colour and there's a lovely lot of pink autumn crocus flowering.
On the weekend I cut up a tree that fell some time ago, and split the rounds for firewood. There wasn't a lot of urgency this summer as there's still dry wood left over from last winter. I'm looking forward to winter, and in the meantime we have the autumn, a time to admire nature and straighten up. And I'm having fun squishing caterpillars.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
More Heat, and Honey
After some days last week of cool, drizzly weather, (it was wonderful!) the heat is back, 34C today and yesterday after a weekend of low 30's.
I had a look at the bees on Sunday. Having extracted 5 supers of honey two weeks previously I thought it was time to put the stickies back so the wax moths grubs didn't damage them. I'd suspected there had been honey coming in since I extracted as the bees had been busy when the weather was good and there'd been no bees sniffing around the shed. When I took some jars of honey to my friends Mark and Jane at 'Sunset', where I have a beehive, Jane said she'd been smelling honey on hot days when she walked in the mornings.
Each hive had a full box of honey on it, including the swarm I caught in early December in the cemetery. The hive at 'Sunset' had two full boxes of honey. I under supered with the stickies and left the honey on the bees for another day soon when I have the time and energy to get it off and go another round in the extracting shed. There goes another weekend of spare time.
It shouldn't be happening. Last year's record crop which took it's toll on me from a work load point of view should have meant an 'off' year this time round, but this next extract will be the third of the summer and the boxes are more 'filled' this time than the previous two extracts. And the honey is still flowing in, the source a mystery to me. There's been a few messmates flowering, the few odd trees that didn't flower last year, but there must be something else within bee range. I'd love to know what else the bees are working.
Not that it will approach anything like the tally of last year, but for a stationary apiary, one that isn't moved from flow to flow, it'll end up being a good season, perhaps in excess of 'three tins per hive',** a fair season even for a commercial migratory apiary. But it's not in the tank yet and maybe I'm counting chickens before they hatch.
** Commercial apiarists talk in terms of 'tins per hive', or they did when I was in the industry, meaning the old 4 gallon tins, which held 60lb of honey, or 27kg. They still talked 'of tins per hive', even though they were using 44gallon drums by then. Generally speaking a year would produce 2-6 tins, average 4, of course some years could go higher and the odd year there may be little if any. A good flow on a particular floral source would be upward of one tin, with 4 tins being a big flow.
I had a look at the bees on Sunday. Having extracted 5 supers of honey two weeks previously I thought it was time to put the stickies back so the wax moths grubs didn't damage them. I'd suspected there had been honey coming in since I extracted as the bees had been busy when the weather was good and there'd been no bees sniffing around the shed. When I took some jars of honey to my friends Mark and Jane at 'Sunset', where I have a beehive, Jane said she'd been smelling honey on hot days when she walked in the mornings.
Each hive had a full box of honey on it, including the swarm I caught in early December in the cemetery. The hive at 'Sunset' had two full boxes of honey. I under supered with the stickies and left the honey on the bees for another day soon when I have the time and energy to get it off and go another round in the extracting shed. There goes another weekend of spare time.
It shouldn't be happening. Last year's record crop which took it's toll on me from a work load point of view should have meant an 'off' year this time round, but this next extract will be the third of the summer and the boxes are more 'filled' this time than the previous two extracts. And the honey is still flowing in, the source a mystery to me. There's been a few messmates flowering, the few odd trees that didn't flower last year, but there must be something else within bee range. I'd love to know what else the bees are working.
Not that it will approach anything like the tally of last year, but for a stationary apiary, one that isn't moved from flow to flow, it'll end up being a good season, perhaps in excess of 'three tins per hive',** a fair season even for a commercial migratory apiary. But it's not in the tank yet and maybe I'm counting chickens before they hatch.
