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Local lizards, beetles, possums and snakes

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Wind in the Willows or Currents in the Casuarinas

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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And then on Monday, chocolate fell from the heavens

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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.

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Another beautiful sunset and dinner on the jetty

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Another beautiful sunset.jpg

 

The wind abates and there’s trouble in the garden

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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?

Toxic fungus
P2200133.JPG  Shedding bark Berries on the leaf

Man about to be eaten by spotted serpent

The flight of the sailboats

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I saw this boat in the cove yesterday and the water and its shadow were so clear it seemed airborne. As more boats arrived, the dance of the sailboats at anchorage began. Initially two were anchored. Another arrived and dropped its anchor, perhaps a little too close to a boat already there. They hauled the anchor, circled around and dropped it again. We go to bed and someone drags anchor, or simply decides to move during the night, and the positions change again. Someone told us they were here when there were at least 18 boats in the cove. Hard to imagine.

Flying Sandpiper
A couple of ketches
We celebrated Valentine’s day yesterday with flowers from the garden.
Valentine's day flowers
Today I found this heart on the lawn from a Cape Barren Goose.
Cape Barren Valentine Heart
And what about this soup made entirely from the garden’s beets. Gorgeous color.
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Signs of the island

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Many visitors and caretakers have left their mark on Deal Island with signs and cairns. Tim made a sign for Winter Cove, which we will add to the collection. Hopefully it won’t be used as firewood by the next group of campers.

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I found evidence of bored caretakers with a good sense of humor in the workshop, this handwritten sign is on the back of a real estate for sale sign.

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There may even be aboriginal middens (mounds with shells). The first two survey markers were placed in the early 1800’s but since then, they have multiplied and we hope to find them all. We found a handwritten map in the library, which showed 8 cairns. We think we may have found two more. We took a real bushwack the other day in the quest for three cairns on two peaks. Instead, we found three cairns on this one peak near Winter Cove and enjoyed beautiful views of the cove from a different perspective.

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It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood

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We took it easy yesterday because the day before we worked on clearing the jetty road of sand that washed down during our day of record rainfall. Now I know. Record rainfall means more roads to clear. We’ve yet to get back to unearth one of the the culverts on the lighthouse track. I know I won’t get any sympathy from anyone in the northeastern United States who have spent all winter digging themselves out from under record snowfalls. The fact that a record is set is exciting for about a moment until the reality of it sets in.

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We are working on a project for the island, building a bench from reclaimed materials: old wood, bolts and and nuts. I think even the hand saws were reclaimed. We’re not allowed to have power tools. No fun evacuating a lighthouse caretaker because they cut off a finger with the power saw. So we saw the old fashioned way. Well Tim saws and I sit on the wood to keep it steady and spin my drop spindle. Reclaimed means we find a bolt in one box in the workshop, then have to sort through all the nuts to find its mate.

Sometimes we have to shoo skinks off the wood.

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While we were in the workshop, a fog settled over the island and it became totally still. At one point, I went outside and couldn’t see beyond the solar panels, which probably means they weren’t doing much for us that day.

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The weather changed and after dinner there was an incredible sunset and the sky was an iridescent orange and pink. Then I caught the moon as it was setting across the water over the swashway. Now it’s back to work clearing tracks.

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Quiet Places: Another guest blogger (Tim) post

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I’ve always been sensitive to sound, a fortuitous (or tortuous) trait for a musician. The soundscape where I live is very important. I’m done with cities, I’m afraid. I can’t abide the din.  Deal Island, on the other hand, is the quietest place I’ve ever lived. Aside from the incessant wind, animals and a few small airplanes a week are the only sounds we hear.  The loudest animals by far are the Cape Barren geese. The males squawk and the females grunt. Next come the Little or Fairy penguins which snore and whistle half the night. The other day our reverie was disturbed by the twin 1,100 horsepower engine roar of the Van Diemen, a Tassie police boat bent on routing out abalone and crayfish poachers. They can be heard 14 miles away, giving the poachers plenty of time to ditch their catch.

Number 2 on the list is our home in the Adirondacks.  Again, it’s mostly animals we hear:  coyotes and birds being the most notable.  When we’re sitting in our outdoor hot tub at night we detect the occasional whine of car tires on Route 9, two miles away.  Fortunately, I-87–far removed–took away all the trucks and most of the cars.

The 3rd quietest place is Seguin Island.   No surprise there.  Again, the wind is a constant.  But we often heard the grumble of the lobster boats.  What do they have against mufflers?

Lobster boats

Then there was the fog horn:  2 blasts every 20 seconds during frequent fog.

Fog detector and horns

And, loudest of all, the Coast Guard helicopter.

Coast Guard Helicopter

We’re just chipping at the tip of the iceberg

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Tim likes to refer to many tasks we undertake on Deal Island as Sisyphean (endless and fruitless as that of Sisyphus whose task in Hades was to push uphill a stone that at once rolled down again). I am trying to photo document this term with his hand moving a boulder up a hill. I haven’t gotten there yet but I understand what he means. We spent several days working on the lighthouse track. We cleared the ditches alongside its length of sheoke needles and silt. We went back after our record setting rainstorm and one of the concrete culverts vanished completely, buried under silt. Now to dig it out again from under the silt, a week later. IT’S BACK!

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Rabbits were introduced on Deal Island by Admiral Stokes aboard the Beagle as a food source for shipwrecked sailors in the 1800’s. The population waxes and wanes. It’s in a waxing mode now. They’re not in the garden but they dig holes all around the yard. Some quite deep. Then they leave their poo nearby. The funny thing is, they seem to remove the dirt and bring it elsewhere. There is usually not a pile of dug up dirt next to the hole. The other day, I filled the big holes and put patches of grass over them like repairing a divot on a golf course. THEY’RE BACK! Tim thinks with a vengeance. As if to say, oh yeah, try and stop me. They are a good predictor of water sources though. Most of their holes are over either clay or pvc water pipes, which are buried underground.

The geese preferentially poo on any concrete around the compound. The same day I filled the rabbit holes, I cleaned up goose poo. They apparently like the area very clean and immediately shat all over it. THEY’RE BACK!

Next is weed management. Sea spurge is an invasive introduced plant on Deal Island. It is waterborne and arrives from the southern coast of Australia. There are large projects by Wildcare to eradicate it, or at least control it. Tim cleared a bank about a month ago. IT’S BACK!

Mow the lawn, it grows again. Weed the garden, the weeds grow again. We wrangle the wallabies out of the compound, we turn around and THEY”RE BACK. Make a meal, we eat it and IT”S GONE! Maybe that’s what life is all about. Simply a series of repetitive, Sisyphean tasks.