onward.

Well, it's been a rather dull day for me, writing and more writing, hot and sticky and windy here. I dropped off Peter at the airport, puzzled and probably bored him with steam powered submarines and nitrates, and came back to treachery and magic and all-to-smart sheepdogs. A writer's life is a varied one... or at least the research is! Our dogs were very restless last night - the moon, the heat the humidity, and so I hope things are better tonight. The tomatos are ripening - used 4 in cooking tonight, and have a fridge-drawer full.
Otherwise: no adventures to report.
Barbs filled in at the school today, as the gardener/groundsman. Hot day for it.

how to extend your beef (or wallaby) mince

You can tell you're living on Flinders island when you stretch the mince in your meatballs with Abalone. When it's an odd day when someone does not drop in.
Anyway -5040 words onwards today with spriggans, muryans, and too clever for their own good sheepdogs.

good night!

I plainly sound a little like a sick sheep

Well, my day got underway at 4 am this morning, when I got up and put the rolls. I had them baked and ready and went down to the roadside to give them to Carole on her way past at 6.30. She must have been a little worried not to be late as she was already past - but no worries, two other friends were following. And at about seven they picked up the still hot rolls with a cheery 'Oh we just 'phoned B to tell you we were nearly there'. Then I knew I had trouble...

Barbs is a morning deep sleeper. I am a first thing at night deep sleeper, and wake quite easily in the morning. B does not (ergo I had left her asleep. She is best approached in the morning coffee and trepidation).

So as I am walking back down our 100 metre driveway - I hear B calling. "Dave, Dave they looking for the rolls!" in the the sort of voice that makes your average drill Sergeant Major look for a place to hide.

I call back "I've just given them to them."

Tch. You'd think after 30 years I'd have learned that if there is one worse thing than having your head ripped off (metaphorically as it were, one hopes) it is the head-ripper-to-be realising that actually they have no reason to rip your head off and all except for being woken up (without coffee) and getting a fright, neither of which it is easy to make into your fault... You see, when she went calling, assuming I was in the garden, instead of at the roadside she got an awful groaning from the garage. Presuming I had been up to some construction or something and hurt myself she ran over there...

Only to find it was merely one of our neighbour's sheep in the field next door. And she still couldn't find me.

I came back, boiled the kettle, made coffee and took it in with a nice fresh spicy bun.

All I got was the baleful eye and a cross grunt to my happy Valentine's day.

Heh. The path of virtue is much strewn with boulders :-).

Anyway, it appears that coffee helped because I seemed to have climbed out of trouble by about eight. We took all the wrasse out of the freezer and minced cat-fish. - We have cat food for 29 days. We're well stocked with dog roo, and very well stocked with dog cubes and rice... so we're sorted for beastie food for a while. Just as well, because barring a miricle I won't be doing much fishing for the next while. Looks like 3.5K on the book today. A lot to go...

Barbs worked this afternoon - plainly very hard, and is now so stiff she can barely move.

Oil lights and the bounty of others.

Hmm. Didn't get to post yesterday, as it was very late, and I ended up chatting to my brother instead. I was also a little down - I'd hoped for a short session of very productive fishing - having been invited up to North East River, and B having done very well out of the Aussie salmon last time. Result - a rather long day and not one fish. All the larder contributions - bar one little squid came from gifts. Worse they came from gifts from people I can't easily recipriocate to, which makes me feel bad. I've never been a good 'reciever' and it makes me feel guilty. We got a young roo, a load of veggies... And the truck's oil light came on after B drove up to drop some landcare people for the trip over to Roydon Island (they're spending a couple of weeks getting rid of exotics) - we REALLY don't need expensive problems and I was foreseeing these. It came on, went off when you revved. Oil was if anything overfull... suggesting oil pressure problems.

The weird thing is - today in the run up to Emita (had to go for Carole's farewell) no oil pressure light coming on. We were late, and B drove cautiously at first, and then faster. no light coming on. Still worrying... it's working, it come on when you start the vehicle and vanishes thereafter. Anyway - more gifts today - we got some Cape barren goose breasts and drumstick and thighs from the goose-shooters. These are a wonderful dark red meat and the flavour is just absolutely superb. And I ended with more wood - a heavy duty ply crate and another crate - I could build two new chook houses with the current scrap timber supply, which consdering I had none when we came to the island, is such a pleasure. I also have a fiendish sharpener and a Big EVUL Cleaver. Sort of thing that probably got banned by the Geneva convention, and might just go through your whole kitchen worktop if used in a bad temper.

Oh and apples, and spring onions... the summer harvest is plainly getting into gear.

And thus, onward. More tomatos out of the garden, will have to start preserving very soon, especially as people give us such beauties I can't resist (mine, esp the Gross lizzies, are not beautiful. But they're tomatoes).

I've got to get up at sparrows tomorrow to make last batch of rolls for Carole for padkos. And I still need to write another 400 words...
So we love you and leave you.

the book moves on

Well now, not a bad writing day, in all seeing as it didn't get going till quite late - went up to move Peter's bandsaw and find out the talley of our debts - which were quite modest, when you consider tha we have the bulk of our dry goods - and some things that will last us a great deal longer - probably for six months or more. Then we also had various drop ins, and B as usual, busy with everything from meals on wheels to their board games evening.
We had dutch oven (aka cast iron pot) baked chicken for supper - free range and tough but mighty tasty. Very unlike bought chicken.
The book moves on. I am starting to think of bits for it all the time - a sign that I will soon be horrible to live with - half in the book world.

'tis a foine beastie...

Well, mostly writing today, with a short interlude to recieve some scavenged and normally thrown out plastic drums that will make great plant pots in the sort of 10 litre size, and to pop up to Peter to collect a load of MDF slabs and bits of ply that he'd picked up at a garage sale and used for packing. Very useful 'stuff'. Barbs and went up later to help him move his solar panels and a truly enormous metal cabinet. He has a little grey tractor - pre-war and elastic (well, steel. Real steel.) that he fitted with forks, a lifting arm and everything short of a pair of wings to. We had a lot of fun hauling things about with it... including entertainment when he had a load of batteries on the fork and almost no weight on the front wheels... turning corners is fun fun fun... It's a foine little beast. B wants one! I crunched her fingers with a metal door (not popular) so maybe I ought to be looking for one for her.

A farewell to swinging seats...

We got a 'the trevally are just about solid' at the wharf call this morning from S&B but alas - by the time we got there... they'd gone. We saw a coupe in the distance.

We've finally been relieved of the awful swinging seat. It kept blowing to destruction and had to be parked right in the way of the door to allow it survive.

Other than that -various visitors and my writer's group this afternoon, which was fun, but always reminds me how much I have to learn.

We had a delicious Tassie Lakeland trout (from Alan the Dentist) and salad from the garden for supper - besides the fight with lettuce going to seed, I remain amazed at how well we eat on very little. If food inflation is going to be a biggy... I guess we won't see a lot of bananas but it's not going to hurt as much as it does some people in the big city.