Crook Eyes

A head cold developed for me on Friday, nasal congestion and and an irritated runny left eye, nothing alarming but one of those things that come and go usually pretty quickly (I hope).

Lib got up yesterday full of energy in the mood to go shopping so her and Gord went to Narre Warren early leaving me to my own company and easy pace. I put a few bets on the neddies at Moonee Valley and Echuca and cleaned out the fireplace while the washing machine did its thing. I couldn't smell the magnificent scent of the flowering sweet pittosporum while I hung it on the line unfortunately because of the head cold.

I cooked up a chilli con carne from the recipe on the back of a tin of hot spicy beans which turned out terrific while I heated a tin of pea and ham soup soup for lunch with the delightful farmhouse sourdough bread, that Gord gets from Aldi, toasted with the soup. All well on a gentle spring day. The concarne is in the fridge to give an easy meal next week.

After lunch I put Lib's electric battery hedge trimmer in the van and went down to Vilma's neighbour's place. We crossed paths walking a few weeks a ago and she told me it was due for a trim. It's only about a forty five minute job but the hedge is almost hard up against the fence between her and Vilma and that side of it needs to be done from Vilma's place and is hard to get at because of the fence so the lady asks me to do it as she knows I'm a friend of Vilma's. I parked in the lady's drive where a large a sweet pittosporum in the centre of the circular drive is in full flower. Again I couldn't smell it but it looked so beautiful giving a rain forest feel as the lower branches have all been removed and the canopy extends out and down. It would be an excellent windbreak and shade provider in hot weather was my thought.

I went home and did some gardening,clearing some thick wire grass and weeds, including sweet pittosporum seedlings which need to be removed every year or two if you have mature ones that drop seed like I do, or they will take over after a period of years and nothing else will be there. By the time I finished both my eyes had swollen up and I was struggling to see at all with the weeping fluid. Lib washed them with a saline solution and I watched the footy last night and slept in the spare room waking with both my eyes glued tight shut with gunk.

I rang the doctor thinking I'd get a scrip for something to put in them but being Sunday there's a message telling me to ring a locum or go to William Angliss hospital casualty in Ferntree Gully. Never mind I'll tough it out today, they are still swollen and weeping and slightly painful. I have dosed up with Vitamin C and will probably be much improved tomorrow in any case. I hope so as I will then have saved whatever the locum would have charged or the doctor tomorrow plus whatever the medication would have costed me.

Lib and Gord were very happy with their shopping buying  clothes and a new vaccuum cleaner.

It's a lovely sunny day. I'm going to the museum where Roy Kendall is on roster duty and I've arranged to interview him for a Signpost article in a future edition. I may squeeze in a little more gardening at home afterwards.

It's Never Dull

I walked my way through the forest in Gembrook Bushland Park on Monday to pick bunches of forget-me-not flowers where they grow prolifically along an edge. It was a warm day, the first in quite a while where I'd put on a short sleeved shirt and no T shirt underneath. The forest was still and the treetops glistened in the sunshine, birds chattered. I thought to myself how lucky I am to have this opportunity, this wondrous place on my doorstep almost. To see a place that has not changed much since white settlement. There's concrete brick and bitumen all over the place and cleared land and changed landscape, but here in Gembrook Park there's 65 acres of remnant bush that's never been cleared.

I picked the bunches and was about to make way back when Pip and Snow started barking at somebody moving along the track. I walked towards him in case the dogs intimidated him but when I got there he was happily patting them. He was a big bloke with a camera with a big lens, around his neck. We exchanged pleasantries about the lovely day and I apologized for the dogs to which he said was no problem, he liked dogs. He said he hadn't been in Gembrook Park for eleven years, but he loved the place, and said something told him to go there today and he was so glad he had, he was feeling so much better after being crook for a long time. I had noticed he walked gingerly, not a limp, but carefully and slowly.

I asked him where he was from, he said "Italy", but then corrected himself and said, "My dad was Italian, but I've lived in Berwick since leaving Gembrook. We went on to explain that his dad bought a property in Maisey Rd in about 1970 if my memory is good. It had an old house on it, and Rudy, he said his name was Rudy, and his wife moved into it around 1980 and raised their kids in what were very happy times with few modern luxuries. They were pretty isolated, but it turned sour after noisy neighbours spoiled it with motorbikes roaring up and down and wild parties going all night. They'd built a new house and turned the old one into a woodwork gallery and his wife ran yoga classes. I'm not sure when in this story, but Rudy's wife became ill with cancer, and died fairly recently. He has two boys at University. He spoke of his own recent illness with some uncertainty and a foreboding tone.

He gave me his card, 'Rudy Azzola  Contemporary Artist', and said he also writes poetry. His father had an interesting history he said, coming to Australia when twelve years old after being placed in an orphanage in Italy when his father died, then when his mother remarried and relocated to a sugar cane farm in Nth Qld. she went back and got him and brought him to Australia. Rudy wrote up his dad's story and visited his home village where he received much publicity and appeared on a TV show there telling his father's story.

I think Rudy said the new owners of the property in Maisey Rd neglected it for a decade and it broke his father's heart before he died, as he loved it. It has been sold recently he said to a young couple. The penny dropped. I was stopped in the street by a young bloke recently who asked me how he would find out about the history of a place he and his wife bought in Maisey Rd as it's a fascinating place and he and his family just love it and they are doing it up as it was a bit run down. I told him I'd keep my ear to the ground and come out one weekend and have a look but I'd ring him first. His number has been sitting written on an envelope in front of my computer for a few months, I just haven't got around to following up. Now I think I may have something to tell him, if Rudy's old place is his place it is a nice coincidence. I told Rudy I'd email him to establish e contact in the hope he can tell me more of his father's story, and to suss out information for the young bloke.

Now today, I picked bay foliage at a farm house in Gembrook, a friend's parents' old place. The old timber house is there too, and a third house very small, where I was asked to get rid of a beehive some months ago so they could finish knocking it down, must have been the first residence. With the very old sheds and assorted machinery the history of the place steeped into me.

I then took the dogs to JAC Russell Park so they could have a wander and saw AJ sitting on a bench enjoying a "Gold". He brought my attention to crimson rosellas nesting in the hollow of a messmate tree, quite low down. Mum and Dad came and went and occasionally you'd see a little beak stick out of the hole. AJ said he's watched them rear young there three years in a row.

Tonight I was determined to make some head way on a talk on the history of Emerald I've agreed to do shortly for the Ringwood Historical Society, but the file on the UBS stick wouldn't open so I couldn't access the power point slides I'd done at computer class. A problem to solve at class tomorrow night, but I was hoping to have more of it done tonight. Instead I watched a DVD compiled of old movies made by Bill Ford of life in Cockatoo in the 1950's. It was great and has helped my mood to prepare for the talk. I'm so glad to have watched it as Marg Treloar lent it to me last January and it's high time I returned it.      

Karma

After a dinner of roast chook with a bottle of McClarenvale Pirramimma shiraz 2007 which Gord gave me for father's day I fell asleep in the chair with Pip on my lap.

I just checked my sportingbet account to make sure I wasn't dreaming and yes there was a deposit of $194 for my tip 9 multiple ((for $5 bet) in the last round of the footy, and there's $50 in my bonus bets too, and a congratulatory message from Rickyralph in my hotmail.

So I swooped home to win by a nose in a photo, one after being 4 behind going in to the last round. Fairy tale stuff.

Bedtime now. Sweet dreams.

