Is the ice still in the river?

This seems appropriate as I have just been writing about the frozen Dnieper River in the Ukraine (of course it's the territory controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the book, not Ukraine).

Despite gale warnings and rain forecast James and I took the galleon in persuit of adventure to Pat's river for an hour or so in what was theoretically the hottest part of the day.



The joy of being very close to all of this sort of thing, and quite organised is that from get up from my desk to get into the water or throwing a line takes 15-20 minutes. Unlike my good friend Chris back in SA who would get up at two AM, to faff about, and fiddle pack everything and check it... and be lucky to be launching by seven (and he lived a few hundred metres from the slip) we're a good team, and quite practiced at chaos theory packing. Hey, it does mean some interesting things get left behind, which has been responsible for quite a lot of fiendish contrivance and ingenuity over the years, but most of it has residence in the dive box or squid box or flounder crate etc.

The ditch next to Galleon would have been a better target... warmer for a start. We took the big kayak which has a 180Kg capacity - and James I don't weigh much more than 130Kg. We got the boat down to the river - low tide and it was the color of tea. Black, stand-your-spoon-in-it-tea with a reddish tinge, overhung with ti-trees and she-oaks. It's quite a pretty estuary, and the vessel was perfectly designed for those with piles - with lovely soothing icy water coming up through the drainage in floor, and soaking my sit-upon. It's a sit-on Kayak designed not sink even if a wave breaks right over the top of it, with drainage holes. Someone needs to explain to the water that it needs to go OUT not come seeping in, and through the rubber of my wetsuit. We paddled upriver first (for the Google Earth-curious - it's the little river next to the airport. We got in off Boyes road, next to a bunch of guinea fowl - I'm not sure if they show up on google earth, but I was very excited to see them. Good eating!) There is a mile of estuary that is tidal. It's about 40-50 feet wide at the best down to about 20 at the upper bridge - where there is a little weir with a dead wallaby in it. And a huge fish that dived away from us... so there are fish in there. We'll investigate at higher tide, sometime.

On the way back down, we established that the fish living in it are entirely mad, as our tandem paddling or vast skill tipped us into the drink (it's not very stable with two on it) and that water is around 8 degrees Celcius - a LOT colder than the sea at 12-14. Anyway, we paddled down to sea, and met the gale (delightful when you are wet) and passed a dead ray in the 6 foot wide range. Sorry - no pic - just as well as the camera would have got wet. Hmm. Dead critter at the top, dead critter at the bottom... maybe that system needs a good heavy flood before we forage there.

The red flag flying there.

No, before you even ask. THERE ARE NO PHOTOGRAPHS. I'm not that tired of life. When, like me you've been married for a long time to a woman of strong will (she has to be, she's still married to me) and arm (she has to have. She has a strong will and she's married to me, and I do daft things. 'Anything I can do she can do better (I can do better than you :-))'. This includes use a chainsaw - do you understand 'respect and no photographs' fully now? Do you understand my favourite character in Rats, Bats an Vats better now? If you haven't read it, you should. It's available at the Baen Free Library.)

What's all this about then? Well, it's our dogs and cats, but mostly the dogs. We suddenly realised this morning that 1)Paddy is as sick as a horse, and needed to go to the doctor (done and on antibiotics) -- he's got his mother's AND my obstinacy. getting this done was no small feat. 2) The Doggins get out of quarantine on Monday. And we haven't sorted out the fence yet. I've been too busy with the book. So B and I went on a very expensive mission to Elders to buy a gate and wire and posts (there is a 20 foot section that needs fencing and a gate, where the driveway comes in.)The one downside is our double-cab ute does not have a very long bin, and we wanted a 12 foot gate - which protruded. We tied it in place safely. So the youngster at Elders says 'have you got something to tie on the back? Which of course we didn't have. And our local police have been stopping cars at the intersection going out of town.

But B is wearing red trousers. So she says "Is there a law that says you have to wear pants when driving?"

The youngster's jaw gets gravel rash. I think he'd never quite dealt with luntatics like these South Africans anyway... "Er. No."

"Good," says B, and gets into the cab. The youth gets the picture... well the idea anyway, and disappears with terrifying speed. I know better than to argue, collect bright red cords and give B my jacket as a sort of skirt. Attach trousers firmly to the gate, and we trundle the couple of klicks home in the blue slug (a nudibranch for those of you who get Zoological jokes), not meeting any black-and-white uniformed folk, unless you count the Magpies. They always make that laughing noise.

