I recently wrote an essay on the theme of "Home" for the 40th anniversary issue of the Australian Owner Builder magazine. Yesterday the hard copies arrived and I read the finished product, and was relieved that it read just fine, even (or especially? ) after Lynda pulled out all my rants about neoliberalism and extant politicians named-by-names etc (which I knew she was going to do)! It's really nice to be edited by someone who can pull out the ranting you automatically do from the bottom of a deep well so that you still end up with something that does speak outside the normal conventions of what we do and don't talk about, and that does still communicate the core things you felt you needed to communicate - and it's seamless, not at all like a Swiss cheese, so you wouldn't know she pulled out nearly 2,000 words in the process.   

Poor Lynda.    Mostly over the past two years I've been writing things that she didn't need to chainsaw down, but home is such a big topic, not just about shelter (or, misguidedly, about investment or status  ), but about love and creativity and joy and relationships and communities and the very planet, and sadly, the forces of greed, ignorance, bureaucracy, corruption and evil which destroy those things. The more articles on these matters I read beforehand just to bring myself up to current developments, the more irate I got, until I sat down to write...

Loved the image she chose from the potential pool I floated by her, to go with this essay:


by Ilkka Jukarainen, on Flickr

It's still pretty clear from what's in print that the status quo needs to be rocked on a whole number of levels, and I am impressed that she let my assertion that current national energy star ratings are like a C-grade high school physics project stand - well yes, it's no exaggeration, because it actually fails the houses that have the lowest energy consumption in Australia, like the ones the ABC's Background Briefing visited in Canberra in 2012 - and our own house barely passed, even though running it uses less than 10% of average operational energy inputs (from electricity, direct fossil fuels, wood) into an Australian family home, and apart from four camping-size bottles of cooking gas a year, we're entirely off-grid solar-electric at that, and the vast majority of heating and cooling in our naturally-thermally-comfortable house is just through decent passive-solar design (orientation, thermal mass, insulation, glazing, eave design, etc etc) picking up sun when we need it for warmth, and excluding it in summer, when there's good cross-ventilation etc.

Oh yeah, and Lynda even posted a suggested music playlist at the end of my "Recommended Resources" section, which I'd sent her not expecting that bit to see the light of day, but she emailed me halfway through listening and was enjoying it, and made up a list on the Internet she linked from. And yes, there's three Cure tracks on it, as part of all the ones that were playing in my mind when I was writing that weekend...

... I slept well last night, for once. Felt tired the whole evening, went to bed before 11pm and slept through until 7am...

Luck in misfortune: while my cancellation of the golden / silver wedding led to considerable dissatisfaction (solution not in sight, without bending myself), I was allowed to see my surrogate family today. I love you very much. Don't you want to adopt me? 🇵🇪😉

PS: OMG - she bought three packs of Kl**n*x (probably to remove make-up). 😜

Quote from: MeltingMan on June 09, 2021, 16:52:51PS: OMG - she bought three packs of Kl**n*x (probably to remove make-up). 😜

Maybe she does a lot of crying when you're not looking.    You could buy her a beach towel. 


I'm happy today because Nelly is feeling better after giving us a scare.



She's in the foreground, with offspring Ben behind.

I don't know what she ate but we found her unable to walk properly in the edge of the bushland last night when she didn't come in for bucket o'clock. There was a severe weather warning (again!!!) and it took Brett and me half an hour to shift the 200kg donkey the 100m back around the house to the internal paddocks and the shelter, with one of us pulling at one end and the other pushing, and lots of encouragement. She was starving hungry so we fed her some hay after her hard feed, and because she then lay down in a big sand hole outside the shelter I put a rug on her.

A late-night phone call to the emergency line of our usual veterinarian had the duty vet suggesting she might have laminitis, which really freaked me out because it's the middle of winter and she's not obese and she didn't get into a feed bin, and with laminitis you really have to know the cause and eliminate it, or it can conceivably kill them. It was suggested I ring the vet clinic in the morning.

Early morning when I went to check on her she did a fabulous dead donkey impersonation which gave me a scare - lying flat on her side with glazed eyes, and unresponsive to my calls. However, Ben responded to me with a loud bray, which is sort of like a foghorn, and this startled Nelly awake - phew! Not dead, just in deep sleep.