Vale Johnny Boy

John  and Raylene and Lib at Lakes Entrance 2007

Last Thursday was quite a day. A memorial service for John Harkins was held at Dandenong South at 3.30pm. John was married to our friend Raylene, who worked with Lib for twenty odd years at Salisbury House and lived at Emerald until moving to the Peninsula, maybe about five years ago. We shared many happy times and it is hard to believe John is gone. He was 62. He had heart bypass surgery a couple of years ago. John and Raylene broke up some time before that. We kept contact with Raylene but not John which sadly is often the way of it when a marriage splits. No intent on our part, just how it went.

Thursday was also Lib's birthday. I arranged to pick her up at work at 2.30pm or shortly after. Gord and I in Gord's car were a bit late at 2.55. Leaving Berwick I decided not to take the freeway, continuing instead south along the Clyde Rd to pick up Thompsons Rd which would take us across to the Dandy Frankston Rd where the service was to be. I'd had a quick look at the Melways in the morning. I took Glasscocks Rd instead thinking it too went right through. On the Melways 2010 there were two sections of the road marked with broken lines, and I wrongly assumed they'd have been built by now. We became lost in all the new estates where the roads all seem to go around in circles with roundabouts and bollards and fancy light poles everywhere. Not good for the blood pressure.

We arrived at 3.45, 15 minutes late. John's children Nicholas and Emily were giving their tribute and we heard John's sister's eulogy in entirety. The poignant slide show of John's life to the music of Joan Baez and Cat Stevens brought welling tears. John loved music, song and good wine and I don't think any evening in his company passed without him pulling out his guitar and leading a sing along.

The service concluded at about 4.15 and after ten minutes or so afterwards talking to Raylene and family we were on the road at 4.30 as the rain started to fall heavily and the heavy cloud darkened what was left of daylight well before it should. We were entrapped in a massive traffic jam. It took 90 minutes to get from Dandy South to Narre Warren where we had planned to buy Lebonese takeaway for Lib's birthday dinner. Robbie was coming up from Melbourne for the birthday. It was close to 7.30 when we arrived home after picking up Lib's car at Upper Beac.

Almost a five hour round trip from the time Gord and I left home.

Books Read Lately

A writing class colleague, Barbara, whose work I enjoy when she reads it out at class, talked about author Cormac McCarthy when we were asked to bring in sentences we liked. I hadn't heard of him at all but Barbara said she'd bring me a book of his to read which she duly did, three in fact. 'All The Pretty Horses', 'The Crossing', and 'Cities of the Plain'.

I read them over a few months. Barb said to read them in order (as listed above) as they are a trilogy. I returned them to Barb on Friday. I loved them. Reading them was like leaving my world behind and being absorbed in the place and time in which they were set, New Mexico and Mexico largely in the 1940's, the main characters being young men in a rural western working environment very much horse orientated and searching for meaning in a changing world. They are great stories and the writer in simple language describes the natural world that is so powerful and brutal and the actions and movements of people and animals that unfold the narrative. There are no quotation marks in the dialogue and little punctuation but there's no difficulty understanding who's saying what. There's philosphy coming at you from almost every page and some of it is rivetting. There's reverence for the horse as a noble beast and respect for the peasant whose kindness and wisdom is heroic. I almost cried in places. That's how I describe it anyway. It has changed the way I see things. The world is not the same tomorrow as it is today.

I have started a new book, 'The Reprieve' by Jean Paul Satre. I'm only up to page 19 and I'm struggling to get into it after the easy pace of Cormac but a sentence stood out to me on page 14-

"It must be rather grim to hope for nothing except that life might continue indefinitely in its present course."

Not in My Backyard 2

The post I did last week I presented to my writing class last Friday.

It was not appreciated by my colleagues and according to my teacher Maria it lacked focus. Such is the way of it when you put your views forward. It was suggested that I work on it to improve it in terms of getting my point across, that being that I think there are far more important things to be worried about than a McDonald's store being built in Tecoma.

Things like impending cataclysmic climate change consequences and massive inequality in the world. So I have edited my previous post, not changing it greatly but a little structurally. Read it again if you wish.

I don't say it's good writing, or deeply meaningful, but it did provoke at writing class. It was said a stand has to be made somewhere. Fair enough, but I'll draw my own line; where, how and with whom.

As it happens the media dropped off the issue this last week, I didn't see one report on it. The three big issues dropped down to two - the Essendon drugs thing and the Federal election.

If I may comment on those-

Shame, shame, shame on Essendon and those responsible for going down the path they did, and more shame on them not recognizing their culpability. And a staunch Essendon supporter said that to me today.

As for the election, the ALP is $5.50 for $1 today. That's enough for me stake a bit of hard earned in what is realistically a two horse race, despite the overwhelming media support for the Libs and the almost idiotic performance of Rudd courting of the youth vote. Lets rock and roll!

Not in My Backyard

The protesters to McDonald's at Tecoma say that VCAT didn't consider public opinion when they overturned the council decision and allowed McDonald's a permit. I don't know the intricacies of VCAT's decision but I don't think VCAT is there to adjudicate by public opinion poll.

I know it costs money to go there. When I objected to Cardinia Council's proposal to issue itself a permit to remove thousands of sweet pittosporum trees from council roadsides I was told council was proceeding despite my objection and that I could appeal to VCAT if I liked. When I looked into that I found that it would cost me hundreds of dollars to lodge an appeal, I would have to make myself available on the day the case was to be heard in order to present my submission, and should my appeal not be successful I would be liable for the costs of the council. Touche. There was no way I could undertake that at the time. They took out the trees. The trees are growing back fortunately.

In the Tecoma / McDonald's case it seems to be a matter of zoning and the site is zoned commercial. To deny Maccas and allow other fast food and hamburger joints is discriminatory. Unfair. That's why there is such a thing as an appeals tribunal.

The horse bolted long ago. When I lived in Melbourne pre 1972 I don't think McDonald's existed there at all. I bought the best hamburgers ever at Angelo's fish and chip shop. When I went to Wangaratta in 1976 I'd regularly indulge two with the lot from Nick, the Greek guy's take away opposite my office. Now there are Maccas all over Melbourne, in country towns of any size throughout Victoria, and strategically located along freeways. There's even one in Kandahar I read somewhere. McDonald's do their homework, they put franchises where traffic flow or population demographics tell them it will be profitable. And they are.

The protesters may as well throw cream puffs at B Doubles on the freeway.

My parents moved out of the city forty years ago to escape the increasing traffic snarl, choosing the quiet country town of Emerald. Tecoma also was a quiet little place, although much closer to suburbia and inside the electrified train network. Emerald now has a peak hour traffic jam through the main street, not as choking as that in Tecoma but getting there.

The gate was opened years ago. We as a nation embrace automobile culture and its connotations such as fast food and soft drinks, shopping malls, satellite suburbs. We lap it up like the cat with the cream. McDonald's in Tecoma is a tiny pimple on a destructive cultural giant that has been rampaging for decades.

Emerald will be next, as night follows day. Then, down the track, could it be? Gembrook? No thanks, not in my backyard. But I'm.....temporary.....and compared to the millions of refugees being displaced or about to be by climate change I have little to complain about. I'm sure they would not mind a McDonald's close by.

It would mean they have somewhere to live.

I have no beef with a McDonald's franchise opening in Tecoma.

