Chores

Just cleaning up again this weekend. Gardening, cleaning windows and bugs out of the outdoor lighting, replacing bulbs - that sort of thing. Entirely unremarkable.

Bushwalk

Quite the loveliest walk.

Camping

We got away for a bit of camping this month just gone.
The first was up to Stockton Beach, just north of New Castle for a weekend of driving with the Toyota club, the other was with friends a little way up north (at a nudist beach :-) The weather was not on it's best behavior. With enough rain to cause a decent flood in Sydney. The morning was made all the ore exciting with a little brown snake (v. deadly) sharing the camp ground with us.







Stockton

Natural Disaster Levy

The poor cunts in Queensland: the paper today says don't panic if your roof blows off. WTF? I think that you are entitled to a tincey tiny little panic if your fucking roof blows off. Keep a raincoat handy - It's a fucking cat 5 cyclone. You'll need something a little more prophylactic to keep the rain off than a rain coat. Hide in the toilet they say - sensible advise at least - you can bet that if I was in the path of cat 5 cyclone that was taking my roof off I'd need a visit to the loo.

Now these pricks that are contesting Julia's Flood Levi should pull their right wing heads in. Me - I'd be happy to contribute to a permanent Natural Disaster Levy to help rebuild and recover from fire, flood etc - to buy rescue equipment and rebuild national infrastructure. Not to be used to insure against marginal or unsafe development and protect people from the stupid but to be used in ways that help all of us or a whole region.

Current temp: 40.7°C

I know, I'm a soft city boy now, gone are the days of working as a geo out in the Western Desert where it was routinely 47 and occasionally it would touch 50 C yet you still put in a solid days work. But these days steeping out from the aircon into 40 something heat is stunning. It is an experience that is hard to describe - it's not like a sauna that you can get out of - everywhere you turn it is that same heat.
I'm looking at some photos a blog friend send me (thanks btw) of a backyard covered in snow that I want to fall into and spend all day making snow angels.

I'm limping a little, damaged by a surf session on Sunday at Avalon, where I got brutalised by the cyclone swell from the last storm that crosses the Qld coast. As I write this I'm playing my tongue across the chips in my teeth earned by being stupid enough not to close my mouth when I got barreled playing beyond my ability.

Meanwhile Yasi is knocking on the Queensland doorstep. This bastard is bigger than NSW:

(clickety click) - from here

'Stralia Day

What could be more Aussie than getting blasted by a few bluies down the beach on 'Stralia Day?

A misty but hot Australia Day spend down at Freshwater Beach. Bit squishy in surf due to the carnival taking up most of the beach.

A bucket of prawns in the sun.

New Years Eve was spent with mum, Alex and the kids enjoying the tunes belted out by a local chick in the beer-garden under the country club. It has a casual beauty, sandwiched as it is between the bowling green and the golf club car-park it overlooks the ocean, dunes and lakes, kangaroos pause in a mob around the t-off just below the fence and a strong sea breeze brings a briny haze. A few locals are trying to make a go of a burger business, barbecuing up the scotch fillet stakes for filling the local fresh "still warm from the oven" focatcia style buns, the local market gardens providing the salad so fresh it still drips sap.

Entree is a bucket of prawns, literally. Enjoyed with a chilled sav blank and a Coopers or three.

It's a picturesque 3k walk back around the lake to mums house.


This is country.

It's bark is worse in this light

Eucalyptus saligna forms a continuous hybrid with E. pilularis

The three 50m trees in our backyard are probably slightly towards the saligna end of the spectrum as the branch forks are more open than the pronounced, upright V's of the blackbutts and the perminant bark just covers slightly more than a quarter of the main trunk. The rest of the smooth bark (an infra-red reflecting adaption to frequent fires) sheds annually.
Why the science lesson?:
Our backyard is covered in a substantial layer of bark.

These photos were taken the day after we mowed - less than 24 hrs.

Off on holls down the coast - I'll take some photos for you so you know what you are missing out on.

Any way, Merry Xmas, and a 'appy new one.

Chat next year.

Cheers