The House(s) of Fran_mart

Here in the Antipodes (why isn't the UK called the Propodes?) it is pretty much the middle of Winter: most days have a frosty start and there aren't many flowers around. One good sign of Winter is the way the wombat that lives by the creek sits outside its burrow from lunchtime onwards on sunny days soaking up a few rays. I have also noticed that the anthills are getting seriously trashed, suggesting that echidnas are getting hungry. I saw the first one for several weeks this afternoon when the small dog went ballistic when up on the road for a walk: there was a spiny person hiding in a clump of wallaby grass. Another sign of Winter is that the local sheep are multiplying rather swiftly. I was going to title this post "especially with mint sauce - apparently originally attributed to the wife of Sir Walter Scott, but now (ab)used by every blogger on Earth. However here is a piccie of one with its Mum. The real sign of Winter is folk burning their heaps of crud that are ...

We have quite a lot of mistletoe on the Eucalypts growing on our property. This is a good thing as the presence of mistletoe is highly correlated with high biodiversity. Right now (ie mid-July) some (on a later check, about 50%) of them are flowering and I was able to get an image of flowers which had been knocked down. I am not sure what caused them to descend: no log trucks have been seen on the place so my next favourite nominees for environmental destruction are Crimson Rosellas. However these plants are the favourite hang-outs of some rather uncommon honeyeaters and they will thus be closely studied! The flowers above are of the Drooping Mistletoe ( Amyema pendula ) which flowers all year. I have subsequently checked out another low-growing mistletoe and found that every flower in the bunch had a stalk so that turned out to be the Stalked Mistletoe ( A. miquellii ). With A. pendula the central flower in each group is sessile (in plain language, has no stalk). It's nice t...

Not You-all Lakes ... ... But Myall Lakes! This is the report on our rip to the Great Lakes area of New South Wales. This is about 250k North of Sydney (and thus 550km NE of Carwoola. We stayed in a house called Topi Gums at the locality of Topi-topi - effectively in the middle of the scrub, about 20km from the coast. Apart from anything else this document is a test run of my netbook, purchased as a means of storing our photographs from when we visit Peru later in the year. I got it from B&H Photovideo in Manhattan (cost about $A470 compared to $A700 around Canberra) and thus far it is doing the job needed. Indeed both the netbook worked well and the trip was very successful. I'll put up more details in the following posts and add photographs etc as time permits.

Topi Gums The house we are staying in is marvellous, looking out over a large dam and with just enough mown grass to provide a firebreak. The first animal we had encountered was the caretaker's Great Dane cross: it was very friendly and playful, and Tammy was very keen to go and play with it, but if there had been an outbreak of hostilities she wouldn't have made a mouthful! She has herself made a mouthful of various bones we have given her, and then buried what won't fit. This is a very amusing process to watch as all steps in the process are done with great precision. On one occasion she set off (on the lead) down the drive with bone in mouth and about 100m from the house, buried the bone under a tree. Why that tree and not the 40 others she passed ? who knows! The bush is fairly dense and well supplied with ticks, as Tammy found on the first day. She did not like having it removed from her (and neither did the tick, as it got lobbed into a fire). Also on the to pic ...

Booti -booti NP This was the Tuesday. Our main target for the day was to walk in the Booti booti National Park, just outside Pacific Palms. As the name suggests there were a lot of palms (and also the Pacific) there. The aim of the Park as to preserve an area of coastal rainforest. The walk started with a fair amount of verticality but did, as promised, deliver rainforest with lots of palms, epiphytes and vines. Needless to say there were also some weeds, including bitou bush and lantana, but there was some evidence of efforts to control them. On the first stretch of the walk there was only limited birdlife, with a brush turkey being the outstanding addition to my trip and year lists. After a pause for some fruit (schlepped in my backpack) we did the return leg, along the shore of Wallis Lake. This added quite a few bird species to the list with the best being very close views of a pair of sea-eagles. From the amount of vocalisation I would expect that they had procreation on t...

Seal Rocks The whales were delivered about 1 kilometre before we got to the lighthouse: we saw a lot of spouts and big splashes as they broached. I don't know if they were Humpbacks or Southern Rights ? these being the options - but they surely weren't dolphins! A young woman said she had had great views of them at the lighthouse so we took ourselves off there. Of course by the time we arrived at the lighthouse, the whales had passed by but we did see some spectacular scenery. The lighthouse (at Sugarloaf Point which apparently is the second most Easterly point in Australia) is now automated so the keeper's cottages can be rented: $2,000 a week in winter and $4,000 in summer. Given that during the day you'd have a constant stream of tourists passing by to destroy the peace and quiet that seemed a tad excessive. It certainly made the $840 we were paying for total privacy seem even better value. As the first visit was so successful we went back the next day. When we ...

Forster Frances wanted to go and have a prowl round this town to what was there and, specifically, what was in the op-shops. I thought this was fine as I had found that the MV Amaroo offered whale watching trips, offering a sort of mini-pelagic birding experience. Given Frances rather colourful (or perhaps colourempty is the better word) experiences of pelagic voyages I wasn't sure if she would want to come along, but that would just be to the benefit of the op-shops. As the weather looked nice on Thursday she decided she would front the trip. I had been recommended some medication to prevent sea-sickness (developed to overcome epilepsy, but apparently found good by NASA in overcoming motion sickness) but on looking it up on the 'net the side effects including increased risk of suicidal thoughts. This seemed a bit harsh for a boat trip so I asked our psychiatrist daughter her opinion. She thought it was a bit heavy-handed and said she wouldn't prescribe it for the...

MUNGO BRUSH, SUGAR Creek and TALLOWWOOD This is really two bits, but since, due to the way Blogger posts items (and my forgetting the second when intially composing this) the second would appear before part 1 I have decided to combine them. Brush(ed off) and Sugar Creek The target on the Friday was to go to Mungo Brush to check out the rain forest. Unfortunately when we got to the crossing of the narrow stretch of water the ferry was not operating. Looking at the waves in the channel, this seemed like a reasonable proposition, but why didn't they say this on a sign at the Highway, rather than at the end of an 11km road? When I asked this question of the lady at the resort which ran the ferry she said that it had only closed, on the orders of the Parks people, about 5 minutes earlier. Grrr... So we decided to refocus our attentions on the Sugar Creek Flora Reserve. On the way back we swung by 'The Grandis' which is the tallest (or one of the tallest, depending on which ...