Example of a dead donkey impersonation, starring Don Quixote:



Nelly was definitely not happy. Nobody at the vet clinic could come out before lunchtime and they suggested I ring around to see if anyone else could do it earlier - which is how I contacted Dr Shae from Nullaki, who whipped out to our place after finishing a bit of surgery. I instantly liked her and her approach to the animal and trying to figure out the problem. Like me the night before, she couldn't find evidence of a bounding digital pulse or of pain when pressure-testing her soles, so she listened to her gut sounds and found them too quiet, and had a look at her last batch of droppings. Her hypothesis was that Nelly had a bad belly-ache, at least partially caused by probably not drinking enough the previous day, which had dehydrated her manure and made her uncomfortable - and possibly by eating something unsuitable out in the bushland. She also said because her heart rate wasn't badly elevated and her colour was good, she wasn't particularly worried about her at this stage. I should encourage her to drink (I'd already placed a bucket next to her previous evening but she wasn't that interested) and keep an eye on her.

The vet gave her an IV painkiller and told me donkeys are incredibly sooky when they do eventually get overwhelmed by pain, but that like in humans, gut aches can be really bad without actually being dangerous. But because we didn't know the cause, to call her again if she wasn't up and about next day.

Nelly was up and about in the afternoon, still a bit staggery but determined to do some grazing, so I let her and Ben into our garden, which is where they are spending the night. She's looking better and hopefully will continue to improve.

I'm happy today because after a chaotic week of things being shaken up, it feels like things are finally starting to ease up.

The week started with me losing my phone, with it taking 24hrs before it was found (wet from heavy overnight rain). Thankfully the cover gave it protection and it survived.

Then on Wednesday night there was the biggest storm I've ever seen, with howling winds and trees crashing around the place. Thankfully our house wasn't damaged, though several plants and a small tree on the property didn't survive. About 15mins from me there are many people living up in the hills (where there are many large trees) and lots of properties were damaged (Thankfully no lives lost). From hearing people talk about it on the news it sounded like a terrifying experience, with trees falling all over the place, and an uncertainty where one may fall next.

Driving to work was bizarre yesterday  morning... a cold misty morning, with trees down all over the place (incl across electricity lines), roads blocked, and traffic lights at many major intersection not working (quite scary to navigate).

We lost power and mobile phone reception for 24hrs, with it coming back on this morning.  I don't think I've ever been as happy as I was this morning to turn on a lamp and see the light come on. It's the middle of winter here so with no electricity it meant no heating or warm showers. I feel for the thousands of people who still haven't had their power restored (and the estimate is 2 more days before it's restored).  Add to that here in Melbourne we are in Covid lockdown again, so warm alternative places (e.g libraries, cinemas, gyms, shops etc) are not an option.
Anyway... I feel like I'm going to really appreciate the small comforts this weekend (being in a warm and safe place).

I'm glad Nelly is feeling better Sue!

Sounds like truly awful weather, @word_on_a_wing! 

Also sounds like some of our weather had enough left in the tank to go east. We had THREE severe weather events with sheep hypothermia alerts in the space of one month and the last one seems to have just hit you. We even had snow on Bluff Knoll and over here that's a rare thing. We had winds of 90-100km/h in some places, but the last front was more sedate, with local winds peaking at 70km/h. At one stage we had 80mm of rain in ONE DAY (a tenth of the annual average) and everything here was waterlogged for a week afterwards.

The really weird thing is that between all this cold, wet, stormy, apocalyptic weather it's been unseasonally warm for this time of year. The past four years here we've just not had average weather - but it does seem we have now come out of our three-year drought.

Nelly went out with the others into the huge area today. She's not exactly well yet, but does seem to be recovering. Or maybe it's the drugs! 

I'm happy today that I'll be able to watch a French Open final in which neither of the participants is a past grand slam winner.    They're both gutsy players and it's great to see them make it this far! One after over 40 attempts at grand slams, one on her first for singles (I think) - after winning at the doubles in several tournaments. I'm happy for both of them and only wish both of them could win!

A friend drew my attention to this story and made my day. 

Tired and happy today about my excursion yesterday, which included castle ruins and lots more (here is a pic of castle Niederhaus):

I am almost happy that England's team won the footie match against German team. 
Well I met my relatives for watching it on telly together and I got a beer and pizza for free, so who am I to complain? 

