Monthly Archives: November 2019

Queensland drought: WILL IT EVER RAIN AGAIN in Qld. and NSW?

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WILL IT EVER RAIN AGAIN?

IS THIS QUEENSLAND DROUGHT THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING?

PHILLIP ADAMS, THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, NOV 23-24 2019: The Gravity Of Water.

HE WRITES, ‘It will take a thousand millimetres to even dent the drought, let alone break it’. I tend to agree with him, invariably. Now you know my politics and philosophy.

A couple of days after reading his article, I had digested the implication of a metre of rain; he’s right, of course. We are unlikely to get a metre, of course. Of course.

On a previous blog under a similar heading I suggested that climate change occurs as a series of steps, not necessarily a gradual slope. I proposed that the tree-cover of any given area may not recover its former health after a prolonged drought, and that many species of vegetation may die out. Seeds sprouting after showers but killed-off in dry soil.

I considered that the the desertification of Australia occurred in this way, from the Centre to the extremities, with tropical and temperate forest retreating after each drought. (By forest I mean trees, not open grassland).

Phillip Adams’ insight: a thousand millimetres of rain, answers a few questions.

Rain after a prolonged Queensland drought does NOT return the situation to normal. Does not replace sub-surface moisture. Rain only instigates a Green Drought. Tree-cover is constantly using deep moisture to survive; the shallow-rooted species (gums, wattles) dry out and die first, but hang on as seedlings, for a while.

When the sub-soil is thoroughly dry, and the deep-rooted species finally die off, they will never return, unless their seeds have Phillip Adams’ metre of rain, in one, long, gentle episode: rain that will penetrate the sub-soil and hold a reservoir to nurture the survival of temperate-forest species.

Hence the drying-out of Australia. A prolonged drought, and there have been many, is not relieved by rain. Neither is it relieved by sudden torrential down-pours, and this is the forecast for the future in Australia, as predicted by the effect of global warming and climate change, and particularly Sudden Stratospheric Warming: fewer and heavier rain-events.

Perhaps the inadvertent but perceptive statement from Adams answers the conundrum of the drying of Australia. In a nutshell, after a prolonged drought, the situation does not return to normal, despite ensuing rain, even good rain. Tree-cover is only maintained by regular rain, dependable rain, whether light or torrential.

Tree-cover is also self-sustaining, to a great extent, barring human interference; artificial destruction (by burning) permanently alters the forest environment, and each fire-event impoverishes both the soil, the species, and the climate.

(For decades I watched the effect of the regular annual burn-offs of Mt Coot-Tha park in Brisbane. The result was a desolation of rotten old trees, no mulch and unviable stunted saplings. A few years of ‘neglect’ enabled straight, healthy sapling to survive with no scars; saplings that would eventually form a healthy forest of shapely trees. Then the burning started again.)

Our climate, long ago, sustained forest coast to coast in Australia, perhaps during the final era of the mega-fauna. The climate no doubt was variable sixty thousand years ago, with floods and droughts, but NOT with fire. Fires were rare and local, and caused only by lightning. Once humanity became widespread in tribes across the continent, and the large grazing species exterminated, and tree-cover regularly and universally burned, the destruction of habitat and consequently of climate, became inevitable.

Fragility is the word. Poke a stick at the environment, and who knows what the result will be. And it’s not just humanity poking the stick: we can’t be to blame for everything…..we haven’t been around that long. It is problematic to blame ourselves for global warming, but very possible. The climate as we think we know it has had many many drastic changes long before humanity existed. The effects of CO2 and its depletion, creation of oxygen, the changes in the Earth’s axis, the movement of the continents, ice ages, asteroid impact: the causes are many that we know of and surely we know little. Burning fossil fuel?

I should be most interested to be able to examine the overall vegetation of Australia during the era of the Megafauna, say 60,000 years ago, or at least before the arrival of humans. There is no doubt that, compared with the present, extensive forest and jungle would cover most, if not all of the continent.

Driving through hundreds, thousands of kilometres of impoverished Queensland landscape, on roads lined with sparse eucalypt and sclerophyl forest, one will often see, in a hillside cleft, a fragment of rain forest dark green against the surrounding grey. A patch of lush green containing no gum trees; hanging on despite the dry. Existing not because of a secret water-supply, but because it is inaccessible to fire. Even on Mt Coot-Tha itself, in the heart of suburban Brisbane, there is a tiny pocket of the original virgin forest surviving in a steep gully, never having been burned: a bright green remnant, a reminder of what Australia was like before Fire.

These tiny remnants once covered the whole country. Their very existence is proof. Even now, a long fire-free period would promote a small expansion of these pockets of tropical forest. This I see happening wherever fire is repressed for a long period, regardless of the rainfall. The dense, shady tropical areas of figs, tall bunias, kauries, hoop pines, vines and deep-rooted species will grow where at present dry bush exists, if, and only if fire is kept away. Those forests of dense shade suppress eucalypts, squeeze them out. Suppress fire too. But the boundaries of rain-forest are vulnerable, and shrink with each burn-off.

Soon the last of the koalas will be burned out of their habitat, either by design or accident. The eucalypts are fire-trees. The dense vine-forest with its clear underwood is resistant, but is reduced in area with every fire encroaching from the bush. The koala will soon be extinct in the wild, despite all conservation, because of inevitable fire; there is no safeguard. Fire is inseparable from humanity; it’s what we do.

There is, then, no doubt whatsoever that the depletion of tropical forest and vine forest, and perhaps thousands of species that depended of those forests, is due solely to deliberately-lit fires. And this for at least 50,000 years. Is this Queensland drought likely to be the worst on record, and is it due to the culmination of centuries of incendiary habits?

The extent of those original pre-human forests is unknown, but may well have covered the entire continent, excepting the grass-land created by the giant herbivores. Dense tree-cover promotes rainfall, soil-conservation, and soil-moisture. Gum-species deplete the whole environment; they are the weeds that survive on the wasteland, contributing nothing, promoting fire.

Here’s a plan, a start, a reparation………Isolate the tropical remnants from fire by gum-clearing and slashing, and those remnants will grow outwards and thrive. Start at the urban centres and work outward. The recent horrific fires are nearly all eucalypt-based. Gum-trees retained in and near housing: crazy. Get rid of them, plant figs, for example; there are hundreds of varieties. Big, shady, undergrowth-killing figs. Within twenty years a park-like garden free of weeds and lantana could surround outlying homes.

So, there’s no doubt in my mind. Science will catch up and prove me right or wrong, but those tiny patches of green in a wasteland of burned landscape show what once existed. How far did the green extend, long, long ago. Perhaps to the Now-Dead Heart of the country…………

Here’s a question. That tiny remnant of original vegetation, surviving in a cleft of rock on Mt Coot-Tha: just how long ago did it extend in every direction, right to The Bay, everywhere? Are there ancient stumps or even roots surviving of pre-fire years, which can be dated? We assume that the landscape of this area has always looked the same, but it has not. The endless tracts of eucalypt-forest are recent; but how recent? 500 years? 5000 years?

Take an area which has never been totally obliterated by regular human-lit fire: the Blackall Range, 100km north of Brisbane in Queensland. It could not be burned-out because the dense tree-cover had no combustible undergrowth sufficient to provide the heat, plus a generally moist humus even during drought. Not obliterated by fire, but by tree-clearing European farmers, exactly dateable, and recent. Now the rainfall has even deserted this once-green oasis: are we surprised? Now the fires have access, finally.

We cannot both clear land and have rainfall-plus-topsoil; an impossible situation.

One metre of rain in one long, gentle event. I can’t see it happening. But I hope. However imagine the complaints; we’d all be praying to our mythical gods for sunshine. More than  a week of rain would turn us all into Poms.

 

 

 

 

 

WITTA DOGS chapter three

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WITTA DOGS and suburban dogs in general

Today, and my moaning is monotonous, I know; the Howler did the morning shift, howling loud and long from dawn to noon, shredding the peaceful hours between ride-on roaring.

When its owner came home to an apparently silent dog, another neighbour with two yappers left for destinations unknown. The Yappers, as usual, considered that their lives were from that minute utterly desperate, informed the neighbourhood loud, long, and incessant, stimulating a few distant mates to sing the chorus.

Enough of the silent, inward moans from me.

