Happy New Year!

Happy New Year and all the very best for 2013 from all the chaps at Maryville@Larnook!  Steve and I hope that you have a fabulous night and hope that 2013 is a brilliant year for you.
Hope you keep checking in on the Mutterings from time to time to see what's going on.

Rainfall 2012

January 318
February 256
March 212
April 125
May 63.5
June 214
July 27.5
August 5
September 20
October 16
November 95
December 239

Total 1573

2011 1776.5
2010 1687
2009 1500

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Steve, me and this funky Santa who I photographed out the front of Mt Burrell shops the other day. The Sphynx Rock Cafe is situated here, as well, and it takes its name from the rock formation that you can see on the ridge-line behind Santa.

I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful and enjoyable Christmas!

Larnookian Meals

 Shane, Steve, me and Cathy (HelpXer from Singapore) enjoying a meal on Wednesday night.

 I had made thai beef salad (starting to become one of my signature dishes)

 and Shane had made garlic prawns which were divine

and this was a delicious pickled pork dinner that Vivienne created a month or so ago.

some pics..enjoy

 One of our friendly green tree frogs eager to catch some of the many flying insects swarming around the lights at night at the moment

 We were blacked out from about 10pm Tuesday night through till the early hours of Wednesday.

 Wednesday morning following the big storm of the night before (see post below)

 The amazing upside down flowering orchid, Stanhopia, starting to flower with some spactacular bromeliad flowers as well

Gorgeous hydrangeas

Cathy and Jeff, HelpXers from Singapore

We've been enjoying the company (and labour) of Cathy and Jeff, HelpXers from Singapore. They are actually from China, but are studying economics and maths at a university in Singapore.  They arrived early last week and today I'll be taking them up to the Gold Coast airport for their flight to Cairns, and then I've got some meetings at my university's campus, which is adjacent to the airport.

 Jeff preparing the stuffing for the delicious dumplings they cooked for us one night

 The proud chefs, Jeff and Cathy, in front of their dumplings, shredded potato and a chicken and vege dish.

Simply delicious. As I've so often said, one of the many pleasures of hosting HelpXers is that we get to make and share food together.

If you go down to the chooks today...

you're in for a big surprise...

As I was typing the post below, Shane (our friend formerly of Murwillumbah, who is now staying with us for a while until he sorts out his housing situation) interrupted me to tell me that one of the girls was missing in action. Well more like missing because it's now inside this rather large and impressive carpet python. One less chook, one fat python.
I am really surprised that the python managed to swallow the chook, which was fully grown. Often a python will kill a chook and then try and swallow it but gives up by the time its distended jaws get to the actual body of the chook and basically back out, leaving the tell tale sign of a very slimy looking chook's neck as evidence of a failed eating attempt, but yeah, just very surprised that this one managed to get it all down.  The snake is not that big, just over two metres I guess, and it won't be going anywhere anytime soon, until that bulge has shrunk in size.

Perfect Storm

Although we've had a bit more rain so far this month than last month, and the grass had started growing again, greening the pastures nicely, another week of dry, very hot weather had begun to brown things off, and we'd had to start supplementary feeding the boys with lucerne, which we've not had to do (other than in winter) since we got them.
Things changed on Tuesday night.
The day had been a scorcher and while storm clouds started to appear promisingly in the late afternoon, they seemed to dissipate and we were again disappointed. But something magical must have happened because we started to hear the rumblings of thunder as we began preparing for dinner. The sky was almost constantly lit up with flashes of lightening and then it began to rain. No wind, just rain, heavy, constant, wet, warm rain.
It felt so good to be outside on the verandah watching this awesome display of weather that we decided to eat at the outdoor table on the verandah.
And still the rain kept going, the lightening became even more dramatic and the sound that some of the lightening was amazing. The energy that must be released during this kind of storm must be incredible and I felt like a little kid, enjoying the drama, the excitement, the noise, the smell of wetness, I was enjoying wonderment.
We have two HelpXers from Singapore here at the moment, Cathy and Jeff, and they enjoyed the storm as well, particularly once the blackout began and we lit candles.
I excitedly checked the rain gauge the next morning, hoping we'd get a couple of inches - we got 101mm, which is just over four inches. We so needed that!

