Quirky old Reptile Park photos

Some of you know that I am working on a history of the Australian Reptile Park with a colleague from Newcastle Uni, Nancy Cushing. Anyway, we have collected lots of photographs of the Park in its early days, as well as photos that the Park's original owner, naturalist Eric Worrell had taken. So I thought I might share some of them on the blog. Worrell was a rather good photographer and he took many photos of the people he met in his travels. The one above is of a buffalo hunter taken in what is now Kakadu National Park.

How many thousands of photographs like this one exist?

There's a story here which I won't go into now - you'll have to wait for the book! Needless to say the boy was not so much worried about the scrub python as he was of Worrell...take a closer look at Worrell's grip on his hair..."i was jiggled like a tea bag'

"I was taught from a very young age to always where white gloves when handling 'gators"

A dinosaur and his girl.

The Joy of Blogging

I am very new to the whole blogging thing, both in relation to writing one and to reading others. But there are so many fascinating, interesting and quirky blogs out there that I recommend you go on a hunt and find a few to follow. Unfortunately, it might also mean that you face the prospect of your favourite blogs eventually coming to an end, and that's whats happened to me this morning. At the moment I only follow a handful of blogs and one of those is/was called The Other Andrew. This guy, who lives in Sydney, had been running his blog for 5 years, though I only recently stumbled upon it on one of my random sweeps of the interdribble. (Well actually I was googling the diver, Mathew Mitcham which led me to The Other Andrew cos he had some pics of him on his blog). Anyway, he writes so well, he is a knitter, he collects retro images of all kinds of things, he had insight - it was a damned good read. But alas, I discover to my great disappointment this morning that he has run out of energy and decided to shut down his blog. This was not good news.
Another blog that I had been following keenly was that of the shaved headed venom researcher, Bryan Fry. OMG his life as he told it was like a Quentin Tarrantino movie...it was edgy to say the least and then it suddenly was no more....no explanation, no warning - the plug was pulled.
Another of my favourites, again oh so witty and insightful, gave her followers a shock a few weeks ago when, as a consequence of new motherhood, she decided she didn't have the time or energy to continue on with her blog. Luckily for all her fans, she has re-thought this hasty decision and so continues to brighten up my interdribbling.
I know my blog is anything but insightful or even mildly witty most of the time, but I see it more as a record of our lives here and a way that our friends can keep up with what we are up to. But I recommend that if you haven't got a few blogs that you regularly visit that you go on a hunt (though I'm not even sure how you can purposefully find blogs, most of mine have been unexpected discoveries) to find some blogs of your own. Or start your own. Oh and keep reading this one, of course.

Steve's handiwork

Steven finished painting the downstairs bedroom on Saturday and it sure looks good. We've (well Steve) has just got to hang doors on the shower and toilet and its finished.

Steve looks remarkably unstressed in this pic - which is consistent with the results of his recent stress test. The cardiologist was very happy with Steve's heart and doesn't think he has any problem with it. We are relieved!

Memo to self: always remove towels hanging outside windows of rooms I wish to photograph.

Bangalow thence Byron thence Uki

We headed out to the Bangalow Market this morning. The day was windy on and off but sunny and warm, though beginning a little cooly. Bangalow is always very busy when the market. Maxime, Yann and Steve on the street in Bangalow.

Like The Channon Market, Bangalow's is vibrant, diverse, colourful, exciting, interesting. The entertainment this month was provided by the kids from Dunoon Public School. This was quite early on in the morning..by 11.30 there would have been 15 kids playing these instruments all in complete time and rhythm.

After Bangalow we took the guys to Byron Bay where they had a bit of a paddle in the surf followed up by an ice cream before we headed to Uki for a drink at the pub in the shady beer garden. Uki is 45 minutes drive fro our place. About 20 minutes from our place is a lookout which is a great spot to see Mt Warning/Wollumbin.

Me, Yann and Maxime with Wollumbin in the background.

Saturday Dinner Time at Maryville@Larnook

Glen came over and we had chicken and salad and much wine...and gin and tonics and bubbly...

Getting to know Kimba

The boys enjoyed getting to know our woma python, Kimba. As those of you who know Kimba can see, he's steadily getting longer. After the photo shoot he settled down to a nicely warmed, thawed out sub adult rat. Here's Maxime with Kimba

and Yann with Kimba

Reptile Roadkill

The warm weather means that reptiles are moving about in search of mates and taking advantage of the warmth of the road to bask on. Unfortunately this often means death. Just this morning driving into Kyogle we saw a lovely big adult male water dragon that had just been runover and on our way back out of Kyogle a large eastern brown snake, again run over. Such a shame.

Meet Maxime and Yann

As you will read in the posts below, we have had the pleasure of having two young French men, Maxime, on the left, and Yann on the right, staying with us since last Monday. They are Help-Xers who are travelling around Australia for the next 12 months. They spent three weeks in Sydney, bought themselves an old mazda and then drove up to Larnook. They are leaving early next week to try their luck with fruit picking in Queensland, and are planning to work their way up to Cairns. However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of opportunities for such work at the moment, so we hope they are able to find some work. They are great workers. Here they are loading up the dishwasher.