One day, one of the houses nearby will be sold, as happens quickly in this popular spot. Sold to someone who doesn’t give a damn about neighbourly feeling, and sets about silencing the community dog-pound. With vigour and determination.

First, she will record the cacophony. Quality sound, time, duration, date, and address all meticulously formatted. The echoing early hours will be a symphonic storm of dog-yells. She will do this for a few weeks, and select the most irritating for archives.

On a bad night, she will contact the police, the local pound, and the RSPCA, leaving urgent messages, because none of those services operate after sundown, and the reason burglaries occur then.

She will repeat the calls next day, with follow-up messages by mail, email, and the multitude of electronic media now available.

She won’t give a damn about the neighbourhood, but will force signatures to a most specific document of complaint, cleverly worded, with emphasis on nuisance, noise-pollution, insomnia etc.. I’d sign it. She is also strangely attractive, and a very good talker.

Enough signatures and recordings (four rabid neglected dogs in constant chorus, 7pm to dawn: 9 hours of cacophony……..and that’s just one example from her library) will insure that the offending dogs will be silenced, humanely. Remaining alive, but voiceless, and at the owners’ expense.

Now bear in mind that right now, and for the five previous hours, as I type, two nearby Yappers plus occasional friends have been in constant row. And are yet. Not more than three seconds silence at any time for that period. And daylight is fading. It could go on all night, and has many, many times.

The sound is somehow magnified as darkness falls. The later, the louder. Pre-dawn the worst.

The woman instigating the silencing will have everyone’s support. All us weak-willed, lily-livered, afraid-to-offend wusses will serve our bold leader to achieve what we should have done years ago.

Even the owners of the most aggravating dogs will sign, ha ha, because THEY DON’T KNOW!           And right now………….

                                             …………. I await their return, and a peaceful night.

P.S. Darkness. Even the birdsong ceased. Echoing double-yapyapyapping ricochets, rending the still air.

WITTA DOGS chapter two.

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NOT JUST WITTA DOGS.

MOST OF THE ONE-ACRE BLOCKS ON THE HILL ARE DOG-POUNDS.

You must think I’m a boring old fart with nothing better to do than to listen to dogs all night and day. And you’d be right. Along with all farmers, the forced inaction due to the drought leads to boredom, wife-beating, the pub, terror regarding the future, bankruptcy and blogging.

My avos are dying by the day; there’s nothing I can do, no water I dare use to effect a little dampness to the roots, and each dead tree represents years of nurture and cost. As for general plantation-maintainance, using a tractor is asking for trouble. One spark, just one.

Already many neighbours are burned-out; both land and hope, and my turn could happen any day: twenty years of work obliterated. If the house survives…….but I daren’t think about it. The fact that we’re all in the same boat is no consolation.

So, searching the BOM for any hope each day, as we’ve been conditioned to do, is fruitless and disillusioning; this is a rare and devastating drying-event with no obvious ending, and absolutely no solution.

It’s the inaction that focuses the mind on irrelevant irritations, especially in the quiet of the night, when all the deserted, neglected dogs for miles around are screaming with loneliness.

A new voice made itself heard over the past day: small and howling with utter sadness, hour after hour. We haven’t had a howler before. It seems to engender sympathy with its deserted state, rather than the intense irritation caused by the rabid yappers.

The yappers rule, unfortunately. There’s no sadness in their incessant row. They are just spoilt brats with indefatigable peace-rending. Little machines that no-one ever shuts down.

The big woofers are not so bad; they briefly speak in deep tones out of a sense of duty, then leave off. And here’s the point of the whole problem. It seems that all these canines are kept as some sort of miss-guided home-invasion protection. A cheap warning alarm to keep the nasty ones away. Well, do I have news for you.

A big woofer is a deterrent. A yapper or three is an invitation: there’s no-one home. Yappers advertise to the whole street that the house is available for ransacking. Empty a few cans of boiled cow over the fence and in you go. Take your time, the dogs will let you know when it’s time to scarper.

At night, with the owners tucked-up and the yappers snoring in or under the bed, the invaders gain silent access undetected, until it’s too late. Yappers have little or no awareness by ear or nose; just constant hunger for canned mush. Once asleep only a poke with a sharp stick will rouse indignation..

So all that row, night after night, year after year, serves only to irritate the neighbours. The moral; if you really feel the need for a watch-dog, then GET one. There IS such a thing. And it’s not a pack of tiny yappers. It’s a quiet, vigilant blue-heeler, or a small alsatian-cross, or something not in-bred and fluffy. I know, having suffered severely from a silent and effective guardian.

In youth, selling door-to-door in a desperate attempt to feed starving babies, I became used to household dogs and their danger-level. Ninety-nine percent softies. The occasional one avoided was a danger not only to me but to anyone, including the owner. An eater of small children. But usually that dog displayed its viciousness with snarling dentition and insane focus. We had one in our street in Nundah which used to terrify the kids coming home from school, and anyone passing the gate unaware. I took to carrying a squeezy bottle of dilute juice from those little explosive peppers. Ha! Problem solved. As it lunged savagely at the Cyclone gate it copped a squirt right in the tonsils. Immediate silence. Immediate backing off. I only had to do it once. It remembered me for ever, and I could pass in peace and safety. God help any child that opened the gate to deliver a message.

Now, back to the door-to-door. I always knew I wasn’t welcome, but what’s a starving boy to do? This house was in Gladstone, and on my ordered route, no shirking the rule. I had knocked on the front door; no answer, but the folks were busy inside, so I persevered. Try round the back. I was wearing the uniform of all car-salesmen and others of ill-repute. It was universal and considered stylish for a month or two during that era: white trousers and shoes.

I carried my heavy roll of sales-gear over one arm, my door-rapping knuckles at the ready, and started up the back steps, unaware of the danger. Half way up an agonising pain in my thigh. Utterly scream-worthy, and I did scream. Unbelievable immobilising torture of four big canine teeth which met and clamped through my leg. Scars there fifty years later.

The dog was most excellent; no noise, no warning, not even a growl, no shaking of its prey, it just held me, and its grip tightened if I flinched a millimetre. All I could do was yell, and holy shit did I yell.

A nice lady opened the back door, shocked at the sight of this poor young white-trousered, white-faced bloke with blood streaming down his daks, filling up the white shoe on the way down. The dog let go at a word, and I collapsed where I was. Never seen so much blood, and it was all mine. Dripping from tread to tread.

But, oh, if I had been a small child.

I wonder today why there was no thought of ambulance. Or police. Or charges laid. I limped back a mile to my car and drove in great pain to the motel for R&R. I frightened myself with the trouserless sight as I stripped off in the shower, but though there were four intersecting holes in my upper leg and massive bruising, the bleeding stopped quickly and I was able to limp to a surprised surgery for a tetanus-shot.

Now THAT was a watch dog, and no yapping.

Wrong Name. Should I care?

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WRONG NAME. USE THE CORRECT ONE.

OR; DON’T BOTHER: WHO CARES?

AS A NEW CHUM,  or annoying Pommy cunt, as the locals called me, I stared about me in wonder at the glorious technicolour marvels of of the place. And the other stuff, mostly shit-coloured.

I woke up in Australia in a camp-bed on a veranda. Until that very minute I had been a blank-eyed zombie, shuttled with family from city to city, boat to train, shank’s pony, more train, all day and night, to a final bed that didn’t rock. Three days with prams, suitcases, backpacks and blank-eyed zombie wife and children.

I woke up in Australia in a camp-bed on a veranda, from a nightmare that started months and oceans ago in a rented cottage in the cold rain, on the other side and hemisphere of the planet. But that’s another story.

My eyes opened and slowly focused on brilliant colour, movement and sound. Near my head, back-lit vivid green banana-leaves and pendulant black-purple flowers swayed and shrieked. No: two crazy-coloured upside-down lorikeets shrieking. There was no sky. No lowering black clouds. Just luminous, dazzling blue light.

I had become a child with endless questions. What’s that? What’s that bird? This plant? That tree? Frogs and bandicoots and snakes and lizards parrots birds ants more lizards spiders butterflies toads trees trees trees eagles hawks. I knew nothing. I recognised nothing. It was wonderful.

After a while, I discovered no-one else knew either. Everyone called the same item a different name. Even said the same name differently.