Gembrook Park Erosion Work

I've been tonight to the Friend's of Gembrook Park AGM. I have been Treasurer for some years so I needed to report on the year's expenses and income. There's not much to the job as we have only half a dozen on the committee and only a couple of dozen transactions so the paperwork is minimal. It's an incorporated committee of Cardinia Council and we receive a five hundred dollar annual grant for expenses. We only have one or two meetings a year and most of the committee's work in the park is in the form of weekly working bees for a couple of hours on Thursdays, which I don't attend. I do a bit down there now and again in my own time, and I assist secretary Merle here and there conferring with discussion should she contact me. Merle is the driver of the group.

I am happy tonight following the meeting as our council liaison man showed us before, after and in progress slides of the erosion control works in the gully which commenced in April and were recently completed. Gembrook Bushland Park is a 29 hectare remnant of native vegetation that has never been cleared. Bushfires burnt much of it in the 1920's but is has escaped burning since then. It suffered from run off and silt from farmland to it's north, and storm water from the town introducing weeds for many decades prior to 2000 but erosion of the gully cranked up with the development of the farmland between the reserve and the main road, which came after the land was rezoned from agricultural to residential. The increase in storm water was multiplied something like four times, being channeled into the same gully with appalling result. We as a Friend's group expressed concern over about a ten year period, and after much public anger and frustration at meetings where consultant's recommendations were tabled, and dispute and indecision and argument over various options presented, at last when council managed to get a some state government financial assistance, the project commenced.

Works of about $80,000 were done last year on the water retarding basin above the park, and about $120,000 this year on piping the outfall from the basin about 80 metres down the gully and past the erosion head to a point that has been stabilized by rock, concrete, soil and revegetation. The gully back up from the erosion head has been replanted with thousands of plants through 'geo matting' and the job has been done with minimal disruption to tree ferns and other vegetation. Furthermore, a very old and huge mountain ash tree that was likely to soon fall over because of the erosion has most probably been saved (touch wood).

The pipes are designed to take all the water, that is in less than in a one in five year rain storm, underground to the point below the head where the gully levels and spreads out and a small creek begins from a spring. In a one in five year event the water will cascade over the top of the ground as it always has. Everyone is hoping a one in five doesn't happen in the near future so that the vegetation establishes well enough not to be washed out. A few years would be good but the longer the better.

We are all so pleased that the work has been done so well and indications are that it'll work, provided we don't get a huge storm any time soon. The contractor is engaged to come back every month for twelve months to keep the plantings weed free and spray deterrent on the plants to repel wallabies from eating them out. After years of watching the damage happening and lobbying as a group, it does restore some confidence in local government engineers and environmentalists to see such good positive work done. Even if it never probably should have been necessary, had appropriate planning and initial safeguards happened.

    

Every Day is a New Day

The world will not be the same tomorrow as it is today. Everyday is a new day.

Don Smedley rang me the week before last to tell me his brother Len had died. I last saw Len some months ago when Gord and I visited him in a care facility in Pakenham where he had been in ill health for some time. I became friends with Len's dad Lionel in the 1990's and regularly visited him at his Mt. Burnett garden where I picked foliage and blossom. I became good friends with Lionel's sons Don and Bob and their wives who lived either side of Lionel and Len moved in with his dad, and stayed after Lionel died in 2002. Len had allergies if I recall and was on cortisone for a long time. This resulted in osteoporosis and ultimately blindness which was when he left the old family home to go into care. When I saw him he was wheel chair bound and on his way outside for a smoke. He had three cigarettes a day, one of his few pleasures he said, along with listening to the radio. I'll not forget him or his friendship. There's a wake for him at the Gembrook sports ground next Sunday which I'm hoping I can attend.

Meredith told me last week that Ian Lucas died. Despite Ian being 96 it was a surprise as he was always so fit and drove his car still. I picked foliage and flowers in Ian and his wife Frieda's garden for many years where they lived in Benson St Emerald. They were wonderful gardeners with a farming background on the Mornington Peninsula. About 5 years ago or so they sold up as Frieda, who was a couple of years older than Ian, was deteriorating with Alzheimer's. They moved into Emerald Glades care facility when Frieda's care became too much for Ian. Frieda died not long after. I visited Ian now and again but Meredith was a regular visitor and Ian visited her at the farm alternately. He had a problem with circulation in his toes and had one amputated a a couple of years ago. He went into hospital to have another one off about a month ago and had a slight stroke while waiting for his op. He was still in hospital when he died peacefully one night. It could be said that he probably wished it so as he would not have liked losing his mobility if the toe thing continued and he couldn't walk or drive. Ian was a tough old bloke but a complete gentleman. He drove a tank in WW2 and had strong conservative views of his time but he was an old softie when it came to animals. I wrote a Signpost article on him a couple of years ago.

The worlds changes, every day, one way or another.

I had the weekend off with no work. It was cold and miserable. On Saturday I went to a Landcare function in Upper Pakenham where the guest speaker was a Dr. Mary Cole who talked about fungi. It was a brilliant talk. I learned so much and came away uplifted by a feeling of greater connection with this earth that supports us all. on Sunday Lib and I went to Casey Fields to watch the Essendon Bombers VFL team play Casey Scorpions which is Melbourne's VFL affiliate for the benefit of 'foreign' readers. This we did at the invite of old friends Gerard and Megan O'Brien from Wangaratta whose son Zac was playing for Essendon. He did alright too and I noticed he was listed in the best players in the Sun. But there was a freezing gale blowing that made the game unattractive from a spectator viewpoint. Lib and I came home so glad that we went. We feel a Wangaratta connection still after 32 years away and were glad Gerard rang us with the suggestion.

On Monday I made two soups, a bean soup using our beans from the freezer and a pumpkin soup, both in crockpots that chugged away all day. Tomorrow night my computer class resumes, I want to learn how to do power point presentation among other things.

 

Can You Believe It?

There's a blowfly buzzing around me. I can't stand them in the house. A goodly number came down the chimney today. It was so warm for July.

I watched a bit of cricket and fell asleep. It's now 2.14am. Past bedtime. Poms are 4/234. First day Lords second test. In the first test last week I found myself barracking for Australia. Fist time in about 15 years. More. Because of Ashley Agar. That was ......fantastic.

Gotta go to bed. Just had to post. All's well sort of.

Winter Wind

It blew strong most of today and the warning this evening was for gales during the night. Strangely it's deathly quiet outside now, not hardly a movement on the trees when I went out to wee and let Pip do same before we retire. Pip sleeps inside while Snow prefers out.

This is my first post for 3 weeks. I have thought of many things to write about in that time but at night after I have taken care of other things I can't remember what they were. I am after all getting on a bit and I think the brain is shrinking quicker than I'd like.

I have been busy at every turn. My friend Ian and his son Jethro arrived from Canada on June 19 and stayed till the 26th when they left towards Queensland in Lib's old Subaru which Ian bought in 2011 when he was last here but left with us when he went home. We have registered and insured it in the meantime and used it which was handy when Robbie was going up and down to Uni. Since then Gord gives it a run to Pakenham now and again or to the big malls so his car doesn't get dented and scratched in the car park battlefield. ( As it did when he went to the movies costing him $900 a while ago) Ian will be back some time in August before returning to Canada and I don't know if he will keep the Subie, or if we'll bother keeping it reged and insured if he does.

Earlier in June I had Museum and Park meetings to attend and report on and a project at the farm has been a priority. The first half of June was wet wet wet. I told Ian to bring some sunshine which he did, the second half of June was dry and sunny. The pattern now is for change with strong wind all day today, lulling this evening and just picking up again now as I can hear.

Lib has had a serious cold and bad cough for a couple of weeks. I have come down with the nasal extravaganza this last few days which is just now getting into my chest with serious irritation and hacking.