And B and her trousers are re-united and James and I dig the new hole to the centre of the earth - or close anyway. Little fellows in red pyjamas kept climbing out of the hole. If they'd showed up earlier we could have hung them on the gate.

Some small fiendish part of me does however have this mental image of the large cop from Lady Barron first leaning into the driver's window, and then saying "would you mind getting out of the car?"

Rain, sun, rain

A typical Flinders day - it should have been blowing a gale and raining. It alternated between all 4 seasons. Bucketing this morning - then 11 o'clock I was stuck so I went and planted out a punnet of red onions that have been waiting a week - in a t-shirt. It was windless and hot enough for the local gecko to put his head out and ask if it was my shout. By 12 the onions and the gecko were getting a good soaking. Then the sun was out enough for B to put the washing out again. I needed some veggies for the stirfry tonight, and went out in the gooti (new word especially for Dirk Flinthart)(thin sticky, mizzly rain - it's Shona, I think. Like sussuration it sounds like what it is.) and picked some spinach, a jalapeno, carrots, and some fresh Italian Parsley and thyme. This is the first of our Jalepenos (we used the ones Lisa gave us up to now - which were so mild.) These - having planted late and struggled along since January and ripening very slowly and temp stressed are toilet roll in the freezer stuff - which may be just as well as Pads is down with flu/cold and B and I are feeling Inge's 'crook'. Chili could burn it out. Anyway, we still wait. The boys for exam results, B for her test result. Me for my brain to tie up the last threads. It's not going easy, but we'll get there.

Home... is in your chest

The boys were listening to Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long, which includes a song by the typical noxious super-hero about the homeless - Problem neatly solved because 'Home is where the heart is, so your home is inside your chest'... which of course immediately had me thinking human snail thoughts. It's not always easy being a science fiction writer with an over-active imagination. Imagine how much worse it is for my dear family! It got me thinking about a few comments on Baen's Bar (my US publisher's forum, where I echo these posts)about this lot.


Yeah. We've been frightened. It's a long step into the unknown, leaving our comfort zone, our old home where we owned outright the house Murphy built (with 15 roof pitches and a sinstral spiral design) in an area of South Africa famous for its beauty, with our own stream and fruit trees and some acres, our safety net of friends and family far behind. There were no paths trodden by other migrants to do what we had done - how I earn my living, the visa we got, and where we have chosen to live are all new ground that we could ask no-one else about. Taking our dogs and cats most people reckoned as close to financial insanity. Deciding to stay would have been far less effort, and cheaper and much, much simpler.

I'm glad we did it. It was anything but easy, but I've never been good at doing the easy or taking the path everyone else travels just because they have. Yet, it's actually not that different or that unique. Humans have done just this... well, since the human race existed. Humans move, explore adapt to their environment, and adapt the evironment to themselves, just like termites build termite mounds. It's what we are. We're intelligent enough to start trying to minimise our damage and do some custodian work... but we always do move, explore, find new things to eat and places and ways to live. The culture I come from - which has more in common with that of the US, Australia, Canada or New Zealand than the 'source countries' in Europe would find Flinders, and what we are doing, very like going back 50 years or more... in all the good aspects too. Community. Yeah, gossip and all the other small place things... but the support too. We know our neighbors. People drop in (and we've only been here 5 months). Yet we have good medicine available and good internet access.

And you can make home anywhere you can take your heart. We have our rock, our piece of an African frontier farm -- proof that it can be done. It's only one stone toward building a new home of own, and not just a rented place (which still is a big improvement on the tent or caravan we thought we'd be in), but it's a start. A root, if you like, that we grow from. Soon the dogs and cats will be here. There are days and events which will still be bleak. Unlike 'refugees' who get humanitarian visas there are no free rides for us. We're not bludgers, we don't expect them. Rock, dogs, cats, our boys and most especially Barbs... I can handle it. And although I am less than sure about eating sea-weed, enjoy a lot of it.

Flinders Island might have been a long way to come to plant that root, but I believe it's good soil for it. I think if I had listened to the voice of reason and left the dogs and cats... we might have had more of a financial security blanket, but I would not have been me, and I would have struggled to come to terms with myself. I'd rather be poor and feel at peace with that aspect of my concience anyway.

The island has had its share of sadness and hardship. Shipwrecks, brutality and heartbreak. But it has also been a refuge, beautiful, lonely and quiet, yet friendly and warm, a balm for the soul, and place that has been much loved. You can feel that here.