My troubles started with the cedar. And furniture. Being a carpenter, joiner, and cabinet-maker, and trained in all three allied trades, I thought I knew my wood. Well, Pommy wood, and a bit of exotic European and American stuff. So I knew what a cedar was. And I recognised the beautiful cedar furniture of colonial craftsmanship; or I thought I did.

Where were these cedars. I asked, over the years; many people, in many places. Almost none left, they said, cut down sixty, eighty years ago. Some rare ones they knew of and described; more puzzlement. I had seen cedars in the Old Country, on grand estates, and the descriptions folk gave me did not tally. Nowhere could I see a cedar, and the lack was beginning to irritate me. Every antique shop had Australian cedar furniture. Where were the bloody trees?

One day a wise person took me to the botanic gardens. There: THAT’S A CEDAR, he said.

Wot? No it fucking wasn’t. Even the label said Toona Australis. (Later changed to Toona Ciliata) That’s not a cedar, said I. Cedar is a CONIFER, a pine tree, looks like a Christmas tree, a sort of fir tree, has resin, not sap, makes amber after a while, has cones, etc..etc..

No wonder I couldn’t find the thing. There are NO cedars in Australia. Never have been. The wood is admittedly similar, but the smell is totally wrong: a Toona smell, not a Pine smell. Though both very nice: very different.

That’s when my problems with names started. Years of searching for a non-existent tree.

In Australia anyone can call anything whatever they like. And do, with conviction, ha ha.

Scientific names are poo-pooed, Aboriginal names sneered at. Though things are improving; after all, Aboriginal names came first, so there’s the precedent, undeniable. Except there are hundreds of local languages……..choose one! Ha ha again.

We are forced, when we wish to refer to a particular plant or beast, to use the scientific names, if there is to be no mistake. But for the most part, the Latin-based names are crap and irrelevant, and ‘honour’ some person, rather than being descriptive. And even common names are often totally misleading (Passion fruit, for example, and more later).

Common names have another issue: they change from generation to generation, place to place, and become utterly distorted over the centuries, as old Herbals illustrate. So we must fall back on the scientific names: there’s no alternative.

Except! Oh no! Even the scientific names suffer the bastardisation of the commons. Wistaria is now wisteria on all labels, to rhyme with ‘mysterious’. Wrong. And what the hell is a monsterio? Wrong again! The popular and lazy and ignorant version of a delicious-fruited, common, local, magnificent climbing plant, most aptly named though very seldom eaten. You don’t know what you’re missing! And more later, so read on, while I check some spelling and look-up a few things……..

Where was I? Well, for a start, the beautiful climber was named after Dr. Wistar, despite all the recent nursery labels. (Older labels got it right). And Monstera deliciosa is confused with, oh, I can’t be bothered.

Now Naturtium officinalis is Watercress! Yes! Delicious watercress sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Two Nasturtium sandwiches please.

Then some loony thought that Tropaeolium, with its round leaves and pretty flowers, tasted a bit like Nasturtium and foolishly called it that. And so did everyone else, the pathetic idiots. Did the loony not know he was eating Tropaeolium? He must have known it wasn’t watercress; it looks totally different. How, then did he describe the plant? Er, it tastes a bit like Nasturtium? He could have died, eating stuff he knew not what. And so it goes on.

You can’t trust the name of Anything. Are you my father? Everything is insecure.

Mountain ash is Eucalyptus regnans. It’s not an ash. It’s another bloody gumtree.
Tassie oak is, ha ha, Eucalyptus regnans…….
Silky oak is Grevillea robusta. Neither the timber nor the tree is anything like oak.
And so on. Most of those trees with Pommy names are not what they’re called.

Prickly pear or Tree pear is Opuntia. Sure, it’s prickly. The plant has savage spikes, and the fruit, which neither looks nor tastes anything like a pear of any sort, is covered in tiny bunches of minute needles which break off into your skin, lips and tongue and irritate painfully for days, and can leave lesions for weeks………sure, very pear-like.  Nevertheless, handled with care, the fruit is delicious. And a noxious, invasive, imported species, all Opuntias are a bit of a pain in the arse: never crap on one by mistake.

And as for Bush Tucker; I can see that a kangaroo steak might be delicious, but being vegetarian I look to native plants. And with the exception of Bunya and Macadamia nuts, most seem to be decorative or toxic or both, and many have European mis-nomers. Any Australian fruit or vegetable with an English name is likely to be a totally unrelated species, and very painful eating. As Crocodile Dundee said: ‘Sure, you can eat it, but it tastes like shit.’

The Aborigines ate all sorts of stuff; they had to. Their whole existence was a knife-edge search for tucker. Feast or famine. And while we’re considering this, three nasty facts. Governor Phillip, and all-round good bloke, fed many parties of starving natives which stumbled into camp, some dying there. Their expected food source failed and all would have perished without his nurture. During his time this was a frequent event. Australia is a hard place.

‘Fire-stick-farming’ is a very polite term for habitat-burning. The bush creatures were burned alive: easy tucker, but so many must have died that couldn’t be found or eaten, and the bush became more impoverished with each burn-off. Now the white man is doing it, to protect housing. And on it goes.

The third nasty fact is the disappearance of the giant megafauna, which took place at the time Australia was first settled by humans, sixty-odd thousand years ago. The same dying that happened to the moas in New Zealand, for the same reason: easy pickings. Big tame food, stick in a spear, or light a fire, and run away. It is thought that the death of the mega-fauna combined with constant burn-offs permanently altered the climate through loss of rain-forest and grassland. It could all have happened in a few lifetimes. The vast areas of desert may have been green just 60,000 years ago.

The French, starved by wars, ate snails: read Guy de Maupassant. Now, of course, they are delicacies. The English would eat nothing but beef once; there must have been a lot of it about, but the Highland Scots thought plain oats in cold water was food, poor bastards.

Anyway, back to the plot. At a rellies’ farm near the Bunyas was a strange tree, native to the area. It was a tree that would have looked ok upside-down; roots like branches and branches like roots. The name I was given was fakkerlakker. Other farmers thought the same or didn’t know. It reminded me of a toilet-wall notice from long ago: ‘Max Factor knacker-laquer adds lustre to your cluster and glamour to you rammer’. Nice. Interesting spelling and alliteration. But I looked in vain for the real name, until I came across Phytolacca, which seemed to fit, except this was a South American tree, and it seems these Australian ones were scrub-remnants left as pets after tree-clearing, like occasional bunyas and figs. So there’s still a mystery.

Side-tracking, Aussie giant fig-trees really are figs, and some have quite edible fruit. An enormous one I know of, in an area of enormous ones, suffered sadly during one windy night, and two-thirds of it fell down. The tree had been visible for twenty kilometres around. The fallen, interwoven trunk smashed through the dense scrub, shaking neighbours in their beds: they thought earthquake. I climbed onto the enormous trunk, over four metres high (that was its diameter, and more) and stretching sixty metres into a massive tangle of branches and vines. Now here’s the strange thing. Within a year and a half there was nothing to see of all that fallen timber. It disappeared into dust and mulch. The moral: don’t build out of fig-wood!

As for Passion fruit and passion flower, Passiflora edulis, the problem is with the change in the meaning of ‘passion’ from tortuous pain to sexual desire, and its strange misuse for  sickly, fizzy, alcohol: Passion Pop. Check with the Roman religious industry for its ludicrous name………

This subject is never-ending. The name of absolutely anything you can shake a stick at is usually doubtful, often changing. And that’s just in one language, so there’s never a fixed reference-point. Scientific names attempt to standardise, and be universally specific, and naming things is an esoteric industry now, and we’d be lost without it. But the common folk  prefer our old colloquial terms from the gardens and bush of our childhood.  We’d probably get the name wrong. So be it.

The Fourth Dead Hare

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LAST NIGHT SAW THE DEATH AND DEVOURING OF THE FOURTH HARE, within a few metres of the previous three. This morning, in the heat, very small stinking remains covered in frantic flies. Flies and smell led me to the site instantly, just metres from the back door.

This within two years.

Ok, so this is a neighbourhood of dogs, none of which, however, I have ever seen on the loose, especially at night. Never seen a stray dog wandering, or a fox or dingo. Or a big goanna.

So questions: Why four deaths in one small area, over less than two years? Why near the house and next to parked cars? Were the hares brought there, or killed there? In each case the hares were mostly eaten in situ. Once only the feet and stomach remained. All bones were usually eaten. Once there were two hares’ remains next to eachother, suggesting that the site was, is chosen for devouring, not necessarily for killing.

