fantastic fungi

These guys are rather large..see my thing for a sense of scale..I wish I knew whether they were edible..would love to gently saute them in butter...
we have so many fungi erupting out of the warm, moist mulch that covers The Big Bush Garden at the moment...
look at these with their delicate veiling
another crop of maybe edibles...
you half expect a leprechaun to be poking out from behind these guys

It was one of those 102mm days

Well Steve made it safely back from Casino this morning but this is the 'bridge' 5 hours later at 4.30pm..the flood height sign which is over 2 metres high is well and truly submerged. People are stranded of course on both sides of the creek.
Luckily we don't need to be anywhere else. With some luck we the heaviest of the rains are over and the creek will subside so our friends Grant and Kelly from Sydney can get here tomorrow arvie and Piglet and Murray can get here the day after.Chris and Steve overlooking what should be our rainforest plantings
water, water, everywhere...we've had 102mm in 24hrs which brings the monthly total to 409mm with four days to go...though the rain has stopped and only scattered showers are forecast for the rest of the week.
And it seems our gym has become a tad wet as well. Luckily Steve had the foresight to unplug the gym equipment...Chris is deciding whether to take a jog or a swim...

Cloudy. Rain.

Today is going to be a bit tricky. The creek is lapping the bridge and could go over the bridge shortly. The problem with that is that Steve has taken Taylor to Casino station so he can travel back to Sydney. It's very likely, given the strength of the rain now, that the bridge is going to go under very soon, just not sure whether it will be in the next hour which is the time Steve will take to get back here. Otherwise, it will be a few hours (hopefully that's all) for him in Lismore doing some sales shopping and maybe seeing a movie. Fingers crossed he can get back. I'm about to head down the creek to see what the situation is like before he rings me.

There is some hope though, the weather bureau is forecasting rain to ease off by this afternoon and we will be looking forward to 'Cloudy. Scattered showers' for the rest of the week. Nice.

It's now pretty certain that this month will be the wettest month since we've been up here...as of this morning we've had 338mm which of course is just over 13 inches in the old scale. Wet. Wet. Wet.

Merry Xmas #2

OK, so this pic has a tad more realism about it than the previous one...Merry Xmas from Steve, Taylor, Chris and me.

Cloudy. Rain. was again the order of the day and so much rain fell that our friends, John and Julie, who live in Lismore, weren't able to make Xmas dinner with us because (i) John and his son, Edward, had spent much of xmas eve digging trenches around their house to drain away the sheets of water that threatened their house, so were reluctant to leave their place and (ii) our creek flooded over the bridge by about 3.00pm so there was no access anyway.

But our friend Glen did manage to get through before the floodwaters cut us off, so we had a dinner of turkey (we cooked our own this year - in an oven bag, worked a treat and the skin even went crispy), pork loin (done in the slow cooker with a brown sugar and balsamic vinegar glaze) and ham - all beasts free range. Some wine, some laughs and a movie to end the night.

And now, this Boxing Day morning, its Cloudy. Rain.

Merry Xmas

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to you cherished blog-readers from all of us (currently that's Steve, Kev, Taylor and Chris) at Larnook. We hope you have a safe, peaceful, enjoyable time and that next year is a brilliant one.

Yesterday afternoon we invited a few of the local lads from Kyogle and Cawongla up for a cinzano and dry and a swim. As you can see, the boys really entered into the festive spirit, even bringing their own blow-up pool to frolic in. Who would have thought that so many could fit in such a little pool. Oh, and it's still 'Cloudy. Rain.' No change there.

Cloudy. Rain

'Cloudy. Rain' That's the forecast for up here for the next three days, if not more. As you can see from the radar image, we are in the thick of things, precipitation-wise.
Not happy, pappi. Xmas is a time for searing heat, where brolgas dance like no-one is watching them on the plains and cicadas pulse from the straggly gum trees. When the hot days mean that it's OK to quench your thirst with beer/gin and tonic/cinzano and ginger ale. Dozing in the early afternoon. All but memories of xmases past I'm afraid.
We have two Help_Xers here with us for Xmas this year - Taylor from Saskatchewan and Chris from Paris and they were both looking forward to a Very Different (read HOT) Xmas Day. And what do they get? 'Cloudy. Rain. ' Yuk.

Pond Progress

We were initially going to simply cover the excavation with pond liner on the naive belief that the walls would remain intact and not need any strengthening. Ha. After a few heavy northern rivers downpours one side of the pond started to collapse into itself and became progressively worse over the next couple of weeks. So...
the only option really was to use these blocks and create interior walls for the pond over which the rubberised pond liner will be placed to create a waterproof seal. This has been an excruciatingly slow and tedious (and heavy job) which Steve carried out pretty much on his lonesome...
and with help from Taylor yesterday with mixing the concrete and concreting the whole structure nice and secure. We are off to Newcastle for a few days today and then hopefully we might be able to make some excellent progress on completing the pond and starting on the deck properly. We are picking up another Helper, Chris, French guy, from Newcastle, so progress could well be boosted.

