A couple of days ago I was chatting with guests standing in front of the homestead.  There was a low rumbling noise and a stampede of 40-50 cattle appeared coming down the road.  That is not supposed to happen.  I don’t own any and there are supposed to be fences containing them put up by neighbours who do own them.  They were young and feisty charging by a few meters away, and disappearing round the house.   There didn’t seem to be anything useful to do, like chase them and freak them out some more, so I said “That’s odd” and continued the nice little chat.  Round the back of the house it is wall-to-wall rainforest and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t like the look of that.  After a couple of minutes silence, the rumble started again and they came back around the house and ran back the way they came.  It would be useful to know where they got through the fence, but they may not even remember.  Cattle are bred for milk or beef and definitely not brains.  Besides I’m too old to chase steers on foot.

A few hours later the washing machine wouldn’t work.  This is a major issue when you run a B&B.  I remember a snatch from the Goon Show from the days of radio where there was a sea battle between two prisons (don’t ask),  “Repel boarders! How do you repel boarders?  Stop changing the bed linen.”

My first attempts to rectify the situation, that is kicking the washing machine and cursing, did not produce the desired result, so I had to calm down and think.  It was making a slight buzzing sound which is the water inlet solenoid which means it is supposed to be letting water in for the rinse cycle.  A quick check reveals there is no water.  All is forgiven wonderful machine! you were only faithfully waiting for water, and would have waited until the sun becomes a red giant.  No water!  I filled the tanks a couple of days ago.  My first thoughts were that departing guests had carelessly left on a tap down at Blackbean Cottage.  A search did not reveal any wet areas.  I went round the homestead and could not find any leaks, nor by following the down pipes from the tank. Time for a cuppa.  Then I remembered a remote disused standpipe behind the homestead installed to aid the construction more than 30 years ago.

Yes, the steers had knocked it over breaking an underground connection.  I had to plug the broken hole.  I needed a 42 mm tapered plug as a temporary measure before I could have water at Blackbean or the Homestead.  When you have as much junk as I have, it turns up with a bit of searching.  An ‘art deco’ chair leg.  Just cut out the right bit, hammer it in the hole, and wire it in.  Now just fill up the tank.

This was definitely not one one of the steers that invaded, but do you notice anything in the image?

And this is where the washing disaster begins.  All the above was just preamble.  Whenever a water system is disturbed, there is particulate matter, commonly known as mud, residing in every bend or nook and cranny of the system.  When the system is recharged with water, this is flushed into the system.  After waiting hours for some water to trickle into the tank from the ram pump, I turned on a tap to find…. no water.  There was an air lock in the down pipe.  I dig up the buried tap half way along the pipe and let it run coughing out water and bubbles.  Having fixed that, the water at the homestead came out the colour of chocolate.  Over the next day I bled of water to flush the system, but as the ram pump has low delivery, I could only do that at intervals. The washing piled up threatening to engulf the machine.  I tried operating the washing machine but the filters blocked up in minutes stopping the machine.  It took about 2 days before the water was clear and I was able to wash some linen.

Meanwhile I had attempted to inform the owners of the cattle that they were roaming.  The property to the west has Holstein brown cows.  The next property west has Brahman cross which are quite white, so the nearly black steers that invaded were from the property to the south.  It is embarrassing to admit I had no idea who my neighbours to the south were.  I did know that the property had been sold a couple of years ago.  A bit of sleuthing discovered them living nearby, but not on the property so I went around and introduced myself.  I did not mention my plumbing disaster.  They had no idea they were missing 40 head.  To date they have not been found, but there are reports of sightings on a nearby property.

I love living on a rural block, but there are problems.  You just deal with it.

One week ago my daughter gave birth to Evie Hillary Povey, her second child and my 3rd grand child.  There had been some debate in the Povey family about having another child as Josie had a terrible time first time round and came close to dying by the surgeon’s own admission.  She managed to combine giving birth with a ruptured appendix, which wasn’t picked up for a while as they were quite reasonably thinking of birth complications.  For all the details if you wish, see a post of about 2 years ago titled “My Hero”.  I think the title gives it away a bit.  Kairne, Josie’s husband, was by his own admission somewhat traumatised by nearly losing Josie.  I had some concerns, but from a distance of 2500 kms, I was behind the events and they only sent updates after the critical times when Josie was recovering.