Surely wild dog or dingo…….but how could either one avoid detection for so long, when it is obviously a regular visitor. Headlights have never picked one out; never a glimpse. No scats have been found on roadside or garden. (Obvious, full of claws and fur.)

I regularly see wild dogs and dingos, snakes and goannas, at my place in the ‘bush’; night and day: they are not so secretive as to permanently avoid detection.

A local pet, perhaps, wandering at night whilst its owner sleeps. This seems the most obvious culprit, and I can think of one. But wouldn’t it take the kills home to eat? And why choose this place for all kills? Bone-crunching is a noisy business; why haven’t I heard it? Last night, within ten metres of where I was sleeping, a big hare was eaten, bones, head and all, and |I heard nothing.

A camera would have to be set up and maintained for a year or more to catch the culprit. If the camera pointed in the right direction.

And why hares, only? Why not snakes, or bush-turkeys, or the dozens of tiny local yappers? These last are out loose night and day, most the size of a hare. A dingo wouldn’t hesitate, though yappers are mostly noise and fluff. There are plenty of yappers we could spare, gladly. Or wild ducks, which always are wandering about? (Though that would be a shame.)

I like the hares. They do eat stuff we plant for ourselves, but not much. They are mad, and entertaining, and picturesque. They are homeless from birth, and have no den, burrow, or nest. Their survival in Australia is miraculous. They cause little damage or harm, and offer much entertainment. They can out-run a greyhound in an open paddock. (Not on a confined track: no room for jinking.) There are never many of them about, unlike rabbits.

Help me find the hare-killer. How can it be done?

Queensland drought: WILL IT EVER RAIN AGAIN in Central Queensland and New South Wales?

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WILL IT EVER RAIN AGAIN? WILL THIS QUEENSLAND DROUGHT EVER BREAK? First published Nov 21 2019.

Of course it will.

WILL IT EVER RAIN SUFFICIENTLY AGAIN ?

Possibly not.

OUR CLIMATE IS NOTORIOUS; ‘land of drought and flooding rains’, but the overall trend is to more drought and less rain. Concerning rain, it seems the events are as regular as ever, within the limits of our short history of weather-recording, but the amount of rain that falls during those events seems to be diminishing. Rain periods are increasing in intensity and decreasing in duration.

As a large island in the middle of a vast roaring ocean and huge weather-systems, it is a mysterious fact that usually these systems swirl around Australia like a river around a rock. As if the land-mass repels the rain-clouds.

In the Northern Hemisphere, for example, the lands exposed to to the Atlantic Ocean and the prevailing Westerlies, are constantly soaked as rain-clouds roll on their course. Those clouds do not veer away, leaving Ireland as a desert.

The Westerlies that could bring regular soaking rain to the exposed Australian coast almost always are repelled by the land. A constant feature of satellite images of Australia shows cloud-formations swirling around and away from the coast, seldom crossing the country. Why is this so? What phenomenon diverts the prevailing gyres away from the land-mass?

One would expect this continent, which sits un-sheltered in the midst of swirling storms, to be a land of constant tropical rains, and carpeted with jungle from coast to coast. And those jungles do exist in North Queensland, as do giant eucalypts in Tasmania, but the majority of the country is desert-dry, and the coastal fringe not much greener.

It is true that high mountain ranges cause local rainfall, and that most of Australia is flat. As Henry Lawson says in Some Popular Australian Mistakes, ‘There are no “mountains” out West, only ridges on the floors of hell’.  Rainclouds that do penetrate the coastline continue on their course without  interruption, retaining their moisture, causing deserts. This is the current reasoning.  However, the very aspect of this land features water-leveled plains, and where small hills and ranges do exist there are wide valley-bottoms; all created by rainfall of huge extent. To form a level plain out of mountain ranges requires not time, of which there is plenty, but non-stop rainfall. At one time, every level plain bounded by ranges of hills must regularly have flooded to great depth, in order to both erode the hills and deposit the flood-silt.

These floodings obviously have not occurred within any geological period recognised, and  possibly not since human settlement. To extend the puzzle, Australian coal-fields certainly are dateable, to when the country existed in a different location on the planet, in an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, with weather of staggering rainfall.

Our planet has changed as CO2 has been depleted. Vegetation is less successful. But why, in certain defined areas, has rainfall either decreased or increased dramatically? Australia has definitely lost most of its rainfall. Has this been a sudden or a gradual decline? Is rainfall itself governed to any extent by CO2 levels? What is the real reason for the Queensland drought today?

Why do these  events happen? When one area of the globe suffers a prolonged period of rain, and another area drought? And why is Australia becoming progressively more dry? Climate agencies have since the 1950s benefited from increasing scientific data, as can be seen from the proliferation of weather-based acronyms, and the predictions are worrying. Adverse climate-change seems to be our fault. But the long-term history of climate needs to be examined.

So, considering this, the long-term; given sufficient rainfall, any area of sterile sand will grow massive forest; no soil-nutrients necessary, no humus formed. Rainfall equals tree-cover in warmer climates. Where has the rain gone in Australia? It used to be there, and has gone; shrunk to the north and south extremities, and still shrinking, it seems, even in our short recorded history. And the Queensland drought rolls on.

Note, recorded.

The ocean gyres of rain-clouds avoid the land-mass of Australia. Why? What is the repellent force that steers most rain away from the coast? Why, sometimes, do rain-formations actually traverse Australia, bucking the trend? How much, and why, does Sudden Stratospheric Warming change our weather, and how permanent are these changes? The Drying of Australia is a problem yet to be solved.

Not ‘where’ has the rain gone, but ‘why’.

Weather forecasting and prediction of rainfall-trends in Australia is based on information collected from 1900, with accuracy increasing from about 1950. The trends are there to be accessed by all, the patterns of change apparent. But what of pre-industrial trends, and pre-settlement 50,000 years ago? What has been happening to the climate of Australia prior to human occupation?

Mention was made of the floods affecting Brisbane in 2010/2011, in a previous blog.  A small area received water-bourne silt to a depth varying between ten and twenty centimetres. Valuable top-soil, but un-appreciated by the recipients. All the current agricultural plains in Australia were created this way: deep floods and deposited silt.  The critical question: are these deposits dateable? Is there a signature within the silt-layer which could be translated to a year, or era? We have an excellent test-sample to examine within the Yerongpilly and surrounding area in Brisbane. This top-soil was created exactly in 2011. Other floods at other places since European settlement have left dateable silt.

Excavation of any level plain will reveal strata of silt deposits which may be measured for each flooding event, from surface to bedrock, with possible interruptions due to meandering creek-beds, etc.. But can these individual deposits be dated? If so, the information would give a true and exact record of climate and its change over time. We would discover real trends prior to industry, to European settlement, and to human occupation, and major questions could be answered concerning the drying of any area and the time-scale involved.

Information of climate trends prior to, and during these three periods is vital to current concept of climate. Can this information be accessed through geology? Radiocarbon and photoluminescence dating is apparently difficult for shallow silt layers exposed at the surface. Dating of surviving vegetable material is possible and accurate, but rarely available, especially at depth.

The dating of each flood-deposit layer, and an estimation of the depth of floodwater responsible, would open a window onto the real climate of the past at any time and place, and answer so many questions concerning our responsibility for climate-change.

How informative to actually know the date and extent of the rains that caused the deposits of silt on valley farm-land. And the pattern of floods through time, from most recent to ancient. Can it be done? Is it possible?

THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAG, Leasowe Sandhills.

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THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAG, Pommy version Leasowe sandhills.

WELL, NO, THERE’S NO POMMY SWAG as far as I know, but I’ve just finished reading Henry Lawson’s description and explanation of the Australian swag, its development and refinement for the Outback, and its mode of carry.

His fine story-telling is interrupted for this most factual and informative account, The Romance Of The Swag, which explains in perfect detail the make-up and contents of the Aussie swag as it existed over 100 years ago.

I mention this because as a child in bleakest Merseyside in the ever-bleak North of England, my playground was the Wirral Peninsula, where a sometime-sun shone if there was a break in the Atlantic gloom. I was aware of Waltzing Matilda, and a Swagman, and had a vague idea of the purpose of a swag, and perhaps this subconscious image led me to one of my happiest pastimes.

