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 This wise looking chap was spotted in a gum in the front garden yesterday by Liz while I was off at Tai Chi. The photo is a pretty good result bearing in mind it was taken through the lounge room window and from some distance away.
Being ex city folk we had never seen one outside captivity and a call to the Ag dept revealed they do live around here and most likely this specimen had not made it home before sunrise. Someone had an owl stay for 18 months in their garden before it moved on.
Unfortunately when I got home and went looking for it, the owl got upset and decided to risk a daylight flight. This excited our magpies who set off in hot pursuit but it looked like this one made it safely to a big stand of gums about 150 meters away. I hope so. I wasn’t trying to interact with it just check it out.
Horsham is blessed with such a range of bird life. As I sit here now I can hear several different bird songs drifting through the window at 5 o’clock on a warm afternoon.
Our early morning ritual here is a nice hot cuppa tea on the back veranda which appears to be a fly through freeway for the more adventurous bird life. A damn fine start to the day we reckon.
 The family history on my side is a somewhat tortured one. Coming from a long line of musicians, broken relationships abound and one or two have had an inclination to self medicate their problems with alcohol. A practice that would seem to have a very low success rate especially in relationship sustaining terms.
One of the elder musicians, my Grandfather, lived in Richmond for many years and seemed well pleased with his circumstances. He had been married in the dim dark past but never really spoke about it and was happy to be living alone in his Bridge Road workshop where he repaired amplifiers and guitars for local bands. Usually after they finished the night’s gig.
The workshop was a thing to behold. To everyone else it looked like a junk heap but he knew where everything was and if someone started to clean the place up he was thrown into confusion. Many wonderful devices lived there, some self built, and most for purposes unknown to a young enquiring mind.
When cancer finally claimed my Grandfather I ended up with a box or two of his possessions and herein lies the headline of this blog. Included was a small starting pistol which he used to chase would-be thieves. Liz happened to be standing there next to me when I picked it up. It looked harmless enough and having a modicum of gun sense I had the muzzle pointed away from her just in case. But unknown to me this weapon discharges out of the top of the barrel which was only a foot or two away from Liz’s face.
The inevitable happened and a surprisingly loud bang resulted, followed by the Chief Financial Officer collapsing on the floor, face down. I can tell you I was extremely worried when I went to assist. Having felt some of the force on the side of my thumb, I thought eye damage was a real possibility.
Happily it was just the shock of the blast that caused the collapse but I can tell you she was more than a little displeased.
These days I stick to the safety of First Person Shooters or LaserZone. Lets face it. If a bloke can’t even manage a starting pistol then “live” bullets in real guns should best be avoided.
The teacher noticed that little Johnnie who was sitting at the back of the class and squirming around, scratching his crotch, and not paying attention.
She went back to find out what was going on.
 Little Johnnie was quite embarrassed and whispered that he had just recently been circumcised and he was quite itchy.
The teacher told him to go down to the principal’s office.
He was told to telephone his mother and ask her what he should do about it.
He did and returned to his class.
Suddenly, there was a commotion at the back of the room.
She went back to investigate only to find him sitting at his desk with his ‘private part’ hanging out.’
"I thought I told you to call your mum!’ she said.
‘I did,’ he said, ‘And she told me that if I could stick it out until lunchtime, she’d come and pick me up from school.’
Political corruption is not the exclusive territory of US Big Business and their Supreme Court. The Tasmanian Wilderness Society which now operates under the name of The Wilderness Society, is having a bit of trouble with it’s head honcho Alec Marr.
In an interesting comparison with Orwell’s Animal Farm, young Alec has been likened to the pigs who took over from the Farmer. An analogy that should find heads nodding within the protest group. Rumours have been floating around about bullying and with an amazing turnover of 60% in 13 months from a staff of nearly 100, there must be something rotten in the management structure.
