The currants are ripe, they're always 'tart' but they look so pretty. Glowing and translucent. I'm happy to grow them for their looks until I can get enough to make some jam or preserves. I'll pick some for Christmas.

Those deco leek seed heads I mentioned last week have flowered and this one is so heavy, it's fallen over into the beetroot. 

The cockatoos haven't worked out yet that I don't care how many pears they eat from the huge pear tree in the back yard. I've never pruned the tree, and the fruit are so small I don't mind if they feed the local birds and possums. The cockies fly away screeching when you come near and they're suspicious of the camera pointed at them. Careful or I'll shoot.

This blurry image is really what I wanted to show you. I've brightened it up a lot but it was a half second exposure on my telephoto lens taken in the evening dusk. I've been trying to photograph this secretive bird for a few weeks. Each time I get the camera out and stalk it in the high branches of trees around us, it gets chased off by another bird. Currawongs, magpie larks and magpies all fly at it aggressively and chase it off. It's an Indian koel, Eudynamys scolopacea I reckon, more common up the tropical northern coastline and it usually avoids towns and people but there's no avoiding it around our neighbourhood at the moment. It's about the size of a magpie, with a scalloped tail that you can just see in the photograph, and when it flies away.

All day and into the night (I've heard it at 3 am) it calls loudly and with a monotonous single call, a sharp "cooeee" (hence its onomatopoetic  name). The bird book says it comes down from New Guinea and breeds in Australia's top northern rainforests. They're known as 'vagrants' when they come this far south and this seems to be a lone bird, I haven't seen a pair. They're also called a black cuckoo, cooee-bird, Flinder's cuckoo and rain bird. The koel doesn't make its own nest, but lays its eggs in nests such as the magpie lark. Female koels are more 'silent and retiring' and lay a single egg in up to three nests of birds that have similar coloured eggs. The chick hatches and monopolises the food brought by the foster parents and even tosses the other chicks out of the nest.

If I take a better picture, I'll put it up.

Frattini is a regular haunt for Doug who owns Digital Mechanics and as I've been invited more than a few times, we've got to know the owners and their children and spouses who work there.

The meal ended traditionally with a chilled limoncello and they presented us with little Christmas boxes of panettone. Except for Anna who is producer and den mother at Digital Mechanics. She received this large tinned version in an (English) retro container.

Thanks DM again for the invite.
 

 You can take the boy out of the country (and feed him a good lunch) but you can't take the country out of the boy. Coming home late that afternoon, I drove through drizzling rain until about Goulburn. Then it stopped and the low clouds hung around the hills and at one stage it was all so beautiful I just had to stop and record it.
 

That's not Santa after a low-GI diet. It's Jan's dad Jack (Pa) and he's in his 'presents handing out' position. The family traditional Christmas has everyone open their gifts before the lunch. As the extended family size has grown we all agreed to limit presents to our own kids, to the parents and a maybe small gift to the brothers and sisters. The extended nieces and nephews miss out, although the new grand-nieces and nephews score something.

This year I followed the day in detail, including the cooking and serving of the food. You'll probably see these pop up on the Regional Food website, but  here's just a visual taste.


All the food is apportioned with those who like peas or don't eat pumpkin all accommodated. The plates are then reheated in the oven.
 

There's a shop bought cold ham, cold turkey home roasted the day before, hot roast potatoes and pumpkin, peas and broccoli for the non-pea eaters. There's a bread-crumbed baked tomato and it's all served with gravy, bowls of bread sauce and with a nod to modern tradition, cranberry sauce for the turkey.


We hire a trestle table for the day and add it to the end of the big dining room table and somehow manage to fit about fourteen people around it. We have Christmas crackers with the dumb jokes, silly paper hats and weird plastic toy inside.

The desert is Sheila's (Nanny) homemade pudding that she's had curing for a few months. We've given up pouring brandy over it and setting it alight, so here are the Bungendore berries as decoration. The pudding is served with brandy cream (traditionally made in the morning with everyone tasting it and saying 'a bit more brandy I think', and whipped fresh cream.

