willow returns

Christmas celebrations at the beach went ahead with neighbours, friends and relatives - no Willow, who was still in hospital, now with a urinary infection from all the blood and protein in her urine.

 

On Christmas Night she decided enough was enough and ripped out the drip so the vet decreed she could go home.

 

All she wants to do now is sleep, preferably on my lap, without even the energy to hiss at visiting cat Zara.

 

She's on the mend but Nonie's grandcat has been bitten twice so we can assume they don't learn.

 

 

 

party weekend

We're still in the throes of moving - so hard -  had seedEnergy's Christmas dinner at Beechwood,  outside in the shelter shed area away from the wind - but by dessert time it was too cold so we ate Di's plum pudding upstairs in the Lookout Room where we could watch the birds and see pelicans fishing.

 

Saturday night was Daisy's boyfriend ChrisB's 21st birthday party in Mount Gambier Old Gaol and on Sunday we had our annual Bubbles and Bagels party,  the 22nd one, with good weather and just as successful as its predecessors.

 

 

All was overshadowed by finding our cat Willow,  barely able to walk and floppy. David instantly diagnosed snake bite which the vet later confirmed with a blood test so she was given antivenom and put on a drip to wash the venom through her system. Three days later she is still in hospital and we are missing her.

Let me out of here!

Dragging out the moving has been a mistake.
If there's ever a next time I'll just walk away and let the professionals do it.
Our freezer is still at Foote Street, the iron and ironing board (not that I really want them), sewing materials, half a shed of tools and STUFF and strangely my big mixing bowls have gone AWOL.
 

 

 

goodbye to the compactus

 

I had to be at Foote Street Monday morning to admit the family team who have bought the compactus: removal a bigger job than they expected, involving a trip home for a full set of tools.

 

Included in the 3-generation team was the boy who bought David's didgeridoo, dying to tell me how well he is getting on. He has been practising hard and can make a kookaburra call plus the sound of a boomerang fading away into the distance and coming back. His granny is pleased with the way his breathing has improved: he can run to the corner and back without puffing.

 

 

Josh was in charge of removing the shelves

carpe diem

Saturday was to be the big move to permanent residency at Beechwood - but nature intervened with 35' and a north wind,  perfect for fishing off our beach. So David seized the day and was rewarded with a nice catch of garfish before he had to leave for tennis. I battled on, shoe-horning my clothes into the available wardrobe space: Port Mac op shop will get the rest.

 

Today David faced the same dilemma with a twist: his clothes couldn't move in because the wardrobe was full of books but the bookcases wouldn't fit unless he cut one in half. Joe came to help with this high-tech operation: note the garden fork which was needed to pry the two pieces apart.

 

also note the freshly picked cucumbers

 

wind wind and more wind

Jennifer and Peter (my sister and her husband) came for the weekend and all plans had to be modified due to the constant 20 knot winds. The guys went fishing at Pelican Point which is the most sheltered spot on the coast: true fishermen - they froze but stuck it out and caught 12 garfish and 3 nice mullet.

They met our neighbours, Di & Rory and Angela & Joe, went for bracing beach walks and admired the tunnel house and its green harvest.

Here they are at Pebbles with David, looking - not surfing:

 

 

every garage sale needs a spruiker

And ours was David. I had no idea what a good salesman he is until seeing him in action today.  He could sell a ketchup icypole to a lady in a white dress as Christopher put it.
 

My Border Watch advertisement was carefully crafted with words like 'boomerangs', 'steel axeheads' and 'wood copper' - all of which did well - but the clear winner was 'rabbit traps' which 8 people turned up to buy. The early bird got the worm and bought all 12 of them. 'Books' did better than expected and maybe I put too many in the recycle bin last week. 'Records' was a surprise with one customer buying 57.
 

My favourite customer was the little boy who badly wanted a didgeridoo: he huffed and puffed and turned purple while elder brother laughed,  then he proudly produced this dreadful mooing noise and was hooked for life. Salesman David sprang into action and value-added a CD of how to play it  and granny paid up.

Granny also bought my compactus (sliding shelves) so that's one less thing to move to Beechwood.
 

