Local lizards, beetles, possums and snakes

March 7, 2011 / one2travelfar / Leave a comment

I’ve grown fond of the lizard who hangs around the sun room. I can hear the little pitter, patter of his feet as he runs across the linoleum. He no longer resides in my sneaker but I found where he was storing his food stash. He made quick work of a little beetle.

These beetles give off a strange scent. i thought I was smelling mildew in the house, but Tim figured out it was the beetles that get inside the house. Stinky bugs. Other huge beetles remind us of the “Cluster Flies” from home. In the morning, we find them lying on their backs doing the back stroke to death. They are so large, when they land on their backs, their legs aren’t long enough and can’t give them enough leverage to flip back over. Then I sweep them outdoors.

This beetle was floundering around the other day. It’s very ornate with a superstructure antenna. Unfortunately, it makes it unstable and top heavy and it also has a hard time flipping over when it lands on its back.

We watch movies on the computer and have been sitting in the sunroom at night. Since it is surrounded by floor to ceiling windows on three sides, the light shines around the periphery outside. We have learned a possum makes a nightly trek around the house, checks out the barbecue for snacks and heads off.

This is the largest white lipped snake I have seen here. I guess it does have white lips. I stamped my foot and it slithered off into the tussocks. It left the wallaby turd behind.

Wind in the Willows or Currents in the Casuarinas

March 4, 2011 / one2travelfar / Leave a comment

There are lots of casaurina or she oak trees around the island, grouped in forests and alone. They serve as a wind break around the living compound

They also line many of the tracks and occasionally fall over in strong wind. We’ve had three days of gale force winds and Tim found this one downed on the track to Garden Cove.

We’re not authorized to use power tools, (something about insurance and airlifting fingerless caretakers off Deal Island) except for a hand drill, so we set to work sawing and chopping with a hatchet.

I had no idea why all boys love playing with hatchets until I tried it myself. I may need to get one for home. We cut it up into draggable pieces and moved it off the track.

The winds settled down a bit after dinner and we walked up Barn Hill to view the sunset.

If you want to learn to cook, go some place beautiful where there is no food

March 2, 2011March 3, 2011 / one2travelfar / 8 Comments

I guess it could backfire, but it has worked for me. I’ve enjoyed figuring out what to eat and trying new recipes to expand the menu. The other day, I wanted something different to drink and made a batch of ginger ale. It was a little nerve wracking because it carbonates and makes its fizz in the sealed bottle. If you let it go too long, the bottle explodes. I found myself testing the plastic bottles for fullness a lot. The recipe came from a Google search and worked well.

My techniques for making bread, yogurt, bagels, pizza and english muffins have been refined and perfected over the past three months. And I have had a good workout to boot. I don’t have any power appliances, so I knead, stir, cream and mix all by hand. Sometimes, I even work up a sweat. How nice if you could burn off the calories before you actually ate the food!

Often, I just look at the provisions and figure out what I have a lot of and need to cook. So I made gnocchi from potatoes; creamy tomato soup, sloppy joes and lots of sauce from tomatoes; oatmeal cookies and scones from oatmeal, chicken curry from the large tin of curry powder; beet soup, carrot cake, semolina pudding, and risotto.

Things really become interesting and unpredictable when I have to substitute ingredients. The other night, I tried to make an icing from yogurt and thought I would counter the acidity with baking soda like you do when baking. Instead, I had an acid-base reaction in bowl and inedible icing. I tried again without the baking soda and it was fine.

Now where is that recipe for roast goose?

It’s March 1 and the first day of Fall?

February 28, 2011 / one2travelfar / Leave a comment

Seasons are strictly by the calendar in Australia. None of this equinox, solstice stuff. Summer ended on February 28 and Fall began today. I’ve made a silent vow to walk a track a day until we leave. These photos are along the creek to Little Squally Cove on the south eastern side of the island.

Little Squally Waterfall Little Squally cairn Little Squally Creek

The view from the lighthouse overlooking the compound and Erith Island.

Returning home on the lighthouse track with a mother and joey wallaby.

Yesterday, I submitted the monthly totals of rainfall to the Bureau of Meteorology. We had 121.6 mm of rain for the month, which is the most rainfall on Deal Island since 1939. We experienced one of the wettest summers in 72 years! And it was wonderful.

Since it’s the first day of Fall, we have cold gale winds. The garden is looking so good. I hope it survives. When the sun comes up, I’ll check and consider setting up barriers around the smaller plants again. Then rinse the sea salt and keep my fingers crossed. We’ll see if I take a walk today.

And then on Monday, chocolate fell from the heavens

February 27, 2011 / one2travelfar / 3 Comments

I’m not dreaming. This morning, while we were finishing up breakfast, we heard a low flying plane buzz the house. We ran outside and saw it circling and coming back. Then a package fell from the sky…and the package had chocolate. And it was good.

Another beautiful sunset and dinner on the jetty

February 25, 2011February 25, 2011 / one2travelfar / 5 Comments

I don’t know if I like nice or bad weather better. Nice weather is nice. Bad weather is dramatic. We are enjoying nice weather and a group of kayakers arrived in the early afternoon. They are on a fundraiser to clean up the beaches of the islands in the Bass Strait and the event is called Clean Across Bass Strait. They spend time at each of the islands cleaning debris off the beach. They have mostly found debris off ships, recreational visitors are pretty tidy. I saw them pull in and then they walked up to the house and even walked up to the lighthouse before picking up a bag of debris along the rocks of east cove.