Front Garden

We created this garden just on two years ago - compare with the pic in the banner. The Lomandra (mat rushes) are growing really well and are a nice habitat for some dwarf tree frogs, and as you can see, the Westringia or native rosemary, that greeny-grey bush on the right, is loving itself sick. The 'road' out the front is our driveway, for those who have not yet visited.
Today was a lovely day. Yesterday we copped over an inch of rain in a couple of hours, sending our creek up over our bridge and isolating us from the rest of the world for the rest of the day. Today started out being very iffy, but nevertheless we drove over to The Channon Market, hoping it was not cancelled, which it wasn't, and so we spent an enjoyable couple of hours there. Unfortunately we had to leave before Oprah's 'people' arrived by hot air balloon...not even The Channon is safe from the ubiquitous Ms O. Then back home to prepare lunch (Thai beef salad and quiche lorraine followed by chocolate cake, strawberries and cream) with our friend Gio, from Clunes. Oh and there was some wine and beer consumed as well.

Please get busy and eat the cockroaches, Mr Green Tree Frog

We have a few resident green tree frogs, who I'm hoping will adore the pond we are presently creating (pics coming soon). This is the largest of the regulars and it hopped into view on Saturday night on our entry porch. For the first time since living here, we've been seeing quite a few cockroaches, so lets hope the frogs get in a bring the numbers down a tad.

Taylor the Python Wrangler

Last Wednesday afternoon I rescued a lovely carpet python from possible death by gently persuading it to leave the Rock Valley Road and head back into the bush on the other side. Then, when we got home, Taylor and I were feeding the boys their afternoon treat when Taylor spotted another carpet python literally a metre from us. It was rather calm and quiet and allowed us to pick it up and I took a few shots for Taylor. However, the python in these shots will be well known to regular readers of the blog: Kimba the woma.
Taylor quite likes being Kimba's nanny and takes him out for some sunshine (on the rare occasions we are getting sunshine at present)..Kimba has grown quite a bit from the 40cm hatchling he was when I first got him three years ago. He fed on a rat a few nights ago and I suspect he'll eat another tomorrow evening.

A wet afternoon in the Border Ranges National Park

Saturday was not the kind of day that I would normally go bushwalking. I'm a blue-sky kinda guy but there was no blue. Instead the sky was dull, swirly, grey and the day punctuated by intermittent and often heavy showers. It's been raining on and off up here for the past week - we've had 3 inches of rain so far this month and if the weather guys are right, we'll probably see some flooding later in the week. So Saturday was wet and cloudy. But Taylor needed to get out of the house for a while and the rainforest awaited.
Protected by raincoats and, in Taylor's case, tropical strength aeroguard sprayed liberally on his boots and lower legs, we squelched our way along the muddy Barr Mountain Circuit track. The wetness of the forest gave the foliage a glossy luxuriance, and, even in the low light, the new leaves on shrubs and trees, and the old, fallen leaves on the track, coloured the forest pink, yellow, red. Strong, relentless winds shook and played with the canopy, but underneath, on the damp forest floor, the mood was still, almost serene. Occasional gusts of wind would find their way through the layered canopy and swallow us up in their gustiness, reminding us of the storm that was all around us.
Whip birds cracked their imaginery whips and charming flame robins cheekily flew up to us to check us out, twittering, probably with annoyance, as they bravely remained on slender branches, dripping with slow drops of water. We half-expected to come across a silver-back gorilla, sitting around the next bend in the track, in the heavy mist. We didn't. But it was good to walk in the forest in the wind and the rain.
* Taylor, who had wisely accepted Steve's advice to spray his lower legs and boots with insect repellent, suffered not a single leech bite. Kevin, who didn't, enjoyed the company of 52 leeches, each of which sawed its way into his skin and sucked on his rich, warm, blood for the duration of the walk, before each and every one was bulldozed off with his bloodied thumb-nail.

Taylor feeds the beasts their afternoon treat

Every afternoon, on the sage advice of the all knowing one, Shane of Murwillumbah, we offer our boys a mix of molasses, pollard and grains in their special red bowl. They are addicted to this stuff so much that they literally gallop up the hill when they hear me or whoever else is feeding them, in this case, Taylor, banging on the side of the container.
This is the only time that the boys will let us pat them...both allow us to scratch their heads and necks and Baxter will let me pat his sides and rump as well. This means that when we need to apply some kind of chemical treatment, they are reasonably willing to accept the treatment.

Taylor makes peanut butter and choco cookies

Taylor doesn't have many skills (yet) in kitchen-related activities (ie cooking) so we set him a task yesterday to produce some no-bake peanut butter and chocolate cookies. He set to work right away and successfully negotiated his way around softened butter, vanilla essence and rolled oats to produce a fine batch of cookies.
His hands were a little on the chocolatey side after he had finished, however.
And here they are...very rich, very delish.

Koalas and Taylor

Taylor joined us last Saturday and is staying with us for a while as a Helper. He comes from a small town in Saskatchewan, Canada, called Hoey and has been travelling around Oz for the past 5 weeks on various backpacker tours. The other day he came to work with me and in the afternoon we took him to the koala hospital that is located on SCU's campus. Taylor was very impressed by this big fellow, Tonga, who decided to put on an astonishing vocal performance, tilting his head back and producing the distinctive (and surprising) sound that only a male koala can make - more wild boar like than what you would imagine being produced by a cuddly koala.