It was a successful day, finished in time for David to go to tennis, thanks to Alison and Christopher helping to clear up. Daisy and Chris brought buns for morning tea which was much appreciated.

 

homemade elderflower cordial

Last week as Neville Bonney drove into Cape Douglas he spotted a flowering  elder tree, the Australian variety Sambucus gaudichaudiana - he admits he drives with his head sticking out the window to look at plants. So as we drove out we picked some flower heads and I made elderflower cordial based on a River Cottage recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. To my amazement,  it tastes terrific, just like the bought one and a great refresher for a hot day.

Recipe:
25 heads of elderflower, rinsed and checked for insects
Finely grated rind of 3 lemons & 1 orange
1.5 litres boiling water: pour over and leave overnight.
Next day add juice of 3 lemons & 1 orange, strain through muslin.
Add 1kg sugar and a heaped teaspoonful of citric acid (preservative),  bring to boil and simmer 2 minutes.
Cool and bottle, store in frig.
Use small amount with water or soda and lots of ice.

 

 

the garfish return

It's been a windy weekend, Saturday being taken up with Alison's garage sale (ours next weekend) and Old Farts' tennis,   so David hasn't had much fishing. Crayfishing has been hopeless: only rats for several weeks BUT Sunday was garfish day and he caught 43 big beauties.

 

Neville Bonney, plantsman and author, came for lunch on Friday and took David on a discovery tour of Douglas Point Conservation Park. Here I was thinking it was just a bare windswept headland - no - it's important for the conservation of the sandhills everlasting plant,  Ixodia, and the Rufous Bristle Bird ,  which obligingly ran across the road in front of them thus proving its continued existence.

 

Meanwhile back at the ranch I have been busy picking peas, tomatoes (get that,  they're early!), lebanese cucumbers, pattypan squash, beetroot from the tunnel house and a few bandicooted potatoes. Also we now have internet with NBN installed upstairs as a fixed wireless network. So I am back on eBay with mixed success: oddments sell better than books of which I have 550 of my personal collection to photograph and describe on ABE.

 

 

a planning meeting update

As promised the planning team for projected improvements to SA coastal communities held an update to tell us what their proposals are and to elicit our opinions.

Just as well - because they are determined to upgrade our picnic spot with bins and horrors! toilets. The Cape Douglas table is fervently against that sort of improvement as we don't want  people electing to camp there. They can come, have a look and go away again.

Their idea of making a safer walkway across the creek to get pedestrians off the road on a blind corner was unanimously voted as first priority; concealed driveway signs also good; more tree-planting; a paved road to the top of Pont Douglas and a sealed car park got the nod.
 

Angela, Joe, planner, Julie discuss the plan

crunch weekend

No going back now. We've decided to live permanently at Cape Douglas so "musical houses" will occur: Alison and Daisy will move into Foote Street and we will sell their house in Bertha Street.

Jon came down this  weekend to discuss with Alison  which of our heirlooms and  excess possessions will be his - and to fall upon the garage sale pile with cries of "I always wanted this" . Beechwood has no storage space and we like its bare white look so we have to be ruthless and reduce to minimal. But this week I will ring the cabinet maker and order a cupboard for upstairs.

Angela from next door dropped in for drinks and, mesmerised by looking at the sea, stayed quite late. She apologised next day and Joe,  her husband,  remarked: 'you'll have to get a cat door for Angela. "  She fixed our rattling flyscreen so she's very welcome.

Crayfish are still very scarce - this week's storm saw the pots dragged 400 metres away and one of Rory's lost - but we've had two feeds of strawberries from the tunnel house,  a meal of peas, two button squashes and two large beetroot.

invasion of the garden club

42 Garden Club members packed into our garage for morning tea, lunch and a meeting. I gave them a talk about how we've been "ungardening" then let them loose with a challenge to discover all of Beechwood's 16 seats - some of them did, even seat 16 which requires climbing up the dune.

 

President Jane welcoming club members

 

Joy, Joyce, Betty, and Gayle made it to seat 16

The "ungardening" concept falls down when you find the tunnel house with peas nearly ready for picking, tomato plants heading for the sky and strawberries ripe in their boxes.