** Commercial apiarists talk in terms of 'tins per hive', or they did when I was in the industry, meaning the old 4 gallon tins, which held 60lb of honey, or 27kg. They still talked 'of tins per hive', even though they were using 44gallon drums by then. Generally speaking a year would produce 2-6 tins, average 4, of course some years could go higher and the odd year there may be little if any. A good flow on a particular floral source would be upward of one tin, with 4 tins being a big flow.
Friday, February 15, 2008
The Fever
My young friend Ruby walked up the hill as I was going back down this morning, on her way to catch the school bus. Her school bag was slung over her shoulder and her strong legs worked under her summer school dress. She leaned forward into the hill, her gait identifying her to me at a distance. She raised her head and smiled as she neared, offering her girlish "Hello." I could see she was carrying something in her right hand, rolled up, looked like flag on a stick.
"Nice morning Ruby. "What's that your carrying, a flag, do you have school sports or something today?"
By this time we'd passed and both looked back to each other. "No, I'm going to the footy after school."
"Good on you. Who do you follow?"
"Richmond." Excitement beamed from her face.
"I'm a Demon fan myself but I'll be watching tonight. Your playing the Saints, yeah?"
"Yeah."
Footy's back. The Tiges have been down a long time and I'll be barracking for them tonight. For Ruby. And for Clappo's daughter, who has recovered from leukemia and is a passionate Richmond fan. Clappo, never into football previously, tells me about Kate who goes to all the Richmond games night or day, and her analysis of what the coach says and game plans etc.
I'll put a few dollars on it, there's a small credit in my Lasseters account, thanks to Maxine McKew. I'll put a few on the Demons to knock off Geelong tomorrow too. They'll be cocky, having won the the big one last year, after a forty four year premiership drought. My friend Nicky, otherwise a sane person, had a 'Weg' Premiers tattoo put on her back recently to mark her 60th birthday. That's worse than my mate Rick, who had 'CATS' shaved into the back of his head in the week before the grand final last year. Footy fever!
"Nice morning Ruby. "What's that your carrying, a flag, do you have school sports or something today?"
By this time we'd passed and both looked back to each other. "No, I'm going to the footy after school."
"Good on you. Who do you follow?"
"Richmond." Excitement beamed from her face.
"I'm a Demon fan myself but I'll be watching tonight. Your playing the Saints, yeah?"
"Yeah."
Footy's back. The Tiges have been down a long time and I'll be barracking for them tonight. For Ruby. And for Clappo's daughter, who has recovered from leukemia and is a passionate Richmond fan. Clappo, never into football previously, tells me about Kate who goes to all the Richmond games night or day, and her analysis of what the coach says and game plans etc.
I'll put a few dollars on it, there's a small credit in my Lasseters account, thanks to Maxine McKew. I'll put a few on the Demons to knock off Geelong tomorrow too. They'll be cocky, having won the the big one last year, after a forty four year premiership drought. My friend Nicky, otherwise a sane person, had a 'Weg' Premiers tattoo put on her back recently to mark her 60th birthday. That's worse than my mate Rick, who had 'CATS' shaved into the back of his head in the week before the grand final last year. Footy fever!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Sorry Day
Without getting too involved, I think this is a significant day in Australian history.
We should look after our indigenous people and their communities before or instead of committing huge expenditure on warfare in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Let's hope it's the beginning of the end of racism, inherent in Australia for so long. Racism borne of a colonial culture of conquest of new lands and the exploitation of resources and the dispossessed.
Perhaps finally there's realization we need to find a new way of life and a new way to do things.
We should look after our indigenous people and their communities before or instead of committing huge expenditure on warfare in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Let's hope it's the beginning of the end of racism, inherent in Australia for so long. Racism borne of a colonial culture of conquest of new lands and the exploitation of resources and the dispossessed.
Perhaps finally there's realization we need to find a new way of life and a new way to do things.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
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!
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!
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, January 14, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, December 31, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, December 24, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, December 17, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, December 03, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
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.
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.
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.
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.
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