Our museum and park has its Biennial General Meeting next week. I have a President's report to prepare. I have said I'll stand for Pres again as no one else has indicated to putting their hand up. I have put in too much time there to walk away and leave my colleagues in the lurch They are a good crew and we have seen off the wolves. The new councillors are supporting and I have recently learned our special request for $30,000 for a paid part time museum curator for one year in this year's council budget has been granted and our app for a CWG for solar panel energy system also successful. The new mayor and councillors are a breath of fresh air into the district and I will stand by my "yours in commitment to achievement" sign off by accepting nomination for the next term, as much as I'd like to reduce my load. I have Signpost interviews and articles to do by next week also. There always seems to be deadlines for me to meet.

Winter has its downside but I love it. Even the wind is cleansing and fresh.

The Sweetest Victory

Noticing his Kangaroo cap, I said, "Hello Ken, I didn't know you were a North Melbourne man."

"Yes I am, but I’m Noel." I’d mistaken him for another of similar age and appearance. I'd been nodding to both these men for some time thinking they were one and the same.

I said he must be pulling his hair out at yet another narrow loss. North had gone down to Gold Coast after jumping them early and leading by five goals at quarter time. Noel agreed it was demoralizing, a mystery to him.

I asked how long he'd been a North supporter and he said he joined North in 1958 when he was about 16 years old. North made a public statement that if they won the premiership that year they'd buy all their members a box of chocolates. That won Noel's support. They didn’t win a flag till 1975.

I sympathized with him for the season's disappointments explaining that I was a Melbourne Demons supporter, say no more, but I had a soft spot for North since the 1970's when Ron Barassi signed to coach, and because recent 200 gamer Michael Firrito is from Gembrook, and our dog 'Snow' came from the Firrito's around when Michael was drafted.

Next day a young boy was bouncing a footy on his way to school. He said his team was the 'Hawks'. Footy crosses barriers of, class, religion, race and gender. Some women I know are fanatical.

I see the local braves training on miserable, cold, dark evenings, working to improve their fitness, skills and teamwork. All credit to them. Every week one team wins and the other loses. It is uplifting and humbling. Lessons and good habits can be carried into broader society.

I don't believe winning is everything. I'd rather be a loser who gave his all than an ungracious winner who had all the luck or advantage. But to win against the odds, when the chips are down, that’s the sweetest victory.      

  

The Automobile Age

Amazing as it seems my lifespan has seen more than half the 110 or so years that we have been driving around in motor vehicles. This has dominated the economies of  'the west' and probably still is the dominant factor in the much talked about global economy.

This thinking came to me during an email exchange during the week with son Rob who lives in Melbourne sharing a flat with a friend. I intend to elaborate more of my thoughts in a future post but for now I copy the exchange here, hoping Rob won't mind me putting his correspondence into the public forum.

ROB

Hello

Just been the usual - yeah I got Mum's email but forgot about replying -  nothing to report here really so that's why you haven't heard from me.

Hope everything went well at Lakes, did you all end up going together on the weekend? New deck? The football is beyond complete rubbish.  I was watching it on the iPad Foxtel (thanks to your account details), but stopped mid way through to watch the Da Vinci Code, which is saying something.

Took Hao's Barina to get 120,000km service today ($700) and was also quoted $900 for replacement of a water pump for the timing compartment thing that is drip-leaking coolant. Think the mechanic profession is the way to go for $130 an hour don't you!

Have been thinking about adopting a kitten what do you think? Don't know if it'd destroy carpet and things. But it would be cool.

good night

CAREY

A few months before I parted with my Suzuki I left it at Clapperton’s for a routine service at 180,000km and when I picked it up they said they put a new water pump in cause it was leaking, and without asking me (they couldn’t) they changed the timing belt at the same time which was due at 200,000 as it needs doing every 100,000 and the major component in changing the timing belt is labour taking off water pump to get in there. Whole job cost me about $600. Good I thought for a water pump timing belt in effect a major service. Clappo charges $77 per hour inc GST. Car maintenance is a financial minefield, and we are at the mercy of the economy, how it works, and the integrity of human beings, which is hard to assess before the event. It’s hard to be sure what they actually did for Hao’s $700 service. The whole car industry is set up for profiteering from start to finish including salesmen, finance, tyres, crash repairs/insurance, fuel, road maintenance and safety and regulation enforcement. It is a major factor in capitalism and frankly it is the basis on which economies and the world runs and if I could, I would not own a car and if I was GOD I’d ban them.

 

See how you wound me up. As for football, I have no interest nor comment. Only that if I could be GOD I’d trash the AFL.

 

Dad

ROB

For the Barina they say the timing belt change is 60,000km or 4 years. It was changed in 2010 so has at least a year to go... But I might suggest that he get the whole thing done in one go, the he can forget about timing belts for 4 years. And shop around at different mechanic places.

I was getting wound up about it too, as you say society necessitates that we rip each other off in order to survive. I'm particularly bitter being fresh out of the "degree factory." This video is worth thinking about when you have the time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEpDUeHjTtQ&feature=youtu.be&t=17s

 

Winter Nigh

Since my last post I have purchased a new work van, a Renault Kangoo which goes well so far, touch wood. I would have gone for another Suzuki but the APV from 2005 have not been built to take a tow bar so I went for the next cheapest small van. It was a pleasant trip second half of last week to Lakes Entrance to meet up with our old mate Willy to build a new deck on the side of the house. The Kangoo is full of electronic wizardry like cruise control and CD player, aircon, digitized display showing fuel consumption, range, fuel used, average speed and so on, all at fingertip, so long as you know where the button or lever is.

We've started lighting the open fire in the evenings, and I've had a few good feeds of wild mushrooms. The autumn leaves have all but gone to ground and the days are short, we are only a few weeks to the shortest day. I picked pittosporum garneti and calendulas and climbed a tree to pick Mexican hawthorn berries today and went to my computer class. It was a bright moon coming home, I turned off my headlights and drove easily without, so good the illumination, just for fun, but quickly turned on again if a car came the other way.

Winter is nearly here. Winter is lovely. In its own way. Bees rest, weeds slow down. It's good to snuggle into a bed heavy with blankets. For a while. I'm dreaming a lot. Earthquake dream the other night, real and scary. A football playing dream another, back at Greta. A funeral dream, in the country, a lady I knew well died. Lib was with me, we argued, I stormed off before the service, took the car, Lib can walk 20k's back, then softened and left the car for Lib and walked, thinking nothing is better than walking anyway.

It's late. I watched Q+A about religion. Interesting. Bill Gates tomorrow. Martina Wainright next week, musn't miss that, will have to leave comp class early. After Q+A I watched Footy Classified, then caught up on email. Must go now to seek dreams, to fly in the unconscious, if lucky, at worst some hours of solitude, and drifting in out of with pleasant thoughts in the conscious. I think of many things and many people in the wee hours. The mind needs the dark and quiet. I love quiet.

So ends this day. Good night.

Down to the Nitty Gritty

I so needed a haircut. Hairdresser Leanne snipped, clipped, buzzed and nudged as I told her that my last haircut was exactly two months earlier in Auckland, New Zealand. It was on the day of our flight home and I was attracted into the shop by a sign I’d seen the night before, offering 50% discount, just as the shop was closing.

It turned out the discount applied to haircuts done by students from the hairdressing school, and none were in at opening time next day, so I had to pay full fare. Never mind. The barber had enormous implants in his stretched ear lobes and was heavily tattooed, including his face, but he was congenial and gave me an excellent cut.