The debate over the second child was obviously resolved in the positive.  Result …. Evie.  Their first child was a son Huon Paul Povey now 2 years old.  Huon not after a tree in Tasmania, but a river and district in PNG where Kairne was brought up.  Both Huon’s grandparents are called Paul, so a respectful nod in our direction.  Evie is short for Evelyn, the district right here round Possum Valley where Josie was brought up.  By spooky coincidence, both Evie’s grandmothers are called Hillary.  How could they not give Evie’s middle name as Hillary.  What remarkable symmetry in honouring history and forebears.

There was no such grief and anxiety with Josie’s second delivery, but plenty of drama.  A week before the due date she went into labour, but as it was Huon’s bedtime she decided to get him off to sleep first.  She must have been suitably calm and soothing as that was successfully achieved.  Five hectic minutes later, she gave birth.  Plan A to drive to the hospital didn’t work, even though they live near the city center, and plan B, calling an ambulance didn’t work as it didn’t arrive until 5 minutes after the birth.  Plan C was entirely unrehearsed where Kairne was the midwife.  He is entirely conversant with the logistics of supplying drilling rigs, heavy engineering and has a roadtrain licence for 150 ton vehicles, but is much less experienced with delicate and squishy things.  He rose to the occasion with 000 providing advice and encouragement.  Another trauma for Kairne, but a much happier result.

We know who did the hard work, it’s not called labour for nothing, but I’m told it was about the quietest birth imaginable with some grunts and heavy breathing, but didn’t wake Huon sleeping in the next room.  What a trooper!  There was 4 hours in hospital for cleaning up and health checks, but home in time for Huon to wake up next morning and discover he had a sister.  A sudden discontinuity in his life that was so unimaginable and instant.  I think I may  have some success convincing him the baby was delivered by a stork, rather like a pizza.  All warm and steaming in a thermal wrap.  If I have put anyone off delivered pizzas, good.  Much better to cook them yourself.

The day after.  Huon discovers a sister.

Evie tries to cope with the world, Josie rather tired after delivery and a night with no sleep and Huon rather gobsmacked but engaged.

Dear readers, you may have absolutely no interest in the events above.  But it’s MY BLOG and one of the most important events in my life.  So please indulge me with a little tolerance for this selfish celebration of family joy.  I am confident that older readers will understand, but younger readers might wonder why I have burdened them with irrelevant news. My apologies.

It is nominally well into the dry season according to climate statistics.  What you expect is climate, however, what you get is weather.  And the far north coast has been getting heaps more rain than normal, delivered down the coast in showers, and up at Possum Valley on top of the dividing range as mist, drizzle and showers.

 

The dour Scottish are familiar with such weather and would say “och aye, it’s dreich and it’s drear”.  (dreich – tedious, wearisome, long. To get the pronunciation right, try and spit as you say it).  The easy-going Irish might say “to be sure it’s a fine soft day”.  The optimistic Yorkshire man after a month in his gumboots would say “eeeh lad, might brighten up yet”.  Your kindly host is saying “enough already Hughie”.  I could use a few days of sunshine.

The silver lining as they say, is that the slow steady rain adds to the water table having time to soak in.  A lot of the rain this wet season has been intense and short causing floods and very quick run-off and hardly adding to the water table.

There are technical divisions of rainforest to do with when and how the rain arrives.  You will not be surprised to learn that Possum Valley is ‘cloud forest’ and in some months gets up to half its rainfall from ‘cloud stripping’  as the moisture settles on the all the dense foliage and gently drips down.

The birds and animals are less visible and active when it is wet.  They must go about their daily business to survive, but seem to forego the social activities.  The snakes just disappear and sulk until the sun comes out to get them moving.  There are a few creatures that just love this weather.  I am sad to report that one of the is leeches.  This is party time for them.  They are small harmless, don’t attack you in the house (to dry to survive), and don’t carry diseases like mosquitos.  It is strange to me that despite being the worldwide scourge of humankind since we were dragging our knuckles across African savanna and cause the death of millions every year, people are more tolerant of them than leeches.   The term for doctor used to be ‘leech’, and they were used as the chief remedy.  They still are used in western medicine particularly after plastic surgery for the removal of blood clots and infected material.  Heck, they even come with built-in anesthetic and anti-coagulant.