Minced fish and other dark delights

If you're a cat, that is. As a human I am less convinced. Of course the hairy hound from Budapest AKA Roland is also very partial to fish. Nothing like a big fishy slobber to make you feel loved.
We turned some of the wrasse from yesterday into preparatory pet food in the freezer through one of the old fashioned hand mincers - it actually worked really well as the bones either get minced or stay behind. We must have 3 weeks of catfood ready. Yesterday I got to 100K in the book, and we celebrated the lovely weather and that and the Queen's birthday by a trip to 'the docks' which is a remote cliff completely without any docks/dogs/docs in sight. It was a lovely family outing as B said - James and I dived for a bit. Despite the rubber layers the water was serious sinus burn cold - only bit not rubber-coated. It was cold but crystal clear and barely a ripple in sight. We swam into a huge shoal of Australian Salmon and failed utterly to spear any fish with the hand-spear (I didn't take the gun, which I regretted). I speared a leather-jacket (triggerfish) in my determination to spear something... only they're... well, the skin is so tough I didn't penetrate! So we swam on, looking for Abalone, and utterly failing to call B and Pads to come catch these blessed Salmon (B and Pads were catching wrasse, which are now kitty-nubbins, barring the two we had in a green Thai curry tonight. Paddy who doesn't really do curry loved until he had a mouthful of wine - an error of judgement - which burned all the way down.) Anyway we eventually got 2 abalone - could have tried harder I guess, but we'd been swimming around for two hours and I was fairly cold. James decided to check on the Aussie Salmon, before we fished for them... and met a large grey something (probably a shark feeding on them) and got out very rapidly onto the little island and water-walked across to the shore. We tried fishing there anyway, but all I got was a big a big blue-head wrasse. I left James and B to go on fishing and went climbing with Pads. Ergo - the dwarf picture. I've done a lot more trad leading than the boys so I somehow got talked into onsighting a route next to the described one. The climb started delightfully - gentle gradient, pinch-grips and high friction and got steadily steeper, and ended some 30 metres on, with a water-etched granite groove - a little arpeggio of moves on crystals and tiny pinches. Eissh... not much in the way of runners. I ended up in a very wide straddle trying to place a wedge and got cramp. Newton was right, but experience with runner-placement stopped any tragedy beyond a scraped elbow. I had to go up twice more, fiddling out runners in very dodgey micro cracks before trying the thrutch and wobble to the top, and reached up and found a glorious hidden jug-handled hold, big enough to tie the Queen Mary to. So all was well that ended well. The climb is relatively easy and will do well as beginner route, now I know that the roundness at the top hides a wonderful hold.

There is nothing like the absence of dying in the meeting of man and cliff to leave you feeling uplifted...

or lifted up anyway. My arms and hands are still stiff, but it was good to feel alive and doing things.

Paddy went to Sing Australia in the evening, and it was a windless night and we hoped for some floundering - but were played false by James's tum. So we came home and I did some work.

We did it together!

Today was really bright and sunshiny early on, so we got all packed up and drove 40kms north to a beach called 'The Docks' that has rock climbing.

First Dave and James went off snorkeling while Paddy and I fished. We caught 5 Wrasse that were big enough to keep, and must have put back about 20 that were too small. I swear we were catching the same fish again and again. Dave and James came back with 2 abalone and we had a lunch break, which I was needing by then.

Then Dave had a quick fish, just to prove he could catch a bigger Wrasse than we could, and then he and Paddy had a climb, using 'trad' gear. Dave led, and we heard their triumphant yells as they topped out echoing across the bay.


They both returned to the car safely where James and I, having caught a fish each, were resting.

It was a day of sun, cloud and then more sun, with a spectacular sunset to finish it off. But it was fantastic to be out and about with the boys again, and I certainly enjoyed the day. We sang all the way home, so the wallaby were scared off the road, and we got back without hitting any. (Touch wood, we haven't hit one yet!)

Have Geeks, will travel

Well, the boys are in demand for more than their now famous Saveloy boiling skills, (tested to near destruction at the market), now being called to sort out DVDs and computers. In theory they were going to fish Emita and stop and do some geek-work at some friends up there, while I continued to deal with Hekate and Constantinople. However in the fashion of such things the trip to the beach never quite got there. I fed them on bangers and mash with my home-made rollmops and the gerkins made of my cucumbers. It appears I can do that again, but the roll-mops are rather hard. Any bright ideas on how to stop vinegar making fish chewy appreciated. I need to do another batch.