There was then, in my home landscape, a coastal strip of market-gardens called Leasowe, meaning exactly that. The gardens were sheltered from the North Sea and the Westerlies by a range of sand-hills, and stretched from Wallasey Village to the old lighthouse ruin, a ruin now marvellously restored.

The Leasowe sandhills (never called dunes) were the site of wartime rifle-ranges; the reason we children were attracted to the area, because to this day the sand is littered with spent ammunition of every calibre and type. The brass existed still in those days, but now there’s mostly only lead, which survives the salt air, as do the vegetables in the gardens which are improved thereby. Even today one can quickly fill pockets with old bullets.

The tops of the Leasowe sandhills usually had depressions where the star-grass didn’t grow; perfect shelters from the wind and the sand, with delightful views over the sea to the west and the Wirral inland. The miles of beach from the now-erased but once stylish Derby Pool at Harrison Drive, to the old Leasowe lighthouse, were seldom populated; only the occasional walkers with dogs, and no-one swam there in those days. The water was feared on that stretch.

One fine day I decided to camp on one of the dunes. Summer holidays. I was fifteen, and remember no opposition from the parents. Perhaps Waltzing Matilda was embedded. I made, and there’s no other word for it, a swag. But my version.

My swag was based on a long, wide rectangle of tarpaulin, and a sleeping-bag. Everything I needed was rolled in the folded tarp. Absolutely a swag, bound with an old belt. But with one necessary addition: a handle-less umbrella.

I set out from home on foot, without the encumbrance of a bicycle. My swag had an approximation of the food, drink, clothing and reading needed for a few days, plus torch, matches, etc.. Just camping without a tent.

I chose a sand-hill with the best view and the most sheltered hollow on top. Formed the sand into a raised bed-place and head-rest, and rolled my swag out onto it. The tarp worked well; belongings at the bottom, a double fold over the sleeping-bag, under at the bottom, over at the pillow-end, a lap under my chin, and the umbrella stuck into the sand by by head in case of rain. Which it did briefly the first night. Not a drip or a leak; perfect comfort.

That first time I stayed just two nights and three days in a luxury of self-sufficiency; sun-bathing, swimming, lazing, reading. My water-bottle re-filled at the market-gardens.

Returning to civilisation even after that baby experience was delightful. I tingled with sun and sea-spray and confidence. My swag had worked. Tents were a definite encumbrance. I was, though I didn’t know it, ready for Australia. And 50 years later to read Henry Lawson, and the real swag.

Footnote; Leasowe is , or was, a narrow strip of sand market gardens, sheltered by the wind-driven ‘dunes’ from the beach and the North Sea, on the Wirral Peninsula, Cheshire, England. The area stretches between Wallasey Village to the North, and the old Lighthouse to the South, and what used to be Bidston Marsh to the east. Much has changed, but the sandhills are still there, and the old Leasowe lighthouse has been restored marvellously. That small stretch of coast still has a touch of wild mystery about it, and beach-combing there is rewarding, though the Twenty Row Inn has gone, sadly: no beers after the walk …….on to Wallasey Village then.

WITTA DOGS

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WITTA DOGS………..IS IT JUST ME?

PERHAPS I’M JUST A MISERABLE OLD COMPLAINING SOD (don’t answer that). BUT.

Witta is a paradise, but this Garden of Eden is not polluted with talking snakes, neither am I in danger of being cast-out for scrumping apples.

There is, however, pollution of an unusual sort. Noise pollution; day and night. The night variety worse, in this otherwise peaceful rural landscape of beautiful jungley scrub and tree-shaded gardens.

Now, the chain-saw and ride-on mower cause temporary pain. They will eventually stop, and usually before dark. And I do contribute, so can’t complain.

Now, the native birds are rowdy, from dawn to dusk, and there’s the occasional illegal rooster, and cars do go past; then there’s the school bus, and the garbage truck on Wednesday mornings, and some folk will practice carpentry and piano with various skill, but there’s a much, much worse noise.

It will start when a neighbour goes out in the evening; drives to the film-night in Maleny, or to visit friends. Worse, visits friends and stays the night.

Worse still, neighbours that go away for the weekend, or for a few days.

LEAVING THEIR TWO OR THREE DOGS AT HOME ALONE, IN THE YARD.

We know the instant they drive off.

The whole neighbouhood knows the instant the leave.

On the worst of nights and days, many neighbours near and far will leave their homes and dogs for various canine-free activities, WHILST THEIR WRETCHED PETS HOWL AND SCREAM AND YELL from the very instant the car doors slam until the gravel crunches on their owners’ return. We hear this. We suffer for the duration. We get angry.

Imagine. The evening quiet. Even the currawongs give up. An occasional lapwing calls on its twilight homeward flight. A boobook hoots like a sad cuckoo. A car starts next door and simultaneously two dogs bark. Rabid, furious, outraged barking as the car leaves. The evening destroyed, the barking frantic, unstoppable, non-stop, no stopping, double barking on and on and on.

Barking dogs are indefatigable. They do not tire. The more dogs, the more clamorous. Only starvation, thirst and death will quiet a ‘left’ dog.

Owners, as a caste, do not know this fact. As their soundproof car-doors slam, they drift in cushioned silence on their journey to oblivion, oblivious. Unaware of the cacophony in their wake. Of stay-at-homes with ruined evenings and corrupted sleep, waiting, waiting, staring in the dark, hoping for the neighbours’ return, and the instant peace it will bring.

The dog-owner returns to a quiet dog. What, my dog barks? We don’t know our own dog? It never barks. Listen: do you hear it bark?

But we know, and we are angry. We forget, after a few nights of peace, and our anger dissipates. But often, night after night, daytime too, there are many absent owners, and the never-ending barking of a dozen dogs brings thoughts of selling-up. Now there are dog-owners who are aware: they are responsible, reasonable, and their dogs likewise. And there are many neighbours in agreement regarding the problem, but no-one is sufficiently driven to instigate an official complaint. Yet.

But nights of peace are so blissful here on our perfect hill, we sleep, and we forget.

Who let the dogs out?

Post script: Neighbours of friends in The Grange in Brisbane had two incessantly-barking miniature collies. The whole street complained, with the result that the dogs were de-barked by a vet, and peace reigned. Despite the dogs’ best efforts, little sound is now emitted.

CLOTHES-HOIST ABOVE THE FIRE-PLACE

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IN THE HOUSE WHERE I WAS BORN, and in one or two rented places, was a clothes- hoist; sign of a wet climate, and general dampness. Rising damp, falling damp, general dampness.

Out, out, damp spot!

The clothes-hoist; superior to, but more unsightly than the clothes-horse, which could be hidden when not in use (but always was).

I have the clothes-hoist to thank for our emigration to sunny, hot, frightening Australia.

The year was 1968. The previous two or three years had been gloomily miserable. Constant cloud, rain, drizzle; I could go on: the North of England has a fine vocabulary of bad weather, more than Inuit for snow. But I had childhood memories of blue summer skies, yellow beaches of hot sand. And crystal winters of glittering frost, and snow dryly squeaking under foot. Where had that England gone?

We had had no summer for three years. Holidays planned and wrecked by rain. !968 was also planned: Cornwall, Polperro of childhood paradise; but we never went. We knew the cold July rain would never stop, and it didn’t. So I spent my hard-earned free weeks at home with the family and the clothes-hoist.

We did every holiday thing we could in the first week. Everything that could be done with three children in the pissing horizontal rain. And it wasn’t fun, just wet, cold work. I could have at least been earning wages.

It could have been worse. We could have rented a house without a kitchen-fire and clothes-hoist. Our fire, that ‘holiday’, burned night and day, and the clothes- hoist was always full to sagging with wet gear: wet blankets we wished had never got washed in the first place, wet sheets, towels, clothes, clothes, clothes. Nothing in the place was dry.

Shoes ranged around the small hearth, steaming. Shoes in cupboards with green mould; shoes that looked like new green suede but weren’t. Leather jackets like corpses of limp moss.

It took nearly three days to dry one blanket: never again, but one of the children had had an accident. The fire roared, the house warmed, the socks dried by the hundred. The old hoist became an efficient production-line, a purpose in life, a family activity, the focus of heat and warmth and dry clothing. A kitchen of glow and comfort.

