Saturday: a good day for reptile sightings

OK, so unfortunately the goanna isn't exactly front and centre in this pic, but you get the idea. I took Calixte (Cal) up to Border Ranges yesterday (see blog post below) and we happened to see a goodly number of reptiles, which we both enjoyed. Several turtles and water dragons in the creeks that we passed over plus 4 lace goannas crossing the road up to and through the national park
Cal learned that goannas will always climb a tree on the side opposite to the human observer but he did manage this shot
and the best sighting at all was a very healthy, thick, gorgeous red bellied black snake by the side of the road...
which I gently moved off the road and into the bush. There are virtually no black snakes left further down where we are because of the toads (black snakes are frog eaters; toads look like frogs; snake bites toad and cops a mouthful of toxin and dies; no more black snakes). It seems the toad doesn't like the higher altitudes ( we are about 700 metres asl here) which means the black snakes are eating frogs and not toads.

Bushwalk in Border Ranges NP

I took Cal up to the Border Ranges yesterday, leaving pretty soon after we had come back from Kyogle. The warm weather brought out the reptiles (see above posting) which Cal appreciated as much, or almost as much, as me. I'm looking up the guts of a very large antarctic beech tree.
The track, which I've walked about a dozen times, had been badly affected by storms, in parts, and at this point, two large trees had fallen across a fairly steep part of the track, requiring us to climb up the trunk (well actually down) to the roots and then back down on to the track.
Cal loved the trip...all the HelpXers that I have taken on this walk have enjoyed themselves but because Cal gets a big buzz out of nature-stuff, it made the whole trip that much more enjoyable.
Lush
This is an example of the intensity of storms that have lashed this forest over the past few months.

Our house taken from the eastern paddock

This is a shot of our house taken from our paddock on the eastern side of McGuinness Road. You can see the shrubs and trees that make up part of the Big Bush Garden on the left hand side, starting to obscure part of the house, with the deck in the middle of the two arms or pavillions.
We suggested to our neighbour, Bill, that he let his cattle into this paddock to eat the grass which he took up and they have done a great job of eating and knocking down what was rather dense, tall grass. We've got a job ahead of ourselves with cutting down a few dozen feral pine trees over the next month, so we can at least access them much more easily now.

A Friday afternoon walk

The weather here has been rather ordinary over the past few days, so yesterday afternoon, when it had stopped drizzling and warmed up a bit, Cal (our current HelpXer from France) and I went for a walk in our neighbour, Bill's property. It turned out to be good weather for snakes and we saw two, that's right, two, green tree snakes, quietly sunning themselves amongst a rocky slope.
It was easy to catch one of them and Cal, who happens to be interested in reptiles and birds had a nurse of one of them before putting it back to resume its sunbathing activities.
As we walked further up towards the Billen Cliffs, we passed through an area of rainforest in which lots of bird's nest and staghorn ferns were growing on the rock faces and up in the trees. Cal thought these were pretty spectacular.
During the walk we could see our friends' Anton and Abby's place, which is in the Billen Cliffs community. I taught Anton way back in the early 90s in Newcastle. He now works for Lismore City Council.
After walking through rainforest we came up to a cliff line with eucalypts and other drier vegetation. Fantastic habitat for geckos and just a really nice walk to do. I wish, though, that we had some of this stuff on our land, but it's at least only a 20 minute walk to get here from our place.

Electric fence

Who would have thought we would be installing our own solar-powered electric fencing a few years ago, but hey, we did it. Well, Steve worked it out and I helped. As you would have read, Dexter had taken to getting out through the side fence a couple of times, the last time injuring himself on the barbed wire (Ros shakes her head knowingly). So, we spent some time gaining advice from the friendly fellas at the Rural Buying Service in Lismore before walking out with over $500.00 worth of stuff (we paid for it first, of course). The kit is actually made locally which is kind of nice, and it was actually pretty straightforward to install.
And here are the rascals looking a tad defiant in this shot - Rascally Baxter on the left, boyish Baxter with his curly forehead on the right.
And yet another shot to satisfy Kerri's craving for more pics of the boys. Their mineral supplement block is the thing you can see on the bottom right.

Friends minibus up to Larnook

We had a big weekend hosting a bunch of friends of Steve's with whom he used to work in Education, Regional Office, back in the early 90s. It was lots of fun, with the mob arriving late Friday afternoon. A relaxed dinner and drinks on Friday night set the scene for the rest of the weekend that included breakfast at Kyogle, a long lunch at Mavis' Kitchen, Uki, champers and spa back here, a light dinner, a sumptuous eggs benedict with asparagus breakfast and then across to Bangalow markets on Sunday, ending up with a BBQ extravaganza on Sunday night.
But alas, all good things must come to an end and here is the gang: Kathleen, Lee, Francis, Steve and Bobbie bidding Steve a fond farewell on Monday morning. See you next time, guys!

Darkness came early

I took this photo at about 4.30 yesterday afternoon as a massive storm front surged over us. We had woken up sometime around 3 or 4 on Saturday morning to the roar of thunder and it picked up again yesterday afternoon. The storm broke about 10 minutes after I took the photo and just over 53mm fell in a couple of hours. Very strong winds, and, as I said, the thunder seemed to be breaking all over the sky, as if you were in a cinema with surround sound. No damage but lots of energy.

