Merry Xmas to all our family and friends!

We hope that you have a wonderful and peaceful and enjoyable Xmas and a fabby New Year! Apologies - we have not sent a single card out this year...Xmas kind of just crept up on us this year and caught us unawares. Well that's my story anyway. Enjoy the baubles!

An inauspicious start to Xmas Eve day

After loading up the vitara with assorted cardboard and empty bottles so I could do some pre-xmas recycling, and as I was just about to get in the car to drive off, I noticed that one of the tyres was flat. Oh my. So the beginning of Xmas Eve was a little less smooth than we had anticipated. Hope the rest of the day improves! Note Steve's expression - this is called a 'forced smile'.

Sunday brunch in Newcastle

Steve and I made a lightening fast trip down to Newcastle on Saturday afternoon so we could attend my mum's 70th birthday party which was a surprise affair at Cardiff RSL (photos to come soon). Yesterday we caught up with some of our special friends in Newcastle for brunch at Dimitri's cafe in Hamilton. From left: Geoff, Graham, Glen and Lee.

Good bye (again) Jann and Maxime

Jann and Maxime, two French help_x'ers who stayed with us a few months ago spent another week with us over the past week before heading up to Brisbane for Xmas and New Year. They did lots of things like cleaning our windows, watering our thirsty plants and digging out our soon-to-be decked Balinese style courtyard. Here they are after a few hours of sweaty digging and carting work.

On our way back home from the Gold Coast airport we met up with the boys at Uki pub which is 40 mins from our place. Jann is on Steve's left, Maxime on the right. After their time in Brisbane they head out to Charleville to work for 5 weeks or so in the abbatoir out there (unless they get lucky and score a better job in Brisbane - which we hope they will!).

100 not out

Woo hoo. We got rain. Lots of it. We were in Newcastle over the weekend and between leaving home at about 1pm Saturday and arriving back at 6.00pm Sunday we received a perfect score of 100mm - that's 4 inches in the old scale - not a bad effort. It rained lightly for much of the night bringing us another 5mm and it's been drizzling all morning, so we might get a little more.
Our lawns will green up and all our plants and trees will be slurping up the soil moisture big time. Fantastic!

Bandy Bandy on Cawongla Road

Pic: Google Images
I spent the past three days up at the Gold Coast for work, staying at Twin Towns Resort at Tweed Heads. My final task was to present some awards at the Gold Coast Institute of TAFE's Graduation at the GC Covention and Exhibition Centre last night. I haven't seen so many big heels and short dresses. Anyway, that ended at 7.30 and I picked up our friend Andy (who had come up for a couple of days to set up our new iMac and assorted bits and pieces) from GC airoport and drove home via Murwillumbah and Uki.
We were hirtling along Cawongla Road at about 10.00pm last night when the black and white bands of a bandy bandy appeared on the road. I turned around and walked up to it and it took off much more quickly than I had assumed this species can travel. Anyway, I managed to pick it up and have a closer look before letting it slide effortlessly through the grass and off into the night. The black and white banding creates this amazing blur when the snake is sliding away so as to avoid getting eaten. Great find - it was my first bandy bandy in the wild.

Nimbin - hippy capital of Australia

Photo from Google Images. Taken during Mardi Grass festival. Police checking people outside the 'Bringabong' shop with it's window display of the giant golden bong which is a permanent fixture.

