Reef Shoes

 We brought back some new water shoes from Hervey Bay last week so I gave them a test at Williamstown along with the Kogan video camera.   I think this camera will work well enough when we get to some real reef swimming.  I made several minutes of video without any issues. Last time it seemed to record short clips only but that must have been me.  The shoes were good, providing reasonable grip but you still have to think about placing your feet on wet rocks. The idea, when we get to Fitzroy Island later in Winter, is to carry these shoes in a net bag across the back while swimming. Then you can emerge onto a different beach say 1 km down the coast and walk back with foot coverage.  Simples!

Estelle gets excited

Estelle has had some foggy head cold sleeps of late but she was full of beans this morning.  We met James at the coffee shop and Estelle was at her full on running best.  This morning went well with a schedule of panadol and ibuprofen and she ate all her lunch for good measure.  With a full tummy and a few books being read she started to nod off. Hooray!  In between, it was kitchen play, puzzle play and train set play.  Now we will have to do it all again this afternoon.

raspberry fingers

 

Lumber Jack

 More like tree root Jack. The Williamstown Village here is having a huge repainting job done which is going to take 6 months. They have started with the main centre and will spread outwards, so it will be some months before they get to us on the outskirts.  Part of getting access to our walls is removing some foliage. We removed more than foliage, with four largish bushes and a tree all cut down and dugout. It was the last tree that did me in, 30 mins for the four bushes and 90 mins for the tree. This one had numerous roots, all needing to be cut to get to the main bole root which got chopped with a dull matock type blade.  My fingers are going to take a few days to settle after that lot.  

Had to root around for quite a while

Asher On Tap

 We had a belated Mother's Day gathering or was it more likely a daughters day gathering yesterday.  There were sausage rolls and chocolate brownies and plenty of kids to eat them.  Estelle got a late birthday present but we had brought some whale books from Hervey Bay so everyone got something.  Asher was demonstrating her new tap shoes and Grandpa gave us the old school version of making tap shoes by nailing coins to the bottom.  Always recycling way back then.

Pants on Fire

 The number of people whom I personally know and have also written books, is growing all the time. I am not sure if it's because I move thru intellectual circles or that it's getting easier to publish books.  Writing a book is hard work and an autobiography would be even harder, especially if it has the confessions, revelations and accusations that this one has.  Much of this story I saw first hand. If I was looking for this one in a book store, I think it would be somewhere between the self help and the religion sections.  Maybe the one this book helps the most is the author as there is a satisfaction about getting it off your chest.

Autumnal Bliss

 We went to the Providence tree and the whole gang were there being a Saturday morning.  There was signage out, there was garden plot reshaping, there was marshalling of resources and enhanced productivity.  We arrived with 15 kilos of olives and what a reception.  So you guys are the mystery olive droppers.  We have to get your photo and we have to announce that new produce has arrived via our facebook page.  Apparently I was supposed to do this last time but I spurn Facebook.  So Debbie joined us up to the facebook coop and the proper announcements have been sent.  Phew!  We wandered down to the foreshore for  a leisurely coffee by the Bay, even sitting outside in the morning Sun.  At least we know now that the olive picking affort was well worth it, as four customers were already planning olive bottling sessions.

Coffee by the Bay

Oil Barons

 There is a group of locals in Geelong calling themselves the Oil Barons, Olive Oil that is.  There are groups in Melbourne doing a similar service ie gathering odds and ends of disparate olives together into one large vat, an oil coop as it were.  They have three locations around Geelong however with only a 2 hour window on one day only, there are no more vacant slots available.  I will have to think abot this as it means upto 50kg of olives will need to be picked late and also refrigerated for up to a week before weigh in.  I now have another 25kg of olives that I can't find a home for.  There are about 20 berries left at the very top that I can't reach.  So this year has been the best haul at 50kg and the tree is now bare.  

hard to get perspective from this photo

Warrior's Apprentice

 This series of books continues with Miles now 17 and he starts to make a name for himself even though he was born into the upper classes of society and government. He has an empediment to normal physical military training and when this fails, it is going to be brains over brawn for him. I am coming to the end of my Hugo historical stockpile.  I have two books left unread, both in this series. There are always the new Hugo winners going forward each year or there is the dedicated SciFi private library I could join, with thousands of titles . They are located in Sydney Rd, not exactly convenient.

