The Outer Barcoo

It HAPPENED !!!

I have to share yesterdays experience.

Returning from the train station at a pleasant and sensible 60 k's, two kids in the back sat quietly, as I chatted with a friend in the front.  THEN there was stunned silence as a huge bird (HUGE!  Eagle?) hauled it's cumbersome body from the grassy roadside, struggling to get airborne in order to cross the narrow country road.   By the time I saw it, it was directly in front of me by about 5-10 metres (and closing at 60 k's).  Unable to stop, I was relieved to narrowly miss it, and the big SNAKE that it was carrying.  No wonder it struggled to get airborne.

Can you imagine if we'd hit?  The shattered windscreen a cinema of screeching bird, blood, feathers, writhing snake on the front seat, screaming kids, hysterical mother and a heart attack.

And then it gets personal

Just when you think that that's "it" for the year ...

 SANDS Vic asked to publish "The Misses and Me" this month.  There's a gazillion stories like it, but if you want to read this one, then feel free to email for the full story.  

Extract

They say "there's a book in all of us", and so mine would have to include a chapter on motherhood and miscarriage.  As a young trainee nurse I was encouraged to observe a woman deliver a baby.  Feeling more at home with computers and sporting goods, I pressed myself against the wall and secretly declared "They will never get me".  

 

 

Cairns, July 2003

A rare photo of mother and babes.  Just the one!

Photo : Susie Haynes

Johnny's Going to the Moon - Quick, look impressed!

So it’s Christmas again, and people are starting to send cards with their foolscap page of the year’s news.  Aren’t they great to receive?  The style of the letter says more about the sender than the actual words they contain, and if you don’t recognize the name at the bottom of the letter because it’s somebody you met on holidays twenty years ago, then a quick look at the front of the card will refresh your memory.  That's where you’ll find the whole crazy gang beaming at you with Santa hats on.   Helloooo!

Some insist on bragging about little Johnny’s acceptance into NASA at the age of five, and their next door neighbour’s daughter’s best friend’s trip to somewhere for something blah blah blah.  (Too much detail). 

 

It’s all good fun, but if you’ve got tiny tots, then when you sit to write your own Christmas Letter, don’t lie by starting with “I can’t believe it’s Christmas already”, because you probably can.  Everywhere you turn there is a reminder. 

 

As the parent of a child under the age of five, you’ll have been listening to Wudolph the Wed Nose Weindeer in recital for the last month as practice for the Kinder concert.  If you’re organised, you’ll probably have made gorgeous angel costumes.  Not so organised, you’ll have ripped the curtains off their hooks on your way out the door in order to dress a shepherd.  

 

If the menfolk are on hand, they might have braved the great outdoors to slay a tree to haul home, leaving a trail of pine needles to your front door, up the hallway and into the lounge room.  Once beautifully decorated, you might find that it stays that way on the top half, and is decimated at the bottom, possibly by the dog, or a small child dressed in the lounge room curtain. 

 

First clue the tree has been “got at” is the trail of tinsel from the lower branches, across the floor and around the neck of the poor hapless rocking horse, who by the way might have had it’s hair trimmed for the occasion with the child proof plastic safety scissors left lying around after The Big Wrap.  Although it’s made from a lump of wood, the rocking horse manages to sport a rather stunned look that demands the removal of said tinsel as soon as possible.  He’s still recovering from that Melbourne Cup fiasco.  

Despite all your best intentions, including retrieving the bobbles from the front garden an hour after they were first put up, there is little to deter a shepherd-child with a stool and an iron will.  Like a magpie, attracted to all that Christmas tree glitter and shine, there is no point laying down rules - just newspaper – or a collection of typed foolscap pages of the years news.  But please.  Do show some respect.  Remember Johnny’s been accepted into NASA, and his parents won’t take kindly to seeing his brilliant little face enmeshed in the carnage.   That’s if you can ever figure out who they were to invite them round for a Sherry !

 

Ah Thank God It’s Christmas.  Anyone for a Sherry?

 

 

I Love Petanque

About knock-off time, when you’re ready for a comfortable seat and a clear head, the last of the tourists take leave from Hanging Rock Reserve.  With the heat dissipating, the still evening air bids them farewell.  

Once a week in the summer, the Out Gate is left ajar for Woodend Hanging Rock Petanque Club members, about 30 of whom slip through with their refreshments and their kit; the gentle clicking of the boules a pleasant accompaniment to the quiet chatter of club members and Snowy the Kangaroo.

