If you are looking for tips on the finer points of welding high-carbon steel, or the correct amperage for 5mm aluminium butt joint, then just click through as you have been dragged here my some mindless search engine and are being led astray.  No, this is an account of a total plonker who always thought welding would be a good idea but never got round to it until later in life.  More of a story of how not to do welding.

Very important is choice of welder to suit your needs.  Careful research is required as there is a surprisingly diverse range of capacities and applications.  Is gas shielding required? Is aluminium fabrication essential?  Of course price has to be factored in the equation and an analysis of probable frequency of use of high-end capacity must be closely scrutinised.   What I did…… Got a rush of blood to the head in the hardware store when a shiny yellow box was on sale.  It came with face shield, small bag of rods, and a CD on how to weld.  I should have guessed this was not quality gear when I saw the plastic rod clamp.  Arc temps are several thousands of degrees, melting point of plastics are at best a couple of hundred degrees.  Even the less technically minded of my dear readers can probably guess the outcome of this mismatch.  Yes, the rod holder melts to a blob.  I also found that the shiny yellow paint did nothing to aid welding.

The second most important requirement to get into the field of welding is to get expert tuition from experienced welders in a controlled environment of graduated steps to build up one’s skills.  What I did……. found there were no TAFE courses, only bookkeeping and macramé seemed to be on offer.  So I resorted to the bundled CD.  It had been translated from Japanese via Mandarin, or perhaps the other way round, and visually showed multiple scenes of blinding light.   From it I garnered only one useful pointer, look at the pool, not the arc.  It would take some time before I realised the CD actually did have 5 seconds of usefulness.

Thirdly is the preparation of a safe work place to practice this new skill, paying particular attention to eye safety, fire safety, avoidance of burns and protection from the intense UV given off by the arc.  What I did…… set up in my woodwork shop where the floor has not been seen for a decade because of accumulated wood shavings, the benches are all wood, and combustible material crowds every corner.  Here is a tip I learned early on and pass on to you; don’t weld in gum boots.  Red-hot slag drops from the job and into them leaving you hopping round the workshop like a bunny on steroids.  Keep a bucket of water on hand to put out the subsidiary fires.  I also discovered the UV is not the way to get a tan.  All of the red and none of the brown.

Now we come to the nitty-gritty bits about actual welding, ‘striking the arc’.  All you have to do is make an electrical contact between the rod and the job to melt the materials to be welded and add the material in the rod to make a perfect fusion as though it had been one piece in the first place.  What I did…… Got all the gear ready grabbed the mask and found I couldn’t see anything.  This has got to be a mistake! How can I weld if I can’t see the job?  I sort of peeped round the edge of mask and blinded my self several times.  I reasoned that if I ever did manage to make an arc, I would then be able to see.  Then followed a long session of making a tiny flash, not enough to see by, followed by an angry buzz from the welder as I have stuck the rod to the job, accompanied by an even louder and angrier buzz from me cursing into the mask as I wrench the rod back and forth to get it unstuck.  Then I had a long, slow cup of tea.  Then another longer, louder session as described above, but with the same results.  Next day I was in a calmer mood and armed with a steely determination.  Get the rod close to the job without the mask, but not so close I give myself a flash.  Freeze the hand, move the head behind the mask and give a little scratch and pull back about 5mm.   Yipee! An arc! The try and keep the arc constant as the rod melts away.  I was glowing with pride after I burnt my first 5cm of rod.  I was also glowing with arc-burn from the previous day.  None of the above was trying to actually join 2 bits of steel, I was just trying to lay some blobs on a flat plate.  I thought I would rest on my laurels for the day, before things took a turn for the worse.

My first job was to build a sauna stove out of a flat sheet of 5 mm steel 4 ft by 6 ft.  A bit ambitious for a first job I will conceded.  I soon found that my toy welder that boasts 100 amps (and it probably is just a boast) just doesn’t have the balls to weld the corner of an ‘L’ joint.  Even cranked up to max, it simple hasn’t the heat to melt both bits of steel as the thick metal easily conducts the heat away.  No melt, no weld.  Bugger!  After a lot of experiment, I found I could just get a weld if I just touched the inside corners of the material in the ‘L’, rather than lapping one plate over the other.  That way I could attack the exposed corners of the steel.   Much later I proudly told an experienced welder of my ground-breaking discovery and he gave me a scathing look and said “That’s the way you are supposed to do it”.  He nobly restrained himself from adding “you numbskull”.

