perfect autumn weather

No wind, low tides and warm sun made our beach walk a delight. 

Seaweed-free after the last storm!

finally moved

 

"The longest house move ever," is what Christopher calls it and finally it's over.

Bertha Street is sold and settled with all Alison's belongings removed to Foote Street or else destined for the final garage sale this Saturday.
Buy One Get One Free
will be the slogan and let's hope we can all lead relatively uncluttered lives from now on.

 

Except Beechwood's garage which has become the resting place for fridges and freezers plus a dryer that won't fit inside the house:

 

We need an electrician to install more power points.

 

Well, there has to be somewhere to store all the fish David catches...
Rory will buy the new Fisher & Paykel 2-door frig and the old long freezer known as The Coffin so it won't be quite so bad after June.

 

Worm water has worked wonders in the tunnel house and we have brassicas like trees and are picking copious quantities of stringless beans.

 

I also planted carrots but they are shaded out by the cauliflowers.

 



raising the roof

Di and Rory's new house at Cape Douglas is progressing remarkably well - minor delays like beams fractionally short and the internal lift arriving from Brisbane with some breakages haven't slowed things down.


The roof is on and one cold Friday evening we gathered at dusk for the Topping Out ceremony.
Rory shinned up the scaffolding and attached a tree to the gable - that will bring good luck to all who work and sail in her.




 

On the fishing side of things, David has decided to adopt Judith's suggestion of using an ironing board on the beach to clean his fish on.

 

 

and we found one of Cape Douglas's rare shells, the purple
Janthina (Violetta) globosa
- well that's what Google says it is.

Gorgeous isn't it!

 

things that wriggle

The worm farm is up and running.
Joe from next door supplied a handful of worms and we topped-up with some from the worm farm at Millicent.

 

They're a lively lot: whenever you take the lid off they're wriggling around eating the delicious left-overs gloop I vitamise for them:

 

remnant cucumbers from making bread & butter pickles

 

they also like newspaper, The Australian more than The Border Watch

Once a week they're  flushed with a bucket of rain water and the resulting liquid - worm tea/worm wee - is diluted 1 in 10 and used as fertiliser.
I'm expecting great results on the tunnel house plants.

 

HOWEVER
There are other things that wriggle, the serpents in Paradise.

 

David is away for two weeks fishing holiday with Roger Pfitzner in Coffin Bay - yes I know, a fishing holiday is ridiculous but they've been doing it for 22 years and hate to break with tradition.

 

My sister Jennifer came to stay for a week, and we came home after a day in Mount Gambier ready for our drinks and nibbles on the deck.

I had Willow on a long lead in one hand and a plate of smoked salmon in the other about to plonk it on the table when I noticed Willow sniffing at something long, brown and wriggly.

 

A snake!

 

I grabbed Willow and levitated inside, Jennifer and me both screaming and the smoked salmon left behind until I decided to risk retrieving it. We watched for ten minutes while the snake tried to find an exit: unable to climb the glass wall it slowly slithered down the steps, across the lower deck then UP the wooden retaining wall and disappeared under the bushes.

 

Willow didn't get much rest that evening as we kept waking her up to see if she was OK and she was; not that hot, floppy, flat-eared look that I remember so vividly from her previous snake-bite.

 

I haven't seen the snake since but now realise we need to make a lot of noise clomping around the deck to warn snakes to stay away.

 

 

crayfisherman's reward

 

David's patience has been rewarded at last.

After many fruitless trips to check his pots and raging over the unsportsmanlike types who may be pulling the pots for him - today he cracked it!

And the secret is to get up very early.

Here's today's catch - a jumbo weighing 2.16 Kg - proudly exhibited to those of us who don't get up early:

 

Willow is interested but she knows from experience you don't mess with those big fellows.



outside table finished

Rory supplied the timber and David did the finishing.


It's a slab of pinus halepensis (Aleppo pine) with an interesting history.
In the late 1880s the McGowans of Strathdownie in Victoria went to Robe South Australia to collect a shipment of tree seedlings which had arrived there by boat. On the return journey they had to go through customs at the SA/Vic border.

The much-travelled trees grew well until last year the current owners decided to cut down a few and Rory went over with his bush mill to do the job, his reward being large slabs of timber, one of which he gave to us. Others will go into the new house he is building at Cape Douglas.

 

David removing dust from the repeated sandings, a leg hanging on the right

Eight coats of plastic later the table was installed on our house deck and we had a ceremonial launch with Rory and Di.

At this time of the year, any outside function needs a can of Aerogard



fishermen at work

 

Daisy and Chris are determined to learn the fine points of fishing - and who better than the master himself to instruct them.

Here they are, life-jacketed and hatted, out the front of Beechwood hard at it:

And here they are several hours later with FIFTY FIVE tommy ruffs to scale and clean.
Some jobs are a labour of love.