A sort of monty-python experience.

to dig into the recessess of Python memory "Stormy petrel on a stick!"
"What flavour is it?"
"Bloody seabird flavour of course."

I'm not an instant and total convert to muttonbird - but it's far from as bad as those who don't like it made out. It tastes rather like what it is - a seabird, with more than a bit of oily fish flavour. I've eaten wild duck that had a similar flavour. I did them 2 ways - firstly hot smoked, and secondly crusted with dried saltbush and roasted in the Cobb (a charcoal barbeque kettle). I'll see what the hot-smoked is like by morning, but it did not really do great things for it fresh out of the smoker. It was edible. The crusted and roasted came under the heading of 'needs work, but you could do that again'. Parts of the bird are nicer than others - the breast, thigh and drumstick are best in ascending order. The bit around the wing is just fish-oil.

Muttonbirding is also one of those things people have delusions about. It's not easy. It's outright scary to put your hand (into the shoulder) down holes, which can and do have have snakes. And it's not every hole a coconut - nothing in some, some have adult birds or even penguins which bite like hell and there are water-rats too apparently (my hands are quite sliced up and sore this evening) and you don't want to wear gloves because temperature is how you know if the hole has a bird or a snake in it, and some of the holes you will never reach deep enough down. Still, I apparently did well for a newbie, and have been invited to go again. It's food, (about 20 meals for us) and that is something we cannot afford be too proud about. It's also part of learning to be an islander, which is important too.

They do pong and I can see why 'get us a few muttonbirds' is greeted with 'get your own.'

ethics of self-sufficent foraging.

I am a biologist and I believe in ecologically sustainable foraging. I believe in providing a quick clean death to something I'm prepared to eat. I'm not of the ilk who will buy mutton in a supermarket, but not deal with the fairly grim process of turning it from sheep into mutton. I still believe that as a small farmer you can do this better and more ethically than at mass produced poultry farms or feedlots and trucking to vast abbatoirs. Anyway - tomorrow we go out muttonbirding. I must say my first reaction to this was not one of unmixed joy. The idea of taking a large chick out of the nest and killing it is not one that appeals to the side of me that wants to protect the young. Yes, they're fluffy. Cute if you don't smell them.

I thought about it a lot and I think the decider was someone posting that muttonbirding should be stopped because they'd seen so many of the adults washed up dead of starvation. Dying of starvation is what various crusading animal protectors have inflicted on deer in the UK and been happy to do to elephants in South Africa. It might be nature's way, but it is really predicated by the fact that there are a lot of humans out there, and either natural food sources or space just isn't available. And it is a horrible way to die. If my choice is to starve slowly and desperately or eat reasonably well and live a contented life and then get killed quickly and cleanly... Please kill me. Muttonbirds might be cute and appeal to the protect baby animals side of us, but in reality it makes a lot more sense with anything (be it muttonbirds or fish) to protect the breeding adults (and maybe protect their food supply from overfishing) - where natural mortality rates are fairly low, and take some of the group where natural mortality rates are high (in some fish, 99.9999% - that's why you can go from boom to disaster to boom with some fish species). The shearwaters numbers and the health of colonies are monitored, the process is policed and licenced. I have been a scientist and I know this much, if my fellow biologists believed they had evidence to show that this was endangering this species, they'd stop it, tradition or no.

Anyway. That's my stance. I gather from the islanders taking us out there that it is something of a rite of passage, and bit of an honour to be invited. Some of them have a tradition of doing this that goes back millenia.

Of course I am curious as to what they'll taste like too. But I could have found that out without doing it myself. But I would rather do it myself and I know it will be done as quickly and cleanly as I can.

