On ant safari

Patiently, silently with hardly a yell to the porters for another Gin and Tonic the great white hunter stalked his prey, his eyes fixed on it as it moved through the undergrowth... (Barbs, approaching quietly from the rear) "What on earth are you doing?"

Me - still on my aching haunches peering intently at grass-stalks. "I saw one of those jack-jumpers on the kitchen veranda. I'm trying to follow it to its nest. Need to find it before Chris's kids get here."

"Oh. So do you actually want a gin and tonic? Because we don't have any gin. Or any tonic."

I lost it at the bottlebrush tree, having painstakingly followed it across 10 yards of grass. Fortunately Barbs found the nest - and some bigger bull-ants (I think they also have a toxic bite) today when she was mowing - about a yard from the bottle-brush, as plain as could be. Normally I'm pretty live-and-let-live, but 5% of people react very badly to them, and with kids I am not prepared to take a chance.

The island is small enough that, if you can deal with getting up early enough, you can see dawn over the ocean and sunset over the ocean on the same day. I wasn't that heroic and all I saw this morning walking back was this.



Sadly -although I took a torch down, the tide was still covering the flats, and the wind-chop made wading and looking impractical. And cold. Did I mention cold? And wet too. What a woos I am. So I came home, before the first signs of the election today. By next time I hope we'll be able to vote. I'm still faint but persuing with Australian politics, but I am looking forward to it.

Someone asked for a picture of the house so here it is.



Not exactly Finnegan's Wake - but houses like that are probably once in a lifetime experiences (Finnegan's Wake was built by an Irish cabinet maker called Murphy as his dream house. It was built on a sinstral spiral and had very few straight walls, most being curved). We're renting it until we buy and build so... we'll see. In the meanwhile it's well built, weathertight, roomier than we expected and, most importantly, we have a home. A place for me to write, and a base for us to explore from.

Jumpin' jack

Or Jack Jumper - a kind of ant - Myrmecia pilosula - is another of those little Australian delights I keep discovering. Do not discover this one for yourself by putting your forearm on the edge of the raised bed that said Jack Jumper was occupying. I'm not, fortunately, one of the 3 percent of people that are violently allergic to them. It's more or less like a wasp-sting but does seem to keep recurring.

So we ventured into Bowmans today to acquire some more pre-paid time for my cell phone AKA 'Mobile' in these parts. We decided we needed two 'phones in case one of us is at the beach and the other gets bitten by a Jack Jumper or attacked by sudden shortage of milk (a very serious condition, which can cause absence of coffee) while the other is at the library - so we have one on contract and one cheapo. "Can we have some airtime for the cell please?" I ask after the important preliminaries have been dealt with (This is an island. Agriculture is still its mainstay. Mention of yesterday's rain obligatory). I get a rather puzzled twinkle from behind the slightly lowered glasses. (you can imagine the thought-processes. 'Humour him. He could be dangerous. Came out of a cell. Besides he's a foreigner, and they _are_ odd')"What?"
"You know. Time. For the cell."
(Blank look, or perhaps assessing distance the door.)
I take out the phone (slowly, no sudden movements ;-)) "It's pre-paid, we need to put some more money into it."
A light and possibly relief dawns "You mean mobile credit!"
And there I thought mobile credit was credit moving just out of reach. A kind of cruel teasing game played by bank managers...
We are divided by a common language.

So we went to Walkers (the supermarket. You need to know it is there, as signs are not Islandish. If you don't know where these essentials are, you shouldn't be here. Or ask someone, really. I could get to like this attitude.) to get milk - the lack of which as I may have mentioned can cause serious conditions like drinking black coffee and not out of choice) and to manage in our talented fashion to forget the Eucalyptus oil again. (to repel March Flies. Which bite, and can be a bane on windless days. I hope they really are absent after March) I also wanted some powdered mushroom soup, which was O/S. So B asked one of the staff, busy listing stuff on a sheet of carboard - presumably for re-order, if we could possibly request things. She attempted to keep a straight face and was betrayed by her dimples and said 'No.' And then packed up laughing. Heh. They were very nice to us, explaining things like instant mushroom gravy, and yes they'll order mushroom soup for us. Ah, we have a purpose in life. We are the dim country cousins for Flinders Island. I've always wanted to do more than just be a good bad example.

Last night BTW we had our first official gale according to Willyweather (the weather site which we live by). The house creaked a little, the wind roared (there really is no other word for the noise) through the pines. If I'd had a little dog called Toto I'd have wondered if we were going to end up in Oz. But we're here already.