Step by painful step, I overcame the difficulties of immense ignorance and super-cheap equipment.  I still have problems with thick metal and bubblegum welds, slag inclusions and setting the workshop of fire, but hey! I get the job done.  I have some triumphs such as welding pipes that have to withstand very high pressure pulses without leaking (on the ram pump) and the sauna stove now looks as though it will rust away before it collapses into its component parts.  I now enjoy welding but have no plans to up-grade my gear as I would then probably run into difficulties with the stand-alone power system I rely on here.  I much prefer the little welder chucking in the towel with thermal overload after 10 rods, rather than the power system crashing.  I also get an enforced smoko as the little device sulks for an hour.  But if you are thinking of leaning to weld, now you know how not to do it.  And you can get welding glass that are like some sunglasses that go instantly dark in strong light.  I think that would make life a lot easier.  Then again it might amuse you to ‘discover’ welding by a process of exhausting every possible unworkable technique.

 

From my autonomous command post in the forest wilderness of North Queensland, I keep tabs on the rest of the world while resisting being sucked into its machinery.  After great deliberation and soul-searching, the only conclusion I can come to is that the rest of the world is stark-staring barking mad.  The only slight concern I have about this conclusion is that I seem to be outnumbered 7 billion to 1.  This leads to a niggling doubt, but I shrug it off as one must have confidence in one’s opinions after all.

Don’t think for a moment dear reader that I consider each and every person totally demented, far from it, but the systems of toil and reward, saving and investment, seem so far from a rational or equitable system that I wonder how long you will tolerate it.  The idea of fair reward for toil has totally broken down, to be replaced by reward depending on how close your snout is to the money trough.  Since the GFC in the US 14 trillion dollars was created from nothing by the Fed.  The cartel of banks answerable to nobody.  So the loss of value of the dollar in the pocket was existing money minus $14,000,000,000,000.   After all they didn’t create and goods or anything real, just money.  So who got this tidy sum? Initially the banks, then they bought government debt to keep it solvent, and then to corporations where it flowed onto Wall Street.  Does this strike you as a bit incestuous?  You bet.  Those inside the system with noses to the trough are sucking us dry.  This explains why 20-25% of the GDP of the US and UK is in financial services.  The new Mafia taking a cut on every deal.  If you take a rational look at an efficient system to transact and account for financial  deals, perhaps a 5% surcharge would be in order.  And so it was in the England of Dickens with a starched collar clerk at a high desk.  Now despite the enormous advantages of computerised systems, the financial sector is apparently 5 times less efficient than their quill scratching forebears?  Or is it 5 times more bloated because they can?

No, in fact they are far more efficient than at any time in the past.  The financial sector has just massively expanded its range of products by wrapping up debt and marketing it as an asset.  The madness really starts with the ‘derivatives’.   I promise to pay Joe $100.  Joe can’t pay his debts so he sells my debt to Sue.  Sue has bought a lot of debts at a bargain price,  so auctions them off at a discount.  And so it goes on until you get ‘derivatives’ where the original source has been just about forgotten, and somewhere along the line, the debts have been re-branded as assets.  The derivatives market had reached about US$650 trillion!  the last I heard.  Something like a decades worth of the entire world’s economic output.  And the financial world makes a fortune trading this shit!  The whole lot of these useless parasites have never between them made anything as useful as a box of matches!

If I sound a tad strident, a little miffed, perhaps a bit out of sorts, then I am not quite getting my point across.  I am absolutely livid that the greatest larceny in in the history of the world is going on, transferring the world’s assets and wealth from the people who create it to the 1% obscenely rich and we let it continue!  One of the smartest purchases that the uber-rich have made in the last few decades has been governments.  That has paid off handsomely.  Now all politicians can gibber on about is GDP, promoting industry, the bottom line, and money, money and money.  I would now like to point out that a society is composed of people, people and people.

