A morning that began badly...

Now, because Wednesday the black Labrador has a happy habit of barking at wallaby, wombats, rats, night birds, shadows, her own imagination (and will sleep cheerfully through people arriving. That's not at night when humans are asleep, so there is not much point) I shut them into my study at night, where they have a bed and sofa to quibble over, as well as do cushions. So for 6 or 7 hours a night they are confined. I am a deep sleeper... for around 2 hours, after which a mouse fart at 200 paces will wake me, which means I have got up to let them out often enough. Unfortunately one of them decided - after having had access to the shed it is in for ?6 months, to pull out the bag of blood-and-bone (a form of fertilizer) and eat some. No one let me know they were not sleeping the sleep of the plump elderly Labrador... The gastric effects that greeted me this morning were not pretty and smelled worse. Both of the rat-bags seemed OK which is more than I can say for the bouquet in my study. Fortunately no harm done to the floor.

I've been drying yet more prune-plums today. The drier is wearing a look of desperate exhaustion, and I have more gifted apples and more tomatoes to try and do before Wednesday. Listen I paid $50 for that dryer and I'm nothing if not mean... I want my pound of flesh, dried so that about 5 pounds wet... Seriously, this is harvest time for most folk, and we're very much part of the informal 'barter' - which is more a constant exchange of gifts of produce, or the products thereof, or a hand when you need one. No one keeps score, and in some cases it definitely flows more one way than the other. If this gets chronic - and there is no reason (if you're old, or sick or poor or new they cut a lot of slack) - then, well, the person quietly gets left out. So, as we're on the getting side of the fruit, I assume either people feel sorry for us or appreciate what we put in. We are on the 'weird' side as much of what we consider very special, is odd locally - Biltong, our olives, and boerwors. And, generally, we don't have a lot of garden spare that isn't being saved for winter, that everyone else doesn't have by the bucket (yes, some does go out - this year with water restrictions in Whitemark, I've given away zucchini that I've been asked for. Normally people run away if they see you with one.) Still, it does seem produce always has some flops (last year I had not many tomatoes, and very few carrots, feeble beets but loads of cucumbers and loads of eggs. This year, very few cucumbers (which as I need the little ones for gerkins for green sauce is serious - we have been given a bottle to my relief), eggs are right down, and I have lots of tomatoes, and good carrots (need to plant more) and wonderful beets, tons of spring onions, reasonable potatoes, feeble sweetcorn and almost no real onions. However fish, abalone and butchered out wallaby are generally something we have a bit extra of, and occasionally there's a crayfish to make someone's day.

We're not fanatical about it, but we try to live on what we grow and catch - and this is why the seasonality of things makes such a difference. What I don't preserve now, we won't be eating in Winter and Autumn.

It puts a whole new slant on life, and on getting on with people.

Kippin etc.

Hmm. Any Japanese readers out there? or readers with Japanese friends? What is kippin, and what is Monpao and what is the difference? (Yes, I am trying to gather information about drying abalone. It's a very secretive process).

Today Barbs and I went to the school to talk about what being migrants meant. I think we shattered a few illusions, and hopefully got them to grips with a little bit of just how different the various types of migrants are, and, no, that all people coming to Australia are not boat-people or refugees from natural disasters. Maybe I should have said we lived in a mud hut and ate our neighbours, and they should be careful if invited for lunch.

I've net-covered the strawberries, and got a much appreciated huge bag of bits for the drip irrigation system. We're still moderately wet on this side of the island, but elsewhere it is drying out a lot. It's something -having grown up with summer rainfall - that I always find odd. Anyway, more plants have gone out today, willy-nilly because something was eating them in the seed trays. So King, Golden, and Healthy capsicum are now planted in the garlic bed (Garlic will have to come out in midsummer, and I hope that I can completely cover that tank in winter, making it into a little greenhouse.) The first of my grown from seed tomatoes (Stupice) is just starting to flower, but I do have a a tiny fruit on the dwarf yellow I bought in flower. Gah. I really must slug bait in the morning, as the lettuce (first iceberg, very sweet) was just full of tiny little slugs. They are in hte same bed as strawberries, and slugs love strawberries. I might have to beer trap the slugs as Wednesday the Labrador cannot come along and drink the beer under the net, like she did last time I tried this.

