first snow peas

well summer is about here, the first snow peas are booming..thought that I'd might as well eat a couple of little ones yesterday...scoffed all that I could see that were big enough to grab...today I go and have a squizz and there's another feed, morning and evening!!! I reckon that there'll be a heap of stir fries coming up..the laksa leaf is going off..tastes just like "real" chinese with a bit of ginger and garlic... I think that there might be a ginger plant growing..maybe not..don't know what they would look like..hopefully my imagination is right..else I'll end up watching whatever it is go through it's cycle and maybe marvel at the flowers..I remember that I poked some sort of tuber set up under the ground here as the rows were getting done, see what happens...
Clarrie the crow is still hanging in there..amazing..I'd have done my dough...his mates have mostly stayed away..cept for the chooks eggs..(and she was sitting)...must be a certain range or freshness factor here!!

sunday..(at last)

summer draws closer ...just as I have to go up the bush...nice one..first trip is up to Leinster..- arsehole of nowhere...no real trees..no real water..hundreds of k's of gibber rock and scrubby mallee bush...heaps of flys...heaps of kiwis..I'll have to practice my accent so that all the kiwi's there can understand me..."choice bro..luts put sum puss in tha chully bun ay...ya bro, ya'd be a duckhud nut too".. 'bout a week of that place'll do me thanks ..at least I'll be out the middle of nowhere.
I was driving trucks around this area, and the rest of the state, 20 or so years ago...at Lawlers it wasn't uncommon for me to get eight or so flat tyres a day..due to the amount of old metal from the early days laying around..got pretty good at changing tyres..but mostly ended up with sheer admiraton for the character of the men that pushed wheel barrows up here from Perth, decided that "this" is the place to dig a gold mine, and off they go...the landscape is full of old holes..chiselled down through solid rock..
I reckon that I could survive in this country if I had to ..it probably would'nt be a real pleasant time though as the country is pretty hard...so mostly when I go up this way I have nothing but a sense of awe of the survival skills of the aboriginals that have inhabited and lived in harmony with the land for thousands of years ..or rather used too..It makes my soul weep to see the loss of knowledge of land and culture that is occurring as 50000 years of collective information is lost through lack of interest and the seductive siren call of the welfare state..the proliferation of american basketball "69" ect singlets and embracement of rapper shit, petrol sniffing and general substance abuse..it makes me despair ..what must the remaining guardians of the language and land be feeling with no-one to pass the knowledge to

flat and splatt

saw the most splattered roo on the road today...dunno what got it, but I could only recognise it, (on the return trip), as a roo 'cos of about 1/2 a tail amongst 30 feet of mince on the road...with a bit of luck it was one of the rally australia fuckheads and it munted the car...think that they are rally drivers cos they've got the same sort of car shape, heaps of spotties on full beam -(in the daytime)...dunno 'bout these cunts..closing our roads and locking out locals from our own backyard...don't spend any money in town..leave heaps of rubbish and cut up tracks....well the trees got a couple of them this year anyway...the powers that be are talking about ditching the rally in favour of some sort of plane circuit race..(looks pretty exiting from the shorts)..above the river up in perth..sound like a good idea to me..For Sale - one rally, complete with dickhead groupie wannabe's in tow.
saw a disappearing shag today as well..fucken amazing what SG's do at 10 feet..there one minute..gone the next!!

the dog

this is how the dog views himself...well you'd think so from the way that he goes off at people..even the ones that he knows, (he only does that in jest to those he knows 'though sometimes a little nip is fun).. I'm used to it and he only gives me a nip as payback from when I sneak up on him, pumping out zeds on a nice warm day, and then grab him and see what happens..he hasn't ever bitten me but gets his jaw around my arm !!
We once had a sheep.."Victa" - (the lawnmower) ..the dog knows the rules..no killing the residents ...so it was really funny to watch Victa trying the dogs new foot long butcher bone...funniest was the dog doing all the meanest snarls and facial contorsions that he could manage, and some of them were fine efforts.. and victa didn't bat an eyelid, just kept on licking the dogs tea....went on for about 15 minutes.. good laugh!!

here's a couple of photos from up north a few months ago, the green one is my camp near canarvon,(inland and northeast)..good camp heaps of birds singing and , as the sun set, the sound of dingo's eating sheep around us and circling the camp..made the dog look around a bit but I didn't see any of them..they must have got about six or so sheep though...other one is my camp view up in exmouth gulf..didn't get many fish ...didn't matter though as it was nice to have my camp to myself...in exmouth and coral bay was just wall to wall tourists..all jammed together in, (shudder), caravan parks...not for this little black duck!!

tough at the top

well this big fella looks like he's having a tough day....I can't believe that it is still so green and we're still getting regular rain and in November...usually things are browning off by now..The flys are friendly, especially around the cow paddocks..so much so that a fly net is a must...when it heats up they will drop off in the sun though and stick to the shade...saw a documentary program once about these folks in the arsehole of africa or somewhere, the place looked mostly like a moonscape but was next to a big lake....obout once a year some wispy grass grows there...that in itself is a mini celebration because they spend their time making nets out of said grass for the highlight of the year...which is when the flys arrive in swarms, sort of like the bat swarms that you see...then they use the nets to catch them and have a fly feast!!! yuuuummm..fly patties on a rock and no mayo thanks...

while the dolphins play

went fishing today..started out well with two good fish on the second and third casts....then apart from one smaller herring that was it for the next five hours...apart from watching the dolphins..i used to cusre them for scaring the fish but now realize that they are an indicator of fish, who have to eat regardless of the dolphins....got a kilo pf tiger prawns for $9.90 ..cheaper by far than shop meat...and had a nice tea of grilled fillets of fish and sizzling garlic prawns on a bed of fresh spinach and coleslaw....yum...works for me!
saw a liquid nitrigen tanker on the way down and the though of one of them in a vehicle accident with the tanker rupturing jumped to mind...would you be instantly frozen and have arms ect snapping off...

bert the bungarra

what a top day...started out by watching a new boat undergoing sea trials up near Fremantle...apparently it blasts 10 tons of water per second out the back..pretty speccy to watch..wouldn't mind a ride in that!! (also uses something like 22L per sec of fuel..means that I could run it for about a minute with my fun funds)..bert was there to say hi again today...right where I had to be standing to do my job....on ya bert!!