A day of two songs

April 3, 2015 / one2travelfar / 3 Comments

I awakened this morning while it was still dark and was checking my email when there was a knock at the door. The Mates4mates sea kayakers came by to say goodbye before they left. I opened the door to say goodbye and the burst into song: Happy Birthday. To me! It was awesome.

They stood in the dark and sang with their green and pink camo zinc faces. I was really touched because I’m sure before a departure you spend a lot of time mentally preparing for the next leg.

Then they headed off to the cove to make their final preparations. They departed before 8 am and thanked me for my lovely birthday weather. We had spent the previous day with gale winds up to 68 knots. Today was brisk and sunny. Sun makes all the difference in the weather.

I had a chance to Skype with family and friends here and at home, which warmed my heart.

I was outside when a group of boaters made it up the hill. They greeted me by name, which struck me a little strange. They had already spoken with Strait Lady’s captain, James, and he had filled them in on us, the American lighthouse caretakers.

They invited us to the cove for bickies(?) and wine. I never know what to expect. Tea may or may not include a meal. Breckie is breakfast. Bickies sounded like biscuits, might mean crackers, so we brought cheese and crackers to the jetty. I had to make sure it didn’t include dinner because I had a birthday cake in the works. No, no dinner so I left the cake behind.

So we walked to the lighthouse to shut her down for the night and I hurriedly finished decorating my cake with strawberry jam filling and chocolate buttercream frosting.

So we had appetizers at the jetty and dinner at “home”. Tim surprised me with a macrame ring for my birthday and a lovely card. He had spent part of the week asking boaters for fine twine to make my present. He got to go aboard several boats as part if the process.

After dinner, he shut the lights, lit my cake, and sang Happy Birthday to me, again. It was beautiful. Then we ate cake. It was delicious!

A tree falls

April 2, 2015 / one2travelfar / Leave a comment

A large she oak tree fell on the track to Winter Cove. Never fear. Volunteers here. Tim got approval to use the chainsaw and off we went in the little Ute. We made quick work of it and have some firewood to boot.

Meanwhile, I got to drive the Ute.

That’s me on the right with the gear shift on the left. At least there are no other cars or right turns!

Skinks were out in big numbers the other day. They were on the entrance to the garden and all over the lighthouse steps. I think they may be the blue tongued variety, but none stuck out their tongues at me.

We’ve added our home to the destination signs at the entrance to compound. 16,518 kms, unless you are trying to qualify for airline miles. Then it’s much less. Now they award “dividends”, a fraction of the distance traveled.

Mates4mates made it here after waiting a week for a weather window on Flinders Island. They are crossing the Bass Strait in sea kayaks to raise awareness for their organization, which supports wounded, injured and ill Australian Defense Force personnel. They are a group of 12 men, ranging in age from 25 to 66 years old and are in great spirits while they wait for today’s gale to blow through. Then they will be off to Hogan’s Island to the north and finally Wilson’s Prom, in Victoria.

We watched another boat drag anchor in West Cove, across the Pass, during this morning’s gale. We were able to contact them to discuss the anchorage but they hauled anchor and headed north. We’ll check later to see if they sought refuge in Garden Cove, on the north side of the island, which would have been protected from the southwesterly gale.

Never a dull moment on this “deserted” island!

All in a day

March 30, 2015 / one2travelfar / Leave a comment

We have some daily chores to perform before 9:00 am. We call them the numbers. First we raise the flag. I’ve repaired two now. This one was missing a grommet so I found a washer in the workshop and sewed it on with the handy sewing machine that is a new addition to the equipment.

Then we check on our solar array and battery status. There’s a beautiful ginormous group of solar panels that soak up more sun and create more power than we can possibly use.

We check how clean they are and then see how much energy they collected the day before. We also note how much power we used, the oil heater really drives it up, and the battery status and whether the generator had to kick in. It never does so we run it once a month.

The next data is the rainfall. We are required to report it daily to the Bureau of Meteorology. It drips into a beaker from a cone, we check the level and then fax that data and record it in a journal and several data sheets.

On sunny days we open and air the lighthouse, no easy feat since it is a hike away; the second house; and the schoolroom. We also keep track of visitors and their boats. We’ve been contacted in the past when someone has not made it to port as expected. Despite our remote location, we’ve had over 100 visitors in 3 weeks with more to come.