I'm hoiking out plants going to seed (lettuce, broccoli, silverbeet, and parsley). The silverbeet replacements are in, lettuce probably not worth putting in until Feb, broccoli even later, but I need more parsley. I have a lot of seed, but mostly moss-curled and we use italian in cooking and moss-curled for pretty, so I might have to let one plant finish. But they are a nuisance (taste lousy at this stage), and are huge.

A day with a hookah

I carefully ordered and stuck the new numbers on the Zoo.

And they have mostly peeled off. It was one of those sort of days. The poor ute was loaded to the gunnals and trundled to Patriarchs and blew up the Zoo (we have a trailer, just need a tire, so slowly we get organised, and soon she can be ready to go, not ready to unpack, inflate, load etc.)

We did have fun doing so, as the instruction were not with us. Anyway got there and back so no drama. Well, no drama except with the little motor (quite adequate for 350 - 450 meters offshore, and she pushed the boat through the waves well - better than expected, actually.) Which would not start... and we tried and tried and tried. Jamie and the other two, with the Hookah, launched and went out. We battled on - got it going after taking the plugs out, after a little adventure with the plug spanner. They do not swim at all well, really. We got out , taking a neat gap through the waves and out. Jamie's GPS was on strike, so we had to move a few times before finding some ground - not our usual bhommies but there were a quite a few small crays in the occasional crack. Nothing quite big enough - I caught 3 I had to throw back and Norm 2. We did find some enormous abalone, but not the best dive. We then came in - Jamie wanted to go to Babel and fish, and Russ and wanted in. We had a good run in but missed the mouth, and could not get the motor to tilt. So we put the motor in the boat - light enough and pulled it the 75 yards to the mouth. Only I tripped and my stormy cape - water sensitive life jacket... inflated. There goes another $25. On the bumpy near quicksand drive out two little struts for the Zoo's floor snapped. The ute battery was flat (from using the electric pump) and so I left the ute and came home Russ (who had to rush) to fetch the jumpers, have a cuppa and and a biccie, and went back. Backed up and waited. They'd had a slow afternoon - only 7 flathead, and got back in the dusk. I managed to get the ute stuck leaving the beach and had to get a tow (quick and easy but still) So... no disaster, but certainly LOTS of drama. Still, no lives were lost, no problems that were not overcome and Norm did get his chance to tell Barbs I have spent the day with a hookah. Maybe I should just have stayed in bed :-)

Ok, yesterday we went diving, and now my freezer has its quota of Abalone, all vac-packed and sorted, and also 3 wallaby. We have a new stock of mince for making wors and possibly dried wors. Today we made 8kg's of coarse mince - Wallaby are supposed to be lean meat, but my word these are fat. I seemed to spend forever washing up (OK, it's partly me. I can't handle greasy dishwater, so as soon as it's even discolored I tend to start again. And it needs to be white-hot. I am a bit of a waster of water, but it's at least rainwater off the shed roof, not something that is scarce right now.) James got off on the injured finger. I think I'll injure mine. I'd scrub toilets or change nappies (diapers) rather than wash dishes, and trust me there is no form of housework I haven't done. I don't object to housework, really disgusting jobs tend to be my share (the women in my family do not handle blood or poo easily. I just tune it out. It's like fish slime)I just don't like greasy water. If I was to end up a widower (unlikely, barring the unforeseen, which I hope never happens), a dishwasher I would have to have, or I'd starve avoiding dirtying anything (I actually don't like a grubby environment. I cannot imagine living like so many young guys - and women too, seem to. Up to a point a degree of clutter (especially at the end of a book) is OK, but it bothers me and suddenly I have to clear it. Whenever Barbs goes away the house gets radical putting away of stuff. Not being able to find things is her penance for leaving me behind.