Not happy

I was going to post various postings using photos from my iPhone that I had taken over the past week, but it seems I have lost all my photos (as well as all my phone contacts) because my iPhone resynch-ed itself when I plugged it into my computer. I think this is because my password had been reset at work because I was given an ipad to use for a particular committee I am now on.  I'm not a happy camper. No postings tonight I'm afraid.

Nicely wet

We've finally enjoyed a storm. As I was driving back from Coolangatta this afternoon, the sky darkened and grey smears of cloud contrasted against the darker background. By the time I got to the outskirts of Cawongla it was raining and the rain kept up until I reached home.  I checked the gauge at 6.30pm and we'd had 6.5mm.  Not a huge amount, I agree, but oh so better than nothing. And then the rain picked up again while we were eating dinner, accompanied by a green tree frog chorus of at least three plump males, each locked in an evolutionary battle to win over any girls that were within hearing distance of their big bellowy croaking.

Yabby traps catch more than yabbies

After our friends, Vivien and Glen, who stayed with us almost a week, had returned from a spot of fishing in our creek, they gave me the sad news that they had discovered a yabby trap along the bank, among the grass. They also told me that it contained the remnants of a number of freshwater turtles. I was horrified and dumb-struck and sickened.  They offered to go down and retrieve the trap, so Steve and I walked down to the creek with them and Glen and I quickly located the trap again. Sure enough, inside the death chamber were the remains, just the carapaces and plastrons, of four short-necked turtles, including one young animal that you can see on the left of the others. Again, I just couldn't believe that someone could set such a trap -  knowing that other animals could easily find their way in through the openings, and then drown. And I wonder, with dread, how many hundreds or even thousands of similar traps are lying on the bottom of creeks and rivers, while the putrefying carcasses of turtles, water rats and platypus, slowly rot within them.  This is completely irrational, I accept, but I felt a twinge of guilt that these turtles, which I might have enjoyed seeing sometime in the past, as they sunned themselves on protruding rocks or logs, had drowned, silently, in our creek.
We hauled the trap from the bank and took it back home. It won't be catching any more turtles again.

Sunday at Bangalow Market

 Our friends, Viv and Glen, from Newcastle, had stayed with us since last Tuesday and during their little break with us at Larnook they had spent a day at Sea World, visited Nimbin and Kyogle, hung around home and generally enjoyed themselves. So on Sunday we decided to take them to Bangalow Market, as Viv had loved the Channon Market when she had visited previously. They are both fabulous but quite different in character and feel. The day was promising to turn out hot, so we left home just after 8 and got to Bangalow about an hour later. At the moment we are going into the Northern Rivers' red phase with these spectacular Flame Trees in flower all over the place. The bangalow palms (and I've not been able to find out whether the palms were named after Bangalow or Bangalow was named after the palms) contrast beautifully with the scarlet of the flame tree's flowers, don't they. That other red-flowering, oh-so flamboyant tree that is bursting into redness now is the poinciana, which along with the jacaranda and flame tree, has been planted along many of the streets in Lismore.

 The markets were busy, colourful, creative, interesting...all those things that good markets should be. I really love the feel of these markets up here and yesterday I was in the mood to shop, so we bought some lovely things, ate some lovely food, and had a great time. We stopped off at our friends, Stuart and Matt, who live in a beautiful Queenslander in Bangalow and enjoyed some banana and walnut loaf, freshly baked and bought from the markets.  We also bought some absolutely delicious chutneys and pickles form a lady from Goolmangar, which is in the next valley over from ours.

And to top off a near-perfect day, was left-over pickled pork, cabbage and bacon, carrots and mashed potato, that Vivien had cooked the day before.  Viv and Glen left for Coffs Harbour this morning, before arriving back in Newcastle tomorrow.

HelpXer: Antony

 Antony, our HelpXer from Belgium spent two weeks with us. His major task was to shift 15 cubic metres of mulch from the pile along the driveway where the truck dumped it, over to the Big Bush Garden and spread it nice and evenly. Which he did quite well, and I readily admit it's a bit of a tedious job when done with no help. And hot. And heavy. So he achieved that goal as well as a bunch of other things, including a lot of watering as he was here for the end of the dry spell.
Last weekend I took advantage of the rather sparse ground cover on our paddock opposite to our house and we wandered over there checking the fencelines. Because when you have fencelines along paddocks you need to check them periodically to make sure they are intact. A long-dead cow, (not one of ours of course) however, was no longer intact, and indeed was just a jumble of very bleached bones. So what's an excitable, 18 year old Belgian to do but grab hold of the pelvis bones and, well, stick his head in it.

