Seing as none of you were really interested in our Federal Budget 'cos it turned out to be a complete waste of time even having it on TV as the damn thing was such a negative and nothing thing, this then in the main is a blog about a wonderful little marsupial that we have here in OZ call a Bandicoot. But first I shall endeavour to give you a bit of background into our animals vis a vis yours.
One of the more endearing things about the names of animals here in the Antipodes is that none of the nomenclature of the little beasties sounds threatening or majisterial. Unlike those beasts of Africa ,Europe,Nth /South America and Asia we here in Australia don't having any screechy roary, mad things that will devour you in one bite. None of our nasties are like that,bit like us really, we do have nasty things that snap, poison and kill very quickly but all that is done with style and finesse.The taipan snake is the deadliest in the world,no roar at all, dead in 30 seconds, funnel web spiders creep beneath the sheets,one nip, goodnight you,not a peep out of it either.Box jelly-fish, get that down your speedos and look out, lets hope the beach resort is close to a hospital.Keep the trainers on when you go for a paddle in the waters of Queensland's Great Barrier Reef, that's in case you step on a stone fish,oops you didn't need that leg anyways.Ssssshhh though, notice just how quiet our deadliest things are? Unlike other countries .
Take TIGER for one, doesn't that conjure up a fierce, striped wild animal with enormous great teeth and very bad breath that will just be waiting in the wings to bite off a slice, of YOU? Then on the other hand we have here in OZ, the echidna, ooohhhhhhhhhh, how sweet, a little cutey pie thing that just curls up into a wincy little ball when frightened and only eats ants, those nasty critters that spoil your picnic, shame on you ants.Like the platypus, Echidna is a monotreme, an egg laying mammal. Next there is Rex the LION.Great hairy bit of a thing it is too, always poncing about the veldt like it owns the place, well you try and tell it to shove off then, see how you get on sistaaaahh.In the OZ corner we have the platypus, soft sleek furry type of creature that just burrows in the river bank for worms and stuff, doesn't even make a noise when doing so either and if frightened by any loudness will whip into its burrow where it hides until the nasty crashing about thingy has sloped off. Last but not least is the ELEPHANT, a monstrous great lump of a pachyderm that you cannot even make piano keys out of anymore, really good for nothing else than leaving massive huge piles of 'IT' all over the grass . Noisy sod of a beast too, trumpets away sixty to the dozen, then stomps all over the farmers maize crop,useless.
That is just Asia / Africa, space wont allow me to list all the yelling loud things from Europe along with the Americas .I have shown you just some of our nice little creatures who have no real obnoxious habits and finish up with a most personable lovely chappie who is a soft cuddly wuggly, that I myself relate to well.
We have the wombat, a pleasant sort of fattish fellow who is most congenial only coming out of his burrow at night making no sound as he goes about his business. He just eats, roots and leaves.
Enter my lovely little BANDICOOT.Not a monotreme like his friends the platypus and echidna just a common old variety marsupial and very shy, also where we stumbled across him, quite rare.To see him well you will have to enlarge the pic.
So there we have just some of our lovely sweet harmless denizens of the forest and glens of OZ, nice homely sort of a quiet likeable spot is OZ, but don't stand under the black wattles in midsummer as a pile of follow- me -caterpillars might drop down on you and their collective bites are deadly,no known antidote either.....sorrrrreeee, but I did warn you.
No Hortense I don't know the official name for those caterpillars, we used to see them on the farm. Remember when they fell on the horses neck and he could never race again? those little green ones that ball up together until one crawls out and they all go marching off in line.If you pluck the middle one out they all stop and ball up again until a leader just wings off , squash them and they give off a really punguent eucalypt smell. You do remember !, and that green stuff you could never get off your blouse so you had to throw it away, was a nice shirt that too.
Horty you didn't really like that Government minister who rabitted on about the infrastructure spending this morning, the Hon.Anthony Albanese . You don't like him, good, he sounded like a goat talking about billyons of dollahs then wouldn't admit to the fact that all the money he talked about wasn't actually going to be spent this year or even next,not for another 10 yrs Horty. What a load of old cobblers girl, to be quite frank m'dear I think he didn't really give a damn , just wanted to hear himself talk over the top of the interviewer.