I'm being far too absent-headed at the moment. I just did a batch of rolls without yeast. Had to add yeast and let them rise, put the oven on, forgot to put rolls in. spotted it an hour later and put rolls in... and nearly burned them, forgetting about them.

Splat

I thought I'd never told you about the fine art of splat.

Abalone is $300 a kg I believe. For us, well, it's one of our staples. Sea-mutton, they call it here. Now if you're lucky and time the tide right and know where to go, you find greenlips shallow enough not to dive. If you're quick and lucky, you can have an ab knife under them before you can say Knockmealgarten and Ballykinderry Fair, and it's quite easy. Pop and they're in the bag. It helps if you have a hookah or aqualungs, of course.

Otherwise you end up working pretty hard... but diving down and wrestling with the beasts at 5-10 metres is the easy part, as far as I am concerned. The hard bit is when - After several hours in cold water swimming about energetically, and just bursting with zoomy energy as a result - I get home, fresh-water wash the gear, hang it up and then... strip down to the budgie-smugglers (AKA speedo) -- horrible sight, trust me, and about to get worse - and position myself on a far corner of the garden, with a board - a good jarrah plank - I shattered the woosy plastic I used, a knife, a steak mallet, and a bag of abalone. First I shuck them, and then pin the very tough muscle to the board with the knife (otherwise a lot of work goes flying into the bushes), and the splat begins. Beat it tender. Only... the steak hammer tends to take off little fragments that go splat-airbourne and liberally coat the surrounding 40 km exclusion zone, bushes, grass, passing birds, and principally the little hairy feller in the budgie smugglers with the mallet, with teeny sticky gooey bits of abalone. The mallet handle become slimy and life and limb are in danger of tenderised (that's why I use the knife, these days. Tenderised my hand.) The abalone are then transported to the kitchen window and the long task of de-splatting begins with a nice cold wash down of the hairy little bloke and his utensils with the garden hose. Then we proceed (shivering artisically, to let the universe know how I have suffered) to the shower and scrub the gooey gobbets off. I'm hairy. It sticks.
I mean SCRUB.
All for a mere $300 a Kg morsel.
Cheap at twice the price I tell you ;-)

Hey, chill, dude...

We had our first frost this morning, but the day was clear and so, by lunch time, it was shirtsleeve warm in wind-shelter patch behind the house. Which led James to "Well, you finished the book, and it's nice weather..."
B and I were agreeable - nice weather here in mid-winter should be seized and used. Paddy is frantically trying to finish something before Clare gets in - and as rain is forecast and we don't want Roland wet later than 9.30 AM (he is not one of your fast drying dogs) so Paddy dog-sat and we went beachward - which as this James's idea I ought to have guessed involved diving (he's obsessed with the hand-spear which for the record is like going after antelope with an assegai.
Possible but not very probable. But it is a harmless ambition... well except it means I have to get in the water too.
And get my beard in the zipper.

B- very sensibly went to go fishing instead. We'd decided on Sawyer's Bay - an area we've never explored. (There are about 200 kilometers of coastline. Add another 50 for convolutions, islands etc. There are bits, just little ones, I have not seen yet...;-)

The first thing we learned - after the experience of mind-numbing (and toe and finger numbing) temperature of the water - was that we'd made a small error of judgement - like 300 metres, which on a global scale is tiny thing... when you have to swim it through very shallow water in the cold, seeing nary a fish nor abalone nor crayfish - it's a long swim. Eventually I did see a fish. A big flathead. Unfortunately it didn't stay to be speared. We found a Nautilus shell, and then a handful of possibly bream... or something else. Anyway a change from the usual flathead-flathead-flathead or wrasse. And to hades with James and the handspear - I wanted them. So I pulled the rubber on the elderly spear gun (which has never been one of my big success stories, but compared to the hand-spear...

