One for the Frog 'n Toad

"The frog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine..." Well, the little tree-frog from outside (could easily be same one I evicted from his lettuce, poor fellow) wants to be all mine... or rather he wants all mine to be all his. The log-box is just outside the glass door to the lounge that the tree-frogs regard as the local Amphibian MickyD's ("Just nipping out for a few fries... flies.") Inevitably I suppose some of them have taken to lurking in woodbox - from whence a certain amphibian got transported along with a fire-destined log to the big copper coal-scuttle that serves as a holding point. This seemed a fine, warm, comfortable place to him, until that homewrecker came along to put more wood in the fire.

"There's a frog!" said B, removing herself sideways at something close to the speed of light.

"Where did it go?" I asked, merely (at this stage) relieved not to have made froggy fricasse.

"Under the sofa," said B.

Now the sofa in question is a big old, heavy solid three seater long enough to sleep on. "Why didn't you stop it!?" (I am well-known for my gifted ability to ask really stupid questions.)

B (with dignity) "I thought it would be very happy under there."

With memories of my then 2 year old son James and the cute froggy he decided to keep as a pet in a hole he dug for it in the matress in his cot, and the wonderful bouquet of over-ripe deceased frog we had to search for, I could not agree with this generous sentiment. Down on my belly I peered underthe sofa - a froggy I did espy, Although I doubt that he was looking at me with love in his dewy eye. "Pass me the big brass spoon, Love" (we have a huge old brass spoon at the fire. Probably for making possets of frog or something). My attempt at spooning with froggy merely led him deeper under. "If I move the sofa forward we can tip it."

"You'll squash him."

"No I can see him. He's in the middle."

So with some grunting the heavy sofa was moved, and tipped onto its back legs. Not too far - because there is not that much room. And the intrepid frog-hunter slid his head and arm underneath, while B balances it, by leaning her whole weight on the back.

I've said and done some stupid things in my time. But "It's just hopped between your feet..." probably deserves a Darwin award.


Frog is now returned to cold outer world. Next time I might try roast frog legs. In the meanwhile here is an altogether more welcome green frog from South Australia, which I have allowed to pose temporarily in the woodbox but will happily follow under the sofa. Thank you very much, Ian.

Eye of Newt etc.

How many ingredients go into your average cauldron? Well, into your supper? I went to see the local doctor yesterday, and the subject of diet came up (not literally, merely in conversation). He's nice bloke with a fondness for Arthur C Clarke (I must give him SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS to read) and he gave me the line about their only being one healthy diet - the pyramid with I forget now 5-7 fruits and veggies at the bottom and a small volume of protein at the top... a diet which he obviously considered atypical. I've always wondered about quantities in these diets, as I did in the bit of research that showed that average meals had decline from 11 items used to prepare to just 7. Hmm. We don't eat a LOT of anything... but I did a count of last night's supper for eg. Fishcakes, tomato relish, salad, noodles. or to break it down: fishcakes - Fish (wrasse -have to use it somehow), salt, Tasmanian pepper, 1 egg, breadcrumbs (and as I made the bread - yeast*, milk powder*, canola oil*, oats*, flour*, salt*, sugar*) green pepper, onion, garlic, parsley, thyme, chili pepper. All of the vegetable/herb ingredients are fresh.
tomato relish: tomato, onion, chili, vinegar*.
Salad: lettuce, spring onion, snow peas, tomato (THE tomato), beetroot leaves, cucumber, fennel leaves and pumpkin seeds* dressing.
Noodles - out of a packet.
Items with a star * didn't come from the island, and we paid for. We're working on it. Definitely do salt soon.
So we used 30 items...
OK - we can eat steak and potato for a few days:-)

In field of reputation enhancement B has been hard at work. She decided to walk into town yesterday afternoon to the library. And en route home spotted a bottle that some litter-lout had tossed out of the window. Being Barbs and being offended by it, she picked it up. And in the fashion of Island life, in 50 yards to our gate 5 cars passed and she waved at them. It was only when the last - policeman Pat in his Police Ute - stared rather hard at her and nearly drove off the road, does it occur to B that... it's a BEER bottle that she's picked up. And in Australia you're not supposed to drink in public, aside from the fact that people might assume you're walking back from the pub in no state to drive. And she doesn't even drink beer. It was one of those times when she wished, desperately, that the policeman HAD stopped. Breathalysed her even. Ah well. All things considered they'll just have to get used our eccentricities, and if that includes believing we wave beer bottles after our afternoon trip to the pub... so be it.

A feast unknown

Autumn rain and the island fields are turning emerald, and mushrooms are coming up all over the place. Without looking to see if I was very short and had hairy feet, you already knew my greed for mushrooms is substantial. Unfortunately, I also know a fair bit about toxic mushrooms - I'm writing about the Renaissance and a fair bit of assassination came into that. I've done a great deal of research about historical ways of meeting a grizzly end as a result, and mushrooms feature. Also... this is Australia. Everything I knew got left behind. These to me are the most promising. They look right, and smell right, and Inge says they're Ok...