Willow likes being out of the wind in the tunnel house

 

 

The club walked next door to look at Angela's immaculate new garden then on up the road to Widdisons' where Jean has made a magnificent seaside garden with many unusual native plants both on the roadside and into the creek that runs between their house and the sea.

Angela's hair is a Cape Douglas landmark

Everyone seemed most impressed with their day at Cape Douglas and one brave soul (Dot) even had a paddle in the sea. 

Meanwhile David went out in his boat and once they'd gone returned with 19 lovely garfish. 

the first harvest

This morning I picked the first strawberries before the hot north wind cooked them in the tunnel house. Growth has been rapid with the peas forming as you watch. 

 

 

Conditions were good for David to catch 15 garfish out the front - and it wasn't hot where he was, knee-deep in the sea.

David and Rory are crayfishing together which means they use one boat to check their four pots and share the catch. We had the first crayfish then Rory had two and now we've got a cray and two crabs. Local lore says that you don't catch crays and crabs in the same pot and so far that's true.

Crayfish score (caught in David's pots): 3

visitors

A weekend at the beach in somewhat warmer weather means visitors.

We met some new inhabitants on the beach while he was fishing and invited them, Marian and Steve, for drinks on the beach deck - and it was just warm enough to sit out there and watch the sunset.

Di and Rory arrived at "red o'clock " the next evening but we retreated to the upstairs room out of the wind where we could still watch the birds. Di and I prefer "white o'clock ".  

Denise came for lunch then Jon and Jaynee to tell us they will be neighbours,  having bought a house halfway round the bay, then Jan and Fred for dinner.

Sunday Angela and Joe from next door dropped in then elder granddaughter Hannah and her partner ChrisM (to distinguish from the other Chrises)  came to sample jaffles made the old-fashioned way in a jaffle iron cooked on an open fire in the shelter shed.

Here they are constructing their own (chicken is a favourite) -

 

The wildlife visitors included a swamp wallaby that hopped from the road to the beach via the beach deck - too quickly for anyone to take a photo - and a blue-tongue lizard that had Willow fascinated, not a good idea as she might try to get up close and personal with a snake.

 

 

beach mooring

David hasn't used our beach mooring because he thought it was too close to shore and his boat would run aground. Today's tide was very low at 0.2 metres so clad in their very useful waders,  David and Rory dragged it out to a better location. It's an old steel wheel off a piece of farm equipment,  now very rusty but reassuringly hard to move.

the start of the season

The first crayfish of the season was caught this morning by David and presented to me for my birthday.

Along with a porthole - just what I wanted for the wall near the shelter shed. Portholes are hard to find these days but he tracked one down in WA at a defunct foundry. 

douglas the dolphin

David's birthday present was a weather vane - that he had to install himself.
Here is Douglas the dolphin showing that the wind is coming from the west.

 

 

 

not at the beach

 

Beechwood was empty last weekend as we went to Launceston for SeedEnergy's AGM with the Camerons and the Gores. As always it was in a great location with lovely accommodation and food.

 As you can see it was beautiful weather and Launceston was ablaze with magnolias.
 

Part of the official meeting took place on the deck of one of the b&b rooms:

 

Three men in a tub - Andy Cameron, Peter Gore, David Boomsma

 

the wicked wind from the west

The wind came out of the west and found a tunnel house in its way so it did its best to go through. David arrived on Tuesday to find the western end of the tunnel house flapping and poor little LotsaLemons looking very sick. The front doormat was metres away and worst of all a big branch broke off a leucopogon.

row row row your boat

Jon is here for the weekend and today he took out The Sprat in a strong north wind.
I can see Willow  thinking: "I hope he comes back or we'll have to look after his cat."

tunnel house up

An easterly wind means no fishing today so David and Jon put up the plastic for our relocated tunnel house.

I have planted a row of peas,  some tiny beetroot plants and moved in my LotsaLemons,  a miniature lemon tree, which has had a hard winter on the house deck. In the warmth of the tunnel house it might have a chance.

