Life in Palerang

This weekend seems to be an interesting one in the Palerang area (which I am choosing to define as including both Urban Canberra and the City of Queanbeyan).

I'll cover a few of the major events under sub-headings below.  Before getting to that I was amused by a poster taped to a speed limit sign.  The poster read "Found Sheep.  Very Friendly pet." You don't often see that in the Big Smoke.  (I was tempted to say you won't see that in the city, but then I thought about some of the things I did see on a leash in New York and decided to withdraw that opinion.)

Council By-election

One of our councillors chose to resign thus getting us to a by-election.  This was faintly annoying as we had already had one by-election as an elected person had resigned on health grounds very soon after their election.  However, the Councillor in question this time hadn't attended a Council Meeting for some months and had generally lost interest.  That gets him a "character point" unlike another Councillor rumoured to be in a similar situation who is not resigning, since that might upset the power balance in Council.  (The latter  is a pro-development member so it is a double disappointment, but no surprise.)

We have two local newspapers in the area and they have covered the election a bit differently.

• The Bungendore Mirror which didn't endorse a candidate but is generally against the pro-development mob.  The Mirror refused to accept a paid-for advertising supplement since the editor opposes spending a lot of money on advertising in local government election.  Well done that boy!  Presumably the candidate who spent the most is his least preferred (not a bad view)..
• The District Bulletin not only took the large advert, but endorsed a candidate. The candidate they endorsed is a community interest candidate who is the Chair of the Wamboin Community Association (a locality to the North of Carwoola) who attends each Council Meeting to represent his community.    Very well done that girl (the editor of the Bulletin is a nice lady who publishes some birding notes by me each year)!

It was as cold as at the polling place and the candidates' helpers looked frozen.  The supervising officer must have been grumpy to keep them all out in the wind.  The Fire Service had all their kit out on display and were running a sausage sizzle to raise funds.  Let us see how the event turns out.

It looks as thought the correct candidate, Pete Harrison from Wamboin,  is going to get the nod after preferences.  Well done electors of Palerang, (apart from the 430 fruitcakes who voted for the "Australia First" candidate and especially the 219 who only voted for him!).

In fact Pete did get the nod, after distribution of preferences.  The pattern of distribution of primary votes  is given by the Electoral Commission.  Well done Pete.

Rabbit control

Rabbits have been an issue here which have been somewhat controlled by:

• Baiting; 
• a humane trap intended for cats and possums but effective on rabbits also (if well positioned);
• A small dog; and
• The presumed activities of Wedge-tailed Eagles, snakes and foxes.

However the Molonglo Catchment Group have got funding for a Rabbit Calicivirus Baiting program and were running a couple of workshops on this.  I was alerted to this by one neighbour and passed the word to several others.  As a result we have 7 properties in our road-group attending.  (It seems more popular than the Pindone Baiting courses, which attracted no participants, probably because calicivirus is safe for pets -except rabbits - and kids.)  The training was led by Phil from SELHPA, Braidwood who will also be delivering the goodies in a few weeks..

This first shot is as much to give overseas readers an idea of what a Rural Fire Service Shed looks like as anything else!

Here is the rabbit tucker!  Each property received 10 kgs (ie half a bag) which should be enough for a weeks worth of baiting.  After getting them used to dining on these excellent carrots we then give them some enhanced carrots and wait!

Some notes on the implementation of these processes commence in my revegetation blog.

The Gumbies

When we lived in Bruce we were close (a 2km walk) to the home ground of the Brumbies, our Super Rugby team.  About half the Australian team played for the Brumbies and they won the Super competition a couple of times.  Then several of the good players quit (often to take up huge contracts with French or Japanese teams) and the spin doctors took over trying to boost a bunch of losers.  Combined with it now being a 90km round trip I hadn't been to a match since returning from New York.  However when a mate rang up to say he had some free tickets it was an offer I couldn't refuse.

So I put on my Arctic survival wear and headed off.  After picking Rob up we got to Bruce and parked at Calvary Hospital which saved both some cash and a lot of grief getting out after the game.  On arriving at the ground we found it to be sparsely populated.  Perhaps everyone was:

• in the corporate suites having a warming libation?  
• still in their lounge rooms watching the Raiders thump the Storm (in fairness, note that this broke an 8 game losing streak)?
• more sensible than us?

Anyhow festivities duly started and it seemed that the Brumbies were going to do well.  They were quite smartly up 10-0.  To illustrate the next part of the game (ie the bit from about 15 minutes to the final hooter) be aware that this image is a metaphor and not the half time entertainment...

For those not familiar with the game Rugby Union involves scrums ...

.. and lineouts.

There are two points of interest in this image.  The first is the hairiness of the Lions #8: when I played the game most of that set of whiskers would have been removed in the first tackle!  The second is the distance out from the try line.   Summarising, the Brumbies spent far too long in this position ...

... and lost 29 - 20 to the worst club in Super Rugby.  Towards the end of the game the crowd was announced as 10,100 and change.  Knowing that the capacity is about 25,000 we judged this to be optimistic.  (In contrast, when I used to attend most matches in the late 1990s and early 2000s the usual crowd was 18,000 and for a big game would be well over 20,000, regardless of the temperature or quality of opposition.).  So we trekked back to the car and I drove home, where the external temperature was -1.

Rob reckoned (and I agree) it will be another 5 years before he attends another of these games.  The best comment was one overheard by the guys sitting behind us where the host explained that he only came because he'd won the tickets in a card game!

Gale Precinct

The final chapter in this epic comes from Sunday, when Frances and I went on a walk organised by Queanbeyan Landcare to the Gale Precinct.  This is a soil conservation area on the SE outskirts of Queanbeyan with a very varied history.  I was along as a bird expert but since we had Rainer from the Office af Environment and Heritage along I took:

• a back seat; and 
• notes from him!  

Between us we noted 23 species, which wasn't bad for a morning starting off at about -6C.

The most interesting part of this outing was the White Rocks area.  This is alleged to be the meaning of 'Queanbeyan' although Wikipedia says the meaning is 'clean water'.  It is also suggested that 'Cuumbeun' is simply a different transliteration of the same word used by a pre-literate people.  Whatever the meaning of the words, the rocks are a popular rock climbing site (and a couple wearing helmets were at the bottom the cliff while we were there).

It was also the site of an historic lime-kiln.  Obviously there are bogans in the area:  not just because they are wrecking the area with trail bikes but also because they have trashed the fence around the kiln (and obviously cut off the base of one of the fence supports). Here is the kiln:

The NSW Heritage agency, and the Queanbeyan Historical Society will be alerted to the fence trashing.