I am fortunate to live in a wealthy country where the basic needs are easily met.  If you don’t agree, then we have a different definition of ‘basic’.  I have been to places like Africa to receive lessons on ‘basic’, and how happy you can be if you pass that threshold.  In Australia, we can so easily deliver ‘basic’ to everyone and still have a huge surplus to play with to develop ourselves, our relationships and our society.  I make the case that we don’t need more money, we need more time, more good relationships, more contact with the environment, more time to play with our kids.

Perhaps I am not outnumbered by 7 billion to one.  There may be a few out there who feel they don’t actually need more money.  Who see the pursuit of wealth beyond basic needs as folly.  I’m feeling a bit lonely and I’d like to hear from you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy winter solstice, the shortest day of the year today.  And what a ripper!  After 40 days of almost continuous cloud and rain the sun has finally come out for the last couple of days.  Above is the view from my veranda a few minutes ago.  Just 2 days of sun has dried up the surface from squelching underfoot to a pleasant stroll on the grass.  Just a few days ago a friend drove onto the grass you can see in his 4WD and very nearly got bogged.  Not by sinking to the axles, just sitting on top with the wheels going round.  Down in the valley it was even wetter and my ducks were nearly getting bogged.  Having been raised parent-less from little fluffy yellow balls in my bath tub, they don’t know that ducks can fly.  I feel guilty as a de facto parent for not helping them fulfil their full potential, but I could hardly demonstrate for them apart from madly running around waving my arms.  I doubt even that would have done the trick without the vital clue of me taking to the air.

Me, and just about everybody else in FNQ would have had a whinge or two about the prolonged end to the wet.  But I think we are all aware in this sun-baked arid country that rain is a blessing.  It is just that when we count our blessings, we are over-endowed.  On a global scale, the scarcity of fresh water is quickly becoming an acute issue.  In India, West US, China, huge parts of Africa, the middle east etc, the situation is acute and deterioration as they plunder the ground waters which will not replenish for thousands of years.  In the richer countries it leads to regional economic failure, in the poorer countries, to threatening the lives of millions and the stability of nations.

Here down on the fungus farm, I have been inconvenienced by not being able to do such things as mow the grass and deterred from other outside jobs, but the rain will have built up the ground water to keep the creek flowing well into the dry season.  That means I will not be troubled by lack of power from the hydro system for the foreseeable future.  Beautiful clean fresh water is tumbling down the waterfalls.  I sponsor some girls in Africa who have to walk kilometres to carry back water of dubious quality for everyday use.

An update on the “Indoor Zoo” post is that there was still a melomy remaining in Maple Cottage after I removed the one pictured in the post.  I had a reliable report that one was still there by a guest who was molested by one while in bed.  After dancing on her luggage, it ran over her head.  Fortunately I had advised her of its presence and she was not of a delicate disposition.  Non-the-less she advised me, or perhaps insisted, that I should redouble my efforts to evict it.  I did so setting the same bin trap that worked before and baited it with chocolate.  Total failure, as it took the bait and escaped.  It was obviously more athletic than its mate, being able to leap about 20 times its body length into the air.  The next day new guests arrived and I explained why there was a large dustbin in the kitchen with a few bits of chocolate at the bottom.  I must say they entered into the spirit of things and not only bagged (binned) the marauding melomy, but took it upon themselves to drive it to the same patch of forest where I had released its mate.  We can fondly imagine them reunited in nuptial bliss.

A friend and IT geek (sorry Martin), has downloaded a plug-in so that you can receive a notification of a new post if you wish.  You have to opt in by sending me an e-mail for me to add to subscribers.  Same method to unsubscribe.   I can’t imagine why you would subscribe unless you have a taste for the totally trivial.  Or perhaps you have been here, and seek a momentary escape to tales of nature’s bounty.