 Not a bad look, really.

Towards the end of his stay with us, Antony began experimenting in the kitchen and produced a couple of batches of tasty crepes as well as these delicious cup cakes which had a blob of, what else, but nutella, in the centre of them.  Nutella is to Europeans what Vegemite is to Australians.
Antony left us on Thursday morning to cycle down through Casino and then on to Grafton. His ambition is to slowly cycle down to Sydney by Xmas and enjoy a Sydney Xmas and New Year.  Though he doesn't really like Sydney. Or big cities. or crowds....

Wet

I write this post on Sunday morning to the comforting sound of steady rain hitting the iron roof of our house. As you may have begun to detect, I was starting to get a tad worried about the lack of rain that had fallen since June which had killed off our pasture grasses to the point where Baxter and Dexter were reliant on the lucern we were giving them twice a day. But over the past weekend we scored about 80mm which has transformed the paddocks and the lawns around our home. Instead of brown we have green. And now we are enjoying steady 'follow-up rain' which should really replenish the ground water and quench the thirst of all our plants, big and small. Our rainwater tank is now at maximum capacity and Julia's Little Creek is flowing happily into Hanging Rock Creek.

Still Dry with a capital D

Only 16mm fell here at Larnook in October, 20 in September and only 5 in August, so it's certainly looking very dry here. We were hoping that our friend, Piglet (aka Michael) would bring some much needed precipitation with him from the central coast while he was here over the weekend, but alas, all he could muster up was 1mm. One of Antony's (our current HelpXer) daily tasks is simply to water our gardens and fruit trees. We are lucky we have two water tanks, one which is rainwater derived, and provides our drinking and washing water, and the other which is bore-derived, which provides our garden and toilet flushing water. If we didn't have both these tanks we would have had to have bought water by now.
Really hoping we get 50-75mm this month. We are basically buying lucerne now to feed the boys as there is hardly any grass left in their paddock. (that's about $70.00 a week in lucerne - ouch).

Our first cycling HelpXer

Meet Antony, not only the first of our HelpXers who arrived on his bike, but our first Helper from Belgium. Only 18 years old, he arrived in Brisbane about a month ago, and after spending a few days checking the city out, made his way to Ipswich where he had his first HelpX experience. While there, he bought himself the bike and the trailer and then rode from Ipswich to Beaudesert on his way to, yep, you guessed it, Larnook! It took him two days to ride from Ipswich to our place, and given its about 150km over some very steep terrain, I am just amazed. He was one tired Belgian when he arrived at our place last Tuesday.
While I was in Singapore, our friend Warren, from Newcastle came up to spend a few days with Steve and they headed up to Brisbane last Monday to see Elaine Page, and do some shopping. That's Warren in the background looking suitable dumbfounded when he learned how far Antony had ridden.

Supertrees at Gardens by the Bay

 A forest of Super Trees connected to each other via a canopy walk creates a very distinctive feel at the Gardens by the Bay (see posting  below).

 The trunks of these SuperTrees are in fact vertical gardens, planted out with hundreds, if not thousands of bromeliads, orchids and other epiphytes.

At night these trees are lit up by thousands of coloured lights so I must go back during the evening next time. You can see one of the giant domes which house the most amazing collections of plants you will ever see in the one area.

Singapore

 Last weekend saw me in Singapore for a few days on a work trip, mostly to stand in for my head of school and present the graduates at the graduation of our cohort of Singapore students who take our degrees through MDIS, a collaborating partner of SCU's, and to attend the Singapore chapter of SCU alumni, together with a dinner on the Friday night with various senior 'executive' of SCU and MDIS. I get to go to Singapore about once a year these days and I always enjoy my time there. This trip was no different. The pic above is taken from a friend's 54th floor apartment overlooking the Marina Bay development with the amazing Marina Sands casino/integrated resort in the background. The three towers with the boat seemingly marooned on top.

 After the graduation, I caught up with our friend, Warwick, who is a flight attendant with QANTAS and happened to be in town. We taxi'd over to the fabulous Fullerton Bay Hotel for a light lunch and a couple of cocktails before paying our respects to the Merlion who projectile vomits continuously back into the harbour.

