Hotlines

I was just having lunch outdoors on campus, enjoying the truly spring-like weather here today and reading the Northern Echo (a local free newspaper with quality reporting, by far the best newspaper up here). Perusing the classifieds (I'm after some good quality mulch) when I came across telephone numbers for the 'Koala Hotline', the 'Bat Hotline' (great Scott, Robin, Alfred's run out of gin, hand me the Bat Hotline) and, yep my favourite, the 'Snake Hotline'.

Carpet python seems to have moved on

Well at least I hope that's the case, and it hasn't been picked off by some marauding wedge tailed eagle. For the past four or five weeks, this large python, of about 2 metres or a bit bigger, has been sliding out from a cavity in our bedroom wall and up on to the roof. Invariably, it would poke its head out at about 8.30 and wait until it had heated up its brain for 15 minutes of so before hauling the rest of its body out and up on to the warm roof, where it would bask until about 11 and then return to its lair. The last time I saw it was Thursday morning. It seemed quite happy with things. But alas, no sightings made either yesterday or today. Hopefully we shall see it around the place somewhere, sometime.

New girls arrive

Meet one of our four new girls that we collected from the friendly free-range egg-selling lady at the Kyogle Farmer's Market yesterday morning. She is always very friendly, always has a smile, always up for a quick chat as we pass by her stall on the way to the fruit and vege farmers just up the path. She happened to mention to us a few weeks ago that she supplied point-of-lay chooks and so we quickly confirmed that we'd like four of her best and brightest. We had to get down before 7.30, though, so we could collect them before the markets started seriously trading.
I was expecting some kafuffle from the other girls (and roosters - of which we now have three), when I introduced this little mob of Issa Browns, but the others seemed to have accepted them quite well, provided they realise their lowly place at the bottom of the pecking order. Anyway, they are very lovely and quiet and good natured and we expect that they will increase our egg output considerably over the coming months.

Honey-eaters in the grevilleas

                                    Photo: Glen Fergus via Wikimedia
The Big Bush Garden is a palette of colour at the moment with the Grevilleas of all different kinds and colours in flower. The flowers, rich in energy-rich, sweet nectar, are attracting lots of different honey eaters who are feasting on the flowers. They include Lewin's Honeyeater (photo above)

                                    Photo: Fir0002 via Wikimedia
This guy has been hanging around for a couple of weeks now, the Noisy Friarbird

                                     Photo: mpeschoux.over-blog.com
One of my favourites, the eastern spinebill. I watched these for a while as they flitted about one of the comb-flowered grevilleas and then into the neighbouring jacaranda. They actually make quite an audible sound as they fly, you can hear their little wings flapping and its rather cute.

                                       Photo: Alan Fear photography
But the outstanding bird is the scarlet honeyeater. Remember last year how excited I was to see one lone bird in the garden?  Well this year he's come back and brought a bunch of his mates and girlfriends with him. There were at least half a dozen, and probably many more, of these exquisite living jewels, feeding in a couple of the grevilleas yesterday and today. They are completely beautiful. I'm so lucky!

A Walk to Cawongla Store for lunch Part 1

 One of the things I love doing is walking. Our weekly rituals when we lived in Newcastle involved walking down to Beaumont Street on a Saturday morning to get the papers and thick slices of off-the-bone ham for lunch from the wonderful Italian ladies at Pina's Deli and then on Sunday afternoons we'd walk along Throsby Creek and down to Honeysuckle. It's not so easy to go for similar walks here but today I decided that I'd walk up to Cawongla Store where I was going to meet my friend and colleague, Erica, and her son Solly, for lunch. It was a very spring-like day here today and I set off just before 11.30, saying hello to the lady from Martin's Road who was beginning her own walk with her two dogs. As I climbed up out of Martin's Road and on to Cawongla Road I noticed this grass tree (see pic above) that I'd never noticed before. This is what walking is about, isn't it. Making discoveries; noticing things that you just don't, or can't see, when you are driving.

 I have a fascination with country roads and the play of light and shade on the macadam surface - a surface that in another few weeks will heat up and entice brown snakes and bearded dragons to soak up this warmth - sometimes for the very last time. I walked slowly, I had plenty of time and enjoyed the sensation of slight breeze against my skin; the sounds of the forest birds - whip, kookaburra, eastern rosella and magpie.

