Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Ah cut daan trees, Ah eat ma lunch

Today was an interesting excercise in moving the impossible - James out of bed and down to the water's edge to pump burrowing prawn prawns. Clare had got Paddy out of bed (a feat amost beyond belief) so they came down too.

Then we went across to Patriarchs inlet, to collect some clams. As you can see it was positively toasty.



While B and Pads and Clare froze their fingers off, James and I stayed nice and warm
thrownetting.


The success rate wasn't too high, as we needed to go and cut some wood and head home.
James got about a dozen small mullet, unlike last time when the australian salmon were there too. Anyway, it was fun. We cut off a number of pieces of dead tree - keep us burning for a while, and went home to cut them smaller and let Clare loose at the blockbuster.



As I said to Pads, I would avoid annoying a determined woman of this caliber, EVER:-). She's capable with a chainsaw too.

We had hoped to use the burrowing prawn fishing for flathead (we ate the last of my freezer stock - kids appetites!) but we got visitors (I think I was relieved) and Pads and J baked us a couple of batches buscuits (cookies = buscuits, America). Paddy with extra ginger, natch. (my sons and Clare appear to be ginger addicts. They may need to go for ginger rehab).

9 comments:

  1. Hey, Dave -- do they have the equivalent of Ironbark in SA? (Basically, a timber so astonishingly dense, tough and springy that even termites leave it alone if there's an alternative).

    If not... umm... take care when you're splitting the local hardwood. It can be - sort of unco-operative.

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  2. Yes, leadwood, sneezewood (sneezewood posts go more than a 100 years) to name two. So far the hardest thing we've found is she-oak. Which is hard, heavy and dense, but does split. What does ironbark look like? At the moment we're splitting gum which is not bad.

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  3. Apparently, there's way more than just one species with really hard wood (see Ironwood). My "ironwood" is the American Hornbeam, or Carpinus caroliniana, which means a singing fish -- highly appropriate for someone like you!

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  4. Burrowing prawn? Is that a mantis shrimp?

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  5. No Quilly - Ghost or mud-shrimp - IIRC Callianassa sp. We get small mantis shrimp too at the same time.

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  6. She-oak? is there also a he-oak?

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  7. Abigail? I think the proper response is "only in her dreams" but I'm looking for a wood nymph to confirm... :-)

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  8. If the She-oak is that hard, and long burning, I really do not want to come in contact with the he-oak!

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  9. She-oak is tougher, he-oak is woosy soft stuff ;-)

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