THE CLOTHES-HOIST was well-made and efficient. It hung from the high ceiling on ropes to two pulleys, attached to two shapely cast-iron hangers through which the wooden rails ran. There were seven rails in two tiers, which together could support a tremendous amount of wet washing. It could be raised to the ceiling or lowered to floor-level, but when full was a struggle to lift, and no doubt there were accidents, and washing in the flames.

Never has such a small, practical device been so useful and comforting. What could we possibly have done without it? (The days before domestic electric clothes-dryers……..but where’s the comfort in sitting around a clothes-dryer?)  Our half-cottage was on the cusp of modernity, hence the hoist, a throwback to recent primitive days, but the village was and is ancient. Picturesque and far from vertical.

There were, in years long ago, in tropical Brisbane, weeks of steaming wet rain, when the old clothes-hoist over a wood-stove would have been hi-tech luxury…….but the honourable height-adjustable Hills hoist was unknown in England. You win some, you lose some.

So, sitting in the laundry-steam on our summer holiday, under a sopping proscenium-arch of undies, watching the cold rain beat against the kitchen window, and the clear water run down the gutter to the stream below, we read of Australia, and jobs, and sunny days, and work done wearing shorts and big hats. Hats to keep the sun off! Why, we wondered? Who would want to keep the sun off?

It took a year to organise, once the decision was made, and, as if to confirm that decision it rained and rained until the day we left, and the boat crossed the Equator, and the sun finally shone, and the sky was blue.

AND NOW.    THE SUN STILL SHINES.    BUT THERE’S NO PLEASING SOME PEOPLE.

Queensland November, 2019, bushfires and never-ending drought.

THE QUEEN PASSES THE GUINEA GAP BATHS

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WE WAIT.

THE QUEEN IS DRIVEN PAST AT THIRTY MILES PER HOUR.

Mid-winter at Egremont. Long, long ago.

Grey, grey overcast, still, cold, with hovering drizzle.

Tiny ill-fed schoolboys in shorts. Schoolgirls in thin cotton. Blazers sparkly with mist. Red knees and chilblains. School caps, saggy socks, scuffy shoes, drippy noses. Waiting.

In a row, one child deep, on the outward-bound side of the the road. Waiting for a phenomenon regarding which we had little curiosity, having been ordained to our shivering fate by authority. Waiting, waiting.

The baths, in midwinter, were steamy-warm. Not hot, as we would have wished, as we changed into prickly woolen cozzies (swimming-costumes, togs), hugging our bony shoulders, waiting with various fear to enter the luke-warm chlorine. Waiting.

In the pool it was initially cool, then cold. Waiting to race. Always competition, seldom fun.

Then off. Action, at last; racing. A lap, two laps of the ancient, minute, indoor council pool. One more; and our spindly limbs generate a few candlepower of heat before exhaustion. Then out, then damp-dry under a wet towel, soggy dripping wool round our loins. Til the next heat: a misleading term. Waiting.

After the regimented competition was at last over, the remainder of the allotted time was finally ours to destroy; bombs and ducking and underwater grabbing, chasing and running and diving at speed. All became banned, of course. All childhood fun is banned now.

In damp-dry school uniform, again, with sopping tight roll of tog-towel, but at last warm, we exited the fug to wait for the Queen. Not warm for long. Then cold, then uncontrollable shivering, in spasms. The one or two heavier (never plump, never, ever fat)  held out longer. A torture on the wet pavement, at the wet kerbside, watching the gutter trickle, with occasional glances of bored expectation down the endless suburban grime. Self-hugging, hopping, jumping, twitching line of obedient sufferers. Waiting, waiting.

Then silence. Big cars were coming, one, two, three, through the wet mist, at the speed limit, past our endless line. Dead-silent motionless line. No flag-waving, No cheering. no smiling, laughing faces. I suppose the Queen was in one of the cars. Some still stared at the gutter. I never saw anyone. The instant finally over, we ran, and ran, for the warm waiting buses to take us back to school for our long cycle back home. Even the kids who lived near the baths had to be driven back to school.

But there was time for a few of us to race into the local shop for a penny Vantas, of which all memory and history has been erased. A huge glass sphere of gassy tap-water, infinitesmally coloured and flavoured, and a small, chunky glassful for a penny. But the brief, slight sparkle soothed the chlorine. The pauper’s champagne.

We told our parents we’d seen the Queen, but we hadn’t.

 

 

 

SYNCHRONISED WING-BEATS OF LORIKEET FLOCKS

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DO LORIKEETS SYNCHRONISE WING-BEATS?

I think so. However, one’s senses are so easily fooled under certain circumstances, especially on the balcony of the Noosa Surf-Lifesaving Club on a beautiful beery late-afternoon.

I was facing landward, having had my fill of the excoriating ocean, my eyes requiring the restful green of the hill behind Hastings Street.

The sun was setting on the burned beach-goers, the traffic grinding slowly on the roundabout below, and against a technicolor violet sky the massive eucalypts near my perch swarmed with raucous lorikeets; their evening ritual preparatory to the nightly roost.

Perfectly relaxed by the ale, the day in the surf, and the exquisite sensation of a clean shirt on salty skin, I allowed my mind to examine in focused clarity the behaviour of the lorikeets, where it seemed something strangely hallucinogenic was happening.

The large noisy flock was performing its short evening ritual; settling briefly within the high branches before taking-off en-mass to circle the tree and the sky at tremendous speed.

It was as the flock raced past between my perch and theirs, not more than fifty metres away, that a strange flickering affected my vision, as if eyesight were briefly malfunctioning: perhaps the alcohol, the ocean exertions, the savage ultra-violet.

Now curious and particularly focused, I concentrated on the flock as its circuit passed: same weird effect. Not my eyes, then, but the flock itself, which for a brief second seemed to flicker as it passed me. As if the frame of a film became momentarily jerked.

As the circuits passed I realised what caused the phenomenon.

The flock was behaving in a way, like one unit. As shoals of fish do mysteriously; a million fish with one body, one brain.

Once airbourne and assembled, the lorikeets assumed one personality in their flock; completely synchronised, each wingbeat and manoevre mirrored in each bird simultaneously.

As the flock passed me, and this is the tricky part, every bird raised and lowered its wings as one. Every wing went up, then down. A thousand tightly-packed birds as one. The banked angle of turn emphasised the illusion of a flickering, faulty image, impossible, because of speed of the wingbeats, to reconcile in a limited human brain, which perceived a juddering image.

Perhaps it was just me, just my perception. I have had the phenomenon repeated a few times; on each occasion wishing for a slow-motion camera to resolve the effect.

Ain’t Life wonderful?

TEA-MAKING AT ELEVATIONS

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How  DO you make tea if you live on a hill, or in the Alps?

What a pointless question, you ask, but I DO need an answer.

Ok; I’m addicted to my morning cuppa, have been since a child, when I put white sugar in it. Later I swapped to yummy Demarara, dark brown and damply mobile.

Now I savour the tea taste and abhor the sweetness. I have different teas from different climates and geography, and choose at random every morning, sometimes sticking with the same blend for months until a change is needed.

But there’s a problem.

Most of my life and tea-time has been lived at sea-level, or near. Recent visits to 400 metres above sea-level do not affect my tea quality.

But for almost 20 years my house is at 800 metres, and during all that time I haven’t made a drinkable cup. No matter how I go about it.

I’ve even toyed with the idea of making it in a pressure-cooker; that could work, I’ll let you know.

Why the problem?

Well, at 800 metres, water boils at a couple of degrees below normal boiling-point, so the brew never gets hot enough to make a good pot. You can cook away for an hour, and though it looks like boiling, it’s not at 100 degrees. At the top of Mount Everest you can put your hand in ‘boiling’ water. Tea is impossible. I think. Haven’t checked yet; silly of me, I should always check before I blog.

No-one else complains about my tea. Perhaps it’s psychological. But I can’t enjoy the stuff. Maybe the pressure-cooker will do the trick.

Ray White real estate, Stones Corner, circa 1973

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A NEW CHUM BATTLES ON.

WE ARRIVE WITH BABIES ON THE FAIRSTAR for ten quid, 1969, after a long and not luxurious cruise, to a paradise of banana plants, technicolour parrots, and glorious sunshine.