Yann and Maxime take on the triffids

After the vege garden had been re-established, we walked down to our bottom paddock where some triffids (aka Scotch Thistles) needed to be belted into submission. Here is Yann hacking into one of the offending plants.

This is quite a large triffid requiring the boys to approach its destruction with some care and due diligence. Maxime appears particularly enthusiastic. The boys look rather Amish-like in this shot, don't you think? Let's go build a barn....

Farmer Maxime...

Yann is all set to clobber another triffid. I particularly like the pose in this shot for some reason.

Oops this one snuck in again.

Vege garden gets a French makeover

We've had two French guys with us this week,Maxime (in the pic above) and Yann. They are Help-Xers and have been really great doing lots of work and adding to the general aesthetic of the place. This morning we prepared the vege garden for the spring crop. First of all the boys dug up and weeded the garden and removed bits of newspaper that were brought to the surface from my failed attenpt last year to use newspaper as weed matting.

Then, after soaking the ground, the boys liberally applied sugar cane mulch.

Another watering-in by Maxime in readiness of the organic seedlings of zucchini, egg plant, tomato, water melon and lebanese cucumber that Steve and I bought at Kyogle farmer's market this morning.

A proud and happy Maxime after planting his first organic zucchini.

A slightly more reflective Yann with his baby cucumber (organic)

Dry as a dingo's donger

It is so dry up here. We've had less than 2 inches of rain since 26 June. We had an avalanche of rain in the first few months and now a very dry winter and spring. Just for the record:
January 123mm 4.9 inches
February 184mm 7.4 inches
March 176mm 7 inches
April 164mm 6.5 inches
May 350mm 14 inches
June 98mm 3.9 inches
July 33mm 1.4 inches
August 5.5mm
September (to 26th) 7.5mm

Our lawns are browning and dusty amd we have had to spend a lot of time watering all our plantings. Today's been very windy but luckily no dust for us today. We are moving into our storm season so I'm hoping we get some mild rain and not too much hail and brimstone.
Post Script: at about 3.00pm the dust started a'blowin....nowhere near as bad as Wednesday but dusty and hazy nevertheless...

Steve paints lower bedroom

Here's Steve painting the lower bedroom. Hopefully that will be finished this afternoon with a bit of luck. We still have the kitchen and informal lounge room to paint and I think we are hoping for an end of October completion for those rooms. Steve saw the cardiologist on Friday who suspects that Steve has atrial fibrillation and not Wolf Parkinson White Syndrome. All the imaging and other tests revealed a strong heart and he's having a stress test on Monday to round off the investigations.

First channel billed cuckoo has arrived for the season

The raucous and very distinctive cries of a channel billed cuckoo punctuated the morning quiet this morning, Sunday 20 September. These guys migrate down from New Guinea during spring each year and breed in Australia. Typical cuckoos they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and enjoy life on the hog without any parental responsibilities. They're a very distinctve bird with that big curved bill. They usually reach Newcastle in November though with changes in weather they may well arrive earleir than that.

Who made this?

This burrow has appeared underneath one of our pump houses. I'm baffled as to what has made it. e've not seen any rabbits on our place and besides there are usually droppings around the outside of a rabbit burrow, but this is very clean. Bandicoots we have, but they tend to just create little nests amongst grass....some learned friends suggest an echidna...anyway hopefully we shall find the owner sometime soon. Oh and the thong is mine, just for scale....

A few creek shots

We've done quite a lot of clearing out of weeds and long grass around the creeks now, well Shane has done most of it. We've also started planting a whole bunch of native trees and shrubs in the cleared areas.

I suspect these two characters are introduced European carp...

Loking from the low knoll down Leycester Creek. This is one of our swimming holes. turtles often bask on the rocks jutting out of the creek.

This is the small creek that flows through our property and enters Leycester Creek. Because Shane likes it so much we have named it Julia's Little Creek. We call Shane Julia cos his last name is Gillard. We shall have an appropriate naming ceremony complete with bubbly soon.

Another view. The creek is cery clear at the moment and is warm enough for swimming.

Maryville@Larnook turns 1

The first anniversary of maryville@Larnook took place on the 15 September, right after another auspicious day, the birthday of Alexander von Humboldt, the afther of modern geography. I had moved in a few days before this and Steve a couple of weeks later. To mark the occasion, Shane cooked a delicious lemon pudding, using Larnook lemons, that we enjoyed last Friday night. His friend, Midgie, also had dinner with us. Midgie lives at Faerieland, a radical faery community situated about 15 minutes north of us.