Leanne is a mobile hairdresser. She told me she met her husband when she was training. He volunteered to get a free haircut and was her subject in an exam. It’s amazing where a cheap haircut can lead.

They married and moved to Gembrook 30 odd years ago and Leanne worked at Lillian Granieri’s Gembrook Hair Centre, which was located in Redwood Road and also in Emerald in the main street, I think in the old telephone exchange. Lib was a customer. In those days Lib cut my hair to save a few dollars but I couldn't return the favour.

After Lib tired of cutting my hair I became itinerant and grabbed a haircut anywhere when I had a little time, or when the hot itchy feeling of a bushy head of hair in warm weather drove me to urgency.

These days I ring Leanne whose two girls went through school with our boys. She’s an avid Richmond fan so we talk footy too. She isn’t always available when I need her so I still pop into barber shops and hairdressers where I might be when the urge to be refreshed and invigourated by a clipping takes hold.

It’s one of life’s little pleasures.

Footnote - I’m told there was a men’s barber shop and billiard room in Gembrook in the 1930’s, where the supermarket is now.

Henryk Rejmers

Lib and I have been down to Lakes a couple of times lately, last weekend, and about a month ago. The first visit was a bit of R+R and our friend Will was going try to get to get there to look at options for building new steps/deck at the rear side as the existing were removed due to the substantial excavations that went on to do the new retaining walls. These walls are up but backfilling has not yet been done as the contractors are busy with emergency work elsewhere. The cost of the work is now tallied to $93,000 which is staggering and demoralizing, this cost shared by three families as the house is owned by Lib and her sisters.

As it turned out Will couldn't make it then so we arranged to go on the weekend just gone which was his first available opportunity. We drove down Saturday and came back Sunday. We discussed a few options with Willy and he's been given the green light to get it done asap which will be in a couple of weeks from now.

On our visit in April we met neighbour Dorothy one day who is now on her own after her husband Henryk died last year of mesothelioma, that ghastly form of lung cancer that is contracted through exposure to asbestos dust and usually takes about 30 years to manifest. Tears welled in her eyes. Henryk was 87 and had an amazing life story some of which I had heard about previously as Dorothy and Henryk were good friends of Lib's parents Molly and Bill.

I found a little book at Lakes house which I brought back with me. It was an account by Henryk of his story, beginning in 1925 at birth in Poland. He was the youngest of thirteen children born to his mother and father who lived in Warsaw at the outbreak of WW2 in 1939. Henryk and his family survived the bombing and strafing but Henryk was arrested in 1941 aged 16 while he was out shopping for material for his mother and press ganged by train to Germany where he was sent to a work camp. He was never to see his mother  and father again, indeed it was some 47 years before he went back to visit his siblings. He escaped the work camp eventually and travelled far, eventually being captured by police and put to work on a farm where he was when the Russians came. He wanted to get out of Russian occupied Germany get so he took off and managed to get through the Russian lines.

After quite a while in refugee camps he migrated to Australia and ultimately and worked  off his two year obligation to work where he was told with a team in the south east of  SA cutting down trees so that pine forests could be planted. The only tools they had was an axe each and a sharpening stone and a file and it was very hard work. He met and married Dorothy whose father worked in the forest camp and eventually moved to Adelaide where he worked for the Council then bought a service station. After several years this was bought out by a neighbouring company who then employed Henryk and Dorothy. They bought a house in Adelaide and lived there till the mid sixties, raising three kids. Henryk was a motor mechanic but had no trade certificate.

Morwell was the next call. Dorothy's sisters married two Italians and Henry and Dorothy visited them in Morwell where they lived, and decided it was time a move to Morwell where there were good opportunities. Henryk started work with the SEC at the power stations and sat exams to have his fitting and turning certificate approved. He worked there until retirement in the mid 1980's, when they moved to Lakes.

Hendryk had a hard working life beginning with slave labour in the German factory. For years he did not have enough to eat and suffered all manner of hardships along the way. He never saw the inside of a hospital as a patient till his mid eighties. He must have picked up some asbestos dust cleaning brake drums out as a mechanic or in the power stations where its use was extensive. A sad end to a fine man.

The inside cover of the little book I read had writing by Henryks hand-

'To Bill and Molly Meek, from Hendryk - November 1996'.

In his acknowlegements he thanks Molly and others for inspiring him to write the book. I'll never go to Lakes without fond memory of Hendryk, and Dorothy, whose house is for sale, she's planning to move to a unit closer to town where she won't need to drive if she chooses not.



 
    

Mellowing

Last Friday, the day after Anzac Day, at writing class, a discussion was had re the dawn service at Anzac Cove, which is of course held on the anniversary of the first landing on Turkish shore in 1915, in line with Anzac Day services held all over Australia.

Teacher Maria presented an opinion piece by a writer whose name escapes me- there was a big crowd in for the first class of the term and not enough handout sheets and I was late so missed out- but from memory the guts of the article was that the correspondent had no desire to visit on the day to be among a crowd of tourists who were there largely for the celebratory party atmosphere and the 'notch on the belt'.

I sympathize with the author's view. I don't like crowds for starters and I have reservation about Anzac Day anyway as a means of paying respect and remembrance to our fallen soldiers. The Gallipoli campaign was the first major military exercise of our new nation and was a disastrous failure costing 8,000+ Australian lives. I don't for a moment dispute the hardship, grit and heroism of our soldiers. As a kid in school in the 50's and 60's Anzac Day it was drummed into me. The preparations at school must have happened the day before because I think it was a public holiday then as it is now, and I recall being home on Anzac Day watching the television and being fascinated by the historical portrayal of the landing and the stories such as Simpson and his donkey.

Memorial services and marches on Anzac Day were first held in the latter years of WW1 and were used as recruiting drives for enlistment. After the war the fallen were remembered in solemnity and the day was an opportunity for reunion for veterans wishing to participate. Many did not including my grandfather who served three years in Palestine and France and who was teetotal and disapproving of the boozing at the reunions.

World War 2 followed, then Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan and Iraq and peace keeping force participation in various parts of the world, and Anzac Day has been expanded to include all those who suffered and served in all of these conflicts.

At class last week one member, Big John, voiced his objection to the article, calling it the most pompous thing he'd ever read. Big John said the writer came across as thinking he was above the service at Anzac Cove with the throng of young people. John said, "Good on them I say, they are only trying to connect to their ancestors. I have been there, it's the most moving experience, one that changes the lives of those who attend forever."

I remain loathsome of violence and war and the flag waving patriotism that accompanies it, which is where it hatches from its egg. Yes, I would like to visit Anzac Cove. But not on Anzac Day. I'd like to go there to contemplate the horror and stupidity of war in my own solitude, and grieve for the soldiers who lost their lives and those maimed and scarred emotionally for life. Not only for the 8,700 Australians and the 2,000 plus New Zealanders killed, but also the 10,000 French, the 21,000 from the UK, and God knows how many Turks (Wikipedia does not give a number) who were, as God knows, protecting their shores from invasion.

But I doubt I ever will go there. I can grieve the fallen from here. And I prefer to carry my loathing of war and violence with me daily. I would prefer to see national reverence for Remembrance Day, which marked the end of the conflict, and is appropriately named.

However, I am mellowing. Big John is entitled to his opinion. So are those who choose to go to Anzac Cove on Anzac Day.

Just as I'm entitled to mine. I'm no wowser, but when I see retired Major General Cosgrove advertising beer on the television in the lead up to Anzac day, I can't help but feel I'm not in step. Thankfully.