 I spent much of Friday at the newest tourist attraction on the island, Gardens by the Bay.  This is a huge development, a botanic gardens for the 21st century, replete with 'supertrees' which are these incredible steel tree-like simulations which of course form part of a light show during the balmy evenings. The two must-do parts of the Gardens development are these giant domes, glasshouses. The one featured here simulates a cloud forest biome up a mountain. This waterfall is what confronts you as you enter this exhibit,

 Steel walkaways twist around like old Kodak film - it is an incredible experience.

 As you move out of the exhibit you must pass through this audio visual extravaganza called +5 degrees which basically gives you a fraction of a degree by fraction of a degree account of what the earth might be like under climate change leading to an increase of 5 degrees in the earth's temperature.

Of course, Singapore is a food paradise, so on my last afternoon, last Sunday, after my 90 minute massage, and feeling very relaxed, I spent a pleasant hour or so drinking a couple of glasses of sangria and enjoying some very delicious tapas before heading back to the airport and flying home.

A hot, but social, weekend

 The weekend was a very hot one here, with 37 degrees reached on both days. Saturday was nasty at times because a hot north-westerly battered our plants over much of the morning, killing off the delicate new fronds on our tree ferns. I'm really hoping that we get a bit of rain tomorrow. Anyway, despite the high temperatures, we had a very social weekend, beginning with lunch on Saturday at Mel and E's fabulous house at Cawongla, literally 7 minutes from our place. We met the girls a few months ago when they happened to be celebrating a friend of their's birthday at the Cawongla Store on a Friday night that we were there with our Canadian friend from Cairns, Ryan. They had dinner at our place a week or so after that and they returned the hospitality yesterday. They have such a beautiful place which is based on a 'shed' construction that they have extended with a separate wing for their bedroom and bathroom. I'll take some more pics another time and show you the interior (oh and the girls as well :-)
After lunch we splashed around in their above ground pool - one of those ones you can get quite cheaply from various department stores - we might do the same.

We were possibly going to head to Lismore Show on Saturday night (Mel and E had actually been on the Friday night and the last time we were there was a couple of years ago with Piglet and Glen) but our mate, Trent, who had convinced us that it would be a good idea to go, if just to eat a dagwood dog (pluto pup) decided it was too hot and dusty so we had a quiet night at home watching Phantom of the Opera (the 25th anniversary production at the Royal Albert Hall - brilliant).

I got up early and set about watering our trees and shrubs before it got too hot and did this diligently for an hour or so before feeding the boys their lucerne which has become their staple now that there is so little grass in the paddock. We're thinking we may have to buy in a big round thingie of lucerne since the hot dry winds continue to brown off any grass that has managed to grow. Our friends, Warwick and John from Melbourne arrived at midday and we enjoyed a long lunch with them starting with a chilled bottle of Pol Gessner champagne. The boys are up staying with friends Matt and Stuart in Bangalow and looking for property to buy as they are keen to relocate up in the Northern Rivers. Which will be completely fabulous if they do.

Sunday, lovely Sunday

 Today was one of those lovely days where you get everything you want to get done, done, and in beautiful weather. Steve has been away in Newcastle this weekend attending the 35th anniversary party of Metropolitan Players, the theatre group he has long been involved with. He's also agreed to do costume design for their production of Phantom of the Opera next year, so he was also going to do some preliminary stuff for that. So I've been pottering around the place, mowing this, cutting back that, that kind of thing. I rodgered the bottom paddocks yesterday, which I always find satisfying, and today I tackled the area down by the creek. As you can see in the pic above, the grass and weeds had started to get away, and so I have myself two hours to whip this into shape.

 And after just one hour and a bit I had it back looking like this. Very happy with myself - so happy that I had to repeat the photo in this posting (it was a mistake which I can't seem to rectify).

 Anyway, it was hot and sweaty work, and pushing (or more correctly, pulling) the lawn mower (yes the creek has to be mown with a push mower) up the paddock is a bit of a hard slog.