Beach Check No 593

There have been two calmish days now so not having checked the beach for at least two weeks, I went across with the trusty rubbish bag.  There have not been many customers there, most likely dog walkers. There was one poo bag for me but generally fairly clean, except for the usual rope and small plastics. The odd item was a lethal looking implement maybe some sort of fish pliers.  I also spent another hour in the olive tree for a 5kg haul of berries. There is plenty of other produce like heaps of lemons and still lots of strawberries but there is no Sunshine at all back there now.  Lastly the orchid spikes have increased to a grand total of 18 as there is growth out of every pot in both courtyards.

maybe for plucking fish hooks out of hooked fish

Arboreal Pursuits

 It is a calmer day so far so I decided to spend some more time in the olive tree. Large deliveries have been made already but there are still plenty of berries on the tree.  It seems that once Autumn has arrived the olives will not get any bigger but they will ripen no matter what size they are. So I am not being as choosy with this lot. Anythng I can reach I am picking. The total for an hour or so was 5 kilograms this morning.  The trick is to get a good purchase and is similar to rock climbing, always have three points anchored before you move a fourth. 

5 kgs

What do you get when you cross a banana with a grape?

 Sultananas!  That is one of Evie's favourite eatments.  English seems to have gone out the window of late.  And these days, if Charlie sees you eating then he has to have some too and he is already a big boy.  I have been getting thru some more video, this time off of the phone.  I held my phone vertical for a video of Evie eg a video in portrait mode.  I stopped this one and turned the phone for landscape mode to continue the filming.  After some turning, editing and cutting you wouldn't even know that portrait has been married to landscape. Voila!

Urangan Tides

 We have done the cleanup and got some washing done even though it was raining. I also vacuumed the suitcases as there was a lot of sand in there.  If it's raining outside, it's good video editing time and the subject is also rain, lots of it.  It will take a couple of days to sort thru this stuff.   As we were driving along the other day, a sign asked us what did Petrichor mean and a bit further along another said 'It's the smell of rain'.  Those banana benders!!  So far I have two clips here from Hervey Bay, a wet one and a sunny one.   

Another Day Another Airport

 We have an hour to fill here at Maroochydore but the internet is very slow. The weather was chaotic storms for the first two days but the last five days have been nothing but Blue with temperatures at 23 and 24°.  We will be arriving in the dark which will be tricky to find the car.  I recommend the Apex car rentals here. They are a bit cheaper as they are offsite, $377 for seven days car rental.  We filled the tank twice in driving to Hervey Bay. We found plenty to do even without going across to Fraser Island.

Balcony Clancy's

 Brendon & Cathie have arrived and we had an impromtu guitar show for Evie on the phone as she was feeling a bit down with a temperature problem. Old MacDonald was a winner which finally cracked a smile.  We are going to walk across the way now to a restaurant dinner. We have had a few drinks on the balcony so walking is a good option.  

Mangroves

We drove down to the Two Rivers area for a riverside walk into the mangroves.  The walk starts at the end of the road which is also where the Fraser Island car ferry leaves from. We have been to this spot before, maybe 2005, when we hired a jeep to go across and do some sand driving.  The trail is only a short one but if you want a mud bath then this is the spot. 

Torquay

 We were in the car again today but did not travel too far. There are numerous beaches along the way to Point Vernon but it is only 15km along. There are striated rock formations there folded like cardboard.  For a while we thought there was a wrecked boat but it was just the rocks.  We moved along to Torquay for lunch and at last used the umbrella that I carried in my luggage. The tide does not recede as far here. We went into the Pirate's Cave (Trash & Treasure) and got a few children's books as well as a new pair of reef boots each as the old ones are worn out. 

rock hull ?

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Torquay

War of the World's tripod legs

Urangan Pier

Back in the day this was a longer working pier where coal, sugar and timber were being exported. Now the tourists and fishermen just wander up and back. The tides are wide here. We explored the sand flats for over an hour and the soldier crabs are out there in the thousands.  We also came back to the main shore to get up onto the pier.  The breeze out there was strong so we changed the lunch idea to sitting on the foreshore rather than out on the pier.  The distances were tricky. We have walked 20000 steps today and the pier itself is 800m long in its shortened version.

far

close

low tide patterns

Morning Walk

The Sun is out this morning so we wandered along the beach to see what this building was down the way. One half is an aquarium and the other side is a breakfast/lunch venue.  Breakfast doesn't seem to be on until at least 9:00am, as the clocks are on retirement time around here.  We have been spying dolphins off the balcony here and there are meant to be whales out there as well but have not seen any of those.  Today we will be walking into the village area and the pier.