 

 

 

Between my house and the two cottages, I’ve been having plenty of wildlife encounters indoors, including the melomy above.  If you have never heard of a melomy, you have a lot of company as they are only found in the northern tropical highland rainforest.  The adult is half way in size between a mouse and a rat, but not closely related to either and the similar design is a good example of convergent evolution.  I caught it this morning in the bin that it is pictured in.  There have been melomys living in Maple Cottage for some time and I’ve been trying to get them with a huge range of traps, some I have tailor made to their size.  As they are a native species, it is of course illegal to use a fatal trap or poison.  I have caught a couple in an ingenious tube-like trap, but they got the hang of them really quickly and they were thereafter useless.  They consider the traps feeding stations and nimbly escape with the bait.  They do however climb into empty bins they can’t get out of like this one.  I think this is the last one to be evicted.  I took him/her down to show a guest at the other cottage and as he was leaving, he volunteered to drive it a few kms to release well away.  If they are released a few hundred meters away, they just come back again.  Unfortunately, two blokes couldn’t manage to outwit a lone melomy, and it escaped drawing blood on its way.  Score melomy 1, humans 0.

I have been sharing my shower with a small ragged edged dark green frog.  He is quiet and agreeable company and seems to be growing, so must be taking some toll on spiders and such.  He is welcome.  I have been given a tropical rainforest on the frogs here kindly given to me by the authors, a couple of profs from JCU.  Unfortunately, I can’t find it in the book so can’t give you a name except I call him Cedric.  Had a month of rain every day except 2 and you can tell how wet it is when a frog takes shelter.

Another recent resident is a small black snake less than a meter long.  It turned up in the cupboard where all the electrical/electronic gear is housed.  Heaps of devices in continuous use that give out steady warmth is attractive to many animals.  At least I kept the small furry ones away.  I kept forgetting it was there and nearly poked it a couple of times, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have bitten me as I’ve stood on them several times (accidentally) without them having a go at me.  After a couple of weeks, the snake abandoned the electrics and took up residence in the roof and some time later I saw part of him hanging down over the electric room heater where I dump the excess power from the hydro.  Heading for the heat again I thought.  A day later it was still there and I discovered it was dead.  I removed it with my snake tool just in case it was faking.  I’ve had a rather emaciated snake catch me like that before.

The possum raiding the kitchen most nights is almost one of the family and we tolerate each other pretty well.  We both know what to expect in the behaviour of the other.  Bit like being married.  To get rid of her I move closer as she watches, but don’t block the escape routes.  When I see her looking from me to the exit I quietly say “bugger off” and she scarpers along the route I have chosen and left open.

A couple of days ago I heard a bird banging off the windows in the lounge and was surprised to see it was a Lewin’s Honeyeater.  I was surprised because they usually don’t have any problem with windows and are a daily visitor especially in wet weather.  I’m just guessing, but I don’t think they like flying in the rain.  Also it was making quiet mewing sounds I have never heard from one before.  I am very familiar with its chirping song, and its ear-blasting trill, and much in between, but had never heard this sound before.  Then another Lewin’s flew across the room and attacked it showering feathers everywhere.  I couldn’t keep up with the pair flying round, banging into the windows and trilling loudly.  Finally the poor victim came to rest and flattened itself on the windowsill with its wings out-stretched in an arc mewing in submission.  The other leaped upon it ripping out more feathers.  I heroically leapt to the rescue and chased off the aggressor.  I slid open the window in front of the pathetic victim to release it from its peril and cool wet air came blasting through the window, but it didn’t fly off.  I poked with a finger in the bum and still it stubbornly sat there until further coaxing made it fly off.  It was only much later that it occurred to me that I had probably prevented the pair having a good shag.

 

 

 

My guests generously donate many things when they leave.  Some intentionally and some not.  My usual haul is an orphan sock, some milk and half a block of butter which would not survive a return trip to Cairns.  Sometimes I discover in the fridge gourmet food items I have never tried before, as the $/kg tag shocks my frugal mind when seen in local stores.  I can assure my honoured guests that I do not waste these choice items, and that I am not soliciting for further donations.

This week unintentional donations have been a charger and an i-pod.   Left by different guests and unfortunately not compatible.   I have been in contact with both parties and I am negotiating the safe return.  The owner of the i-pod, or is it a tablet? will have to rely on wet-ware for the coming week.