There's money inside the pudding, pre decimal silver coins, sixpences, shillings and two-shillings. The higher silver content makes them safe to use and there's a ritual handing back of the ones you find to Pa, who gives you a decimal equivalent.

Afterwards there's a lot of sitting around and talking, with cups of tea or coffee and if there is room, you can have one of  Nanny's shortbreads and mince pies.

People then drift off and see the other side of their partners families, and a late dinner of cold leftovers is served for those remaining. I'm sure this is all pretty much the same process at your place too. The weather was unseasonably cool, instead of sweltering it was very comfortable. Last year we had Christmas here at Bungendore and I think, even though everyone helps, Jack and Sheila are finding it a strain to host the lunch. That's one of the reasons I took lots of photographs, this may be the last big Christmas at the house were Jan and her brother and sister grew up. 

After lunch I went to pick up my daughter Aurore who has Christmas with her mum and grandparents (she's an only granddaughter and special). That evening we went out to Ringwood to visit my brother and his wife and daughter Katherine (about the same age as Aurore).

They suggested we drive a couple of streets over on the way home and see the Christmas lights on a neighbours house. I'm sure you'd see the glow from space it was both amazing and hideous, we all stood with mouths open. There was a strange sound of ethereal music as some of the decorations (this photo is just a tiny corner) had those tiny sound chips and were playing carols in tinny multilayered cacophony, all in a quite Ringwood street. It was surprising because it was away from any main road or a neighbourhood of similar decorations with people trying to outdo each other - as they usually are.

Bungendore has a competition for the best Christmas lights, I must take some pictures for the Diary. Merry Christmas to you all.

Monday 27 December '04

I've been trying to take a view, clear of cars photograph of the Royal, and today was the day. No dogs on the footpath here.

Your taxes at work, part 2345. Damn, I missed it. This small patch of asphalt is the site of the most expensive dispute in Bungendore street history. It used to have a tree and tree guard there, like the one beyond it, but it's been knocked down, run over, and I suspect deliberately destroyed on a number of occasions. That's because it is inconveniently where the semi-trailers need to unload for the Produce store & Aquarium and Pet supplies. (I don't think it's an aquarium supplies issue, more the hay and feed bags that get unloaded by forklift.)

Someone on council must have flipped out at the problem of replacing the tree, and setup four huge yellow bollards. I couldn't believe it when I first saw them, and should have rushed for my camera but this looked like a permanent and ongoing solution to the problem. I could take the photo some other time. It then acquired a belt of plastic fence material around it and didn't look very attractive.

In the week before Christmas, they disappeared, and this small square of asphalt remains. I know Greg at the Bungendore Motel was a champion of the trees but I know he was stunned at the size of the 'protective' solution that was installed. I'm sure we'll both sigh over the loss of the trees, but commonsense seems to have won out. Maybe the Bungendore Produce store can take on the task of nurturing the remaining trees as a good will gesture.

I don't appear in this Diary's photographs very often, once a year is probably enough. But I had the lights setup to record the sour cherry jam making process and after sitting there for three hours pipping cherries I asked Jan to point the camera at me to record my stoicism.

I'd picked some of the cherries and stored them in the fridge while we were away. The others were ripe and although 'netted' the blackbirds were flying in underneath so I picked the last ones.

We usually get around three kilos of pitted fruit, this year was slightly under but still enough to make jam for us, and some to give away. The sour cherry jam was what won the best exhibit in the jam category at the local show last year, and it's looking just as good again this time but I'll give someone else a chance :-). When I found out that they don't taste the jams, it didn't seem to be a real competition. I make jam to be eaten, I can do any amount of special effects to make it look good.

Max, the narcissistic animal featured here, has been following us around while we've been working in the vegetable garden. He managed to find a small patch of rye grass and got a seed inside his ear. He rushed around rubbing it against whatever he could find, driving it further inside. He was obviously distressed, whining and scratching at it, and we couldn't see what the problem was, so we rang the vet. The local one was closed for the holidays and so Jan had to take him into the emergency animal hospital in Braddon. She had to leave him to be sedated and they removed it. I picked him up a few hours later and he was back to normal, and it only cost a couple of hundred dollars and half a day of time. Pampered pets I hear you say? Absolutely I reply.