The little things

The little things get you. It's not the big stuff, because, well, the countries have a lot of big commonalities. Parts of the island could be Scotland or Wales, or the midlands of KZN. Parts look like the Cape (Some parts - the limestone areas on the coast for example are just Flinders) It's the little details that jar you into realising that Australia isn't the old country. Forex flatbed utes are every farmer's norm here. The only ones back in South Africa belong to furniture shops that deliver. I never saw a digging implement there that does not have a handle on the end. Here a sort of pole-shovel is if anything more common than a spade. A live chicken is a chook, a chicken is sunday dinner...

Just when I start feeling familiar with my environment and forget, along bounces a wallaby or along waffles an echidna... but in between, well, sometimes I forget I've moved half a world away. It's a good thing, I think.

I barrowed the contents of my 1 compost heap into the one raised bed tank, and now want to add 3 or so more barrow loads of this rather rubbish sandy topsoil. One of the odd things about living in the middle of a flipping huge radiator (the sea) is that 'winter' comes late, but stays long. I had to get brutal and root out a lot of things that just will never bear - tomatoes still flowering. With my non-skill at gardening I hate pulling out anything that isn't dead.

I turned on the TV tonight to make a background noise... and there was Pietermaritzburg - well a gum-plantation near PMB! (our nearest city back there). It was mountbike downhill race. I looked for a while, to see if I saw anything nostalgic/familiar. But it was gum trees and and a muddy track. Most of the gums here have stuff growing between them, that was all.