Good deal that going to see 'angels and demons' friday then 'star trek' today, I does like a rollicking good movie or two.The gelato was at its best in Cocolat as well me lovely, in all, a top weekend
Saturday 16 May 2009
Sunday 10 May 2009
ink marks on a blank page Sunday 10th May
Our federal budget day looms on Tuesday, not that it will bring any surprises as most of the details have been carefully leaked to the media over the last few days. The treasurer is a chap who like the three main players in this Government appears to have completely mastered the art of talking whilst the mouth is full of marbles and under water at that. The whole of the cabinet can mouth the same mantra of rhetoric at warp speed, and really have been able to spin at force ten of the cycle. For some weeks now the top movers and shakers in Government have been flogging themselves ragged to sell just how wonderfully conservative and fiscally responsible they are, at the same time though they have been handing out cash to all and sundry like drunken philanthropists. Poor old OZ is going to be in debt forever and three days, the legacy of their largesse will be carried by the grandchildren of this generation.
Okay so I'm not an economist, who has to be when there is at this moment the country is saddled with largest national debt ever and theGovernment of the day can't even tell us, the people, how they will manage their way out of the fiasco. The only thing that they can actually say forcefully is "Why haven't the opposition been putting forward their policies". Got news for the Government, the opposition aren't actually wielding the reins of power, you lot are.
We are relatively well off here with a very stable banking system, there once was a lovely big surplus in treasury as well, we still have stuff to dig up that folk need and we beat the New Zealand team in the rugby test, so all is not so bad in the land down under.
Just made myself an espresso,cut a wedge of home baked fruit cake then sat down if front of the TV . Not much of note flickering away on the lcd, puerile offerings even on the public channel that I normally watch. So I turned to the commercial lot, even worse there. One of the commercial stations had a really slow cops and killers show,on one,football (oz style) another,a more juvenile USA cop shoot 'em up, last also very least was a chat show run by 30 something folk who all spoke in shouts with lots of face gestures. One segment on the chat thing was a young fellow who looked as though he had been dressed by the op-shop doing a voice over to a filmed piece on the philosophy of fate. The only thing interesting was the title , but perhaps I show my age here as all the 30 somethings laughed their collective heads off. Never like to get on stage about age either, you are each and everyone of you all sorts of age. I am 67, love being that, cannot wait to be 68 then 69 etc etc etc. My generation had all been married for years with children when we were thirty, not saying that was a good thing, but it was different times with a different set of values. Here in OZ we had lived an insular sort of life for years even as far up to the Vietnam war, the normality of life hadn't changed much for most of us until after that conflict had been and gone. Lots of young Aussie men and women had been to wars all over the place as far back as the Boer war but had come back here then just picked up as nothing much had happened. Perhaps it was the tyranny of distance from anywhere that was anything that isolated us, or was it just in the national physche that we were who we are and that made us different ,willing to stay the same. Folk from OZ travelled far and wide doing all sorts of things but they always came back and then settled back into being parochial Aussies almost as they stepped off the plane. Just about every jouralist who interviewd any visiting famous o/s person as they stepped off the plane asked this question,"What do you think of Australia?" There was a famous incident in Melbourne when Frank Sinatra was asked a bunch of really fatuous silly questions, he got very upset with a female journo then called all Australian female journo's "$20 Hookers" The local transport union got so incensed they refused to allow Sinatra's plane to take off. We really didn't appear to be very cosmopolitan at that point but life here moved on allowing us to gradually catch up with the world. So we are now at our place in time where on a per capita value we have almost as many murders per thousand as London, drink more beer than the Germans, become alcoholics as fast as the Russians, rack up credit card debt at a rate similar to Americans, have the same rate of obesity in major cities but thankfully we now smoke less per thousand than almost all Western Democracies. We have devoured the American way of life so well most of our children know more words of the American national Anthem than their own. A survey was conducted recently where the respondents related more to Barack Obama than their own Prime Minister. Hey, but who could blame them,that man is charisma. One thing that we must stop doing as a nation though is having our movers and shakers fly o/s, get sold the latest snake oil(that dont work), then come back here to install it to be the next great hope only to see the wheels fall off two days later. Grow up OZ, we can do our own version of snake oil!
Indeed so Hortense, news wise it is a mighty poor week. you rightly point out too m'dear that most of the budget has been leaked out. That might make a mockery of the journo's all getting locked in a room with no communications to read the budget papers, then when the doors get opened all run to file their stories at the same time, so as not to spill the beans scoop wise an all.