The other species that revels in the rain is of course my ducks.  The platypus are totally indifferent to the rain.

I am quite sure bedraggled scrub turkeys get rather fed up when they come and stand on the patio next to the tractor and just stand there doing nothing, just sheltering from the rain.  After an extended period of rain, the turkeys sunbathe.  They fling themselves on the ground on one side and throw a wing into the air.  Then roast the other side.  I think they need the sunshine to control mites or similar rather than fancy a tan.

In other news, my eldest daughter, partner and 1 yo son have bought a 250 acre grazing farm just down the road.  A mere 15 kms away.  A lovely rolling property right on the boundary between rainforest and wet schlorephyl.  (I can see that is wrong, but not in spell check).  That is about 1185 kms closer than they have been for the last few years.  They will probably move in about xmas.  I have been put on notice that grandfatherly duties such as child minding are expected.  My youngest daughter in Darwin now in the ‘beached whale’ stage of producing another child to add to the family (last 4 weeks).  Added to the energetic 2 yo she has now, she wont have to get up in the morning thinking “now what am I going to do today?”  The day will start abruptly, then just keep happening.  The art of coping overtakes the discipline of planning.

I watch with amazement from my refuge of peace, as insanity grips the planet.  The latest round of brinksmanship as Greece and the EU dare each other to collapse the European financial system and perhaps the teetering world economy.  ” Greek bailout #7?”  Don’t think so, as the Greek haven’t seen a cent, euro, drachma.  The bailouts went straight to the creditors, other European banks.  A financial shell game to keep the party going.  The sooner the Greeks say “bugger off and put those debts where the sun don’t shine” the better.  I do of course mean a deep vault in Switzerland.

More locally, the Abbot ploy of paying people smugglers to turn around and take them back beggars belief.  Now I do admit that Abbot at the last election promised to promote new industries, I just didn’t expect them to be in Indonesia.  What a terrific business model!  The smuggler sets out with a boatload of people who have paid them, go the shortest distance till they bump into an Aussie patrol boat, collect more money and home in time for dinner.  Get paid both ways!  I can see Indonesian fishermen with poor catches inviting the whole village onto his boat, BBQ provided, urgently seeking our intrepid ‘border patrol’, taking the handout as the Aussie crew who wouldn’t know a Rohinga from a Rwandan from a refugee.  It is likely that payments breach international law and domestic law prohibiting the aiding people smugglers.

Happy winter solstice, and may your days get longer and brighter.  I’m on pretty safe ground there.

 

I have been living in Possum Valley since 1976, and it is beginning to seem like a long time even to me.  but a couple of days ago I was reminded it is but a heartbeat in the great scheme of things when I found a stone axe on the track just 5 m from the porch of Maple Cottage.

It attracted my attention because I am familiar with the bed rock here as being wall to wall rhyolite.  Nor was it the light coloured rocks of the road gravel.  As soon as I picked it up though it was caked in dirt, I could see it was an aboriginal stone axe.  I have found many in my travels around Australia, including two manufacturing sites where there were dozens in various stages of preparation, presumably discarded for some revealed flaw rather than taken to completion.  One was in the Northern Territory in an opening into a lava tunnel I think, where the roof had collapsed.  The other manufacturing site was in western Queensland about halfway between Mt Isa and the Gulf.  I was doing mineral exploration work near an ancient fault line and rocks from the other side of the fault turned up in large numbers on and in uniform sizes, on our side with completely different sedimentary geology.  I was rock sampling an area of about 1.5kms by 2.5kms using a grid surveyed (by us) with pegs every 50m.  The required sampling technique was to go in a circle 5m around the peg, and every 2 paces chip a rock with a geopick (hammer with spike), and bag the chip.  Except these stray rocks could not be chipped.  No matter how long and hard I flogged and flailed at these dense green rocks, they could not be chipped.  The geologist told me to leave them, which was just as well as I couldn’t break them, because they were not part of the local geology and had been carried there by human agency.  They were green tinged ‘Eastern Creek Volcanics’, much prised axe heads and traded all over Australia because they are virtually indestructible, as I found the hard way.  Considering the numbers of ECV floaters I found, it must have been a considerable industry lasting millenniums.