According to the latest Nimbin High Times newspaper, Nimbin was recently named as one of the top 10 hippy sites in the world. It was up there with Kathmandu and Amsterdam. Also in this week's Echo, another freebie newspaper (which actually has much better quality reporting than the local mainstream rag, The Northern Star), a Lismore councillor failed in his motion to install 'drug-free zone' signs on the main street of Nimbin (ala the alcohol-free zone signs you see around the place). Most of the other councillors derided such a move as being, well, just silly. 'Because there is drug-related activity on lots of streets in lots of places - why single Nimbin out?' they cried.
Reasonable point but, to date, I haven't been asked if I wanted to buy weed/smack/cake/cookies/e/k/speed/amphetamines/ice in Lismore or Kyogle or Casino or Bangalow or Byron. But I do in Nimbin. Pretty much every time I visit.
Now, just for the record..as long as tobacco and alcohol are legal then I simply can't wear the illogic of allowing some drugs that cause considerable personal and community harm and not allowing others. I'm pro decriminalisation of rec drugs. So, my rant here is not with the actual use of recreational drugs.
My rant is about inconsistent application of the law. Last time I looked, Nimbin was still part of Australia. Where you have open selling of drugs on streets in pretty well every other part of Australia you get some police activity to mark the fact that well this is just not appropriate behaviour - indeed it is illegal. But not much sustained action takes place in Nimbin.
There's some sad looking smack-addicted characters that sell the drugs and not a few young guys, some who look younger than 15. I wonder whether lots of Nimbin kids become 'Saffy's' (drug-intolerant daughter of Ab Fab's Edina) and eschew drugs as teenagers?
But much of Nimbin's tourism (which by the way seems to be thriving) is drug-related. It's very interesting from someone who is interested in tourism as a thing to study. Loads of backpackers come up each day from Byron in minibuses with tour companies like 'Psychodelic tours' or 'Sky-high tours' to buy some dope off the lads (and ladies) on the street.
But the alternative view to mine, which was expressed by a female estate agent when she was showing me a couple of houses in Nimbin was that 'well everywhere has its drug problems....its just that ours is out in the open'. She has a point.

Hot and dry

Each morning breaks into a clear blue sky and rising temperatures. No sign of rain. Ever. Brisbane might have thunderstorms this afternoon according to Fran Kelly on ABC National this morning. This gives us hope. A little. We are starting to lose plants that we planted down by the creek and if we hadn't been watering our plantings close to the house systematically over the past few months many of them would now be dead.
We had just over 1000mm of rain in the first six months of the year. So far, in the last six months we have had around 150mm. Please rain.

An arvie swim

It was another hot day. The NBN weather man said it had been 38 in Limsore and so was probably about 40 out here at Larnook. For those of you who live in Newcastle, Larnook is positioned about the same distance from the ocean as Singleton. But Larnook is prettier. Much prettier. And we don't have coal mines.
Anyway, so it was still real hot when we arrived home at about 5.00pm. Martins had been wheel barrowing loads of dirt from Ground Zero today until the tyre on the wheelbarrow got a puncture. "Exploded" to quote Martins. He then spent the rest of the day watering plantings. He had done half the plants down by the creek but had taken some time out.
When we arrived home he was about to return. So I joined him and together we filled buckets of cool water from Leycester Creek and watered the remaining 20 or so plants. When we finished I decided to have a swim. I stripped off to nothing, feeling that fleeting feeling of exhileration of being completely naked outside. How naughty. I walked a few steps into the water, treading in soft. clean sand before falling into the water.
The coolness of the creek swallowed me and I felt as if I weighed nothing. I slid further into the deeper water until I could barely stand on the rocks below. My body felt like it was sensing like it hadn't been sensing. I felt slightly warmer and slightly cooler currents against my skin as I swam leisurely across to some rocks that jut up out of the creek. Turtles and little pied cormorants rest here as well. I felt refreshed. I felt alive. I felt like a kid again. And this was at my place. Skinny dipping in a cool creek. After work. At home. Bliss.

a different view of maryville

Shane and I mounted an expedition on Monday up our little creek on our property on the other side to the house. We then headed up a ridgeline on our neighbour, Bill's property and found we had a fine view of Maryville from a very different perspective.

Latvian versatility

Martins (see posting below) has been quite versatile....digging out stubborn azealea bushes (well what was left of them after they got hacked back to their roots); laying down barrowloads of mulch and...

painting a timber bench seat we bought some time ago at the Tender Centre. In the shade. Under the mango tree.

(partial) metamorphosis

My main project while I have been on rec leave this week has been to clean out the central 'courtyard' area between the two pavillions so that we can do a complete Jamie Drurie makeover. Think timber deck, long rectangular fish pond, water lillies, Bali effect. Go on, use your imagination.