SUNSHINE AND SEASHORE

I'm super happy that we got a lovely day of sun and seaside walking to start off the weekend, in the middle of what is turning into a long, bleak winter. It was like an unexpected bubble of golden light and happiness in a sea of grey.

Here on Western Australia's South Coast, we've had three years of drought (only 50-60% of normal annual rainfall) followed by one of the wettest winters on record - our region has literally been drowning for the last two months and large areas are affected by flooding, waterlogging, soil erosion, structural and landscape damage. There's been a severe weather warning with sheep hypothermia alert at least once a week - normally we would get that once or twice a month in winter - and we've been regularly lashed with gale-force winds, sleet, and never-ending downpours. We live on a smallholding and I've been walking everywhere in gumboots for weeks. It was wet last weekend and it's forecast to be wet again later this weekend and for most of next week. Just what we need - more rain when the whole place is like a giant bog.

We made a pact that if we got a bright sunny day on one of our days off, we'd go somewhere we'd never been and make a day out of it, and that's exactly what happened. Having walked the Bibbulmun track from Albany to Denmark in day-walk sections several times over now, we bought track maps for Denmark to Walpole and north to Pemberton and the inland Karri forests, so we can systematically walk another 150km or so of the famous track in sections over the next couple of years. We got a good start to this fitness and sanity project by doing a 25km walk from Parry Beach to Boat Harbour and back in May - I posted some photos of the spectacular, pristine coastal scenery in this thread at the time.

West of Boat Harbour is a little settlement called Peaceful Bay which we'd never been to before, and that's despite of the fact I've lived and walked on the South Coast for decades. It's simply such a vast place that you can keep yourself busy just climbing every Stirlings and Porongurups peak every year and doing the dozens of short and day walks in the Albany-Denmark region over again. But the Bibbulmun track has got to be the best way to see the coastline from Albany to Walpole, properly, on foot and totally immersed.

We'd warmed up for this big day out by doing a 10km hilly section locally on the Bibbulmun east of Bornholm on Thursday afternoon, and the hike we planned around Peaceful Bay was to go west around the seashore for about 7km and then shortcut back to the village via a 4WD track - about the same distance.

Fabulous outing. We started on the town swimming beach:



The end of that beach was a rocky cove:



From there on, we walked through a succession of beaches separated by dunes and rocky points. So this is the second beach, and you can see the next "up-and-over" at the end of it already:



Our dog loves to chase waves; here's a nice photo of that:



The geology of the Peaceful Bay area is mixed and diverse: Ancient granite, more recent intrusions of basalt etc, quartz veins, limestone, all creating a diverse and spectacular seascape:







The South Coast has a lot of very white, fine-grained icing-sugar beaches from sand made of granite. On this walk, we also found cream-coloured beaches because of underlying limestone geology and the erosion of that. This particular little beach had much of its sand made of broken-down seashells:



We kept on following the shoreline, walking beaches and track...





The coastline in the distance behind Brett has the huge sand dunes behind Quarram Beach (we've not been there yet) to the left, and then the 12.5km Boat Harbour to Parry Beach stretch we did that return walk on in May, to the right of the photo.









From here, the climbs became more serious as we got into more elevated coastline:







Look closely at the next photo - there's two kangaroos in it. They were less than 10m from the track and quite unconcerned with us as long as we kept walking!



The track got increasingly elevated, and there were quite a few sculptural-looking rocks around.



This is the coastline west towards Rame Head and Conspicuous Cliff.



Quick snack stop - one thing I do quite religiously from two hours into a walk, to keep energy levels up...



More rock pools, and crabs!





A rounded-rocks shoreline:



Imagine where this log came from, and how much power the sea has to toss it up on the shore like this:



This was entering a zone called The Gap:



There was a beach in this cove, at the end of which we sat down to eat and drink, before taking the 4WD track from there to shortcut back to Peaceful Bay village.



By this time my feet were feeling the walk, and Brett produced a pair of headphones from his backpack and invited me to listen to the music on his iPod, which I'd carried to take photos. I don't normally do this, but I tell you what, a cover of "Blue Monday" by an outfit by the name of Orgy sure woke me up, and we made the 2.something km back in no time, despite the deep sand...



