Brown Queen

 I have been working my way thru a stack of 58 pages of hinged stamps that came from a dealer. If a dealer is still sticking stamps to a sheet with hinges then you know he has been retired for at least 50 yar and these pages have been sitting around for that long as well. These are high quality stamps and mostly British Empire.  It has taken me about 8 weeks but I was coming to the end of this lot with only a few pages to go and there it was in the middle of the page, not a penny black, but a Penny Brown. This is the second oldest stamp in the world, being printed in 1841, one year after the penny blacks. This stamp is not all that rare, as there are a few around but it is old and worth $62.  I selected around 1000 of the 3000 stamps available for inclusion in my collection and a large proportion were printed in the 1800's and all of them expensive.  

imperforate

Gone in 60 seconds

 There was one other issue I missed in yesterday's wind which is the tallest orchid spike we have been patiently coaxing along.  It was not snapped off but completely bent over backwards. I have done some rewiring support so at least it is straight at the moment.  Today's other win was the successful removal of our faithful dining table which must be at least 35 yar old. It gave good service and was repaired a few times and also reupholstered as well.  These guys were fast, no inspections, no objections just loaded up and were gone.  The council said they would chop it up in the back of their garbage crusher if you called them to take it.

This story has been officially tabled

White waves to prove the Sun is back

Southerly Buster

 I have heard tell of trees down and some toys blown about the place in Melbourne last night.  I have surveyed the damage here and the only problem was the rain gauge which has been broken from its masthead and finished up in a few pieces.  The original owners put it there so it has lasted along time.  I went down to the beach to see what's what.  The wind was southerly so the beach was quite calm just now and probably missed most of last night's wind as well.  There was a largish tube washed up and a stack of beach grapes as well, also nicknamed Neptune's Necklace.

We never checked this gauge anyway

more likely Neptunes Apricots or more correctly Hormosira Banksii

Sons in the Saddle

 This book is the sequel to the "Kings in Grass Castles" saga of the Durack family.  The first stanza revolves around the grand father of the author and this one around her father.  The outback delights of a harsh life continue for this lot although they make enough money along the way for some world travel including visits to the old country.  Mary Durack intended for this book to cover the period to 1950 with her father's death. However she had to stop at 1920 because there was so much to tell.  Perhaps she should have continued, as the third book to finish it off, never got written.  I tried to track down a way of watching the film made in 1998 but so far I can only find a trailer for the first three minutes of the film on Youtube.

Olive Produce

 I have had picked olives in the fridge for three or four weeks now and they have kept as well as the day I put them in there.  We have finally done the drive to Port Arlington to deliver them to the Produce Tree table. There were a few other items there that might have been artichokes and also squash.  We haven't been there for a year but it now has a book cabinet similar to those other street stalls.  We did not linger as the temperature had dropped suddenly to 7° so we went into the nearby coffee shop. This gave us good views of the new jetty being constructed for the ferry. This will have an undercover walkway and waiting room for the travelers. 

we are having good sunsets of late

I assume this is water proof

jetty expansion

Geelong Tour

I filled the car with cardboard and polystyrene. There wasn't a spare space, it was jammed full.  The recycle centre is in North Geelong, so is an area we had not been before and is very industrial. These places are all the same however the Geelong one is under cover and also has a shop next door where they sell some of the stuff that is brought in.  We decided not to go in but it looked huge.  The seagull paddock was just down the way and is parkland that has been built over an old tip. The engineer building the boardwalk at our beach also built a bridge across the lake here.  Lastly we stopped in Geelong to visit the camera man and found a hotel called The Joker where we had lunch.  The only thing left for today are tax returns, just a year late.

mega skips

the recycle shop

The contemplation grove

was a tip now a lake

 

City View ride

 We got out on the bikes earlier today as the rain had cleared and we were not sure if it was going to return. Along the way a mirage like view of the city opened up. We have seen this type of thing before where Bass Strait oil rigs are projected closer than they are. This time the city had popped up bigger than usual.  We stopped for coffee at the train station van. A car club had also stopped and they made sure everyone within a Km new they were heading off. 

City pop up

Coffee run