Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Well, I have learned a little more of the art of wallaby hunting, and some of my mistakes are now obvious. Apparently wallaby don't like sheep and won't come back to a paddock they've been in for some time.

We got the runts - the smaller 'roo that the abattoir doesn't want - so this morning was processing quite a lot of meat. I am going to make some biltong. Yes, I will explain. When I do it.

I also took another new-to-the-islands bloke diving and shooting fish. He speared one of the fighting rocks which a cunning leatherjacket moved in front of him - and discovered that wetsuits float :-) Kind of mildly sadistic fun watching him try to swim down (he thought if it was too hairy he might need a lifejacket along to keep him up. I did explain that a wetsuit does make you float, but no-one believes it until they try to dive in one). It's hard enough to get your fins in the water. But he got his first fish, so I think a convert, maybe. So they were kind enough to give us an dinner - and thoughtful enough to make it something different, showing how much of life is about perspective - chicken :-) We almost never eat chicken (we got some excess-to-requirement roosters last year), and it's been a year since I had beef. Of course turkey, pheasant, cape barren goose, muttonbird have all featured in our diet, and wallaby is a good stand in for beef, but a treat is something you don't get often. A lovely evening... They have a truly glorious view.

4 comments:

  1. A very good point on a treat being what you don't get normally. Here in Chicago I eat a lot of chicken as a main protein source b ut rarely get seafood. Frankly I don't trust most "fresh" seafood this far from where it was caught and as slow as the turnover is at many shops.

    I shall continue to use your associate links when shopping amazon so you will hopefully be able to afford a nice piece of beef soon to make a treat for you and the wife.

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    1. Thank you. The associate link money is actually very good for me psychologically - I allow myself to spend some of it. I'm pathologically careful with the rest of my income - it's for essentials, and saving toward a home (having had our own place -which we sold to bring ourselves and the animals over here, which was a good thing, it's very difficult not to. So, slowly - because writers are not well paid, and Australia is expensive, we're saving towards it. But it really is nice to just buy something because you want it, or Barbs might like it, now and again :-))

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    2. Have you gotten the first check yet? Or is stuck in the net 60days accounting?

      Still that's better than the net 18months traditional publishing accounting...

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    3. Still in the 60 days BUT... I can see - to the last cent, what it is, and what it's from. I've been paid - on time, to the last cent, for e-books. That, when I am faced with royalties that do not compute (it is impossible to back calculate from the payout figure, and the royalty percentage, knowing the sale price, back to a number of books. You get a fraction), that when I enquire I simply get stonewalled, makes me very inclined to say no, Amazon are NOT the devil, but actually you hate them because they are Lembas to you.

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