The elderly rubber promptly broke. I wacked myself in the chest, but that was that. And by the time James and the hand-spear got there - there was nary a fish to be seen. Ah well. We swam on to B, who had caught nothing. And so, as there were lots of those nothing available back where we'd come from, I tried to talk to her only my mouth was numb... and then six or seven yards past James (about 15 yards out, standing up, waist deep)

A dolphin (sorry no camera in the water)

B shouts points and waves - and James decides it's a grey nasty she's telling him about and bolts towards us -not looking back. By the time we managed 'Dolphin'it slipped away again. We stood on the rocks and watched two of them, possibly the reason we'd seen so few fish. Anyway, as they say back in South Africa, 'lelik is niks, maar stupid' so we got in and swam after them. Didn't of course get anywhere near them. Got to the next rocky point, which was slightly deeper and rougher, and had the inevitable wrasse, and a few abelone (Poor B had caught nothing, and had slipped and fallen hard) and some stripy fish that nearly gave me a heart attack - or at least James vanishing after them around a rock did(which I thought was pomonitory, but was actually an island with a narrow channel to landward - with a high wall - in which he chased fish).
We always keep tabs on the other diver... and I lost him. I hauled out onto the rock to look and couldn't see him behind me or to seaward(he must have been just in the lee of the rock I was standing on) and yelled (yes, even underwater it works - and we're not diving with tanks - free diving with snorkles - come up to breathe.) I yell frantically and B starts running from 100 yards off, waving her arms about. I'm trying to work out WHAT she's waving about - whether I need to dive in, and just where she's pointing - when James appears to LANDWARD behind me - out of his channel. So all was well. James found a couple of abalone, and we walked back. The boy had already passed the stop shivering point, young idiot. Anyway, all was well except B is sore from slipping and the deep freezer didn't benefit a lot. Oh and I saw a wombat, walking back. We were walking back, not the wombat, he was standing shaking his head at us, saying 'morons'.

Seafood Secrets and the Flinders Taste Experience

This is a guest post from Chris McMahon. . .

Flinders Island has been a real seafood experience for me. Now if someone else had said something like that about a week ago I would not have been all that jealous - I've always enjoyed fish, but would never have put myself in the same ranks as all those crazy people who get so excited about seafood buffets.

Well it might be the fresh seafood we are catching here, or maybe Dave's excellent cooking, but my taste buds and my mind have both been expanding here. Last night Dave cooked me some abalone that he had gathered around the Island. Amazing!

At the same meal we had calamari - including the famous squid that my son Aedan and I caught off the jetty. I've had the odd bit of calamari and chips from the local fish and chip store - but I'm sure that is not even the same species as what I tasted last night! The flavor was complex and beautiful, the texture vastly different from anything I have tasted before. Excellent time had by all - the only problem is that Dave has effectively killed our ritual of going down the local fish and chip shop. None of us can face eating what had passed for calamari after tasting what fresh calamari properly prepared tastes like.

Today it was exploring over on the other side of the island, and a visit to a local wildlife sanctuary.

Tonight it was clam pasta, followed by freshly caught oysters fried in garlic butter and served on garlic bruschetta (we have been busy on Flinders today at low tide gathering the clams and oysters), then trevally (beautiful light tasting fish with light white flesh).



Now I have never been a fan of strong seafood tastes, and have shied away from them (i.e. lobster etc), but I could not believe the taste of the oyster! It gave me emotional and physical reactions in parts of my body I had never felt before. Of course mentioning this was giving me physical reactions led to the obvious jokes:)

Not only have I been introduced to these fantastic new flavors, I have even been permitted to glimpse a few of the secrets of the Freer kitchen at first hand as apprentice chef.

Tomorrow we are headed north to look for abalone.