On my page ‘History’, I have detailed digging spuds in the Evelyn district and turning up large numbers of axe heads.  My share I long ago donated to Ravenshoe Visitor Centre.  I think I will keep this one found in Possum Valley.  There is no way of dating stone axes except if they are found in soil strata which is undisturbed and can be dated by some marker such as volcanic ash or carbon inclusions.  So the one I found could be 1000 or 40,000 years old.  It may have been accidentally dropped or deliberately discarded because of the chip in the cutting edge.  All the axes I have come across in Australia have been ground to an edge rather than ‘napped’ or flaked as is common elsewhere.  Some of the local axes had a groove on one side parallel to the cutting edge and were obviously designed to be hafted.  This one does not and was designed to be a hand axe.

Yesterday I went down to the hydro for the first time in a month because I could tell from the control board that there was increasing fluctuating output.  It sounded a bit grating but couldn’t see a problem until I shut it down and gave it a good shake.  Just a little rattle on the turbine shaft meant one of the bearings was shot.  I keep a couple on hand so could fix it right away, but instead of requiring a gear puller to drag it off, I could pull it off by hand.  Bugger!  The shaft had been turning in the bearing for some time and had been ground away.  I presented the new bearing to the shaft and had to hammer it on which is good, until it got to the proper seated position and it was minutely slack, which is bad.  Due to some movement in the position of the bearing, I backed it off until at least a little bit of it was tight.  Bodging at its worst.  But wait!  I have more shameful remedies to share.  When the wear and rattle gets big enough, it is possible to use a shim.  For those of an engineering bent, a shim is some thin material you jamb in to make the bastard fit.  For bearings, I have found that a broken carpenter’s tape can do the trick.  It is hard spring steel and thin.  Cut just enough of the tape to go round the shaft, wrap it cup side up around the worn shaft, and flog the bearing on with a large lump hammer.  Tight as a duck’s arse.  For now, I am holding this technique in reserve for when the shaft/bearing fit gets as bad as a brick in a shirt sleeve.

Of course there is a genuine engineering remedy.  This is not buying a new part as this equipment was a one-off from 32 years ago.  I could dismantle the turbine, take the shaft into an engineering shop in Atherton, have the shaft built up with stainless steel welds added to the shaft and then turned down to size on a lathe.  Perfect, good as new.  This has two disadvantages.  First it would cost money.  Dear readers who know me would appreciate the horror in which I hold this solution.  Second, I would be at the mercy of a hugely competent, but disinterested company’s job list, and could expect to wait until more lucrative jobs were completed before my pissy little repair was looked at.

So having got the hydro producing again I retired to bed basking in the glow of my own ingenuity.  Only to be awakened next morning by the hum of the hydro going over-speed, which means it is not producing electricity.  Usually, I can’t hear it at all.  Double bugger!  What did I FUP? (to differentiate from FU which I definitely didn’t mean).  It was a totally unrelated failure.  A connection to the slip-rings had become loose and burned out.  This is because I couldn’t get UNF 5/32 inch nuts.  These are tiny brass nuts of an archaic British thread that are not made anymore.  I have scoured the world via google and concluded that the 32nd inch sizes have been discontinued, probably for decades, and only sixteenth sizes were now available.  So I had bodged up some nuts by tapping the nearest size of metric threads into a little nut.  I had been very careful when tightening up not to strip the threads, but had not got a secure enough connection.  After about a month of use the connection had built up resistance which heats it up leading to catastrophic melt-down mode.  Sometimes bodging comes back to bite you in the bum.  About 20mm of wire remaining as the rest burned away.  All this takes place in a tiny space that normally rotates at 1500RPM.  Like doing surgery in a mouse’s earhole.  I find a very small diameter bit of copper pipe (gads, I love my junk), to join the wires and crimp the new to the old, squashing it together with vice grip pliers.  The tiny stripped thread nut I also delicately crimped to an oval shape to be able to tighten up.  There is a good chance this latest bodge will last a decade.

In the couple of days this electrical disaster was happening, my e-mail was also falling apart.  I could not send any e-mail to anybody with a hotmail address.  The Mailer Daemon reported a ‘block list’.  Apparently hotmail was blocking my ISP.  Why? doesn’t make much sense.  So I opened another account using my own domain and a completely different server but the result was the same.  I suspect skulduggery way beyond my pay grade.  Either hotmail is attacking me (most unlikely) or others are attacking hotmail (much more believable), or a system fuck-up (very believable).  My apologies to those with hotmail addresses who have received no reply from me.