    

Chook Drama

Not long after we returned from NZ Lib's chook Myrtle went AWOL. On the first day of its absence I was concerned at lock up time when Henny hungrily followed me to their pen but Myrtle was nowhere to be seen. She'd been scarce for a day or two and reluctant to go in the previous couple of evenings so I thought she must be broody and have a nest somewhere.

Oh well, Foxy Loxy'll have a nice supper, I'll get another young bird, a brown one like Elvie's. She says they don't get broody as much as black ones.

A couple of days later I spotted Myrtle briefly, eating some of the bread I'd left out for Henny.

You little bugger.

No sooner had I seen her with some amusement on my part that she's survived than she was gone again, not to be seen for another couple of days. This time I'd returned from my walk and put the dogs dishes down to feed them then turned and walked a few paces back towards the shed when I heard a flapping noise and a dog squeal. Turning around I saw bully Myrtle hopping into Snowy's breakfast. She has it all over Snow who runs the other way when she employs the charge she learned from Rooster Lemon, whom you may recall met his demise last year.

You horrible savage chook.

I shoohed the thing away for poor Snow and stood guard while she ate her food. Pip is oblivious to all Myrtle's aggressive tactics and therefore the chook does not trouble her. There's a pecking order with the chooks and the dogs and Snow's at the bottom.

Over the next couple of weeks I looked high and low in the garden and shed for Myrtle's nest a number of times, and crawled under the house with a torch more than once looking for the stash of eggs. It was baffling me. Then one day I saw Myrtle on the deck, I had been nearby and hadn't seen her approach, then she disappeared again so quickly. So for umpteenth time I looked under and behind everything and being more thorough than previously I got down low and looked into the back of Pip's kennel. Sure enough there was the black feathered fool. As I reached in to pull out the bedding the stench hit me. There was a dozen and a half eggs in there some of which were broken.

You stinking horrible idiot chook.

I threw everything into a garbage gag, bedding and all. Rotten eggs exploded as I did this and it still stank to high heaven so I triple bagged it and put it in my neighbour's bin - they have moved out and their house is for sale so that was OK. Pip's kennel has a flat roof with a bit of carpet on top and I'd seen her lying on top of her kennel. I thought it was because of the warm balmy weather, but I now knew better, and also why a fox hadn't got it.

Within a day or two Myrtle was back to her normal nutty self; harassing, aggressive, noisy, always after food when you walk out the door. Both chooks are now laying in the shed, next to the fridge, against the back wall. I don't mind that. It's a stretch to get the eggs but at least I know where they are.

  

Back in the Hunt

In the footy tipping Round 5 I had 9 winners from 9 games to claw back 3 on Rickyralph, who slipped up on Collingwood, Richmond and West Coast.

I feel like the the big game fisherman slowly reeling in the mackeral soon to be gaffed.

I had $2 on my multi 9 tip. It paid $45 only in total as there were some shorties in there like Geelong, Sydney, Hawthorn and Brisbane, and the others were less than or around even money.

Besides the collect it was nice to see Collingwood smashed by the Essendon steamroller. Essendon will get theirs soon enough I reckon but not next week as they play the GWS in what could be some sort of record AFL deficit. I reckon GWS will set a record for long odds.

Footy Tipping

Rickyralph has jumped me this year. After 4 rounds he leads 26 to 21. He had a perfect 9 in round 2 followed by two sevens, leaving me floundering.

In our criss cross emails this week he mentioned the passing of his dog Dodge, at 14 years of age from liver disease a few weeks ago. Dodge started getting very thirsty some months ago and when he went off his food altogether it was time to call in a vet friend to put him to rest.

Rick is still grieving and I feel great sympathy for him. He and Dodge had a special bond that humans and dogs can have but the depth of which is uncommon. Rick has aged from 47 to 61 over Dodge's life and inevitable as everything is it still leaves a great emptiness I'm sure, as I have often imagined should I lose my girls.

I have great determination though to improve my tipping and take the title for the third successive year. At this point there are 18 rounds yet to go.

Good Harvest

Towards the end of a difficult season I can report that the last month has provided a bountiful harvest at Hanna's where I grow most of my vegies. Corn, beans, carrots, zucchini, button squash, tomatoes potatos, silver beet have all been delicious and herbs like parsley dill, basil and rocket and have been plentiful too and also shared with my friends. There's some good pumpkins that'll last a while, hopefully through to when pumpkin may go to $5kg like it did last year. We had some parsnips and capsicums too, in small amount.

I've put in some brocolli here at home and a row at Hanna's and some at the farm, and over the next few weeks should get some broadies in and garlic too. The silver beet and parsley should pick into the winter and I've put some seed in as well, and seedlings tend to pop up all over the place by themselves too. I've never done very well with onions, but I'll try some.

I'm lucky to have had Hanna's place, it has good deep easily worked red soil. I'm sure wherever I go in the future, as long as I'm able, I'll be growing vegies. I love the work getting them in and going, and the harvesting, and especially the eating. The limiting factor in my recent years has been a lack of time and little sunny open position both at the farm and here. We became very tree and shrub orientated through the nineties and noughties, responding to demand. We over planted certainly, and with a lot of stuff that is now no longer wanted by the market.

I can't say the same about a honey harvest, it's been another miserable year.  I have yet to pack the bees down for winter, but I fear they'll be very light on for stores. I may give the bees away. I went to the trouble of setting the shed up to extract honey but for poor return. I put all the tools and accumulated 'stuff' in the wood shed. My electric uncapping knife did not agree with the new switch board we had put in when we had our solar system installed, tripping the circuit breaker continuously which makes knife unuseable. The sheds are still in disarray and I'm hoping for a couple of weeks yet of fine weather to reorganise everything and get the firewood under cover. It's scattered all over the place.

I'm losing enthusiasm for many things, working bees is one of them. AFL footy is another. Business leaves me cold. I have no desire to catch up on bookwork and plan new strategy for next season and take on the big tasks of necessary garden renovation.

All I really like to do is grow vegies, take walks, watch birds, read books, and write, which is why I'm telling you this. Life is about leaving things behind as we go down the road. Not wise to deny it. Once I was a baby, a child, a teenager, a young man. The body ages but the spirit grows. Everything changes. I must. My profile talks about a simple life. It's time to live it.

But there'll be winter vegies, and spring is just round the corner. And a federal election. How dreadful.


 

Elise Petit (2)

I'm very pleased to say that I located Elise through facebook and learned that she did get her purse back. She emailed me as follows. It made me feel happy.

hi!! Sorry for the response times. I'm backpacker and I haven't often internet... THANK YOU VERY MUCH for my wallet. I thought it was lost but Australian people are very honest and nice. It was mportant for me, i had my french credit card, etc... You saved my travel!!!  I asked your phone number at the policeman but he didn't want to give it me. Sorry for my english...  Thank you a lot!! Have a good day!! Fortunately that people like you still exist!! Updated to Elise Petit March.

More (Creeping City)

I have wondered how it is that for many years the block of land on the corner opposite St.Silas church on the Pakenham road has remained vacant.

Not for much longer.

I have picked wild carrot flowers on this plot for many years

The backyard of the house in background ( my old friend Ida's) has been subdivided off  and  all trees and shrubs removed prior to more construction.
 