For some reason folk like Alec lose touch with their members when they having been living a comfortable life and the ego ends up putting self before any other interests. When he suffered a 9 – 2 no confidence motion, Alec should have had a “good hard look at himself” and thought about the spirit of his organisation. That old fashioned idea of Democracy.
Unfortunately for TWS, he went the other way and started punishing folk by withdrawing funds and (get this one) holding a secret AGM and only inviting his mates along. On the scale of cunning he gets big points for meeting the legal requirements by publishing the notice for the AGM in the least read Tasmanian newspaper the Burnie Advocate (I’ve never heard of it either). But disenfranchising the membership can only lead one way and I’m surprised he hasn’t worked it out yet.
At risk here is a staggering annual $15M worth of donations but it goes even further than that. Once someone thinks they are bigger than the organisation they usually prefer to bring the whole thing tumbling down rather that let someone else take over the reins. With the trickiness displayed so far, young Alec looks far from repentant and more likely to trash an organisation that held it’s head high after the Franklin Dam era of protests.
If I was a kid coming out of Uni full of Green enthusiasm I’d give TWS the big swerve. It’s hard enough to battle big companies like Gunns without having another bitch fight back at Head Office. And if I was kicking in any of that $15M in donations I’d be wondering exactly where it was going and how much bang for the buck I was getting.
Feeling like having some fun with designing and testing market reaction?
Want to make your own T shirts, mouse mats, coffee mugs etc?
Head on over to Zazzle and check it out. You can put your finished designs into the market place and earn a small percentage of the sales for no cost to yourself except your time.
Click on the Tee shirt above to hit the site then have a play.
 I’m sad to report that Blackie the chook (the one with the most character and the most imaginative name) has wandered off into the after life or the chook equivalent there of. The recent heat wave may have been a contributing factor but a lack of enthusiasm at meal times had prepared us for a possible problem.
As chooks go, Blackie was the one with the most character. If ever I felt a peck on the back of the leg, it was usually Blackie registering displeasure at a later than expected lunch time, or reminding me I hadn’t turned over a few sods for her to scratch over.
Egg production has dropped by one of late and she did suffer by being egg bound a little while back. She recovered at the time which is quite unusual but only managed a couple of months grace. It would seem that she was the one not able to produce an egg a day but we have had a very good run up till now so no complaints there.
Chooks get a bit bossy if you introduce a new chicken into the pen so we wont be replacing her until another one passes away. Then we will add another pair to share the stress.
Today’s garbage truck carried her away to her final resting place. I’m not into burials and head stones for departed animals like my mother used to do so she had to settle for adding to the land fill at the local tip.
Sunday night I went to see this flick at Horsham Cinema but first a warning. There are some minor spoilers here so come back after you have seen the movie if you want it to retain the surprise elements.
I sometimes struggle with disaster movies. The contrived extra drama is a real show stopper for me. Happily, this flick is much better than the standard fare with all the events sitting nicely within the story. The special effects are very good too. None of that lame gfx as featured in Twister.
Of special note is a number of things that usually accompany disaster movies but are surprisingly missing here.
Firstly, No ones cell phone cuts out at a critical moment. A thousand thankyous for that.
Then there is a Russian aircraft that is technically in good nick.
Thirdly, although a lot of the action happens in the States, the solution is in another country and the final settlement location is not in America either.
Now as much as I enjoyed the above items, there is some stretching of the imagination required and it has the obligatory “The US President stays with his people to the bitter end,” moment, but for all that it is still a very entertaining movie. It’s helped by the strong cast especially John Cusack and Oliver Platt.
It does prompt a bit of thinking too though I suspect while others were concerned about Climate Change I was wondering which ark the telephone sanitizers were going in.
The current negotiations between Labor and the Conservatives over an ETS have made some significant changes to the Government’s plans but also exposed the National party to the harsh glare of farmers in general.