Peaceful Bay reminds me of a cross between Tasmania's Dootown and the South Coast's Windy Harbour - little informal villages of holiday houses, not built to suburban specifications - with a quirky feel to them.





Really good day out - and looking forward to more hitherto unexplored tracks, hopefully within the next fortnight.

To see all the photos and do a sort of "vicarious tour" just click on any of them to go to the Flickr photostream.

STORMY WALKING

The amount of rain we are getting is ridiculous - five fronts in one week, three of them associated with severe weather warnings. Well dammit, we'd had enough of being indoors and yesterday started the weekend by going out out to walk 15km (Muttonbird to Grasmere Wind Farm End return) as one of those fronts was approaching.

It felt so good to stretch our legs we walked merrily for three hours, through bursts of sun alternating with downpours and even sleet. What never stopped was the wind, which turned the 11 degree Celsius maximum into near-freezing due to wind chill. They don't call'em the Roaring Forties for nothing...

The secret was to walk fast, and I'd had coffee, which tends to hypercharge me.

This is a sort of natural Stonehenge...there's a few of them around the coast:



Views west to Grasmere and Albany Wind Farm...



A burst of sun... (...and spot the dog, who was ecstatic after mostly being on the sofa for two days...)



The heathland is starting to flower:



This is a Holly-Leaf Banksia:



Grasmere / Albany Wind Farm:



Happy dog, who can't understand why we're not always driving somewhere to go for a walk and then coming home to eat and collapse on the sofa (her favourite type of day):



Between coffee before walking, thermal mountain pants, a rainproof breathable jacket and walking fast all the way, I wasn't too hot or cold:



Turning around on reaching the first Grasmere turbine, to return home:



Pretty spectacular cliffs, and Torbay in the background:



On the way back, we side-tracked to a campsite to shelter from a burst of sleet.



Of course, when we got to the hut the sleet stopped. We decided to go again a couple of minutes later, and within a minute, sleet was coming down at about a 45 degree angle on gales. The storm clouds were pretty impressive:



As usual, to see the full set go to the Flickr page by clicking on any photo...

... it is nice to get on with the neighbours!
On Sunday I went for a little walk and met a neighbour (I don't see often, there are hedges in the way), so we chatted shortly.
Today I had something to do outside near the street, other neighbours (lady & her kid, over on the other side of a crossing) were also out, I didn't know whether they had seen me, when suddenly I heard "hello neighbour", so I said "hello" as well and later even went over to chat a bit.
They are kinda "new" (moved in last year), it was nice to finally "really" meet them.

Quote from: Ulrich on July 12, 2021, 19:44:59... it is nice to get on with the neighbours!
On Sunday I went for a little walk and met a neighbour (I don't see often, there are hedges in the way), so we chatted shortly.
Today I had something to do outside near the street, other neighbours (lady & her kid, over on the other side of a crossing) were also out, I didn't know whether they had seen me, when suddenly I heard "hello neighbour", so I said "hello" as well and later even went over to chat a bit.
They are kinda "new" (moved in last year), it was nice to finally "really" meet them.

It's very nice if you can get a good neighbourhood atmosphere going by being friendly and considerate. One of the big, very common problems with urbanised modern Westerners is a lack of local community, and a lot of neighbours are strangers to each other. I noticed this more in Australia than in continental Europe - we're more urbanised here and people move around a lot for work, resulting in a fair bit of disconnectedness and social instability. I thought London was very similar with that problem, from my short-ish experience working and living there in the 90s - partly an Anglo thing I think, but then rural communities both in the UK and Australia can be much better that way (though don't have to be, especially if you look different from the locals etc).

Best place I lived socially was a little community in the foothills of the Alps in Italy - terraced smallholdings, olive trees, everyone growing their own F&V and keeping goats, rabbits etc. I was a kid and in Italy, the whole village raises the child, so I had amazingly nice experiences with neighbours, adults and children alike. It was like everyone was your uncle, aunt, brother, sister, grandparent, and they just included you and showed an interest and shared food with you and taught you things. Wonderful feeling - though the very idea makes Brett, who's very Anglo, shudder! 

I'm happy today because Brett has two and a half weeks off a week from now, and we're both going to have a proper break with lots of hiking, and minimal work! 

Had an impromptu date with @hippiecat that went really well. 😎
We've known each other for a long time, to be honest. Here she is relatively new.