evening view with swimmers

morning view of apartment

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Waterfall Creek

If we had known the driving part was 5 hours we most likely would not have tried this day trip.  The tourism office guy assured the roads were good, just a few repairs along the way.  He said three hours tops. We did stop for morning tea at Childers. This is an historic town and the picture theatre still works the way it used to.  We brought drinks and lunch with us and we were the only ones to do this out of the three groups we saw there.  The rain yesterday, did make for a better spectacle of these rock pools.  I only went into the shallower ones as the big pools were dark but most likely swimable. I am typing this from our deck and I can see Fraser Island just across the way, as well a catamaran and a fishing trawler heading out.

more like cascades creek

Hervey Bay

 We have made it to the Mantra Great Sandy Straits.  It was a three hour drive and completely rain soaked all the way with huge squalls and beating rain.  The forecast says more of the same tomorrow but hopefully by the end of the day it should clear up.  We think this apartment might be one of those owner rental type of deals but we do have a good balcony looking over the water and the beach just down the way. The main issue tomorrow is that the waterfall I wanted has problems with the dirt roads becoming impassable.  We have booked a spot at the marina steak house for 6:30pm and we are about to walk across there now.

Sunshine Coast ?

from the balcony

The Home Shop

No we haven't started our drive yet but amazingly I have some time now while Charlie is at swimming and Evie is at Day Care.  That does not mean it isn't busy as there is a new fridge coming this morning so we are going to clear out the old one having just gone to get bags of ice.  We also need to repack as our stuff has been spreadout and we cannot leave anything as the flights leave from Maroochydore not Brisbane.  Evie was selling lots of things for breakfast, including eggs, milk and coffee so we are all full up.

Mother's Day

 We packed up two kids into their car seats and squeezed Debbie inbetween both of those seats, with Laura and I in the front. Good thing she is skinny.  We went off to the Sandgate beach/park/adventure playground.  There was rain around and storms forecast but we went anyway. The picnic on the blanket was mostly fruit but with a coffee and babycino from across the road.  We have frequented this area lots of times including meals at the nearby Full Moon Hotel.  Evie got to paddle in the water and make some sand castles. The Mum's got some rest but not much.

Travel Day

 This travelling around by myself is a bit different. Debbie does it all the time but I cannot remember the last time I got on a plane without anyone else travelling with me.  It would have been when I was working as there were a few conferences and interstate jobs back then.  At least there are no plane issues so far as we have had two cancelled flights in a row previously. I have probably mozzed myself now.  This post is a bit of a time filler. Everyone else sitting here is typing on something or other.  

Telegrams

 I opened an Old Gold chocolates box and there was a roll of telegrams inside.  Now for those who are only digitally inclined, teleograms were your fast way to get a message thru on the same day.  You still had to queue up at the post office, not just whip out your phone and send an SMS.   These were all sent on the 31st Jan 1953.  I am not sure how some of them are written and some are typed.  To scan or not to scan?  I am digitising all the photos so what's another 23 files.  Where are these people now?  eg Mr & Mrs Tudor??

Beach Clean No146

 The Sun has arrived for the first time in 5 days.  You never know what could wash up in that time and it has been over a week since my last beachcomb.  The beach shape at the far end has changed with a gouged out section.  The wrack is solid at both ends now and in places gets too wet to go and retrieve that elusive paper wrapper.  Otherwise the conditions were good for a slow meander, paying attention to the smallest bright colours that aren't supposed to be there. Such as a red biro cap and a red broken bucket with a few matching pieces along the way.  Just a few butts this time and only one piece of rope. 

Clean Beach

Barrayar

 I am onto my last stash of Hugo winners. There are three winning novels out of a long lineup of volumes in this mega saga.  The author must spend weeks in her made up world before another volume gets added to the story.  Barrayar is third book in the series so I have numbers  3, 4 and 5 all Hugo winners.  The hero is born in book 3 and gets a bit older in each subsequent volume. Sounds like a certain wizard that everyone knows.  These guys are all medieval in title but they also have space ships.

Post Ride

 The Sun came out in the afternoon and I was looking for an excuse to get outside when I found two messages outside the door. One was a large heavy box of stamps from an auction and the other was a card saying "parcel not deliverd pick it up at the PO".  So one was left here and the other one wasn't. Not sure if it was this morning or when I was at the dentist yesterday.  PS the BUPA payments we have been making for a lifetime are now starting to cover most of the dental bills. At Last!  I went for a ride into the PO and the other parcel was more stamps but only a small envelope.  I have had a quick look in the large box and what caught my eye was what they described as "a large collection of Olympic stamps".  I figured there would be a lot of bicycles amongst them however it turns out there were 50 copies each of the same 70 stamps and just two featuring cycle sports.  The rest of the box should be better.