My stomach will never forgive me going back to Brisbane:)

...In a piece of bread

Got up before the light this morning to go and dive for Abalone. The tide was such that I could still get in a decent late morning writing session and dive - and the weather and wind look to be on their way. The Abalone in freezer quota is now full. I'm getting better at it (got my quota today without being exhausted), even though everyone seems to think I am moderately insane free-diving from the shore for them. Aqualung/hookah from a boat is the norm.
I need to work a bit more on my down-time (yes, this means something else entirely when you are referring to a skin-diving with a snorkel). Am getting a little frustrated that I haven't found the crayfish yet. Yes, everyone tells me 'it's deep. You need scuba/hookah'. They might be right. But I really really need to explore more. Also been trying to figure how to catch crabs here. Need to get a crab-hawk (a device which is not a trap, for fishing for crabs) maybe. But they only seem to have them in the US. I'm allowed a cray-pot or a bait trap. Bait trap door is 65mm... cray pot has to have 200mm high escape holes. The things I am trying to catch are bigger than 65mm, and smaller than 200mm... Oh well, I'll work something out. But I fancy some crustaceans for a change ;-)

I turned one of the despised wrasse into fish-cakes tonight. It's not going to be a world beater, but with a tomato chutney, a very acceptable tea (as they say hereabouts. Tea is not just a drink jam and bread).

I was just talking to B the other day about one of the differences we've noticed is whenever you go to a function in South Africa - they'll sell you a wors (kind of sausage -coursely minced beef and pork, with coriander seed as the principle spice - not worst, although sometimes...) roll as a fundraiser. Here - on Flinders - much the same thing... well, obviously a sausage, or a lamb chop (that's a first for us) ... in piece of white bread. Fortunately the Island Bakery is still running and does make a good fresh loaf. What would Pratchett's Dibbler do here? Is this Australia, or just Flinders?

Abalone diving

With food prices really rather high here in Australia (compared to SA) and still higher on the island, and being determined to start off the way we want to continue, we had a good tide, and good weather this morning so we took ourselves to the rocks to dive for Abalone (me) and to fish (B). In Dave's theory of self-sufficiency (which is a rather Rube Goldberg theory, held together by bits of string and powered by wallabies on a pogo-piston) foraging has a pretty important role - because it conveniently bypasses my shortcoming as a gardener and my non-existant skills at animal husbandry (Which I reckon would have the entire animal farm sueing for divorce.) A good foraging session is at least partly opportunistic - because fish, shellfish, game, mushrooms and field-food are relatively hard to gaurantee (rather like my veggies) - but if you have some grasp of what you're doing, where you need to be and when, you will hit real larder/freezer fillers from time to time. Of course that's not how fisheries regs work, but they're still generous enough to allow us a varied stock up.

There is just one minor detail - without local knowledge you can be wasting a lot of time and energy. James and I spotted quite a lot of Abalone off the back of the island off Killikrankie. I was surprised at the time as it is quite close to a popular holiday spot. Still, better than looking blind (and the abs we'd seen off Trousers Point had been smaller and scattered.) And I am free-diving, no aqualung and old age so easy dives are popular. B and I swam across - well I waded - my weight-belt is just a little too heavy and designed to get me down. We floated a crate with us with reels and tackle and drinks in. Got about a third of the way and Barbs said "I'm moonwalking." That's where her similarity to Michael Jackson ended though. Floating in her wetsuit she swam and I walked. We got over and I put on frog-feet and started diving. The abs were there - I did waste a lot of time looking in places they weren't and hoping I'd see a lost crayfish. Alas, no such luck. I really need a small fortune for that underwater camera for the blog (and a dive-bouy to tow things like a speargun and a bag -But more anon). The fish (some of which looked like dinner and some of which looked like they really deserve a role in one of my sf books.) in colours startling and vivid... and camo shades suddenly appearing in shifting forests of seaweed and then vanishing like shy beasts in the next movement. There are mobile ribbons of spangly little fry-fish everywhere, and the ichthyologist aspect of me wants to know what they all are and all the intimate sordid details of their family history (Ichthyologists are like that. They're mostly harmless otherwise). I was being hyper cautious, because dive alone = die alone, and I don't know the local currents or even bad places or beasties. Anyway, no disasters. I found that most of the abalone were a bit undersized - hence them being there. I did have 5 of my 10 quota, which I suppose for a newbie wasn't too bad. I was a little disgusted with myself but after about 2 hours (a lot of which spent in the wrong places), I was just too cold. B added one wrasse just over the 30 cm limit to the larder. I should have fished or taken the handspear out but... the tide was pushing and I was cold. So we set out back... me with the 5 abs and the fish and my weightbelt. So coming over I'd applied river-crossing logic and led us across the widest possible point. B was convinced I did this to get her wet... So we went back the narrowest point. Like in rivers this is current scoured and deepest... B in a wetsuit with no extra bobbed along swimming happily (incoming tide, no worries - you're going in. . Me... I was sinking. I had to let my wife swim on and get my fat-frog-feet on or we'd have the embrassment (not to mention other problems) of ye tough careful diver in all his kit, drowning (OK unlikely - I can swim and I was probably not more than 15 yards from standable water and only chin deep where I was. And I could still have dropped my weightbelt, and stuff in my hands) Lesson one. Abalone weighs. I think a bag and bouyline might be a good idea for ten.

