Farewells

It's been a session of farewells. Saddest and hardest for us has been James, seeing as we did not see Paddy at all this December. It's a reality, as they grow older we'll see less and less of them, especially if they end up in far countries. It was a major, major, major epic getting them permanent residence, and a door I desperately wanted to open for them, but what they decide to do with it is their own decision. That doesn't make it easy for parents I guess, but that is reality and we'll have to accept and cope with whatever happens. There will always be a place here for them.

Barbs James and I went to D&L's music barbeque, and were insufferably rude by being distracted into diving - and spending a lot of hours out in the bay. It was a 2km swim - for which I am now paying. I have chafed two toes raw on the fin. I did succeed in spearing a huge flathed - which got away, and zebra which didn't. James got a leatherjacket and a small flathead. We saw some really large bream, and trevally. All-in-all a very good father-son session, and I hope our hosts forgive us.

Our Melbourne (for now) dwelling friends are away, and we have the loan of their vehicle while ours gets some fixing done - expensive, slow fixing. It's a minibus - as an ex South African I find driving it (back from the airport yesterday) makes me feel I should be playing Boom boom noise instead of dulcet classic music.

The proofs for CRAWLSPACE AND OTHER STORIES are done, back with Eric, so the Kindle version of that (which has the novella prequel to Rats Bats and Vats in it, and the Crawlspace novelette - in the same universe - that I want to write a whole book on, if it is popular enough).

And now, we return to Dog and Dragon. Going to be all hands to the pumps for the next few weeks. B has gone off to a Board Games evening without me.

Smokey and the bandits

A picture from the New year barbeque, cooking muttonbirds. We got our licence renewal notices today. We'll just get one, as 25 muttonbirds is plenty.
Chuckle. You know you have a low profile here when the local cop wanders down onto the warf and asks you if you're a tourist. We've been here longer than he has. Actually I would think we're quite well known, just not at the sports club or pub.

spearfishing

In between the time of contemplating Spriggans and pictsies for the current book, we draw closer to James going back. Pads is already in South Africa, back at Uni. This morning we proved you can mome a lot with a crowbar and a hi-lift jack - even a small container. Miricle-of-miricles we found John-the juggler's shop open when we went to get petrol, so I was finally able to buy youth size wetsuit for a friend. Now I have wetsuit... all I need is strong kite, and I can fly it to Tassie.

Then, after lunch, as his time with us grows few, James and I went off for a dive. The first spot had decent size breaking waves (most unusual here) and a strong current and will not be visited in a big hurry again, unless the easterly blows. Then we went back to Trousers point bay and had a glorious dive along the edge, with the water shivered with enorous shoals of fry, and even yours truly succeeding in shooting zebrafish and Magpie perch and leatherjacket. At one stage I was surrounded by Garfish - which were lots of fun to see, but impossible to shoot. I also shot the largest crab I have seen on the island - not vast by crab standards but I have been needing crabs for cooking, and I thought I might lose it if I swam down and tried to catch it by hand. I also had a fit of concience having had several fish come off the spear. I have no problem killing fish, but I dislike injuring them and not doing a clean job. I think I may have to get a single-prong spear with a bigger barb.

And thus, having caught our fish, we came gallumphing home. B had gone to the CWA dinner and it was just J and I having a seafood dinner. I've gutted several of the fish through the back - leaving the belly intact, for barbeque. It's obviously weird to the locals, by the looks I got.

Australia Day

Yesterday was Australia day, and the island had its get together at Yellow beach. It was rather different to last year... in that last year we knew almost no-one and this year we knew almost everyone. Last year I was bright and eager to talk to everyone, and this year I was so tired I could barely talk to my friends.

In the morning we'd gone to dive where I'd seen some scallop shells washed up, last year. I only saw one there this year and it was old. The season is closed but I want to locate them. The area proved rather dull, thick seagrass, sand, prawn holes, a myriad little fry (in their billions) until in the thick sea-grass I spotted a scallop... well, the fan-pattern. I swam down to pick it up... touched it... and the flathead whose pectoral I had just touched took off like a ballistic missile. So did I, vertical lift off above the water. Anyway, the next dodgy thing I saw - about 4 metres down was a bit of kelp - in the seagrass. I prodded that with a spear and the ray swam off.

Then we had a coffee at Max's, made an early stop in at the Australia day do, where the Lions were hard at work, organising a vast tea, and went off to go waterski-ing... on the sea.