So Shane and I began the process on Tuesday by removing all the pavers and some garden beds.

Then Martins, our Help_Xer from Latvia (think Eurovision Song Contest) got stuck in on Wednesday and Thursday and we cleared put all the plants (most of which we have transplanted), rocks, sleepers, soil and other debris.

And here we have ground zero, awaiting the holes for the footings for the deck. Stay tuned.

Awakening to the dawn chorus

Blissful isn't it. All you city folks thinking how beautifully serene it is to wake to the bushland choir of birdlife, celebrating life by singing. Hmmm well not if you include amongst their ranks a very noisy koel cuckoo which likes to wake at 4.30am. This musical philistine is joined shortly afterwards by the gaggle of channel billed cuckoos (see story below). Recently joining in the fray are a number of cattle that Bill, one of our neighbours, has placed in a paddock near our place. I now understand what 'the cattle are 'lo'ing means.'...it's bloody well short for bellowing...and then there's the cow amongst them that sounds not unlike the T. rex from Jurassic Park. Literally. Hand me that valium....

Rain birds: rain!

The channel billed cuckoos have been extremely raucous over the past few days, irritatingly so just before day break at about 4.30/5am. There must be half a dozen or so that are roosting close to our place and they begin their morning by sounding like they are being collectively strangled. Which, as a matter of fact, I would like to...sometimes. well in the mornings, anyway. They fly inelegantly overhead at various times of the day, announcing themselves well before you actually see them. Maybe they are telling each other where the best nests are to lay their eggs in. If you know what these birds look like you would appreciate what an absolute shock it must be to a raven or currawong or whatever other unfortunate bird becomes the unsuspecting surrogate parent to this large and let's face it, not entirely attractive bird.
Now another name for this species is rain bird, and eevrytime I hear them I think..'agh they must know through some inne mechanism encoded in ancient DNA that it is about to rain...this is good because we need it deperately'...but no...they get it wrong every bloody day.
And it is dry again. We received only 38mm for November and if we don't get 2omm at least in the next week or so we are really going to brown off in a big way. Today Shane and I shifted two of our tree ferns to a new location because they just couldn't cope with the dry winds and harsh sunshine. Rain. Please. Go on.

Veges verdant and vigorous

Looking across the vege patch: zucchini (which are now producing), lettuce, tomato

Our corn...a bit straggly but they are OK..with bok choy and rocket self sown emerging between and around the corn stalks

We should get loads of tomatoes this year and the lebo cucumber has started producing as well

Giving the place a make-over

We've been busy slapping on litres of paint on anything that stands still for the past few weeks and I'll be doing a fair bit over the next week I have on leave. Here I am painting over the painted stencilled inlays in the bricked ends of the house. I'm hoping some curse isn't activated after covering the doves of peace.

We finished painting the entry area on Sunday. Still to paint the seat a funky purple colour. Hopefully this week.

And the inlays now looking a little more contemporary. Kind of. Shane emerging in the early morning to start taming the creek area. The garden here is just on 12 months old now.

Red

Last month it was the jacaranda that were showing off and this month it's the poinciana and flame trees. Maybe it's been the dry spring, but this year the flame trees in particular have been amazingly vibrant. The pic above was taken at Steve's school in Ballina (Southern Cross High) while the pic below is of a flame tree at the uni. The poinciana will continue flowering for a couple of months.

Pretty nice, hey.

Tender Centre#2

OK, so I don't quite know what happens to us when we go a'tendering, but we do seem to become capital T Tenderers. Here's what we put bids on on Friday:

Telescope MISSED OUT
Lawn Mower HIGHEST BIDDER BUT UNDER RESERVE - WAITING ON OUTCOME
Brush Cutter MISSED OUT
Bike Trousers BOUGHT
Old fashioned antique look carpet cleaner MISSED OUT
Church pew HIGHEST BIDDER BUT UNDER RESERVE - WAITING ON OUTCOME
Chair AS ABOVE
Wooden seat MISSED OUT
Outdoor bird cage MISSED OUT

I'll let you know how we get on on Sunday night.

