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).

Pat's river mouth

Found another little gem of a spot about two km away, at edge of the airfield for those looking on Google earth. I'd had enough of spending another beautiful day at my desk slowly making progress so we went to look at another potential flounder place - which has fantastic views of the mountain.



James spotted the clams - in thick exposed beds mostly tiny, but we picked out the better ones for having with pasta.

And sundown over the flats was stunning.

clams, flounders and passing turkeys

There was an early morning low tide this morning so we went to collect some clams (don't ask what species, I don't know, and neither does anyone else. Katelysia sp. at a guess - but they're quite small.) Anyway, the regulations allow us 100 pipi or clams or 200 wedge shells and don't seem to specify exactly what species they are, and there seem to be a bunch of Katelysia species living in that habitat and a few other species I really HAVE to find out what are and exactly where live. I'm a very selective predator/forager who believes very firmly in variety and leaving plenty for tomorrow. The locals have told me there are no clams here. And no mussels. And no oysters (well maybe in the North-East River - the North-East River is kind of like a mythical distant waterbody of Eden with EVERYTHING. Heh. It's maybe 50 Km away - and a good fishing spot. But I don't think it's the biological lost world. I think that's a lot closer - like all around here.)


It was a nice low tide and we got our bag limit quite quickly with minimum immersion in very cold water.

I took a few minutes to see if I could catch some mullet with the cast net.


I'm not heaven's gift to this - I just like it as a very visual way of fishing - see your fish-shoal and throw at them. Miss (mostly).


Well, that's the theory anyway. I caught 3 of these cute little flounder that I certainly never saw. Was fascinating putting them back and watching them vanish into the sand (I really need video clips of some of this stuff). And only 2 mullet - both under the 25 cm size. That's big for a shallows thrownetting mullet. I saw lots of very tiny ones but no major shoals of medium/large fish. Oh well, more things to find and enjoy finding.



Driving back past this incredible watercolour landscape



We saw some wild turkeys - about 25 of them. If they hadn't been in someone's else's fields but on the roadside I might have been tempted to try thrownetting them. I wonder if that is legal?

on food

Food has always been rather an obsession of mine (no one else I know flies with a 2 kg recipe book) and one of the things I am most looking forward to is learning a whole new set of possible ingredients. One of the reasons I like the whole self-sufficiency bit so much is that freshness and quality make for great food, and it's one of the few ways you can know both and be in control of it. The sheer seasonality of living like that also means that absence makes the heart grow fonder and the ephemeral factor makes the things like fresh asparagus very precious. It seems here, with much of the fresh veg being flown in, and with the abatoir having closed down (so meat is being flown in too - which is insanity when you consider the island's agriculture is principally stock farming) we're going to have to adapt to local conditions and self sufficiency very very fast or go broke. Local knowledge is of course key to this and so far we're managing to be newbies very well -- I've almost never caught less fish -- this is whole new ball-game for us (ping-pong I think). We've seen some enormous rays - two metres across, and some fry, but are obviously not fishing in the right spots yet. We have caught some Calamari with much ink squirting and hilariarity and yesterday in a bitter howling wind we collected clams -- much smaller than my cooking bible says the common species are (pipis and vongole), so probably yet another of the myriad species we have to learn - 2 species - one quite strong tasting and probably ideal for tomato based sauces with lots of garlic or/and chili, the other slightly sweet and delicate - suited to creamy sauces, perhaps with a white wine reduction and touch of fennel. Flinders is famous for its fish -- and I am sure we'll find them. It's just been a case of not really getting where to go on a kelp shore and the weather has not been in our favour.

I've cleared one quarter of a neglected small raised bed area so far, collecting old dung from the field adjacent to the house (and I hope today seaweed) to try and add a bit of water retention and fertility to the sandy soil. It's late to be planting but I feel I have to try. carrots, lettuces and the bassicas should do OK. Not sure about Tatties - at Finnegan's Wake they couldn't be grown in winter - we had frost.

We've seen wild turkeys (twice) wild peacocks (once) and of course Cape Barren geese (all the time) and along with the possibility of keeping a few sheep this all still has to be explored.

In the meanwhile we have rather limited utensils and a stove that only has 2 working plates - one does white hot only and the other is more-or-less normal. The oven door is so warped that you're heating the entire house so... a bit of a challenge there. Our furniture hasn't arrived (and who knows when it will?) so this morning saw B in her cozzie (handwashing in the bath is a wet process) doing the new dance - the windy-flinders freezer - while hanging out washing.


But we'll succeed. Take a few knocks, I am sure, and have to get up again.
And now I must get to work on my day's writing.