I’m no meteorologist but these clouds look like some interesting weather might be on its way.

I had unfinished business in the garden to attend to and left the house at dawn. I ran into the usual cast of characters along the way. I worked through rain showers and managed to plant twelve varieties of vegetables as stage one of my garden management plan.

Caretakers before us built the beautiful enclosure to protect it from the wind, sea spray, rats, wallabies and birds. (I think they are the same ones who built the bed we sleep in from lumber they found washed up on the shore. We are such light weights.) Check out the handle on the sliding lock.

They couldn’t keep this guy out though. I decided not to plant near him at the moment.

Strong winds are likely to keep the visitors away over the next couple of days. When I measured the rainfall reading today, I checked the wind speed and it was 34 knots. Hold onto your hats. Every day we have to report the rainfall via a little fax machine, which is sort of like a credit card machine, to the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology.

We walked the trail to Winter Cove and confirmed that a sailboat we had seen in West Cove yesterday was safely anchored. They were and had the company of a fishing boat. The harbor was in the lee of the wind and you wouldn’t even know it was blowing from the west. We explored the campground on the beast and found several whale bones including an intact portion of the spine.

I had a successful day of cooking and baking today after a couple of disasters yesterday. I’m going to limit my cooking information to a new page, 300 meals on a deserted island.

I’m trying to figure out the various radios and where we can get weather reports. At the moment we don’t have any internet and earlier today, I couldn’t hear the garbled radio report on the VHF radio.

Yesterday we walked up to the lighthouse. It was so windy, I thought I would blow away. The lighthouse is beautiful. It was built around 1891 and has a fresnel style lens, probably first order based on its size. It used diesel fuel to power the motor, which turned the light. it flashed 3 times every twenty seconds and could be seen for 26 nm. There’s an ornate iron staircase and it’s quite lovely. Next time, hopefully the wind will let me go outside on the catwalk. Yesterday, the wind was howling and sometimes it sounded like there was a car or truck nearby and other times, there was a moaning sound as if the lighthouse was its own aeolian harp.

The superintendent’s house is in the compound near where we are staying and houses the museum. It is a lovely building and there has been a lot of work to restore it. Our compound is 2.5 km away from the lighthouse. The other keepers lived closer to the light and the remains of those buildings are near the lighthouse. The “compound” is an area surrounded by two fences to keep out the wildlife. The inner compound only includes our house, and the visitor’s house. The outer part of the compound surrounds the remaining buildings and our garden We have to open lots of gates when you want to take a walk.

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We finally made it out the island. We left Flinders Island at dawn. The weather was predicted to be favorable, but not quite. Seas were rough and the boat was leaping, bouncing and crashing. When we neared the island, I said I was glad at least we waited for a calm day! It turned out it was one of the worst rides to the island the Parks Reserve Manager had taken.

The day was glorious though. Blue, clear skies and the wind died down. We got a tour of the island, all its systems and equipment, including a 3 cylinder, 4wd truck, the Beast, which has issues. Not acting too beastly at the moment, but it managed to get our stuff up the hill to the compound.

We spent most of the day unpacking and loading the refrigerator and pantry. Then we took a short walk up Barn Hill, overlooking the compound. I slept well until the winds picked up and it sounded like the house was going to blow away. The compound with the house we are staying in is the white area in the center of the picture. The compound contains the only living quarters on the island and right now we and the wildlife are the only ones here.

Since food has been such an important issue in our planning and shopping, I am going to at least list the meals we eat. It should turn out to be close to 300 when we are done. Here’s what we started with:

1) Lunch: grilled cheese and carrots

2) Dinner: peas from the garden, israeli couscous and grilled steak with apple pie for dessert, one of my best ever. And we had our first taste of cask wine. Not too bad.