As if! Yes I do agree Horty, the treasurer is a sort of smarmy looking fellow at that, the sort who when he was at school would tell the teacher on you before you did stuff,then swear he didn't.
Sorry about the trip to Cocolat old girl, no movies this week either.Still Mothers day lunch was pretty full on, the call from daughter was great, life is good init.
Okay so I'm not an economist, who has to be when there is at this moment the country is saddled with largest national debt ever and theGovernment of the day can't even tell us, the people, how they will manage their way out of the fiasco. The only thing that they can actually say forcefully is "Why haven't the opposition been putting forward their policies". Got news for the Government, the opposition aren't actually wielding the reins of power, you lot are.
We are relatively well off here with a very stable banking system, there once was a lovely big surplus in treasury as well, we still have stuff to dig up that folk need and we beat the New Zealand team in the rugby test, so all is not so bad in the land down under.
Just made myself an espresso,cut a wedge of home baked fruit cake then sat down if front of the TV . Not much of note flickering away on the lcd, puerile offerings even on the public channel that I normally watch. So I turned to the commercial lot, even worse there. One of the commercial stations had a really slow cops and killers show,on one,football (oz style) another,a more juvenile USA cop shoot 'em up, last also very least was a chat show run by 30 something folk who all spoke in shouts with lots of face gestures. One segment on the chat thing was a young fellow who looked as though he had been dressed by the op-shop doing a voice over to a filmed piece on the philosophy of fate. The only thing interesting was the title , but perhaps I show my age here as all the 30 somethings laughed their collective heads off. Never like to get on stage about age either, you are each and everyone of you all sorts of age. I am 67, love being that, cannot wait to be 68 then 69 etc etc etc. My generation had all been married for years with children when we were thirty, not saying that was a good thing, but it was different times with a different set of values. Here in OZ we had lived an insular sort of life for years even as far up to the Vietnam war, the normality of life hadn't changed much for most of us until after that conflict had been and gone. Lots of young Aussie men and women had been to wars all over the place as far back as the Boer war but had come back here then just picked up as nothing much had happened. Perhaps it was the tyranny of distance from anywhere that was anything that isolated us, or was it just in the national physche that we were who we are and that made us different ,willing to stay the same. Folk from OZ travelled far and wide doing all sorts of things but they always came back and then settled back into being parochial Aussies almost as they stepped off the plane. Just about every jouralist who interviewd any visiting famous o/s person as they stepped off the plane asked this question,"What do you think of Australia?" There was a famous incident in Melbourne when Frank Sinatra was asked a bunch of really fatuous silly questions, he got very upset with a female journo then called all Australian female journo's "$20 Hookers" The local transport union got so incensed they refused to allow Sinatra's plane to take off. We really didn't appear to be very cosmopolitan at that point but life here moved on allowing us to gradually catch up with the world. So we are now at our place in time where on a per capita value we have almost as many murders per thousand as London, drink more beer than the Germans, become alcoholics as fast as the Russians, rack up credit card debt at a rate similar to Americans, have the same rate of obesity in major cities but thankfully we now smoke less per thousand than almost all Western Democracies. We have devoured the American way of life so well most of our children know more words of the American national Anthem than their own. A survey was conducted recently where the respondents related more to Barack Obama than their own Prime Minister. Hey, but who could blame them,that man is charisma. One thing that we must stop doing as a nation though is having our movers and shakers fly o/s, get sold the latest snake oil(that dont work), then come back here to install it to be the next great hope only to see the wheels fall off two days later. Grow up OZ, we can do our own version of snake oil!
Indeed so Hortense, news wise it is a mighty poor week. you rightly point out too m'dear that most of the budget has been leaked out. That might make a mockery of the journo's all getting locked in a room with no communications to read the budget papers, then when the doors get opened all run to file their stories at the same time, so as not to spill the beans scoop wise an all.
As if! Yes I do agree Horty, the treasurer is a sort of smarmy looking fellow at that, the sort who when he was at school would tell the teacher on you before you did stuff,then swear he didn't.
Sorry about the trip to Cocolat old girl, no movies this week either.Still Mothers day lunch was pretty full on, the call from daughter was great, life is good init.
