A cane toad called Spew

This toad was recently gobbled up whole by a dog in Darwin whose owner then took him to the vet's where the dog was induced to vomit and blahhhhhhhooohagh up came the toad still very much alive. So the vet called him Spew. Well you'd hardly call him Nathan or Felicity, would you.

There are quite a few toads in Larnook and at Maryville, though I'm yet to kill any other than those I run over. Every morning after a wet evening the road is littered by little/not so little toad corpses, usually on their back with their pudgy toad arms stretched upwards. To kill or not to kill that is the question. Killing the odd toad that I encounter at night won't make a scrap of difference ecologically, so I ponder whether I am obliged to kill them. I looked closely at one the other night by torchlight and I discovered little flecks of orange and green and yellow scattered on its warty back. It was quite pretty.

We do have quite a few frogs: so far - green tree frog; dwarf tree frog; peron's tree frog; rocket frog; bleating tree frog; striped marsh frog,but alas, apparently the red bellied black snake population has taken a tumble because of the toads. That's probably a good enough reason to kill the ones I come across. Pass me the freezer bag!

Just for your info: the most humane way of killing a toad is to place it in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge for half an hour or so. Then once it's in a deep toady sleep, you place it in the freezer. And leave it there for a good 24hrs. I was speaking with a biology teacher the other day who told me she was using thawed out toads once for disssection purposes and a number of ther toads regained consciousness whilst opened up on the dissecting boards. Ouch.

According to the work of Prof Rick Shine and his colleagues, the toads at the frontline of the invasion in Northern Teritory are evolving/adapting so rapidly to develop bigger legs so they can invade more quickly that they are developing arthritis.

More info on toads go to: http://www.canetoadsinoz.com/

Steve wins two CONDAs

Woo hoo! Steve had been nominated for a City of Newcastle Drama Award (CONDA - Newcastle's version of the Oscars) for his costume design for The Producers, the show that Metropolitan Players had staged in September at the Civic Theatre in Newcastle. The CONDA Awards took place last Friday 5th December, the same night as it happened that we had gone to Ballina to see Ballina Players perform the very same show with my colleague Maree and her husband, Joe.

As we were driving back to Larnook Steve received a text that he had in fact received a CONDA Award for Oustanding Achievment in Musical Theatre! However, more was to come. Just after midnight we took a call from Julie Black, who had directed The Producers who also informed him that he had also won another CONDA for Achievment in Costume Design. Woo hoo!!! That brings his total cache of CONDAS to 5.

Thanks to Jenny (Brook) for her lovely photo of the two awards which she will lovingly cradle up from Newcastle To Maryville at Larnook in the new year.

Flamboyant trees for flamboyant gentlemen (apologies to Cher)

While November is the colour of mauve up here with the beauty of jacarandas in flower, December is lit up by the firey colour of reds and oranges from the poinciana (or flamboyant tree) and also from Illawarra Flame Trees. Quite a few streets in Lismore have been planted with poincianas and they create a spectacular effect for the next month or so. Unfortunately, although the Rock Valley was smudged mauve all throughout November, nobody seems to have planted poincianas, so we have to wait until we hit Lismore to enjoy their colour. However, we have planted one at Maryville, but I think we'll be long gone before it achieves anything like the grace and beauty of the tree pictured (Thanks Queensland Museum).

Rita the Ride-On

This is Rita the Ride-On Mower or 'lawn tractor' as some of us ranch-types prefer to call them. Rita has had a hard life and we put her in to the Lismore Rural Buying Service (a local hardware/farmware/gardenware cooperative - kinda Bunnings without the bling) for a reoonditioning soon after buying Maryville (Rita came with the property).

I've mowed the lawns twice now...looks like I'll be doing them once every three weeks during the summer, and it takes me about 5 hrs, spread across two afternoons. It's mostly fun, but the few acres that I cut is somewhat sloping and it's not until you are saddled up on rita's seat that you realise the degree of angle that some of the ground slopes.

We also have a push mower that we then use to do the edge work and go around the plants we've put in, altogether more finnicky stuff that Rita is just not interested in. She's a bit rough, is our Rita.

Pumping all night

Underneath our bedroom live two Onga waterpumps, similar to this one. One pumps water from our rainwater tank to the house and the other pumps water from another tank filled with bore water for our gardens. We've had pump problems since moving in: we've replaced one and replaced the air tank twice on another. It costs us $80.00 each time the pump man drives his white ute up to our place from Lismore. It's not an inexpensive business having two pumps.

Last night the water pump that is connected to the bore tank came on relentlessly every 30 seconds. I know because I timed the intervals. Every 30 seconds for about 20 seconds of pump noise. All through the night. Until, at 5.00am, when Steve asked me (yes we were both awake) 'Are you sure you don't have any taps on?'. 'Freaking hell' I thought, 'I hadn't turned the hose off since yesterday morning at 6.30 when I gave fresh water to the chooks. I dashed out of bed and turned the hose off. No more pump noise.

Wallaby Country

The first time I visited our property with the real estate agent one of these fellas hopped slowly away as we pulled up in the car. That wallaby was one of the reasons I wanted to buy this place. Our property is visited by a mob of red necked wallabies on a daily basis. There is usually anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen grazing on our lawns and when we drive off in the morning we can sometimes see another dozen or so along the road to the end of our property. There's a couple of big, muscly bucks like this fella, some females with joeys in puch and at heel. yesterday afternoon I walked the 500 metres or so down to our letterbox and this guy let me get to within 2 metres of him before he ambled off.
Unfortunately they aren't very road savvy and we often see dead wallabies on the road through Rock Valley on our way to work.

Our first egg!

Well after 5 weeks since they arrived at Maryville, one of The Girls, (our 8 chooks) finally came up with the goods and laid an egg. I suspect it might have been Martina, as she seemed to be even more confident than usual. Anyway, I gace them all some greens, including a bok choy plant that had gone to seed and said how wonderful they all were. No eggs this morning, however, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens next.

Speaking of eggs, one of my Pygmy Mulga Goannas again had difficulty laying her eggs (she had the same problem last year), so off she went to the vet's for another caesarian, poor girl. The vet extracted 6 eggs from her and she had already laid one, so she was certainly chokers. 5 of the eggs looked OK so they are in the incubator along with another 4 from a previous clutch. The patient appears to be doing well and is due for her last antibiotic injection this afternoon.