 The failing membership of the Nats has been an ongoing problem the consequences of which have led to a declining number of seats in parliament. The problem seems to stem from the party requiring the votes of the farmers but the financial support of the Mining lobby. A more subtle collection of pollies might be able to handle these two groups when they clash but the current crop simply don’t seem to be bright enough to handle the situation.
In December last year Senator Joyce foolishly came out in support of the farmers over a Greens bill to require a water study before an exploration license was issued. One hostile phone call from Mitch Hook, CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia, and Barnaby did a back flip withdrawing support. This was bad enough but he compounded the damage when he went on to candidly reveal the fact that the phone call had occurred. Leaving the farmers with no doubt of where the party’s loyalties’ lie.
Now that an agreement for an ETS has included some serious concessions for farmers, and Barnaby Joyce is trying to hold back the tide, the farmers have to decide if they are going to side with the party who is in lockstep with the Miners or start looking ahead to how they can claim their rightful place as earners of carbon credits under new rules. I can’t see it being that hard a decision for them. Go with the Liberals and aim for a seat at the decision making table, or stick their heads in the sand and hope it all goes away.
If it was my farm and my income and my kids inheriting the property, I’d want to get inside the decision making process as soon as possible.
The Internet is a funny place at times and posting something on the Net can bring fame albeit unintended and probably embarrassing.
Star Wars kid The Star Wars kid started out as a geekish kid taping himself going through some light sabre exercises then posting it to YouTube. It looks pretty funny as he stumbles around the room but then the power of the Net look over.
Someone decided the light sabre would look good if it was actually lit so the video was edited with a nice glow to the ends of his stick. Nice bit of work which then inspired more one-upmanship.
These days you can find any number of variations of Star Wars kid including fighting characters from the Kill Bill movie. Star Wars Kid does Kill Bill
All very entertaining and inventive though probably somewhere the original star doesn’t care to visit. Once it’s out there you can’t get it back.
Check ‘em out and try some searches for yourself. Lord of the Rings is out there and Agent Smith from the Matrix.
 One of the nicest things about moving away from the big city is the country living. The pace is slower and the attitude is less aggressive. The toot of a car horn invariably means a friend is driving by not someone offering negative feed back on your driving skills.
We have always entertained the notion of having chickens running around the yard and finally we have the ability. The plans have been modified though. Anyone with a garden using wood chips as a water saving method will know where I’m coming from here.
Chooks live to scratch and have no concept of how a garden should look.
But behind a chook wire fence, they have made a brilliant addition to the yard. Got leftover veggies or indeed the scraps left over from their preparation? Into the chook pen. Pulled out a few weeds and want to turn them into compost? In they go too.
After having the chooks for just on a year, the sandy soil in their yard is looking a lot more healthy. Between the chook poo and the weeds, the soil has really built up. We even have worms in there although it’s risky for them to reveal themselves. Nothing gets the excitement levels soaring like turning over a few shovel loads of dirt and a worm or two turning up.
Egg production is a real eye opener too. The eggs are big. And the yokes so yellow. Nothing like their pale cousins in the supermarket. The laying process is a sociable event too. We have 4 chooks and they take it in turns to produce an egg. After one has laid an egg it comes out of the coup and loudly declares success. Then another will walk up the ramp and lay her egg right beside the first one. Out she comes and the process continues.
The actual chicken coup sits right in the back corner of the yard under a huge gum tree. It’s shaded from about 10 am so the chooks have cool conditions throughout the day. Never the less the current heat wave has dropped production from 4 eggs to 1 per day. I don’t blame them at all. We have had such a mild opening to the warmer weather that the 100 degree Fahrenheit days have been a bit of a shock to the system.
So that’s how chooks have entered our lives. Even more fun than I thought they would be and great little recyclers to boot. A welcome addition to the homestead.
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This wise looking chap was spotted in a gum in the front garden yesterday by Liz while I was off at Tai Chi. The photo is a pretty good result bearing in mind it was taken through the lounge room window and from some distance away.
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