Turn back the clock

Today was my first experience of time travel. We went back an hour and it did not feel remarkably different, just earlier. Unfortunately, my grandfather has been dead for some years so I could not cause a space-time paradox by murdering him (or possibly in a less homicidal manner getting him out of marrying my grandmother.) But daylight savings only allows you to move back one hour here, so all of these paradoxes are out of the question unless you have arranged them for 2 AM on sunday morning. I think the powers that be figured that most grandads would be tucked up in bed at that time, and it would be less likely that Tasmanians would go around wrecking the fabric of space-time. I've always been an advocate of daylight saving for South Africa, but this is my first experience of it. The days are definitely much shorter now and winter is nibbling at us. The island is full of Easter strangers, many of whom don't greet passing cars. I already feel territorial about 'our' turf.

kissing-salad (lettuce alone)

I do NOT like my salad to hop at me! Caterpillers in my lettuce are one thing. Frogs entirely another. I picked a lettuce from the garden and brought it in, pulled the leaves apart into a bowl of cold water to crisp up... and

The Predawn Light

We were up before dawn this morning, no, not for fish, or not primarily. It is the three peaks yacht race. The boats sail from Beauty Point on mainland Tasmania to Hobart, stopping at Flinders Island and Coles Bay on the way, and at each stop 2 people must run up the local peak and then back to the boat! We passed 2 runners on the road, and were down at the Lady Baron jetty in time to see the sixth boat arrive, and drop its runners before finding a proper spot to tie up. The seventh boat hit a sandbank well in sight of the jetty, and after a while a tinny went out and took their runners off, and they will have to wait for the tide to get into the jetty! They lose time for having been helped apparently. (The boats name is "Don't Panic"!) Ten boats started the race, but I didn't hear where the other 3 were, maybe still on their way.

But we watched a beautiful sunrise, with enough cloud around to make it really pretty, and, of course, we cast a line into the water in case any fish were warm enough to want to eat. There was a light wind that was coming straight off the ice, I would have loved to know the actual temperature, it felt like about 6 C to me!

Dave caught a Silver Trevally, but although I managed to get a squid interested, I could not get him on my jig. Still, we went just as "gapers" to see the yachts, and came home with supper, so that is a bonus.

The sun is now shining and there is very little wind, so I fear the runners are going to get hot, and the yachts will not be leaving very fast! Still it is a fun combo race!

test-post

Blogger is being truly erratic. Giving me error messages half the time. If you do get here - please let me know.
My glasses - you know the ones that B says make look truly extinguished - decided that screw Dave - or at least screw loose and dropped the lens onto my lap were the order of the day. Then I took John-boy to airport and drove his truck back here - rain and misery weather sweeping in. Horrible weather for a small plane but the island air-service has a good record (at that price they should have). Rex or Dennis was telling me about one of the old islanders who'd never left the island by plane being flown out on the Flying Doctor service in some dodgy weather. "Oh will you be able to land it?" she asks. Pilot smiles reassuringly - "Don't worry, I've never left plane up here yet!"
On the exciting news - we have been given permission to pick olives in the school grove. Pay what we think is fair. Difficult question - what is fair for raw olives?

Dead parrot society

It was stiff, and green and mysteriously dead on the porch. While I did some swearing at their early morning loudness I really have no desire to eat Mr John Roswella. I buried him in the paddock in front of the house, and heaven wept. Well it rained on me, at least.

We had a rather flat morning fishing (total bag some kelp for my garden and some saltbush to try drying.) John's mention of the next book made me have a look on Amazon. I'm sure the release date was around the 12th but either my publisher changed it or I got it wrong, because SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS came out on the 30th of March. So I missed it. It was a sort precient book in many ways - it's the first serious attempt at addressing some of the issues that bedevil the really possible with present science sort of space-travel (not the warp speed and beam me up sort of thing)that sf writers have made for some time. The real issues of how we get from here to there on a trip in a small habitat, lasting many years, haven't been en vogue since Clarke's Rendesvoux with Rama and Harry Harrison's Captive Universe. I tried to keep it real (or possibly real) and yet accessible, because I am rather passionate about the idea of colonising space. Of course being me I couldn't resist satire too, so it is quite funny in among the adventures. The many little isolated habits - islands if you will - had a lot of material for it. I didn't -- when I wrote this book -- anticipate living on a remote island myself! I wish I'd done so before I wrote it. I would have had a better understanding of Ferries.

Anyway I look forward to my author copies showing up at the Island post office. Any day now, I'm sure.