True stories from the inner back


I have chosen this title because where we live and places like it can't really be called the Outback! It could be thought of as Tales from the Urban Fringe, but that sounds like an Art Festival.

Tale 1

One night recently Frances and I were sitting in our sun-room having a cleansing glass or two of red and watching the light fade. The small dog was with us (but not having any red). Shortly after it had completely faded – say 5:40pm - there came what sounded like a VERY loud knock on the back door.

Small dog goes ballistic. I scuttled off to see who was knocking. No-one visible. So I checked various other doors and go out with the spotlight and can't find anyone.

Frances and I agree that this is most strange and puzzle about it for a while. Small dog goes back to sleep. After a while we go back to the lounge, where there is a nice warm fire. In passing Frances notices that her palette has fallen off her art-cart and the two halves have separated. This would have caused the 'knock – knock noise'. We relax, and the small dog stays asleep.

Tale 2

Some friends were heading to bed about 11pm when the husband realized a car was coming up their drive. It then blasted the horn a few times.

Husband goes out to remonstrate with this invader and rushes back indoors to tell his wife that the car driver claims he has a broken back!! Ambulance is called as the driver does seem to be in a bad way, having spasms and fading in and out of consciousness. The car is also not in good nick as it has a front tyre that has rolled off the rim - apparently as a result of whacking a wombat.

It emerges the driver broke his back some time back and the shock from the wombat incident has redone it. He had been having a few drinks with some mates before driving home. As usual the Ambulance dispatch service (in Wollongong, some hundreds of kilometres away) has trouble working out where to send their truck. That gets sorted and about midnight the ambos arrive, load in the afflicted driver and depart.

Our friends head back to bed about 12:30am.

About 2am Mr Plod turns up and works out that the car is not exactly in full compliance with various laws and says "Hrumph hrumph". Our friends get back to bed shortly thereafter.

The next day:

  • following the trail of marks from a naked rim it appears the incident occurred about 6km from our friends house; and
  • the driver fronts with his dad to say 'Thanks' and to arrange to come back with a trailer to remove the car!
Things like this rarely happen in the Big City!

(As an incidental comment, this is the first time I have managed to publish a post using the Publish Blog stream of blather in Microsoft Office!)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the birds: The view from the top of
Read more