Heather and Mike gave us some bags of potting mix which is terrific because the soil is - not  surprisingly - sandy.

taking it easy?

The fisherman had four fishing sessions but only Thursday's was any good.
On Saturday he took The Sprat (next job: remove the old name) out off the beach for two tommy ruffs which were returned to the sea.

He trimmed the roadside hedge back to its sinuous shape, erected the frame for our tunnel house which has been relocated from Foote Street, made a potato bed and put up a bench on the top of the western dune...

Our ceremonial first sit on the new/old bench was attended by a chorus line of about fifty dotterels which twinkled in unison along the shore on their tiny legs.

 

the garfish return

The fisherman is happy: he stood in the water at the western end of the bay for one and a half hours and caught 15 beautiful big garfish. 
Gorgeous weather,  19' and no wind.

tree removal

The Moreton Bay fig tree has gone from the western end.  David decreed it's not endemic to the area and anyway our poly tunnel has to go in that spot and its roots would soon be invasive so he chopped off all the foliage from the tree then tied the trunk to his car and towed it out.

Fishing isn't very good this weekend - only four mullet - one theory being that the tuna have eaten them; another theory being that they have moved around the coast to Hutt Bay. 

planning session

Grant District Council invited residents to a planning session to discuss future development for river and coastal communities.

Cape Douglas was well-represented and everyone there presented a united front: we don't want things to change, we like it as it is - off-the -beaten track and practically unknown. The planning team wanted us to say we hate the shacks but we don't. They were there first and as the site is below sea level and suffered badly in the big storms, we all think leave them alone. They have lifetime title only.

We'd like a better safer road up to Point Douglas: it's beautiful up there and we're happy to share it but no "facilities " thanks.

 



Our neighbours Angela & Jo (left) and David (right) putting their views to the planners

no spring yet

Too cold and windy for fishing this weekend though David did cast a line for an hour on Friday and caught two mullet which will become bait.

The only place out of the wind is by the shelter shed so he started on the screen there. Every car that comes over the speedhump just before our place has occupants who immediately glance left to see what we are doing - so a screen will stop that and I will plant an evergreen climber. The north wind will also be blocked and I shall move my ferns here.

does one echidna mean spring?

The sunny day seems to have lured an echidna out of hibernation.
I'm glad to see it and hope it eats every inch-ant it can.
Amazingly the seaweed I put on the dune as mulch is still mostly there.

 

calm after the storm

We missed an historic event in Mount Gambier - snow!
But was it ever windy at Cape Douglas! 
My wind sock took off into the scrub and the new brass bell unscrewed itself and fell to the deck. We watched it all from the Lookout Room, enjoying the big windows that stood up to the storm perfectly.

Daisy came for a sleepover and slept well even with the howling winds, waking to a clear calm morning and sunshine.
We went for a walk along the beach before she had to return to the Mount to play hockey in her new purple shoes.

 

a brass bell

This weekend we invited our neighbours at the beach, Angela and Jo, round for drinks - and they gave us this lovely nautical brass bell which David has hung on the beach deck. I'm thrilled with it and foresee ringing it hard to get the fisherman back on land for lunch.  

The rope across the deck front is to indicate to passersby that this is private property:  we frequently find sandy footprints on the decks that don't belong to us. 

The fisherman returned from the western end of the bay soaked through and freezing cold, having been flattened by a wave - but it was all worth it as he'd caught 19 beautiful big garfish.

virtual walk-through

Now that the blinds have been installed we are almost finished and I will do a guided tour, starting with the west wing:

bedroom 1 formerly bright blue



bedroom 2

hallway - same floor everywhere

toilet 1 formerly part of main bedroom

gorgeous bathroom formerly main bedroom

sitting room formerly purple, pink and yellow bedroom

sitting room has roman blinds

dining area looking out to new deck

dining area for people and cat

kitchen looking towards the road

kitchen with green door

kitchen with scones

stairway to Lookout Room, passage to laundry plus fisherman's shower and toilet 2

bed in corner of Lookout Room

you can make a cup of tea upstairs! toilet 3 behind

a place to sit and look at the sea - calm today

Lookout Room

Lookout Room