Tomorrow is Tender Centre Friday

Woo hoo. Not only is it my last day at work for a week, but it's also Tender Centre Friday. It's just like ebay except you walk around all the junk, trying to scratch out a few dusty pearls from all the swine. I wonder what we might bid on tomorrow? Have we been out of civilization for too long do you think?

Getting a make over

So, here's the south-facing verandah and pavillion after it's new colour scheme. Much bolder and more vibrant than previously.

And the entry garden is looking fantastic now too, after a nice mulching and new path installed.

Compare that with the banner photo...we've come a long way in 12 months, I think.

Vin and David

It's 5.24am and I've just returned from taking Vin and David to Kyogle station where they caugt the 4.22XPT to Brisbane. They are heading up to Coolum later today. They were excellent workers and we've progressed the painting of the exterior of the house quite a bit. Here is David aka 'Michealangelo' doing what he has grown to love.

David in particular seemed to be relaxed about working in his jocks. Who were we to impose some kind of draconian dress rule? Steve and Dave before they remove the Balinese 'prison mirror' so Steve could paint the wall.

Vin also decided to ditch his usual clothes yesterday. Here he is after a cupboard we were shifting from the entry deck crumbled apart. Vin was begining to get a reputation for breaking things: first the lawn mower, then the brush cutter and now this cupboard. 'Stay away from the TV, Vin. oh and the dish washer and the computer...'

The boys' final soaking in the spa after a hard day's work.

And off they head in the middle of the night to Brisbane and then Coollum. Catchya again, guys.

A weird wildlife afternoon

As we were driving home yesterday afternoon, about 5 minutes from the turnoff to our place, we noticed a carpet python on the road. My eyes had drifted from the road to the paddocks on the right hand side, so I had to swerve a little to avoid hitting it. I pulled up and ran back to it with the intention of encouraging it back off the road when it lunged at me with mouth wide. And it was then I noticed it was bleeding from the mouth. %$*& I must have hit it after all. So I caught it and Steve drove the rest of the way home while I held the python with its bleeding mouth in a woolies green bag.
And what did we see sliding across the road just over our bridge - another carpet python! Two in 5 minutes is damned good going! This one was fine and we stopped the car and waited until it had disappeared into the bush. Once home I range WIRES who told me they would ring back later once they had contacted their reptile person. In the meantime I placed the python in a cupboard we have on the front deck. It had settled down by this stage and was no longer bleeding. It had no visible signs of injury and wasn't behaving as if it was hurt.
Then Vin came out to say he thought he could see dingoes on our paddock opposite the house. So out we went and there was a pack of four, maybe five dogs, and some looked like they might have had some dingo in them. They looked like they were hunting and it was a weird feeling to see this mob of large predators on the hunt. They were unlikely to be pet dogs going for a romp with their mates, these guys looked like they were mean and tough and lived in the bush. We put the chain on the chookery last night.
I didn't ever get a call back from WIRES so this morning I checked the python out. It seemed fine, was coiled up in a relaxed python way, was not bleeding, had a clean tongue, so I released it near our creek. Go well, python, and stay away from roads. No sign of the dogs or any dead wallabies.

Border Ranges National Park

I took David and Vin up to Nimbin for a look yesterday afternoon and once they had checked out the drug dealings in the main street and had a beer at the pub, we then headed for the Border Ranges National Park, which as its name suggests, straddles the NSW/QLD border. It's wonderful to live only 25 minutes south of this park. I first visited it last year when I took Piglet for a drive through and more recently we had a quick visit with Glen and Andy. Steve stayed at home working (as he d0es) while the boys and I headed on a splendid two hour stroll through the rainforest and antarctic beech forest. Here they are posed in front of what maybe a 2000 year olf beech tree - Vin (bottom), Dave (top).

The flame trees are putting on amazingly vibrant display at the moment and we walked under occasional huge trees along the walk. They are starting to lose their flowers now so the leaf litter was bedazzled by these beautiful blobs of red.