Now, here is the truth. I cannot waterski. I can do the splits, cartwheel, get liters of water up my nose, and try again, and again and again with determined stubborness, but not ski. I was just getting up and losing it. James got a bit further and managed to stand for about half a minute... really skiing. One day. Anyway, it was fun, even if we got to the Australia day thing again too late for the races (phew) and the beach cricket (which james likes). But there is no finer place for an Australia day celebration than Flinders island, I conclude, especially if you are a kid. Everyone looks out for the kids - most of them know the kids. It was just so different to the average beach in South Africa (where you have to watch your child every second).

I am as a result today very very stiff and rather bruised.

A fish on a bicycle -no something more implausible

A terrible sight was seen on the streets of Whitemark, an apparition to make your blood freeze... or at least make you run for cover. Yes, yours truly on a bicycle. These things are not my metier, but I decided that as we live two km from town, and there was a bicycle for $10 for sale at a garage sale... James's very smart mountain bike is here, but 1)it's his, 2)it's very tall... so I thought this might work and save fuel. It's been about 12 years since I last got onto a bicycle and that was not much fun. (on the beach riding back to my son with an asthma attack.) This is a road bicycle, and I was rather wary... and wobbly. But although I put long sleeves and long trousers on, gravel rash did not happen. So now we'll just have to work at a little more distance and maybe slightly less arthritic tortoise speed (my son informed me I got up to 15 km an hour...)

The Bare Hands Gang

Talk of killing what we are willing to eat... A while back I happened to read a diatribe by hardcore vegetarian about how humans were not evolved to eat meat because we were such puny-bodied animals we could never run down a buck and had no teeth to kill it with. She was a holy mission to tell us meat-eaters how evolutionarily deviant we were...

Now, your choice of diet... is your choice. If you want to live on miricle whip and coke, good-o, fine by me. If you are trying to raise your kids on it I might just be forced to do something about it, but sensible, careful, thinking vegetarians can nourish their kids just fine (it just takes a bit more thought, and it always should take some).

But humans are omnivores. And quite frankly a bit of meat does us good from the iron and vitamin D point of view, besides the fact that our gastro-intestinal tract seems well adapted to it. Anyway, she's wrong. Besides the fact that as tool using animals (almost inevitably using tools for food aquisition) humans are not unique (birds crack snails on specific stones, use twigs to fish for bugs to name two examples - and simians throw things, and use sticks to 'fish' for things.) we do hunt -- quite effectively at times -- for animals with nothing but our hands. She - city bred and supermarket fed vegetarian - just assumed that 'prey' was always a nice steak producing size critter. It probably wasn't a lot of the time, back in Africa when our shared ancestors were picking fleas (or salt) off each other. It was small creatures. Lizards. Fieldmice - find a nest and they're easy. Baby birds (muttonbirds are still a case of this). Frogs. Fish. Yes, I have caught them with my hands. And then there is the advantage of running and hunting in a communicating pack. Apparently a bunch of kids here used to run down (sans weapons - barring maybe a pen-knife or a stick picked up from the bush) wallaby for their tea.

And that, of course, is without thinking of the sessile invertebrattes - or invertebrates in general - oysters might need a rock or a fire to open, but black mussels you can stand on, if you have no fire or rock. Locusts and termites are still big parts of many traditional diets. I read the Maya used to eat rafts of mosquito larvae. And crabs, prawns, crayfish, and octopus are all things you can catch barehanded. Sometimes you get hurt doing it, but it's not that difficult.

I'm always a little taken aback by demands to permit traditional hunting - be it of whales or seals or abalone... that somehow involves a 4x4, or a glass-fibre boat with an outboard, and a rifle or aqualungs. Not that I oppose traditional hunting/gathering, or even non-traditional hunting and gathering - we're adaptable creatures and we learned new ways to hunt all the time. I believe it is a vital way of getting back to what we are, to understand the value and price (both morally and in effort) of food. But I feel if anyone wants traditional hunting/gathering rights in excess to those granted to anyone else, should do the entire number - from making the boat and spear to dressing in the traditional way for it. I would love to do this myself, to learn. I suspect from the personal moral point of view, once I had learned, I'd still end up choosing a modern piece of kit to do the job quickly, cleanly and efficiently. But then, if I was passing the rules I'd have said these are size and bag limits etc, but "any food you can gather, stark naked, with no mechanical or manufactued by a third party means of access or tools is fair game, provided you eat it in one sitting, there" because that is the human tradition.

But then I have always been a little odd.
Well. Very odd.

So the fireys cricket was cancelled due to inclement weather, We have battled to get the collection CRAWLSPACE AND OTHER STORIES onto B's Sony reader, and Eric and I are trying to settle on a cover, we've had pleasant barbie despite the weather... and I am for bed.