I took a walk up over the bridge up Martin's Road to where it meets Cawongla Road this afternoon and found this female water dragon laying her eggs right by the side of the road. I hope the littlies head the right way when they hatch, otherwise their first outing might be their last. I thought to myself how dry the soil was that she was laying in and how careful you have to be if you are trying to incubate reptile eggs yourself - temperature and humidity must be kept within a fairly narrow range - and yet this female decided that this would be suitable. But I have to wonder if she could tell that we were likely to get a storm later on which would moisten the soil and assist the eggs in their incubation.

Dry

It's drier than we've ever experienced it up here and some of the plants are starting to really show the stress of low levels of soil moisture. This far north Queensland tree is normally covered in huge (and I mean huge) leaves but over the past few weeks it has been shedding them. Luckily its branches are covered in small baby leaves - and we have been watering it well - but it's a pretty stressed tree at the moment. Check out the male wallaby just to the left of the tree.

 The paddock in which Baxter and Dexter graze is very dry as well and we really need some good soaking rains (god I sound like a farmer) to kick start the growth of grass. We always give the boys lucerne hay over the winter when the grass slows right down but we've had to continue with the supplementary feeding right through spring. The boys are still looking pretty good but they should really be putting on the weight by now.

And our creek is at its lowest level since we bought the place. Looks beautiful of course but very low. Our own water supplies are fine - our drinking water tank is a good third full and we pump bore water into the other tank which is used to water gardens and for toilet water.

Wet

 I started seeing a storm front developing about 4ish and was hoping that the clouds would open up and unleash a torrent of rain. I heard, for the first time this season, a couple of channel billed cuckoos (also called rainbirds), so I was hoping that was a good sign as well.

And even though the sky started looking tremendously stormy, the clouds headed east and that was that. Or so I thought. But just as I was saying goodbye to our friends from Newcastle, Sam and Jane, who had called in after they had visited the Channon Market and Nimbin, (they are staying in their super deluxe campervan at Byron for a few days), a storm hit. Unfortunately it only rained for 15-20 minutes but I'm hoping we got about 5mm. Not the 40mm I was hoping for this weekend, but 5mm is still 5mm.

Carping on

There is a pair of large carp, I think they are koi, that have lived in the deep part of Hanging Rock Creek, just to the south of our bridge, for a long time. They are well known to locals, who mention the big carp from time to time. We'd seen them occasionally, usually when we've had a long dry spell and the water in the creek flows clear. One of these great fish is a golden colour, the other mostly white. But we hadn't seen them for a long time, maybe all year. On the odd occasions that I thought about them, I'd guessed that they had left that part of the creek, swimming downstream to somewhere they had decided was more liveable. But on Sunday afternoon I saw them. Together, this piscean long-term couple, slowly swimming about in the late afternoon sunshine. It's hard not to feel a little in awe of them, actually. And I'm probably being very anthropomorphic and projecting human qualities on to them. I'm sure I am, actually. But how wonderful to see them. Together. I wondered about how they manage to stay in this stretch of the creek during big floods, when millions of litres of chocolate brown water flows ferociously, spilling out over the banks and flattening grasses, reeds, shrubs and trees. When do they sense that the big waters are coming? How long do they have until they seek shelter perhaps in an eroded under-bank or underneath a great log? The ecologist in me of course categorises them as feral. They shouldn't be here. And just this Saturday I'd picked up a bottle of Charlie Carp fertilizer, made from the crushed up bodies of European carp, and thought how wonderful it was that a useful product had been made from such an ecological disaster. And then I imagine the creek without this pair of old carp. And I think it will have lost part of its story.

Spring flowers in the gardens

some natives, some not..just some random point and shoots this afternoon

 this is a beautiful plant, wish I knew what it was...I think it's self sewn

 Magnificent Dendrobium orchid that Shane (aka Julia) gave me for my birthday

 Stunning Grevillea

 Cliveas

 Mango trees are covered in flowers at the present

Hippeastrum are popping up around the edge of one of our water tanks

My Birthday Weekend: The People

 Well some of the people anyway. I am very very lucky to have such a wonderful family and friends, many of whom are family as well. So above: My sis, Leanne, friend, Tracy, mum, Elaine and other sister, Alison.

 Jason, Shane and Jason

 Jason and Piglet (aka Michael)

 Mr Music Man, Andy

 Sam, my brother Brett and Puppy (aka David)

 Me, Puppy, Sam, Sheryl and JJ

Dale, me and Glen