 Another Country Diary Links to images and other pages are in blue, mouse-over pop-up comments when I have them are burgundy. |
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| 8 August '02 | ||
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A bigger problem was when we were planting the new trees for the primary school and the hares destroyed a lot of the young tasty plants. The tree guards that were put up had to be made more rabbit proof but there was talk of baits and traps, neither of which had much support. The town traffic is usually so sparse
at night that I'd never seen one as road kill before. This one was just
outside the Church of England in Gibralter Street and looked pretty
healthy (for a dead rabbit). Clear eyed, full fur and no sign of
calicivirus or myxomatosis. Having wild rabbits that can come into
suburban yards means that when Kate had a big friendly pet rabbit for a
couple of years, it had to be immunised every year at some expense. She
used to let it out of it's hutch to run around the chook pen, which it
did wildly, glad to be able to stretch. We made that a way to make her
feel guilty about caging it (along with the fact that she hated cleaning
up the rabbit poo and was scared of spiders living around the hutch I
made). The hatch was very big with a wire mesh floor and we moved it
around the yard onto fresh grass. When the dogs would run past the cage,
the rabbit used to leap around as well, as if wanting to play. It was
big enough to chase off the cat but I think the 'play' with the dogs
wouldn't have lasted long. |
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| 10 August '02 | ||
 I've
been doing some more photography for the Nats website. This time it's
was organised by the Queanbeyan office and they couldn't get the people
we'd talked about together so, we ended up doing what were
mostly promotional images for the local member for Monaro, Peter Webb.
While we won't be able to use them on the website, I managed to get a
few more 'generic' ones and I did get to see Peter's family property,
Fairlight. It
was beautiful sunny day, spring felt imminent and I didn't mind being out in it at
all. I really
warmed to Peter and had a great time traveling with him in his car, and
hearing his local stories and knowledge of the area. The Webb family
property is huge, fronting on the Murrumbidgee River on the back road to
Yass and Wee Jasper from the Cotter Dam turnoff.  As
we approached the T intersection just near the property we noticed the
flock of ibis in the paddock. "That's a sure sign we'll get a
storm, probably hail" said Peter, "we think they're the ones
that hang around the Bungendore area and they flock here when the
weather is going to be bad". (Sure enough, two days later we had
some big storms with rain and hail in Bungendore). As
we came through the Fairlight gates the first thing I noticed were the
Osage oranges on the ground. Peter complemented me on my identification
(not knowing the recent extensive Osage events) and said the tree had
been there long before his time, and that they'd planted a few in some
of the windbreak rows around the property. |
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 We
talked about how, as family farms change hands because the
children don't want to continue on the properties, the local
knowledge is the biggest loss. Weather patterns, growing conditions,
soil types are never passed on with a bill of sale. Peter's brother Tim
is looking after the property while Peter is absorbed in his National
Party role. Tim isn't married (yet) so they've been talking about
'succession' and whose sons and daughters might be interested to keep
that 'knowledge' and property going. Tim was in the middle of shearing,
and helped us bring in some sheep for some photographs.
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 I
didn't feel that Peter needed to shear a sheep to prove his country
authenticity, and that it was heading into cliché but they wanted some
photos so I obliged. He did a creditable job and at the classing table
we talked about micron sizes, springy belly wool and some 'black
patches' that required the wool being sorted into the different
bales.
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 I
told them of my first 'wool cheque' when I was a kid, about ten years
old. My parents had a single friend whose farm we visited and he allowed
us to pick up all the scrap wool, the bits caught in barbed fences, the daggy bits on the woolshed floor and we eventually had enough for a bale
full. It went of to auction and I remember getting a cheque, in an
envelope with the address written in an almost copperplate script, to Masters
Fred & Phillip Harden from Goldsborough Mort & Co some
months later. It was a big buzz even if it was a small amount.It was dark by the time I got home, but I like some of the pictures I took. I also had a new tree to investigate on the web. There was a soft white flowered bush by one of the gates, as we had moved from the sheep on into the cattle paddocks.  When
I asked Peter, he said it was Tree Lucerne and that it was also used as
feed in dry areas. Theirs were a lush, relatively low (about 4 metres
high) planting, used as a windbreak. Its
botanical name is Tagasaste (Cytisus proliferus) a species native
to the Canary Islands. Like a lot of introduced plants, it is one of
those species that if controlled, is great fodder crop for permaculture
but let loose in wetter areas, is invasive of native bushland and
roadsides. It blooms at this time of the year, between July and October,
and has small white flowers that look like pea flowers. It also develops a
seed pod. I've some larger
images in a
popup window here. 2 x
350pixels wide jpegs.
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| 11 August '02 | ||
 Sunday
mornings (not too early, about 8.30am), the local bikers converge on the
street outside the pub. They then turn their backs on the boozer and
walk into the Gib Street Cafe for breakfast and espresso coffees. When they take
their helmets off, in amongst the gray hair are a few bald heads but
there's not a torn denim vest or a tattoo in sight. These are the modern
designer bikies and many of them are my age. One of the regular columns
in the Bungendore Bulletin, 'our local rag', is the Motorcycle
News. It's written by Charlie Robinson, an avid (and older) biker who
also writes the local gardening column and has a great vegetable garden.
Feeling the tension between the two journalistic fields, he calls
himself Charlie Rumblebum when he writes the motor bike stuff. Both
columns are funny and interesting, a polarity that suits the town and
its residents.While I've enjoyed riding trail bikes over the years, I don't feel the need to get a big bike and drive fast round country bends. But I understand the attraction. My Sydney mate Doug has just bought (or some more long term financial arrangement) a big BMW bike. He traded in his yellow Honda which was big enough. Doug tells a story of being out on one of his morning rides and turning into a rutted driveway of one of the better country restaurants to appraise it for a possible lunch. Looking around he didn't notice a hole and dropped the bike over at slow speed. No damage but when these bikes lay down, you need two people to lift them. He got to check out the restaurant in the end, because the only activity around was in the kitchen and he had to ask for help from the chef and his assistant to lift the bike upright. He was too embarrassed to then eat there, so he said 'thanks' and had a pie down the street. Doug has promised to visit us on his bike soon, while the weather is cold, because he can't test properly his electric handle grip warmers in Sydney. |
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| Fred Harden | ||
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I
thought it was great when I first moved here, that there were rabbits
and hares running in the streets around me. I still see them sometimes
in the headlights as I come home late. There are noticeably fewer hares
now, and we occasionally hear a single gunshot at night that probably
accounts for another one. I didn't consider them a real pest to our
garden, but I did see a small rabbit for a few days that scuttled away
each time I went to the back of the yard. The dogs would run in circles,
sniffing and making excited yips but they never uncovered where it was
hiding.