There’s about $200 in the bank, a kitten in the Bundaberg house, and a million frogs. Frogs everywhere.

Work peters out soon, after a year and a bit.  After a happy start, nothing, absolutely nothing. It never occurred to me we were living in a depression, I thought it was normal life.

No jobs for anyone; last hired, first fired. The new chum was always put off with apologies, and bosses were kind, one exceptionally so; I was splitting blocks in a cement-product factory (three kids to feed, no shoes necessary), asked the boss to give me a challenge, a price per hundred. Andy, he said, look son, you can work here as long as you like, no problem, but I don’t need them blocks split, just keeping you in work, ok? I took the hint and we took off. For the big smoke: Brisbane, the Country Town.

No jobs in the Courier Mail each morning. No trades, no-one wanted; plumbers, electricians, carpenters (me), no joiners (me again), mechanics, librarians, shop assistants. Hard to believe now; no jobs at all advertised. I had a pocket of sixpences for the phone box across the road, but there were no jobs to apply for.

Except for salespeople. Hard selling, that is. Cold-calling; the most mentally demanding job on the planet, destructive of souls, with a burn-out period of two years, max.

There was no alternative.

I sold insurance. I lasted eighteen months and aged five years. I had been a quiet carpenter. All involved became rabid extrovert alcoholics, but we earned a good quid for the duration. There was a lot of car-throwing, into motel swimming-pools.

Then, with a small economic buffer in the bank, and a horror of further door-knocking, I knocked on one more: Ray White’s, in the big city, where kindly bosses assigned me to the Stones Corner Office.

An easy choice; there were only three offices: the City, Toowong, and Stones Corner. My territory was the South Side, all of it, every house on the south side of the river to the bay was my legitimate prey.

I met my new boss, the best of all bosses, and I’ve had some of the finest: Rene Ranke, Marinus from Holland, ship’s engineer, most patient, kindly, and generous.

I worked my arse off for month after month. Nothing, no income whatsoever. There were no other jobs to go to, no carpentry, insurance would kill me, the small savings depleted. I was in a cleft stick. I knew every house we had for sale, inside-out, every detail, every land-size, bedroom, price, rates, condition, owner and dog, rabid or friendly.

From Stones Corner to Cribb Island to Jacob’s Well I had examined every place we had for sale, hundreds of them, and updated every ancient listing, and added to them as folk confided in me.

I showed my allotted and advertised-for clients the world out there, in my $500 Valiant VIP. Petrol was cheap. Houses were plentiful. Nothing. Clients kept coming back to me, they liked me; I was a free, willing, taxi-driver of unlimited mileage. I showed house after house after house. I knew all the best buys, the bargains, the ripe-for-development. You could buy a good Queenslander in Buranda for less than $10,000.

It’s hard to believe that I earned not a single dollar for ten months, despite the experience of being a successful insurance-salesman of the toughest variety.

And it would have been longer, perhaps much longer, except for the generosity of dear Rene, who donated to me his personal perks of a southside auction: a guaranteed commission, and another, and a certain buyer. It was nearly a year before my first donated commission arrived in the bank, and fourteen months before my first actual sale.

To this day I have no idea why I was so hopeless at the job. Without Rene’s generosity I would have had to have quit and gone on the dole, never to have found out that I was actually very good at the job. One year I was Top Salesman of all Ray White’s, winning a giant silver-plated plastic eagle, but no bonus…….tough but fair. Well, not even fair sometimes. I remember four sales I made during my time, where the commission was somehow questioned by others, or by the owner himself, despite my work and my contract and my signature and my client. I was paid nothing, and with no explanation. If there was the good name of the White’s to protect, little me was the loser.

That second year saw sales mysteriously mount up. I was doing nothing differently. I had developed no sales-technique, my attitude was, if I showed the best house at the best price at the right time…….they’d buy the thing. I showed some clients houses on and off for two years and more, with prices always mounting, before they finally made a decision.

After five years, and I suppose, success, Rene’s kind faith in me paid off for us both, but the office and the car-driving and the constant telephone made me long to put on my carpenter’s apron and start restoring some of the wonderful architecture of Brisbane, on my own account.

In the great outdoors, in and on and under old Queenslanders, I learned so much, and worked so hard, that The Book got written to preserve both my re-claimed knowledge and benefit those who come after me. Despite crap, ill-informed tv programs……..(See Blog)

So, My thanks to the Whites for putting me on, Alan particularly, and the young son who once turned up late, in pyjamas, holding a younger grandson, to conduct one of my auctions. The informality was endearing if peculiar, but the sale was made, and I was paid. On yer, Brian.

But most of all thanks to Rene, kindly gentleman of good humour and comradeship, popular and perhaps loved by our Stones Corner coterie both in office and in adjacent hotel after work. I once calculated that a good 20% of my sales originated in that pub.

Good memories of fellow-phone-fiends in our cubicles, and best wishes to Michael Ball, Danny Burke, Gerry Ponych, and Robin Phillips the fellow-ex-Pom. We seldom argued, and were always gentlemen when it came to divvying the loot.

And, one last Post Script. Our Saturday-morning girl of talent and efficiency and responsibility, and of attractive exterior, was one day studying sheet-music during lulls. (I love lulls) Being a muso of sorts from way back I was curious, and we chatted more than the usual typing necessities required. Her music exams coming up. Piano her instrument. We needed a pianist; could she play jazz? No but will do, and she did, and does to acclaim right now; one of Australia’s busiest and most popular professional musos.

Jo Bloomfield, now Jo Hawthorne; she married my mate the trombone-player, both of whom I love dearly. I think she failed her exam. Good.

 

RESTORING THE QUEENSLAND HOUSE, Grand Designs

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YESTERDAY I WATCHED yet another copy-cat or franchise version of a successful tv show. So depressing, as I actually have some knowledge of this particular category.

There was featured the very sad remainder of a typical Queensland colonial house, with insufficient structure to warrant restoration, let alone inappropriate raising on inappropriate 75mmSHS posts.

The poor builder was in a cleft stick; it was a lost cause, and committed to construction. He quite rightly, and perhaps too late, explained that the ‘restoration’ was going to cost three times that of demolition, and a new building project.

The enthusiastic owner, oh dear, was showing a visitor around the initial construction. The visitor, a young woman, represented I believe, the heritage department of the local government. I could be wrong, for I watched in horror the blind leading the blind and had to turn off the tv before I smashed the screen.

The two women wandered around the elevated ruin of a once respectable utilitarian colonial house. Not a wall, a partition, a ceiling or floor remained complete, great sections having been excised or butchered to oblivion.

The critical focus and major architectural brace of the old house was totally missing: the brick chimney, along with its foundation of ashlar, laundry copper hearth, upper kitchen fireplace and range: all gone except the negative evidence of holes in floor and ceiling.

Very sad; an old house can almost be re-built around the chimney-breast with its foundation.

The heritage representative had absolutely nothing to impart, but was led like a lamb. She appeared speechless either through ignorance or fear of the camera. She smiled and offered ludicrous small remarks.

She should have been severe, outraged; her anger at the depredations of multitudes of previous owners obvious. Her presumed but obscured knowledge of colonial architecture and restoration, the point of the entire show and her part in it, offered absolutely nothing: worse, she seemed to condone the proceedings and marvel at the sad and irretrievable ruin.

The builder was quite sensible with his opinion, but way off the true situation. This project and the program it supported, purported to to be a ‘restoration’. No chance. I once heard a bloke say of a clapped-out car, ‘It wouldn’t pull a greasy stick out of a dead dog’s arse’. May as well clad the Taj Mahal in aluminium-styrofoam as restore this place.

Maybe I should have watched the entire show. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

The ‘PRIMROSE’, Liscard, Wallasey, Wirral.

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THE DEAR OLD PRIMROSE PUBLIC HOUSE.

NOW, AFTER A GOOD HALF-CENTURY, no kidding, we went for a beer or three at the Primrose.

THEN, I was eighteen years old and had just started a rather marvellous and formative new life, changing my outlook from grey to bright Mondrian colour.

From a desperate ‘job’ in the drawing office of Clayton Crane & Hoist Co., in shit-streaked Liverpool, after a failed and extended grammar school education, I had been accepted as a student at Wallasey School of Arts and Crafts, in Central Park, Liscard.