I do not resent this development which is smack bang in middle of town and inevitable, sad as it is in my selfishness that that the landscape along my walk is changing so rapidly. You would think there would have been a building on this site at sometime previously given its central location, but not so in my 32 years in Gembrook. I must ask one of the Gembrook lifetimers. I have been asked to do a talk for the Gembrook senior citizens on April 10, so there'll be an opportunity then. My friend Joyce Begg who gave me the invite grew up on the property on the other corner (where now the community centre stands) which was a dairy farm in her childhood. I'm flattered to be asked so I accepted. I can choose my own topic and should be OK with a general talk about my activities and livelihood at Chamomile Farm. I loathe public speaking but can't seem to get away from it.

Elise Petit

Returning from New Zealand on the evening of Thursday 28 Feb, I barely had time to open and deal with the build up of mail both hard copy and electronic an catch up to speed with various areas of work before the NHPEM function on 3 Mar to celebrate 20 years of the museum in the current building which was opened in 1993. As current president it was required of me to make a speech, not my strong suit by any means and something that is forefront in your mind as it approaches. It was a relief that the day was a great success due to the work of my museum colleagues who had been tireless in their preparations during my holiday absence.

On Monday 4 Mar, I took my morning walk with my two dog pals whom I had missed so much while I was away. On the way back down the hill 'Pip' was determined to sniff in a hedge of lonicera in front of Orford Cottage, and relaxed as I was with the relief of the previous day's function now behind me I indulged her and 'Snow' even more than normal. I noticed a tatty looking object under the hedge and picked it up. It was a small purse made of soft material which seemed damp making me think it had been there some days as it had rained before we returned from NZ but not since.

There was identification in the form of credit and debit cards and a French railway pass in the name of Elise Petit, along with various other paperwork suggesting the owner of the purse had recently been in West Australia, and an amount of cash stuffed in with the paperwork, disorganized and dishevelled.

I knocked on the door of Orford Cottage and asked the lady whom I know quite well if she knew of an Elise Petit. Where I found the purse in the hedge was adjacent to where visitors to their house park their cars and I thought it may have fallen out of a car and somehow been kicked or knocked into the hedge. It was a good way off the road, unlikely to have got there by falling from a car passing along Launching Place Rd. Elise Peteit was not known by the the lady of the house so I took the purse with me and rang the police at Emerald when I got home, thinking the purse may have been reported lost.

The constable suggested I look for a mobile phone number in the purse so he could contact the owner straight away. There was none, but I gave him he name of the owner of the purse so he could check to see if there had been a report of its loss. I told him I'd drop the purse into the police station that afternoon. After I finished talking to him I counted the money in notes and coins and made the contents more tidy after a thorough search for contact details. There were all of odds and sods including cotton buds loose along with other paraphenalia.

I went to the police station that afternoon and handed the purse in. The police woman examined the contents of the purse and quickly went to get rubber gloves after seeing the cotton buds. I think this was some sort of protocol to prevent her getting Aids or some other infection, not that such had entered my mind as I had examined the contents earlier. She counted the money, notes and coins $171.70, and filled out a lost property form asking me questions about where I found it and my personal contact details. There were new forms she said which were unfamiliar to her. It took a long time it seemed to me who wanted to get about my business as quickly as possible. I couldn't just hand it in and leave, I had to wait while she went through the form as I had to sign it when she was finished. I could not help but be alarmed at her slowness and lack of urgency making me acutely aware that she was being paid for every minute while I was not. Eventually I was given a copy of the PALM Property form 1346860 and left. I told her I'd like to hear if the purse was returned to its owner as I could imagine the stress a tourist would feel at the loss of bank cards and cash, and it would be nice to know if there was a happy ending.

That night I recounted this to Lib. A few days later Lib asked me did I hear if the purse was returned to its owner. "No, I've heard nothing." A few days later she asked me again. The reply was the same. I found my copy of the PALM Property report and had a close look at it. There's a yes/ no tick box mid way on the form which has the words (without question mark) 'Wish to Claim'.  The No box was crossed. There was another yes/no tick box along side it with the words ' Forward details to finder' It was also crossed in the No box.

I was not asked these questions. The police lady had marked them of her own volition, and I had not examined the copy of the form when it was given me, I had quickly left. I told Lib that I will never hear if the purse was returned to its owner as the form had been filled out to that effect, without my sanction. What happens to the cash if Elise Petit did not contact the police I know not. Perhaps eventually it goes to the police Christmas fund or government revenue.

Life is a learning experience. Should I hand in found lost property again I'll pay particular attention to the paperwork as it is being done. If by some miracle of the internet Elise Petit gets to read this post I hope she gets her purse back with the cash. I've tried to find her by my own means unsuccessfully.

Just how her purse got into that unlikely place remains a mystery.

* This had a good ending. I contacted Elise through FB and she thanked me for the return of purse. See post April Elise Petit (2)

AUCKLAND and HOME

We left Whitianga on the Wednesday for drive back to Auckland, stopping for lunch at a delightful town the name of which escapes me just now. Dinner that night was excellent in a Japanese restaurant across the road from our hotel. Afterwards we went to a live comedy show two doors up from the restaurant where 10 comedians performed one after the other. It was terrible with foul language and crude jokes about the worst things you could imagine.

Next morning before driving out to the airport we went up the sky tower, supposedly the tallest free standing structure in the southern hemisphere. We watched a few brave souls do a sky dive down on a controlled speed descent on a couple wires. Not for me.

View from top. That wire in the middle is one of those the sky jumpers use.

Rob and Gord picked us up at Tullamarine about 6.30pm. Almost on cue there had been 60ml of rain in the previous couple of days, the first for many weeks and the hot weather had abated for a while.

WHITIANGA

We left Piahia on Sunday 24 Feb. I looked at the map saw what I thought was our destination at Whangarei only a couple of hours away so we took a back road through some fairly remote bush and picked up a coastal tourist road where we got back onto bitumen. The scenery was superb. After a while we were back on a major highway. Some Kiwis on our yacht trip in the Bay of Islands were from Whangarei and when they asked me where we were going next and I told them they said, "Why are you staying there, it's not on the coast and isn't really a tourist town, it's NZ's northernmost city." I said the agent worked out our itinerary.

We arrived at Whangarei about lunch time and pulled up to find the name and address of our motel in the bag in the boot. 'Beach Resort Motel' Whitianga it said. "Where the hell's Whitianga," I said to Lib, fumbling for the map, to find Whitianga was 4 or 5 hours drive away on the Coromandel Peninsula well and truly the the other side of Auckland. So we steered our Nissan Tida along the highway and arrived at the town of Whitianga about 5.30pm.

It was obviously a big tourist town with many new buildings in wide streets, an air of prosperity was immediately felt but with relatively few people about, not like Piahia which was busy with tourists from all over the world. The population multiplies in peak season which we had fortunately missed. This time our accommodation was spacious, had excellent cooking facilities and was upstairs with a great view of the bay.

Five minutes by car from Whitianga, a nice spot for lunch

A little further on the road to the next bay

We were here for three nights and two full days exploring the coast and finding so many quiet little bays and white sand beaches. This place is a little piece of paradise. Like the other places we stayed, there were no fly screens on the windows and no aircon. Neither is needed in the north on the coast; it doesn't get too hot and there are few flies if any and mozzies either, and no moths came in at night. You just opened the windows and let the breeze in.

Next bay

There were hot springs on this beach

Irony 2

I looked up the dictionary to refresh on the word Irony. It's a tough one to grasp and I don't really get it.

Try this - Conveyance of meaning (generally satirical) by words whose literal meaning is the opposite.

Or - A situation or utterance (as in a tragedy) that has a significance unperceived at the time, or by the person involved.

Or - A condition in which one seems to be mocked by fate or the facts.