Next of course are the boletes - slippery jacks - I am pretty sure they're edible.


Morrie2 - these are much bigger, some up to 15 cm across.

then there are these 'prickly looking ?puffballs.


and these ones the slugs/snails/mice loved.

I wasn't sure if they were a kind of puffball, truffle, thing-from-Altair, or a undeveloped bolete.
Then there were these shaggy-ish fellows.

with white gills (always makes me wary- not always with reason)

And finally these very dodgy looking ones on the front lawn.


which something as you can see had been eating despite the white gills


But so far I am steering clear of actually eating any of them. Any clues, anyone... even 'don't touch that for your life'

olive oil expeiment - fail

Sometimes things just don't work. I'm already making fiendish plans for a better olive crusher... make that a heavier olive-crusher that can crack the seeds and totally reduce the olives to pulp. We actually manged to get maybe 2 ml of oil out of B's hard work and my heating and spinning (I spun a milk bottle of goo on a 4 metre rope. The rope broke sending the bottle over the fence in a lovely 15 metre flight. It landed, unbroken in a bush. Amazing how low the value of shrubs is here If it had been valuable furniture or a carpet, splat!) There is a sheen of oil on the surface, and the little I gathered off the top with a thin-edged teaspoon is soft, fruity olive oil... but that seems to be about as much is we're going to get.

So tomorrow, to the compost heap. Ah well.

We've had a thunderstorm this evening - a brief one of about 15 minutes. This has some of the nostalgia value for the great almost daily summer storms of the Drakensberg which used to roll and crash around the mountain and forced me to unplug and swear a lot. It seems this is not as common here. That should do wonders for the volume of cursing I do.

They say if you get high up enough, you can see tomorrow (they also say it helps if you get high up enough really close to the international date-line). Today was a rather mundane sort of day, with a lot of work and not much wild excitement, unless you count killing a few caterpillars on my brocolli. So as the weather is supposed to turn vile again tomorrow, and the writing had gone reasonably well, we took a drive out, up to the highest point you can drive to on the Island - It's only about 8 km away and only 1300 feet. But sea-level is 8km away from Walker's lookout too, and it's in a little bio-island of its own of windswept montaine grassland, just above the montain heath. Sadly we'd left it a little late and the weather was already on the change. You can see the east and west coast, the South, across to Cape Barren and maybe on a clear day the North East River... pretty nearly the island. Only stayed about 3 minutes because it's COLD and WINDY up there.



On the way I saw a wombat and two wallaby (one of each species) and dismally failed to get pictures of both. The wombat looked rather like a sumo koala bear having a bad day. We saw more ring-neck pheasant, turkey, and peacocks too. Oddly very few indigeous wild birds but that could be that the others are bigger and look like dinner.

Bad news for the mick

I'm growing steadily more used to the pleasant cadences of Tassie Australian. It's a bit slower-spoken than Sydney Australian, and easier to understand. Mind you, there are still a few mysteries. How come you fish for brim (bream) but do not barrack for a tim, or run out of stim? And I hear Mick is mighty disappointed he's not going to inherit the Earth even if there are eels in the crick (creek). Well, I suppose English never has been logical, even before it emigrated out here.

A report back on Australian Salmon. Has anyone considered changing its name? I mean if you're going to brand a fish with country's name, make sure it's good eating. Ok it's not terrible, and I think it will make very good roll-mops, and maybe just pickled fish. I think it's what might be called a very fishy fish, without a lot of other flavour. Slightly soft in texture, it was Okay grilled. I smoked some, but oversmoked it a bit (having trouble with the little gas burner(running out of gas)). Hot smoking is a bit of a bastard to get perfect. Cold smoking - always looked on as the black art and mystery, is actually relatively easy. You just have to get the fish/meat salted right and keep the smoke cold. Do that and you're home and well, smoked, rather than dry. I flaked it into cooked barley, caramelised onions, fresh snow peas, spinach (just in case there is any more threshhold carrying) and chopped olives (using up the bought ones). It was edible, but I was wise to choose a strong flavour like barley. Anyway, I have 2 more IIRC to experiment with. It's easy to de-bone and should make good fish-cakes.

The olives continue to have their water changed. It's slightly purple-tinged.

We are leaving the island!

Well, we have filled out the forms, and are now just waiting for confirmation. But we will be leaving the island and sampling mainland life in Sept for the World Con in Melbourne.

This is rather daunting. They will be more people there than there are on the whole island. But hopefully there will be some familiar faces. I am looking forward to doing some shopping as well as some socialising.