Tree fern

David at front, Vin at rear. Vin found a large native snail shell that had been broken into by a noisy pitta. He was most impressed.

The walk was beautiful and you really did feel like you were in some primordial, sub-tropical rainforest, which is not surprising because we were!

Mud daubing wasps

Photo: Alastair Ross, Google Images
For the next couple of months we shall be discovering the little mud capsules constructed from the muddy spit of mud dauber wasps. They build them everywhere - on the insides of car doors, under cusions we have on the day bed, even inside shoes that are left outside. I stuck one of my hooves in a shoe yesterday and felt lots of crumbly, gritty stuff and on extraction, found six of these little muddy cocoons inside. As I scraped them out several broke and they were full of small, paralysed spiders, as this phot shows. I'd forgotten that this wasp searches for and then paralyses soiders which it places inside the cocoon so that when wasp junior hatches it has a fresh supply of food to last it until it emerges from its mud wrap as a new wasp. Its the first time that I had actually seen this in the flesh myself. There must be a very large number of small, nervous spiders at our place at the moment!

Friday night at Cawongla Store

We occasionally head 5 minutes up the road to Cawongla Store in the village called, not surprisingly, Cawongla, which is Koori for peaceful place. The store stays open on Friday nights for dining in (wood fired pizzas) so we took our latest Help_X workers, Vin, on the left, and David, on the right, from France, up for a meal.
They have been very busy putting in new paths, mulching, lawn mowing and painting. I shall post some painting shots up in the next few days.

A new path through the front of house garden

The native garden we have at the entry to the house is bisected by what used to be a very average looking weed infested, compacted earth track that lead from the main path towards the front door entry area and the south facing pavillion. So, nigh on 12 months after we created this garden, we decided it was time for a track make-over. Shane kindly prepared the path by weeding and breaking up the soil and better defining the edges.

And this is the finished track courtsy of 10 paving blocks, lots of bush mulch and the hard work and creativity of our Help_X slaves, oops workers, David and Vincent from France. Excellent job, they did, don't you think?

Steve prepares for painting

We are preparing to paint the exterior of the house which should make a very big difference to its look. Gabe began the process by painting some of the verandah railings and we are hoping that the two French boys, Dav and Vincent, who arrive on Wednesday, will be able to paint the decking and other railings of the verandahs. We've decided on a colour for the exterior of the house so they may also begin painting the house (depending on their verandah painting skills, of course). Oh and Steve can be seen high pressure hosing (one of his favourite activities) the scum and muck off the veranda roof and decking. "A clean surface is a paintable surface..."

Update: creek and fruit

The recent rains have been wonderful for our thirsty plantings but of course the extra rainfall and warm temperatures and sunshine have been a boon for the weeds and grass as well. Spent a few hours mowing down by the creek. This side of Julia's Little Creek is under control...

This side is outta control....

The pears are starting to become more pear like, but they seem to be fairly slow growing, while...

the mangoes are really starting to take form and some are even showing a little bit of blush..I'm hoping we manage to save a few for xmas from the fruit-loving birds and flying foxes.

Meet Teriaki and Sushi

Meet Teriyaki, our cock Japanese bantam. We were at The Channon Market this morning admiring the poulty stall when our friends Matt and Stewart, well particularly Matt, convinced me that what our lives needed to be totally fulfilled was this sweet pair of bantams. The more I looked at the proud little rooster with his demure girlfriend, the more I knew he was right. So once Steve had acquiesced, I handed over the $25.00 and these two became ours.

This is Sushi, being a little shy in front of the camera.

Sushi with Teriyaki in the background. Our chookery has an internal compound which can be used fro separating or quarantining so we've put the two banties in here for a few days until the other girls get used to them. Lordie did the girls cackle and crow in a very concerned manner when they saw their new friends. The girls can go on a bit at times.

Just some pics of the place taken early morning

Fallen jacaranda blossoms carpetting the front entry

The sun emerging from over the Billen Cliffs through a foggy morning

The Billens emerging from the foggy mist just before 7am

More purple blissnes

The recent rains have re-freshed the ground, the plants, the look and feel of the place