I am much more at home with mechanical failure than web problems.

Beautiful weather over the weekend.  Not a cloud, and starting with a cool 12C then quickly warming up to a max of 24C.  The sky a deep blue, not as dark blue as I have seen it, when it is as dark as the green of the rainforest, but showing that there is little moisture, smoke or dust in the atmosphere.

I have thought about why it is sometimes so dark blue in Oz when I have never anything but a faded pale blue in England.  I have seen pics from Kate in Perth of the darkest blue skies.  Knowing that the red end of the spectrum penetrates dust, smoke and moisture from following astronomy, it is obvious that in clear air I will see the black of space lit only by the back-scatter of the atmosphere.  This also accounts for red dawns and dusks as the red light can penetrate through a longer path through the atmosphere and the blue light is scattered away.

I can put up with a bit more of this.  For a while.  Then I will start whinging about the lack of steady rain to replenish the water table so the creek will flow well in the dry season, so I will have hydro-power later in the year.  Ungrateful sod that I am.  I have had about median rainfall of about 1300 mm so far this year, but it arrived in huge dollops and didn’t soak in, but rushed in floods to the creek and away.

Then I think about the farmers stricken with drought that are always with us in this dry dusty country.  Where every rain period is just a short reprieve from the next drought.  They watch their livelihood and income disappear as the sun sears crops, and the lack of fodder causes the stock to stagger and die.  And I whinge about an inconvenience I can see happening sometime in the future.

Because I have travelled a lot in my earlier years, I have some first-hand experience of the difficulties faced by people who have very little resources.  Who are totally self-reliant and do not expect, and are unlikely to receive, any help when disaster arrives.  People in the Horn of Africa for instance, who are stricken with the double calamity of drought and war.  I have this yardstick to compare my difficulties against those of the least fortunate in the world.  Then I realise that the slight problems the variables that the weather throws at me, is within my  power to control.  For so many it is not.

I don’t know where the world is headed, but I do know that I have lived a charmed life being born in a rich country, and moving to an even more bountiful one.  See the picture of orchids and elkhorn epiphites, and the ferns that are epiphites on epiphites.  So this suggests that I should enjoy this beautiful day, not dwell on the future’s possible problems, and relax in the confidence I can deal with with it.  I sometimes live in the past, the present, or the future, but the most satisfying is the present.

This is not a spam from an Indian pharmaceutical firm, this is how to erect a power pole.  They are long.  They are heavy.  Even half a dozen strong men can’t lift them as you can’t push past the centre of gravity so the pole has all the leverage.  So this is about how to get the pole in the hole without serious physical injury.  Something I am sure everybody needs to know.  So the pole is 7.5m long and weighs 250-300 kg.  I need to move it 25m away and replant, having been smashed to the ground by a falling tree.  I offer you a picture of my mobile crane.

The mobile bit is because it is mounted on the back of my superbly rusted 1982 Toyota Hilux.  The crane bit is because I can lift it off the ground into the vertical position with a few bit of pipes, rope and other assorted junk.  On my own, in perfect control every step of the way.  The horizontal pipe at the back of the tray is a bit of broken pipe from the ram pump.  The A-frame steel pipe is left over from the shed construction.  The handle of the windlass is spare plumbing parts.  Equally sophisticated is the the stop mechanism which is a stick that can slide in and out on the tray support beams.  At the top of the A-frame is a pulley for a rope turned from a small offcut of red stringy.  Superbly strong wood.  The A-frame is tied back to the bull bar by a stainless steel wire I can barely see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This close up shows the windlass pipe in cradles and hold-down loops of stainless steel recycled from a defunct water pump I think.

 The feet of the A-frame sit on bolts sticking through the tray.  Total cost of this contraption:- zero.  Total utility of this contraption, well, I didn’t have any other way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I was on my way down from pole erection, I ran across this little critter which I reckon has to be a legless lizard.

I haven’t seen anything like it before in my decades at Possum Valley.  It seems to have a bit of a neck, not seen in snakes and is only 30 cm long.  It seemed to have a head like a skink, with a slight neck between the head and body.  It was very docile and obligingly remained for the several minutes it took me to go for my camera.  Grey on top, banded yellow and black underneath.

I would welcome advice from anybody who knows what it is.