Sunday 3 May 2009
Ink marks on a blank page Sunday 3rd May
Been away for a week or so,went to see daughter and her family in another state,Victoria that is.
Nice trip, but missed the goings on here in SA ,the rain and then more rain. All good that, it did pelt down too. Just in case y'all didn't know we are or were going through an almighty drought, worst for years so 'they' say. Mind you ,a lot, and 'they' said it as well, all down to climate change, 'they' said. Let me put you in the picture regarding the robbi thought on climate change. Notice I said thought and not the plural as I only ever have the one thought at a time. Of course it is all down to climate change, irrefutable reasoning that as it be the Earth is continually changing and has done for millenia. Humans have repeatedly polluted the Earth, been doing so for 40k years or more , the Australian aboriginals lit huge bushfires each year to burn off country to 'manage' it for their way of life. The burning off in some places altered the ecology of Australia and made the Eucalypt the dominant tree specie there. So much so that many indigenous shrubs and trees do not reproduce each season unless there is fire. We had been living on our farm for some ten years when a wildfire came through and after the next rains some two weeks later on the roadside verge across from the house there were three species of plant growing that had not grown there for ten years(acacia family). Some of our natives need smoke to germinate,Discaria pubescens and those in that family are just some. This blue ball we live on is in a continual state of flux and change,so why am I back on this hobby horse? as I seem to remember not so very long ago I waxed on lyrical in a similar vein.You may well ponder but there is a simple answer, not related to a senior moment either.
On the way back from Victoria I decided to make a detour and drive the coast road(Great Ocean Road) to a place in my state called Nelson. One reason was to see if I could get down on a beach called Dinosaur Cove( in Victoria), yup there are lots of nice fossils there to scrabble for if the tide is out that is. Hortense had never been to that part of the country as well but I do not equate Horty alongside fossils either.
I do have more that a passing interest in fossils and this particular place is a great example of the early Cretaceous period (100+m-y), bad luck robbi the tide was well in and as I only go 5'7'' in my shoes I would have been about a foot underwater. However the drive is nothing short of spectacular and for 400kms the scenery is just awesome. You drive into the bottom half of the Otway ranges which has some of the best stands of mountain ash forest in OZ and some really dense rainforest as well. The tree top walk (rainforest) on suspension bridges is one of those things that make your head spin, in an inspiring way. Coming out of the Otways the descent down to Apollo bay is breathtakingly beautiful and the town itself is friendly and just a great spot to lunch, plenty of top restaurants and a couple of good bakeries.
Drove on after lunch to the Twelve Apostles and then stayed the night at Port Campbell.
The Twelve Apostles have been carved out of the cliffs by wave action as well as the normal gyrations of the tectonic plates over millenia and are sculpted into amazing shapes,whilst the cliffs and bays are geological time capsules that show how the Earth has continually evolved over time. After Port Campbell comes the Bay of Islands and for me the most spectacular of sights and if the weather is on,that is a stiff onshore breeze blowing with the tide incoming the blow-hole there is a fantastic sight. We had a long drive back home on leaving the motel so although the day promised a good breeze we had to get there at 0700 when it was relatively calm. Good things happen when you least expect, walking up the track to the viewing platform there in front not 10mtrs away was a bandicoot. These little marsupials are very shy and rarely seen in daylight, especially here where there are normally lots of people. I managed to get quite close and took as many pics as I could before it scampered away in the undergrowth. Bandicoots have become rare there as they have no defenses against feral cats and foxes, they are also solitary animals and seem only to pair when they mate.
The drive back to Adelaide was about 540kms, a good road, no hills until Adelaide so I just put the cruise control on and we were home at 1830 that night. Got some top pics which I'm about to load on here now.
Hortense hasn't had a Gelato fix for a week plus so we must wend our way to Cocolat in the next day or so, a plan do you think? She is also a little more than miffed that I haven't been able to wind myself up about the Government at all, just far to busy driving and looking at OZ. There is a late news flash though. Surprise surprise, our federal Government is delaying and reducing the Carbon Trading scheme it earlier promised to get elected to one that is going to set the carbon price down to $10 a tonne and will also can the start date until 2011. Old cynic that I am there could also be a stop put on the thing altogether as the next federal election will have to be in 2010, is the timing convenient or what? The Global recession is a godsend for this Government, they have blamed everything from cold coffee to where do the flies go in winter down to it, but then as Hortense will tell you, I really am an old cynic.