3500 of them

Negatives

 I got out one packet of the negatives which was an old Kodak envelope that opened into two pockets. Both sides had a wad of negatives. Is that the cumulative name for many negatives? It was more like a wallet hence wad of negatives.  When the final tally of photos comes due there is going to be some duplication, as when I scanned the first two negs, one I had seen before and the other I have not.  So in case something is missed I am doing them all as they turn up.  There was another in there featuring a bike ride. Who would have thought.

such negativity

I can only see two bikes

Ugg Day

 I just had to get out the Ugg boots this morning as I made the mistake of having cold feet when I went to bed last night.  It has been hailing on and off today. The mini heaters are working ok so far and if they stave off todays 12° maximum then that will prove it.  Any one who made it to Brisbane this week despite more flioght cancellations, has timed it well to escape this blast.  I retrieved one box of stamps and three boxes of photos from Willie yesterday, as I had run out of both here at Clifton Springs.  The photo boxes are large and inside one was a shoe box. That box seems to be mostly negatives. I think it might take a month just to get thru the shoebox.  One of the envelopes said Debbie & Neil's wedding but inside were strips of negatives which I have never seen anything the like of.  They are tiny, maybe 10 mm x 20mm with no way to hold them still so I just weighted them down, which worked OK.

A Delivery of Olives

We haven't been to Willie for a few weeks and as soon as we walked thru the kitchen area the floor was covered in water from a leaking dishwasher. We had this looked at months ago and the techos declared it was working and  "no fault found".  That is a line I used years ago but now we have to get them back.  The Taylors also came over to pick up the olives.  Now they have a good 12kg to play with. It was also a good chance to go across the park to the Thai restuarant. It is a Thai wife and a Spanish husband running things.  The food was a bit spicy.  We have only one left to try out which is Greek. It looks more like a take away though.

12 Spikes

 When you open the backdoor now the orchids are hard to miss and they are not even in bloom yet. There are twelve spikes from 6 different pots this year. This is the best result we have had at Clifton Springs.  There may be more hidden in there somewhere. You can't pick them out easily from the photo but when the blooms come it should be quite a sight.  We have been cleaning up for a quick trip to Willie before Debbie flies tomorrow. I often forget that the strawbs are still coming and since I sprayed a nest of some bug or other, there has been a steady supply. It seems to be coming to an end now as there is only one plant left with fruit growing.

Pure Work Flow

There have been a few deadlines lately on the Pure Bookkeeping front. Debbie was up at 5:00am for a North American launch of the new Work Flow Management tool.  On this occasion software has been  written to compete with other tools out there that promote the flow of steps, to get the bookkeeping done, in the right order with documentation.  This was 18 tough months in the making. Our customers can now use Pure Work Flow as incorporated in the Pure Bookkeeping System, instead of paying extra for something like Asana or ClickUp.  The Australian licencees have been testing this for some months so it should go smoothly for those Canadians.

It's a gas gas gas

 Our gas bills are the ones that have rocketed.  We have plenty of natural gas but price increases are mostly forced up to get us off it.  Today is cold but we have not turned on the gas heating. It is the heating that costs us, so we are going to try small electric heaters near our desks during the day.  We will confine gas usage to hot water and cooking. Williamstown does not have gas bills so there is no issue there.  Years ago it was the electric radiators that used all the power and sent the bills up.  In a 100 yars time we will be going back to use that natural gas or maybe the Chinese will just take it.

Duty Stamps

 I have been mostly inside today except for a trip to the supermarket and now a weather alert has come up on my screen, as very black clouds are piling up out my window. It was 10:30am and an announcement came over the intercom that the Coles quiet hour was starting. What the?  Sure enough half the lights went out and the Coles radio channel was turned off and an eerie silence was all that was left. Most people seemed to be tiptoeing after that.  

I have often found duty stamps from the colonial period but could never value them as they don't rate much of a mention in catalogues.  I have found an online resource that has info about them and they can be just as valuable as postage stamps.  They look like stamps, you lick em and stick em like stamps but they have the words duty not postage.  It seems the courts are sticklers for official documents, so duty stamps were invented to be placed on all sorts of documents relating to production, transport and retailing of both farming and manufactured goods.  

This is the oldest I have from 1867 value $12

This is the most valued at $60

This one is from WA  printed in 1904. Mint condition $30

New Path

 A new path is being built in the reserve East of us at Beacon Point. We usually walk West towards the Dell most of the time.  There is a small beach in this Easterly direction which is currently choked with wrack.  The new path is meant to give beach access for the streets above the reserve.  The path will not be extending as far as our place but its not much of a beach access unless they are going to improve the steep path down and clear the wrack as well.  Its May Day and maybe yesterday was the last beach day.

not a breath of breeze yesterday

It will be fully concreted