The most important and beautiful donations from guests have been the photos that have been e-mailed to me.  The one included in this post sent to me by Kristy who stayed here a week ago.  All my best photos are from guests.  A big thank you to all who have sent me great photos.  The header on my web site is part of a picture that was sent to me by a guest who is a professional photographer.  A very dreamy scene of a tropical sunset over the top dam.  Some one recently told me that it has appeared on a postcard released in Manchester UK, which is poignant as I was born and raised there.  Possum Valley could hardly be further from inner city Manchester in distance, climate and lifestyle.  I recently walked along the little street in Stretford where I used to live via Google Earth, and saw my old semi-detached house.  Hasn’t changed much except the front garden has been concreted over for parking space.  Apparently that is quite common now in the UK.  I also looked at Whaley Bridge, then a small village 30 miles outside Manchester where the family later moved to.  The field behind the house where I used to walk in the summer and toboggan in the winter has now been sub-divided into an housing estate.  Sigh.

Also thanks to my guests for sharing your stories with me.  About your travels, your families, your struggles and your triumphs.   And thank you for listening to my own stories, boasts and vanities.

Of course I appreciate my guests who pay the tariff and keep me in the luxury to which I am accustomed.  More than that, I enjoy meeting every one and learning something I didn’t know before.

 

 

Yes, dear readers, I am slowly groping my way to a new relationship.  Perhaps ‘groping’ is an unfortunate word.  Shall we try ‘forging’ or ‘negotiating’?  Hmmm, perhaps not, as one suggests something counterfeit and the other resolving differences by logic and trade-off.  Relationships are after all 90% emotional and 10% rational.  No, I mean some gentle settling in, a relaxation of expectations without either side making demands.  After all, the other party doesn’t have much brains and is without representation.  No, the rules and circumstances of this relationship will have to be entirely defined by me, though the real power lies with the other party.

I am trying to define my relationship to the environment, to Possum Valley.  I came here almost 40 years ago, and the ecosystem came here about 500,000,000 years ago.  Before that there wasn’t life on land, no fauna or flora, and I’d have been talking to rocks.  I guess that makes me a Jonny-come-lately.

In 1976 a friend and I paid some money to another person and ‘bought’ Possum Valley.  What does ‘bought’ mean?  I own and possess the entire land, both trees and plants and all the animals upon it and can change, plunder and destroy at my whim anything already here?  Apparently, as the ‘ownership’ was duly recorded in state archives and now I was lord and master of all I survey.  At that time there were few or no restrictions on what I could do with the land.  In my first months here, I came to see the richness, vibrancy and complexity that I could in no way create or duplicate.  Fortunately for me, previous owners had cleared some land for grazing thus relieving me of the guilt factor associated with destroying some of this environment.  In fact I have preserved only a few acres around the cottages and have let natural processes take over the other cleared ground.

Many cultures do not have the same concept of land ownership.  They certainly had the concept of rights of land usage and fought wars to establish their rights.  But they had the idea that they belonged to the land and were actually defending the ‘country’ when waging the wars.   I am talking about aborigines and north American cultures.  The concept of owning the land was absurd, when generations had come before them and taught them the sacred sites of ancestors and spirits that had shaped the land long before they were there.

I wasn’t taught these secrets, and come somewhere between these two entirely different world views, our ideas converge on preserving and maintaining the richness and variety that was bequeathed to us, to try and hand on to the next generation no less than we inherited.  As human numbers increase and consumption of resources explodes, this ideal is harder to achieve.   I am only answerable for my deeds in the times in which I live.  I perhaps leave an ever more difficult task to my children.  For now, I have begun to understand my role as custodian of Possum Valley.  It has been thrust upon me by the whims of European law, whereas in a traditional culture, it would be the responsibility of all.   I will try my best.

It is that time of year when the change of seasons seems particularly quick.  I wont bore you with mathematical explanations of how with periodical sinusoidal motions, the maximum rate of change is midway between the peak and the trough.  Oh… hang on, I already have.  I will tell you about the signs at Possum Valley.

There will be no more sweaty days.  To work up a decent sweat, I will have to do some hard yakka… god forbid.  Many days will not creep into the 20’s centigrade.  But I don’t rely on the thermometer to tell me the change of seasons, as it is the average day/night temps that matter.  A reliable instrument is if I can spread butter on the bread without totally destroying it.  I am one of the few in Oz who doesn’t keep the butter in the fridge.  Here it never gets hot enough to separate into ghee and whey,  Or is that curds and whey?  Anyway, it doesn’t go into a slimy mess.  So my next purchase of bread spread will be of ‘softened’ butter.  In other words contaminated with vegetable products.  Sigh.