I was in the middle of my encounter with the giant sea creature. I boiled water in a very tall stock pot and put him in. There was some thrashing about and I had to hold the lid on. Pretty horrible. Tim had already vacated the premises. Things settled down and it cooked up beautifully. I chilled it then got a ton of meat from the tail and claws and we ate it with a dipping sauce of tomato sauce, worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, red pepper and milk taken from the Lighthouse Cookbook.

We had a nice dinner on the jetty with the kayakers with stimulating conversation. Several had spent some time either visiting or living in the United States or Canada, in beautiful places: Vermont; Whistler, BC; Aspen, CO and Marin County.

We are all moved by the beauty of Deal Island and the Kent Group. It is awe inspiring to approach from the sea with the soaring cliffs, bright orange lichen covered rocks and aquamarine water. It was also heartwarming to see everyone individually walk up the hill to the new bench to get a good phone signal and call family and friends.

Another beautiful sunset.jpg

There’s a lizard living in my sneaker

February 24, 2011 / one2travelfar / Leave a comment

Since there are gianormous spiders and man-eating ants here, I have developed the habit of turning my shoes upside down and tapping them before I slide my foot in. I usually wear my hiking boots but today I only planned to do a little work in the garden so was putting on my sneakers, which I haven’t worn for a while. I noticed a small dead beetle in the heel and was getting ready to dump it out when I realized it was dinner for my sneaker’s inhabitant who was lurking up by the toe. There was a small skink curled up in there. I think it’s the one I see walking around in the sun room, where the shoe rack is. I decided to wear my boots.

So off I went to the garden to finish my clean up. I tested a rat trap by putting my pinky in it (by accident). Luckily I was wearing leather gloves and only have a slightly purple finger to show for it. I sort of knew something like that was going to happen when I got the traps out. I was weeding and saw the Tasmanian version of a Praying Mantis or some sort of twig insect.

And for dinner tomorrow, we have this insect like creature from a local fisherman. I’m sure there will fun afoot in the kitchen ala Annie Hall. It’s huge! It must weigh about five pounds.

We built a wonky bench

February 23, 2011 / one2travelfar / 3 Comments

During the run of bad weather, we kept busy working in the shop. We found lumber, nuts, bolts and screws and, using only hand tools because we’re not allowed to have power tools, made a bench. Not bad eh?

It may look a little crooked but it works for its location. There’s a corner on the road from the jetty to the compound, which usually has good cell phone reception for Telstra phones and laptops. It is fondly referred to as Telstra corner. If you do a Google search for Telstra Corner and Deal Island, there it is. The trouble is it’s on a hill with slopes in at least two directions.

We made a similar bench for Seguin Island but it was sited on level ground. This was on a slope that went downhill and forward. I got a headache just thinking about the angles. But it worked! Then we hemmed and hawed about putting a sign on the bench. Telstra corner seemed too commercial so we came up with the universal reception signals instead. And it will remain on Telstra corner because it won’t sit anyplace else.

The wind abates and there’s trouble in the garden

February 22, 2011 / one2travelfar / 2 Comments

Clear skies

The wind settled down overnight after four days of 30 knots with gusts to 70. The garden survived. After the first night of strong winds, I barricaded the small seedlings as best I could from the wind. They had been spinning around in circles while the wind blew. A large group of tomato plants took a nose dive. Today I removed the wind screens and resupported my fallen tomatoes.

I noticed one of the beet seedlings missing just like in the cartoons. It was dug out of the bed and there was a small pile of dirt nearby. I smelled a rat. I knew there was a reason there were a hundred rat traps lying around the garden when we arrived. They’ve moved back up to the garden. I thought I noticed some of the tomatoes had small bites taken out of them but I think I suppressed it. So I got out the peanut butter and set a few traps. This is war! So far it’s two points for the Home team and 0 for the visitors. Or should they be the home team and we the visitors? I’ve been coddling these seedlings along for two months. During this last gale, even after it rained, I had to go out and water the garden to wash the sea spray, which blew in from Little Squally Cove, 1/4 mile away, off the leaves. Just like “Jaws”, “First the shark, then the rogue wave, then the tomatoes falling overboard!”

During a walk yesterday, I saw some strange vegetation. Glowing, bright red fungus, Eucalyptus trees that bleed and shed their bark instead of their leaves. Some sort of berry or parasite that grows on the leaves not from the stems. And of course more rocks where I found half a man but is he lying down or sitting up?

Man about to be eaten by spotted serpent

Apparently red skies in morning also predict a gale

February 20, 2011 / one2travelfar / Leave a comment

Sunrise Deal Island.jpg

Sunrise Sunday

Tim has been wearing a hat most of the time because his sunglasses died. Two days ago, when we went to Squally Cove, a willy waugh whipped it off his head, took it straight up in back of him and then deposited it about 20 feet in front of him. Later that night, one of the fishermen in the cove recorded wind speeds of 70 knots and all three boats in the cove dragged their anchors during the night. And it continues today with 15 foot seas off the island.

We have a small fishing boat sort of stranded here. They can’t leave because of the weather and weren’t planning to be here more than a day or two. It’s been five days now. Maybe tomorrow will be calm enough for them to go home. Sometime this week a group of kayakers from Surfriders should arrive as part of a fundraiser/clean up effort. They plan to spend the first hour on each island cleaning up the beach. They’ll have it easy here unless we scatter our trash, packed to take off the island, on the beach.

The wind shifted to the west and yesterday I walked to a couple of lookouts to see the surf. Squalls blew by. Waves crashed on Erith island with surf rising at least 200 feet up the cliffs. It’s nice to come back to the comfort of the cottage on days like this.