Job, in quotes, because there actually was none, with commensurate pay; beer money spent in the Pig and Whistle three times a day, for the sake of sanity. Morning tea, Lunch, and Knock-off; consecutively two pints, two pints, and four pints, then two deep-fried pork pies with English mustard for the delightful ferry-ride to my rented single room in New Brighton, in a house  where mad rooters kept me awake and wondering all night.

Very demoralising and fruitless. As was Merseyside.

So from the drawing office, where I was distinctly disliked, and where I would watch pigeons kick their old rain-and-soot-soaked nests onto the heads of pedestrians far below in a  derelict blackened city, I entered a new life.

WSA was housed in a delightful rambling mansion in a well-tended park near the Liscard shops, and the Primrose was the nearest pub. Once settled in, with old and new friends, in a playground of Pottery, Ceramics, Lithography, Sculpture, Art History, Drawing, and curious lectures and ‘criticisms’, I found the Primrose. I had swapped The Scouse for Paradise.

The Primrose, (and I must research its history) is, or was, (it may have been pulled down), a very ancient sandstone cottage of Tardis aspect; it seemed bigger on the inside. It looked as if it were carved from a single giant block.

In the Summer, it was surrounded by a tended rose-garden, with raked gravel paths and leafy arbours containing tables and benches, and a waiter would regularly potter around, in case anyone should want a re-fill. We always did.

I have always just managed to escape becoming alcoholic; not without trying, and became familiar with every detail of every pub on that mysterious Wirral peninsula,  but the Primrose was Home. My own Cottage in its beautiful Garden.

In Winter the Primrose was even more welcoming. Being, in a way, homeless, I would put-off nights in my cold cell until late, and spend hours of cosy contentment in one of the tiny snugs of that ancient place. A comfortable upholstered bench, a long polished wooden table, a coal fire in the grate, and on the paneling by my head a bell-push to warn the barman of my requirements.

So with books on Art, and on Pottery, and a sketch-pad, sticks of conte, and a novel, I would nest in that snug every evening, mostly alone and content to be so, but sometimes joyfully joined by friends from my classes.

In later times, room-rent became better spent on food and academic materials, and I took up secret residence in the Art School itself, like a mouse in the wainscotting. From the Primrose I was minutes away from my nest; up the coke-heap in the kiln-yard, along a parapet, through a small window, to my luxurious bed amongst the mattresses and blankets of the Life Room.

It was one night, alone and studious in the Primrose, that Victor Sanderson, a handsome and charismatic older student, joined me in my snug; ‘you’re Andy, aren’t you?’

But that’s another story; life-long, and spanning the entire Earth, which spins yet, though without dear Vic.

Never, ever, go back.

But I did, fifty years later, with another dear: Lucy. And I was glad of the supportive company when we cautiously entered the almost-derelict pub in a dead drizzle. The whole neighbourhood was dismal, run-down. Un-repaired broken window-glass, weather-streaked for-sale signs, peeling paint and un-cared-for cottages.

However, a pub is a pub, and there was strange laughter and occasional shouts from the inmates. Not the clientel of old; what the hell did I expect? But I have to use the term ‘derro’, though I feel ashamed of my reaction. The snugs were gone, everything except the bones of the place was perhaps new thirty years ago, and now decayed, sordid.

We were ‘welcomed’ by a hyperactive small friendly-aggressive mostly-toothless person, who danced up to us grinning and chattering, watched by the few others from the asylum. I took refuge in boldness, quickly ordering two pints and getting a far table, talking very loudly in my best Aussie accent to confuse the natives, who settled down to stare at us, scratch, and attend to their itching eyes.

The pints gave us time to explore the surroundings; first from our table, then wandering around like landlords inspecting a tenement. The old place still had masses of charm, and though many of the interesting mechanical features were defunct, the stucco decoration was intact with the charming tobacco-brown glaze of a century or more. Much more.

A second pair of pints had us considering buying and restoring…….ah, the romance of ale, and of irretrievable memories. Madness, but so curiously beckoning. And it seemed the place actually was for sale. Like every pub in Britain.

But oh dear, the lovely beer garden and the roses.

Outside, in the solid motionless damp, was a ground of crumbling bitumen and concrete littered with stacked detritus, trucks and parts, piles of anonymous wet and dripping stuff, with the ancient building discarded like the rest, cowering in its own domain.

Never go back.

Ever.

POST SCRIPT!

HAVING CRIED INTO MY BEER, I thought I’d better Google the old place, just in case, because that 50-year re-visit was a few years ago now, and has depressed me ever since, until this rather astounding moment. I honestly thought the Primrose was finished.

Should have looked first.

What a gratifying surprise! The Primrose risen from dereliction to magnificence! Looking so pretty and cared-for and loved, as good as new…….you have no idea how I have cheered-up since recovering from the gloom of my blog.

As an old customer, to the owners, congratulations; to the staff, and the new generations of custom, my very best wishes to you all for enjoyment and long life, and may The Primrose thrive til the end of days, and longer.

Queensland drought: PROLONGED WEATHER STASIS AUSTRALIA chapter 2

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SUDDEN STRATOSPHERIC WARMING and THE QUEENSLAND DROUGHT. First published Nov 8 2019.

The Sudden Stratospheric Warming event over the Antarctic Region is the likely cause of the current Prolonged Weather Stasis affecting the central latitudes of Australia.

Predicted about three months ago by the Met Office as lasting until ‘Possibly January or February 2020′ this event continues to suppress rainfall generally, despite the occasional local showers giving false hope to those recipients.

My previous blog on the subject outlines the possible effect of Prolonged Weather Stasis, or PWS, on Queensland drought. Sadly the predictions are so far becoming reality for rural townships, graziers and all farmers within the affected zone, which includes most of the coastal fringe excepting the far North and South, and Tasmania; these areas may actually receive more than average rainfall.

As I wrote previously, graziers are de-stocking cattle at an alarming rate, of necessity, there being no feed. Dairy farmers likewise are downsizing, every dry day bringing disaster closer. These are the initial preventative measures in a situation which is daily becoming worse, and these are the businesses which are first affected. As PWS continues, more and more ventures and industries will be forced to close, an accelerating cascade of unemployment throughout the community, as inter-dependent services collapse.

City-dwellers are far from exempt. Critical to the well-being of our communities is the level of water in the dams. At present we have excellent storage in the major dams, and should this tide us over until rain resumes we should thank the original planners and designers for their foresight. If rain events do not resume, diminishing dam levels will become a nightmare for us all, with no viable solution except drastic rationing. Should even that fail, the last option, which should be implemented immediately, right now, Friday the Eighth of November, is the building of coastal de-salination plants: hundreds of them.

De-salination has successfully provided water for coastal market-garden greenhouses, utilising evaporation and condensation of piped sea-water direct to the growers, returning the salt-rich brine to the ocean.

Households can subsist on a relatively tiny water supply…..after severe education and rabid policing, but industry and essential services need massive quantities, which may simply not be available. Think of the staggering volume required by breweries, shock, horror. But this is serious. Industries, to remain viable, must oust residential areas from our coastline in order to operate on desalinated water, though pipelines may span distance. This situation is, of course, going to cost everyone.

As I write, dam levels are dropping. If my forward-planning is a false alarm, so be it. A double pipeline was constructed years ago to pump treated sewage-water from Luggage Point to Tarong Power Station. Excellent fore-sight for exactly this situation.

Well, not this situation exactly, for we may be on the cusp of suffering a far worse outcome. An open-ended Queensland drought.

The weeks pass. The rainy season approaches, many believe, and hold their breath. A month or so and we’ll be at Mid-Summer. We may wait and hope, but action is needed immediately, for this year, The Rains may never arrive. Then what will we do?

Politicians flutter and seem to not be aware of the catastrophe facing huge areas of the country. All are currently and rightly horrified at the fire-devastation which can never be controlled, and may affect every community within cooee of a tree, or a paddock.  But this is just the initial sign of worse to come, although having your house burned down is pretty bad. Once the trees have gone there will be a period of realisation, as townships, one after the other become no longer viable: no water supply. No farm. No industry. No job. No mortgage repayments. Shops with very expensive food. The thought-process of extrapolation from events happening right now are very scary, although we watch the nightly news with comfortable trepidation. Soon each of us may be directly affected; time will tell, but really, there’s little we can do to help ourselves, and nothing we can do to change the weather.