Coming in to the shallows - with the white sand and clear sea it looked very tropical - I saw shoals of silvery fish I assumed must be mullet shivering the water just behind the shore wash. I got rid of weight-belt, abalone and big frog feet, fetched the throw-net and had a happy half hour of cast-netting. I caught (and released) quite a lot of mullet. I'm near certain no one had ever thrown a net at them, as they let me get quite close. Local regs are 25 cm to a mullet and most of these were too small. I'd have eaten 10 over a barbie (Braai, Cathy, braai) quite cheerfully back in South Africa. But local rules have to be played by.
Anyway, we came home beat the abs, washed the bits of abalone off ourselves and have some more meals in the freezer. It's not really cost efficient or self-sufficiently effective (protein about 4 meals - I reckon on a good forage being meals for about 2 weeks - beacuse it won't always be good, and trading your surplus is very much part of this lifestyle. I got a squid this evening to add to it, so it's nearly a week's food.

Australia day

James came home from sea with a good feed of flathead, some abalone and serious dose of flaming scarlet skin and very wide grin.
We ate flathead and pronounced it excellent - firm, succulent, and with a lovely flavor. I simply shallow fried it in rice bran oil, with a flour and egg batter. I also - with trepidation, cooked whole greenlip abalone the way John had told us to. Now I am used to slicing abalone blotting-paper thin, and then beating it with a steak mallet until lacy and see-through. It's still slightly tough - a minor detail for the flavour of it. It's then very very briefly fried. You can also cut it in chunks and cook in a pressure cooker for quite some time - the end result is tender, but much of the flavour is sacrificed. The idea of briefly cooking a whole crumbed abalone had me living in fear of turning something precious and delicious into large chunks of very long lasting old car-tyre imitations. But -that waas local advice -and I am here to learn - so I ventured bravely into culinary sacrilege. It worked and the abalone steak wasn't tough. Not as tasty as the South African kind, IMO - still delicious. And RICH.

Today was Australia day, our first - and memorable - we went to a beach barbie up at Killiekrankie a Lions function. We sat in the shade of the she-oaks looking out at the kids (including James) playing beach cricket. Behind them two little Catamarans sailed out in the bay toward Stacky's Bite.It was idyllic, friendly - with us meeting a lot more people who already know about us:-) - getting some inside information on a lot of the ups and downside of the Island. James and I had done a dive circuit of the little island just offshore and had seen an array of fish- some of which I now have to look up, and seen a lot of Abalone -- crays, less so, sadly - the only ones were in the holding fykes in the channel. I'm still hoping to dive from the shore for them, without aqualungs. We'll see.

Then we drove the final few km to North East river, and tried for Australian Salmon for few minutes... ineptly. I got myself broken up - lost most of my line - and James had the tail of his plastic bitten off. Learning curve.

So this evening I've cooked some clams, bacon, broccoli and pasta in a creamy sauce. It calls for bit of white wine and some flatleaf-parsley. We'll work on it.