Julia's Little Creek Revegetation

Spent part of the last few days planting 39 local rainforest trees and shrubs down by the creek. This involved setting them out where I wanted them to grow, then digging the holes and planting them in, with a bit of slow release native fertilizer.
Then I staked out each one so we could easily see them so that when we brush cut along the creek bank to keep the weeds down, we wouldn't cut the newly planted plants. For those of you who are interested in such stuff, this is the species list I planted:

Red Kamala

Native frangipani

Flindersia australis

Cudgerie

Yellow Wood (Flindersia xanthoxila

Brush Box

Red Cedar

White Oak (OK so not a local but...)

Red Ash

Pink Euodia

Blue Quandong

Riberry

Couple of other lilly pilly species

Pittosporum undulatum

Transformation: Dec(k)adence

This is what the space between the two wings of our place looked like when we bought the house: an old garden that had seen better days with a lot of plants that were unsuited to that space. So over the past two years we have worked intermittently on changing the space into something that extended the living area and created something visually interesting.
And this is what the space looked like this afternoon after we'd finished off the timber slatting to hide the gap alongside the house and to hide the two air conditioning motors. It took about 4 days work to build the slatting (Steve did this of course) and stain all the timbers (which was my job).
The deck area nicely frames the view up to the Billen Cliffs, and we'll add a couple of large and interesting pot plants to add some drama to the deck. It's been a project that has involved quite a few people, mostly HelpXers: Oliver and Andrej, Yann and Maxime, Martins, Maurizio and Gianmarco, Taylor, Suanne and Andreas and Fabien as well as Shane. So thank you guys! I think we need a deck-warming party...

Rat-proofing under the house...yeah right

Before we complete the middle deck (pics to come in the next few days) and thus block off access under this part of the house, Steve wanted to try and block some holes through which rats enter our house, especially during winter. So he spent a few hours under there today, clearing out some rodent access ways and blocking them up with pieces of timber. It seems they have chewed their way through some styrofoam that is above our cool room. Let's hope Steve's handy work is effective.

Building new vege gardens

Some months ago we abandoned our vege patch because it had become riddled with onion weed. We had planned to put some terraces into the 'enclosure' next to the garage but then I came up with the idea of building some raised vege gardens, and managed to convince Steve that this was a brilliant idea. So we began the project yesterday. First take a bunch of sleepers and lay them in the area you want to build your gardens.
Now there's been a bit of magic between the first pic and this one which involved some sawing of some of the sleepers in half to make the ends, and fitting and then drilling screws into the timber through these natty steel end things that you can see at the right of the pic. Then it's a matter of getting each box square and level. So we finished building them yesterday and this morning I filled each of them in.
First task was to lay a thick layer of newspaper down over the grass and wet this thoroughly with the hose. Then I wheelbarrowed 12 loads of organic rich soil that had been delivered from Troy's Landscaping in Lismore. We ordered 4 cubic metres, about 1.3 per garden.
Into this mix also went a wheelbarrow of Baxter and Dexter's finest poo and some soil shovelled up from their feeding pen, which added to the richness, together with some chook poo pellets that I sprinkled on top.
And this is what the units look like after having a thick layer of sugar cane mulch spread over the soil. I'll leave them to settle in for a week and then plant them out next Sunday. We'll probably buy some organic seedlings from The Channon Market. Not bad, hey.

A cow goes walkabout

After a day of intermittent sunshine and cooler, cloudy periods, a storm cut a swathe across the sky around 4.30 or so yesterday afternoon bringing very strong, squally winds and rain. We could hear the wind approaching up the valley and thousands of leaves showered down like confetti.
You can get a sense of the strength of the wind if you have a look at the tops of the pine tress bending.

Anyway, all this is setting the scene...we had a big Dorothy and Toto get swept away to the Land of Oz kinda storm last evening.

So this morning I took down a biscuit of lucerne to give to the boys who surprised me by their absence in the small pen in which I always feed them in the morning and the afternoon. While I thought this was odd, I had other things on my mind like feeding The Girls and shovelling soil into the new vege gardens, to be overly concerned. Anyway, I did my chores and began filling in the first of the vege gardens when I decided I'd better go check to see that the boys were OK, given the big storm of the night before. I located Baxter by the fence that runs parallel with McGuinness Road on the eastern edge of our property but no Dexter. Baxter was looking worried (if bovines can look worried) and staring wistfully straight across the fence and towards the road. 'Hmm' I thought. 'Where the hell is Dexter?' So, I trudged down the paddock and then across and up the other side, but not a single other belted galloway did I see.

I thought I had better check the very extreme corner, near to where I found Baxter, before alerting Steve to this piece of news. While Dexter was not there, I did spy him. Out of the paddock and happily grazing on some grass by the road. I knew that all I had to do was offer him some lucerne hay and he'd follow me down to the lower gate which he did, so getting him back was no problem. But how he managed to get over the fence remains a mystery.

There is no visible evidence anywhere of him pushing through the fence so all I can think of is that during the storm yesterday afternoon he freaked and jumped the fence. Now I know this possibly sounds a tad far-fetched, but it's the best explanation I can come up with at this stage. It is a tad disconcerting, however, because it means that, at least in the case of that rascal, Dexter, the perimeter fence is not 100% secure.