Perhaps I shouldn't use the word at all. In the previous post I don't think the fact I sailed on a yacht built by/for Sir Peter Blake and then a few days later was reading an account of a bloke who interviewed  the man was ironic at all. Simply a coincidence. Certainly it does not fit the above dictionary explanations of irony. I must ask Maria at writing class to explain to me (again).

Irony

Nor would this go where I wanted. A view from 'Lion'

For some reason I can't get this further down where I wanted it

We have looked at the word irony in my writing class more than once over the years. It's a word my son Gordon uses regularly, I think mostly in the wrong meaning, but what the heck. For some reason I just can't retain the meaning of irony and I'm too lazy to go looking up the dictionary just now. I will tomorrow and maybe due to this post it will finally sink in to my poor ageing brain which has had its share of binge drinking and concussion (football) over time.

However it is ironic that I should meet a man in Beaconsfield some days before our NZ trip who gave me a book he wrote ten years ago when he was aged 50. Peter Sweeney is his name, a journalist working out of Perth for most of his working life but Berwick born and now residing thereabouts. It was a chance meeting, his book titled 'Half Time' (He intends to live to 100) is one of three he has written.

On our day sailing trip we walked down to the wharf half an hour before the ferry left for Russell about 20 minutes away (big ferry fast speed) as instructed to do so. The Maxi yacht Lion left from Russell as its port had more water depth than Piahia which is why it was a base for whalers and sealers and therefore vice and whoring and drunkenness one hundred or so years ago, reportedly the wildest location in the South Seas.

The crew of Lion were three, a skipper with the gift of the gab,competent, as were the other two, an attractive and strong lady and a man about my own stature who had incredibly powerful forearms from years of 'grinding' on the winches that enable swift changes to the sails on these racing yachts. The skipper told the history of the yacht with almost reverential tone to it's original owner who had it built, Sir Peter Blake.

It was a nice day as we headed out. Dolphins rose and played, dozens of them all about. The crew told us not to look at the dolphins as we hadn't paid for a dolphin tour. It was magic to see these beautiful creatures in such numbers and so close you could almost touch.

The skipper explained that the conditions were not ideal for sailing and the motor would need to be used quite a bit if yesterday was repeated. We didn't mind, it was just nice floating over the blue water. After a couple of hours under sail at reasonable clip with lessons given to the tourists in the work of grinding to change sails we pulled up at the 'Isle of the Princess' for a one hour break. A few swam ashore, Lib and I took the inflatable dinghy which did three trips to get everyone off.

A highlight was a pair of little birds Lib and I saw on our way up to the lookout. Black with a bit of white, I said to Lib they had the beak of a robin, but were not like anything I'd seen before. I asked a couple of Kiwi people if they knew what it was, both replied negative, and I asked the crew member with the huge forearms who also didn't know, but said he did believe a type of  rare bird had been released on the island because of the lack of predators there and a program to save this endangered bird. Later in our motel we were watching the tourist TV channel and a segment came on about the Stewart Island Robin which had been bred and released here and there, and was the little bird we had seen.

After a great lunch we sailed off again. The wind picked up and the resultant sailing was magnificent with the maxi  leaning so far over you'd swear it would capsize as it sped across the water at great speed. The crew and us tourists alike whooped it up in the excitement in what was a fantastic experience.

The irony? After we left Piahia I read Peter Sweeney's book. In one chapter he talked of interviewing Sir Peter Blake the renowned sailor. An amazing man, he won the around the world race at his third try, he won the America Cup. He was killed shot dead by pirates sailing up the Amazon river at age 53, so Peter Sweeney informed me.

I enjoyed Peter Sweeney's book and related to his thoughts and feelings on many scores, in fact most.

It was not possible to photograph when she really got going as it was hang on or go overboard

PIAHIA

From Opinono to Piahia was a short hop of a couple of hours from the West Coast to the East through farmland that seemed to increase in productivity, population and traffic. Piahia surprised us, it's a tourist town highly commercial in the Bay of Islands area, busy and crowded with people spilling from all manner of campers and vans and rent cars like ours on the foreshore onto the beach and into restaurants and ice cream shops.

Our hotel was a little of the main st and regrettably again had no cooking facilities in its excellent motel unit that was ours for 3 nights. Making up for this was the biggest and best bed I have ever slept in, a king size you seemed to be lost in. We did a load of washing in the hotel laundrette and emailed Gord who was looking after the watering at home and the chooks. We'd put the dogs in a kennel, not wanting to overload Gord, especially with all the thunderstorms activity and the shot gun blasts in the distance that occur regularly and sends dogs into panic, particularly if we aren't there.

Friday our first of two full days we took the coastal tourist drive to the north east calling in at numerous picturesque bays small and not so small, at one of which we had our picnic lunch which is a favourite activity of Lib and I these day followed by the read of a book, in my case in the nearest shade available, and in Lib's in full sun lathered in sunscreen.

We'd seen an advertising hoarding of  a day sailing trip on a sixteen berth yacht with gourmet lunch so on returning to Piahia that afternoon we decided to book for the next day only to find it was booked out. Plan B was the big tourist booking office near the wharf which also had a day sailing sign and book we did, $110 a head including lunch. I think it was the best $110 I have ever spent. We were on the Maxi yacht 'Lion' which was built by Sir Peter Blake I think in the 1980's and came second in an around the world event that Blake was determined to win and which he did at his next try in a slightly lighter and faster boat he had purpose built. This is the bloke also that won the Americas Cup for New Zealand after Australia's win at Fremantle in 1983. A serious and famous sailor.

I'll write more about this memorable day sailing in the Bay of Islands next time, but I just want to get a few photos up now and hit the sack.

This sort of scenery is everywhere

The yacht stopped at this 'Isle ot the Princess' for an hour

 

The view from the lookout, The big yacht central is 'Lion'

OPINONI

Lib and I left Opinoni two weeks ago on Thursday 21 Feb. On that morning we walked the shore of the river looking for a lucky stone for our friend Raelene. Years ago at lakes Entrance we found a stone on the beach at Lakes Entrance while walking with Raelene and her husband John. Raelene carried her stone as acharm all over the world till she lost her handbag one day I think in Morocco. So we have another for Raelene and we hope she likes it.

We stayed in the 'studio' apartment behind me, two nights

Looking towards the Ocean from the jetty

Opinono is on the west coast. Highlights were the Tane Matua Kaurri tree, 2000 years old it is estimated, and the Koutu boulders (good feed of oysters off the rocks), picnic lunch one day at a remote beach. We loved the area. 

'God of the Forest', Tane Matua

Hippy Geologist - we bought a painting at his gallery

Geologist said these boulders, there were several quite round were 6 million years old

Looking across the tidal river

Home And Tired As

Lib and I returned from our NZ holiday last night. It was highly successful and without mishap. We loved the scenery and the mild temperatures and the general laid back pace. We restricted our travel to the north of the north island after arriving in Auckland on 18 Feb. We had a hire car and spent 2 days in Opinono, 3 in Piahia, and 3 at Whitianga and an overnight stay in Auckland at beginning and end. I'm too tired now but over the next week I'll put up some photos and talk about some highlights, which were numerous.

For now let me just say it was a total pleasure to drive about 1500km over 11 days and not see one speed camera. Average Jo doesn't have to have a fishing licence and nobody on the boats wore life jackets as far as we could tell. There was a feeling of freedom, probably accentuated by our holiday mood. The economy is strongly tourist orientated and they certainly make you feel welcome, right down the pecking order to the cleaners and maids and burly bartenders.