This small dam was being used by a couple of wood ducks while a pair of plovers made it very clear from their loud vocalising that I was intruding and unwelcome. I wondered what sorts of frogs used this pond during spring and whether there were any red bellied black snakes left in the area of whether they have disappeared from the valley altogether due to the impact of cane toads.

 Walking means that you are much more involved and integrated in the landscape than when you are cocooned in the steel and glass of a car. I smelled this unfortunate red necked wallaby a few metres before I saw it. I puzzled over the last third of its tail having been cut off and wandered why someone might have done this. I estimate that about one wallaby a week is killed on the stretch of road from our place down to Leycester which is the beginning of Rock Valley, so around 55 a year just on a 15km stretch of road. It may well be much higher of course, as I'm sure I don't see all that are killed.

 After walking for about 45 minutes I came to the lovely sign proclaiming this place as Cawongla, 'the peaceful place'. The bird on the left of the sign is a pheasant coucal or swamp pheasant, actually a type of cuckoo. They are very common around our place and we often see them flying slowly and somewhat clumsily like an ancient archeopteryx or hear their woo woo woo calls.

And this is Cawongla Store, a lovely place, which we visit from time to time on a Friday night for their wood fired pizzas. Erica, who is on sabbatical for the rest of this year, lives with her partner, Noah and their kids Maya and Solomon, in a rammed-earth house they built themselves at Barker's Vale, about 15 minutes north west of our place. They live on top of a mountain adjacent to Border Ranges National Park and when we visit them I always come back and think our place is down right suburban.

We had a wonderful lunch, enhanced by a couple of glasses of a lovely crisp sauvignon blanc semillon blend. Erica had fish and chips while I had a vege burger. We laughed, we gossiped, we caught up. As friends do.

A walk to Cawongla Store for lunch Part 2

We lunched for a couple of hours and then Erica needed to go and pick Maya up from school and I headed home. I strolled back down Cawongla Road, looking into the big blue of the sky and the deep green of the bunya pines.

This is a fabulous old Queenslander which I believe was the residence of the family who owned most of Cawongla at one stage. It's a lovely, very dignified home, though a little too close to the road for my liking.

Magnificent jacarandas are starting to change the colour of their foliage to a golden yellow colour before much of their canopy will drop away before being covered in the most beautiful of mauve in mid-to-late October.

An old dairy I think it is - a remnant of the time when dairying was still carried out in the valley. Not any more of course, very few dairies still remain. Beef cattle have replaced the dairy cattle. I wondered what kinds of snakes hide out in this old structure - perhaps carpet pythons and brown tree snakes up under the roof; perhaps brown snakes in the grassy paddock in which this structure is slowly decaying.

While we can't see Wollumbin from our place, it is visible a few minutes from our place along Cawongla Road. It has become an important part of the landscape for me.

The stretch of road before I enter Martin's Road and then into our road, McGuinness. Wattles have been flowering for a month or so and as I walk past these I remember childhood bushwalks in places such as Cardiff, the Warrumbungles and Blackbutt Reserve. I am fortunate I don't suffer from pollen allergies - to me the smell of wattle signals spring and the coming warmth and renewal that spring brings with it.

As I cross the bridge over Hanging Rock or Leycester Creek, which forms one of our boundaries I appreciate how it changes - how very moody it is. We haven't had much rain now for the past six weeks so the water is clear. After heavy rains the creek looks like it has chocolate flowing through it. I continue my walk up to the house and I am grateful that I have health and the ability to walk for as long as I want. I've had a great day.

Tyalgum

 After enjoying lunch at the Astoria Cafe in Murwillumbah with our friend Shane (aka Julia), we drove back via the village of Tyalgum. To get there you leave the road between M'bah and Uki just a few kms out from M'bah and travel through some lovely country on the western side of Wollumbin. Tyalgum owes its existence to the 'red gold' of the red cedar, the logs of which were transported down the creeks into the Tweed River. Today, the village of about 250 people, is apparently known for its classical music festival that takes place in early September in the historic hall, part of which is also now an art gallery, which we had a look at.

 Frrom Tyalgum the road took us back to join the Murwillumbah-Kyogle road just west of Uki. On the way there, though, we had tremendous views from the west to Wollumbinm allowing us to see the ancient volcanic remnant from a very different perspective.

 Absolutely glorious day, one of those big blue sky days I love so much.

And what a day to be doing some back-roading, exploring parts of our region which are still new to us.