Another token of the season change is the young black snake that has taken up residence in the power supply control system.  The electronic devices produce a steady warm glow most attractive to animals of the serpentine persuasion.  I have to watch where I put my hands, but I have confidence it will keep away the rodents who are the summer residents.  I have also been sharing my shower and bathroom with a frog for the last few weeks.  If a frog comes in out of the rain, you know it is a bit wet outside.  Frogs are quite agreeable house-mates, as they are the scourge of the insect population.  Call me prejudiced, but I prefer my soft flappy little friend to the host of six and eight legged invaders clamouring for the real estate I thought was mine.

To my friends in much higher latitudes, I have to admit that the change of seasons is nowhere near as dramatic as you enjoy, or endure.  The length of day is much the same, the temperatures drift from from the pleasant but sometimes a bit hot, to the pleasant but sometimes a bit cool.  No, we don’t have the drama of light and dark, hot and cold.  Nor the almost complete cessation of plant growth that so affected neolithic societies.  When the autumn harvest was in and the produce preserved and stored as best you could, then you could calculate with a deathly precision, could the family survive the winter?  Bad harvest?  Then best take the grandpas and grandmas to the dark forests as soon as possible.

On that dark thought, I leave you to contemplate our wealth and ease.

Every business has difficult times, makes mistakes and disappoints customers.  It is what you do from there which makes the difference.  Sometimes the circumstances are beyond your control, but still how you respond makes the difference.  What gets up peoples noses is when nobody cares, when your are referred to somebody else to get rid of you, and you have to state your case again and again.  Where you can’t even contact anybody with the authority to make a decision or resolve the issue.  We’ve all been there.

Enter B&B.  Or ‘Hosted Accommodation’.  In nearly all cases, the owner is the operator on a property they own and consider home.  I am one.  I not only consider it a business obligation to provide the best service that I can, it is also part of my pride and emotional well-being to share my beautiful environment to provide  an enjoyable and satisfying experience.  And you have to go far to find the boss who can make decisions and resolve issues, he or she probably greeted you on arrival.

Recently cyclone Ita molested this part of the coast and brought inconvenience to many.

The cyclone was only a cat 1 when it went somewhere near a couple of days ago.  Pretty windy but only one tree across the track, not like the hundreds in the last 2 cyclones.  But it rained a bit. 246 mm yesterday and most of that in 3 hours in the afternoon.  In the middle of that wind and pelting rain, a guest arrived but I told him to stop at the top of the hill as the creek was 30m wide, navel deep and doing quite a rate of knots.  Couldn’t even risk wading through.  Fortunately, there is the bridge near Blackbean Cottage. It wasn’t visible, being 400mm underwater, but I assured him that there was one and please follow directly behind me, as it is quite narrow.  I had one end of his wheelie suitcase.  I disgraced myself twice by missing the bridge and plunging into the water, but had the presence of mind to let go the luggage which he manfully struggled to keep above the waters.
He later agreed that although he is very well traveled, he has never before had quite that experience when arriving at a hotel reception, with storm and tempest and disappearing receptionist/porter. Fortunately, he had a sense of humour.

The rest of the party has arrived yesterday, having flown from Sydney , but the plane made 2 aborted landing attempts before the pilot made a decision between discretion and valour and headed back to land in Brisbane.  My guests were accommodated and flown back today at the airlines expense.  Both the Gillies and Kuranda range still closed, probably land slips, so they came up the Palmeston.  I do appreciate the effort they all made to get here.  Lesser mortals would have just cancelled out.

Next day I assembled the able-bodied guests down at the bottom of the waterfall in the rainforest also known as ‘leech central’, due to their abundance there.  The occasion was hauling the hydro generator out of the creek as it had been swept away in the floods.  It weighs 110 kg and I needed the help.

B&B’s can provide personal service, direct involvement, interesting experiences and perhaps even an educational opportunity.  A hotel or motel can provide predictable comfort ranging from adequate to luxurious depending on your budget, but B&B’s often provide something special that you have never experienced before.

Possum Valley is a bit on the wild side.  Many offer gentle luxury.  Choose carefully.