Living life on the edge

Now I know I have posted about quail previously, but seeing a small goup this morning as we drove down Cawongla Road through Rock Valley has spurred me on again. There's something very cute about seeing a family (I know I'm being anthroporphic here - I'm sure that there isn't really something analagous to our notion of 'the family' in quail-cosciousness) of quail minding their own business, as they go about doing quaily things, as you hurtle past them in your vehicle. How perilous their lives must be. Not only do they have to contend with the vehicles but also the impulse of so many to 'tidy up' the roadside verges which then totally removes their habitat. I haven't seen 'our' quail since one of the neigbouring landholders set fire to his paddock a month or so ago. Sharing these mini-ecosystems are buff-banded rails which are somewhat less cautious than the quail and we often see them head, neck and beak at full stretch as they race across from one side of the road to another, their little wings beating as fast as possible but never giving them much uplift. Given the lack of dead quail and rails, however, on the road, it seems that both birds manage to hang on without being walloped by cars or utes.

Steve to see cardiologist this Friday...and echidnas

Steve managed to get an appointment with the cardiologist this coming Friday so hopefully a better understanding of what's happening with Steve's ticker will emerge from this appointment. But he's fighting fit - his irregular incidents of tachycardia aside.
Speaking of things tachy...this is a lame segue I know, but the genus name for echidna is Tachyglossus so bear with me...since coming to live up in the Northern Rivers I have seen more echidnas than in my 45 years prior. They are particularly active late winter and early spring when the boys waddle around in pursuit of the girls. Their wanderings frequently take them across roads where way too many of the poor things end up run flattened pin cushions. Last evening we drove a friend from Sydney, who had called in for a drink in the spa while watching the sun set, back to the train station at Casino (which is a rather grand country station). And what should be snuffling across one of the back roads we were driving along - a jolly old echidna. Fingers crossed he doesn't encounter another road for a goodly while.

In praise of the loquat

When we lived in Maryville, Newcastle, the neighbours had a loquat tree which grew on the fence that formd the boundary with our place and consequently many loquat fruit fell on our side of the fence and rotted. They rotted because we didn't ever consider eating them.
However, now that I have tasted loquat fruit from our tree up here in Larnook, I curse my stupidity over all those squandered loquat moments that lay decomposing on the ground. Loquats are delicious. They are full of juice and the orange pulp is sweet with a slight tang. They are one of my favourite fruit. Our tree has been fruiting for the past month but it was only last week that I actually picked some off to try. The birds of course have been gorging themselves so it's only the occasional fruit that they haven't managed to find that is available to us. It's such a great feeling to wander around your yard and pick fresh strawberries, mulberries, tangellos and loquat. I can't wait till all our fruit trees start producing in a few years time.

To market, to market...

We left home at 7.30 this morning to go to Lismore Car Boot market, which is an excellent marlet held in the car park underneath the Lismore Square shopping centre. There's all sorts of stuff here and this and the next blog have some pics I took. The guys above are discussing tools.

Bears and avocados (we bought 3 for $2.00)

pretty ladies' things...

lots of fresh fruit and veges

even more fresh fruit and veges

More images of Lismore Car Boot Market

Just some more pics: a box full of horseshoes

A drag queens wardrobe of vibrant orchids, bromeliads, azealeas...

What's she thinking.....

A boy and his veges

Lots of fruit and veges....all that rhubarb..

The heart is a lonely hunter

'Kevin, Kevin, I'm having my heart thing again' was not how I was wanting to wake up on Saturday morning. Well it was very early Saturday, actually, about 12.30 am when Steve woke me with the news that his heart was racing again, and not just cos he was in bed with me. He had a similar episode about 5 months ago and he had been told by the doctor who saw him at Lismore Base Hospital that it wasn't a life threathening problem provided the heart returned to normal rythm within a reasonable period. So we got dressed and drove down to the ED (thats hospital speak for emergency department) which was much quieter than we were dreading.
Because it's a heart-related problem the triage nurse always gives Steve a 1 which means he gets to go straight in, while I get to read magazines in the waiting room for an hour or so. As I said, I thought it would be very busy but it was remarkably quiet and towards the end of my time waiting I was the only one there, though a few people had gone outside for a smoke.
Anyway, at about 2.30 a tall, young British doctor called me into the emergency clinical area where Steve was masked up for oxygen and had a canula in his wrist ready for the various magic potions they drip into him to get his heart to return to a normal rythm. Oh and Steve had numerous little sticky things on his bod to attach various cords and things to measure his heart rate.
No sooner had I arrived than another doctor, Andre, informed us as he began unplugging Steve that Steve would be moved to the rescucitation area just down the end of the room. This caused both of us more than a hint of anxiety and I had visions of an All Saints 'stand clear and charging' moment any second. He also tried to explain what he thought was the matter with Steve but gave up after a minute or two cos I think he had confused himself let alone us. He'd draw us a diagram, he eventually muttered.
But no resus was necessary, after they had adminstered magnesium Steve 'reverted' which is doctor speak for his heart was back to normal. This happened at 5am and Steve was released at about 10.30. But Doctor Andre reckons Steve might have a thing called Wolf Parkinson White Syndrome where the electrical impulses kind of do a disco beat thing within his heart and are not behaving themselves by following the normal pathway like they should. It can be fixed pretty easily with a hot soldering iron and a well placed burn (or something like that). The bad news is that the waiting list to see a cardiologist up here is a few months. But anyway, he is fit as a proverbial fiddle now.