Nice trip, but missed the goings on here in SA ,the rain and then more rain. All good that, it did pelt down too. Just in case y'all didn't know we are or were going through an almighty drought, worst for years so 'they' say. Mind you ,a lot, and 'they' said it as well, all down to climate change, 'they' said. Let me put you in the picture regarding the robbi thought on climate change. Notice I said thought and not the plural as I only ever have the one thought at a time. Of course it is all down to climate change, irrefutable reasoning that as it be the Earth is continually changing and has done for millenia. Humans have repeatedly polluted the Earth, been doing so for 40k years or more , the Australian aboriginals lit huge bushfires each year to burn off country to 'manage' it for their way of life. The burning off in some places altered the ecology of Australia and made the Eucalypt the dominant tree specie there. So much so that many indigenous shrubs and trees do not reproduce each season unless there is fire. We had been living on our farm for some ten years when a wildfire came through and after the next rains some two weeks later on the roadside verge across from the house there were three species of plant growing that had not grown there for ten years(acacia family). Some of our natives need smoke to germinate,Discaria pubescens and those in that family are just some. This blue ball we live on is in a continual state of flux and change,so why am I back on this hobby horse? as I seem to remember not so very long ago I waxed on lyrical in a similar vein.You may well ponder but there is a simple answer, not related to a senior moment either.
On the way back from Victoria I decided to make a detour and drive the coast road(Great Ocean Road) to a place in my state called Nelson. One reason was to see if I could get down on a beach called Dinosaur Cove( in Victoria), yup there are lots of nice fossils there to scrabble for if the tide is out that is. Hortense had never been to that part of the country as well but I do not equate Horty alongside fossils either.
I do have more that a passing interest in fossils and this particular place is a great example of the early Cretaceous period (100+m-y), bad luck robbi the tide was well in and as I only go 5'7'' in my shoes I would have been about a foot underwater. However the drive is nothing short of spectacular and for 400kms the scenery is just awesome. You drive into the bottom half of the Otway ranges which has some of the best stands of mountain ash forest in OZ and some really dense rainforest as well. The tree top walk (rainforest) on suspension bridges is one of those things that make your head spin, in an inspiring way. Coming out of the Otways the descent down to Apollo bay is breathtakingly beautiful and the town itself is friendly and just a great spot to lunch, plenty of top restaurants and a couple of good bakeries.
Drove on after lunch to the Twelve Apostles and then stayed the night at Port Campbell.
The Twelve Apostles have been carved out of the cliffs by wave action as well as the normal gyrations of the tectonic plates over millenia and are sculpted into amazing shapes,whilst the cliffs and bays are geological time capsules that show how the Earth has continually evolved over time. After Port Campbell comes the Bay of Islands and for me the most spectacular of sights and if the weather is on,that is a stiff onshore breeze blowing with the tide incoming the blow-hole there is a fantastic sight. We had a long drive back home on leaving the motel so although the day promised a good breeze we had to get there at 0700 when it was relatively calm. Good things happen when you least expect, walking up the track to the viewing platform there in front not 10mtrs away was a bandicoot. These little marsupials are very shy and rarely seen in daylight, especially here where there are normally lots of people. I managed to get quite close and took as many pics as I could before it scampered away in the undergrowth. Bandicoots have become rare there as they have no defenses against feral cats and foxes, they are also solitary animals and seem only to pair when they mate.
The drive back to Adelaide was about 540kms, a good road, no hills until Adelaide so I just put the cruise control on and we were home at 1830 that night. Got some top pics which I'm about to load on here now.
Hortense hasn't had a Gelato fix for a week plus so we must wend our way to Cocolat in the next day or so, a plan do you think? She is also a little more than miffed that I haven't been able to wind myself up about the Government at all, just far to busy driving and looking at OZ. There is a late news flash though. Surprise surprise, our federal Government is delaying and reducing the Carbon Trading scheme it earlier promised to get elected to one that is going to set the carbon price down to $10 a tonne and will also can the start date until 2011. Old cynic that I am there could also be a stop put on the thing altogether as the next federal election will have to be in 2010, is the timing convenient or what? The Global recession is a godsend for this Government, they have blamed everything from cold coffee to where do the flies go in winter down to it, but then as Hortense will tell you, I really am an old cynic.
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