As there is no draw, no ladder and no teams, there is no requirement to turn up, other than to take your mind on a little holiday, which I do once a week now.  It’s true, because I made the announcement to the family that for the rest of summer, dinner’s in the oven and I’m off to Petanque at 5.30pm, where nobody wants to talk about anything much except what’s going down on the Piste and how to get your boules to do a crack, a nudge or a point/shoot.  To be honest, I just stand there and chuck the things. 

It’s the serenity I love.  The stillness.  The isolation.  The detachment from everything other than hurling a little silver thing at a little wooden thing and trying to get good at it.  And like many things that starts off as just a bit of fun, I’m now hooked!  I don’t want to mop the floors or do the ironing.  I just want every night to be Petanque night!

At 50 bucks for a year’s membership, I think it’s fantastic therapy.  Isn't it worth that just to get out of the house!  I think so.

Garth Gates and Entrances

A visual tour of some of Neil Turner's work.

It's all about the Fantasy

British Patchwork & Quilting have published my story on the AP&Q Magazine's Fantasy Challenge exhibition 09.  

You've got to love Lana Lefroy's vibrant and enticing entry.  There's details in the story of how it was made.

DR-107 One Design Aerobatic Kit Plane For Sale

Click HERE for photos 

FOR   SALE

One Design Project

Priced below cost at $22k

Fantastic aircraft +/- 10g   Unlimited

Well advanced project with completed wings and fuselage + many extras such as Brunton flying wires, wing tips, undercarriage, canopy, instrument panel, fuel tank etc.  Needs engine, prop and instruments.

Denis (Australia) +61 423 404-233

  
   

 

 

We Need The Bees

There once was a time when whisky and tea 

were securely kept under lock and key, 

but now with the demise of the humble bee, 

we’ll be hanging onto our honey.

OK, honey doesn’t rhyme, but it’s integral to the story.

Hands up who has honey or fruit with breakfast every morning?

M . i ...olu..ly lo.. i. (I just put my left hand up)

Above the din of the crowd one night, Newham bee keeper Jim Sansom proclaimed “there’s no honey”. I rang him that week seeking an answer.  “JIM! NOT FUNNY. WADDYA MEAN ‘NO HONEY’?”

Having harvested around a ton and a half for the previous two years, last year’s crop was nil. With little rain from Aug-Oct, the trees bypassed bud and went straight to leaf.

For the man who bought his first hive in 1956, the strain in his voice was obvious as he explained the plight of the humble bee (not the bumble bee, that’s another story).

The bigger problem is Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which sees the bees abscond from their colony never to return - an underlying cause of which is the parasitic Varoa Mite.  

The mite attaches itself to the bees, and they get weakened and the next thing they’re sick and exhausted and on their little knees, until finally they die !!!  Every country in the world has this mite, except Australia.  We are the Last Man Standing, and we are now exporting "clean bees" overseas.

The problem if the mite arrives here, will be when it escapes into the environment. Bees like to be busy, and most things in agriculture rely on them for pollination. Busy Busy Bees.  If the wild bees get wiped out, we’re in big strife.

And so it's time to be both a Lert and a Larmed and urge our government to get serious about the few sentinel hives, mainly manned by volunteers, which are kept around the ports to detect the mite if it arrives.  

Now that’s not a job that any bee wants. They’re like the canaries that get taken into a gas leak. (Vital, but ultimately a dead end job).

And while the bees are battling on two fronts, with the drought and the CCD, the sniffer dogs did their bit recently when somebody tried to smuggle in a few queen bees inside a fountain pen. (How did ... ?)

Jim reckons if we had a bounty we wouldn’t have a problem. I’m not sure if he expects us to shoot the offending bees, or the bloke that imports them.

The sentinel hives need to be properly manned by professional teams, particularly around the northern ports which are susceptible to infestation from near neighbours like Indonesia and PNG.  If they're not sponsored with a trip in a biro, then they just hitchhike on the masts of ships.  It's not so far to travel across the Coral Sea, y'see, basking in the tropical sun, buzzing busily on their way to the land of milk and ....

If you like to eat and you can write, then maybe have a cuppa with a drop of honey, and pick up your pen.

Jim Sansom.  Newham.  (03) 5427-0408

Writers Block?

“It is not enough to write so that you can be understood; you must write so clearly that you cannot be misunderstood.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Outback Magazine : Neil Turners Gates

In this month's Outback magazine, my story on Neil Turner appears on Page 92 with a gorgeous photo of him with his son Josh, who never seems to stop smiling.  He's a photographers dream.

Here's a link to the story.