There’s a veterans’ group, Mates4mates, who have been waiting for a decent weather window for a week, to kayak from Flinders Island to Deal Island. They called last night and said they will be here today. I think it may be part of a celebration for the 100 year anniversary of Anzac Day. April 25 is the day veteran’s are remembered each year and, in 1915, was the day Australian and New Zealand armies landed at Gallipoli. As a new nation, it was their first military engagement and nearly 8,000 soldiers died during the drawn out occupation.

Beyond that, I heard on the radio that two boats arrived last night at Winter Cove, which is fairly remote from the compound. I am not sure if we will see them or not. Two new kayakers stopped by last night, one from near Toronto(!), and plan to head out this morning. The catamaran from Port Albert is collecting their group of 12 walkers and heading out this morning. It looks like a lovely day.

Chasing rainbows

March 28, 2015 / one2travelfar / Leave a comment

We try to air the lighthouse in sunny, breezy days to prevent mold and algae growth. It takes at least an hour to walk there and back. Tim opened it in the morning and I closed it before dinner.

To my delight, I saw several rainbows during my walk.

When I got to the lighthouse, sea squalls looked like clouds rising directly from the ocean.

And there were more rainbows arising from the sea.

Magic.

Marooned

March 28, 2015 / one2travelfar / 3 Comments

We’ve had visitors across Murray Pass, on Erith Island, since Wednesday. There are two sets of kayakers passing in the night, I so to speak. One group is heading north, the other south. We had two days of gale winds and squalls and, in the morning, we saw the sailboat anchored in a different spot from where we left them at night.

Today they crossed the Pass to get internet weather forecasts. When we saw them getting tossed around in the sailboat, as they plowed through standing waves, we knew they would pay us a visit. So I defrosted a batch of Anzac cookies and put on a pot of tea.

It turns out the sailors did drag anchor in the night at the height of the storm, when the wind was 50 knots or so. They held by about 0100 in the north end of the bay. We had tried to hail them on the radio, to no avail, but they learned of the only good holding ground when they visited the kayakers ashore. They had trouble hauling their anchor and think they were caught on part of the railing of the Bulli, a steam driven coal ship which sunk there in 1877.

Bulli had 450 tons of coal on board, anchored during a gale, thought the weather improved and set off again, it hadn’t, and they returned to the cove where it hit a rock and sunk. All crew got off the ship before it sank and were rescued the next day. Salvage efforts were not successful.

This is a drawing of the Bulli I found in a book of Tasmanian shipwrecks.
Here is the piece of railing they recovered. I can’t be sure what ship it is really from because when I tried to find information from the diary of the keeper during the Bulli’s sinking, I found accounts of at least one other boat in the same location. The wreck of the Bulli is a “popular” dive site.

Dramatic weather

March 26, 2015 / one2travelfar / Leave a comment

The gale forecast for this weekend arrived last night with 50 knot winds, rain, and perhaps a little hail. The house shuddered, the windows rattled but remained intact. Knock on wood, the roof isn’t leaking as it did our last visit but word is, it needs to be replaced.

We kept an eye on one boat anchored across the way, in west cove on Erith Island. We had tried unsuccessfully to hail it on the radio to talk about the limited, good holding ground there. Happily this morning they are still anchored, although not where we saw them last. Must have been a harrowing night.

I’m not at home until I’ve waxed the floors

March 25, 2015 / one2travelfar / 2 Comments

It’s true. On my hands and knees. My kids will tell you how treacherous life was after I applied butcher’s wax to our wood floors. A brief walk in socks could send you flying.

Same is true here on Deal Island. What struck me the first time we were here was how the floors shined. They were clean this visit but not gleaming. While Tim was off clearing nasty nettles off the track to Winter Cove, I got busy.

First I washed and stripped, the floors. I looked forward to using the 1950’s era home floor polisher again. Just like the ones used in commercial spaces but smaller, and fun!

Then I applied two coats of wax. Now I can call the Caretaker’s house home.

We had some fair weather and aired the lighthouse and buildings. I took some nice shots of the living compound during our walk.

We stay in the group of buildings in the distance, to the right of center. It’s about a 40 minute walk to the lighthouse from there.

Today there’s a gale wind from the northwest. I’ve done the best I could to protect the plants in the garden. Time will tell.

Fiber interlude on Deal Island

March 22, 2015 / one2travelfar / 2 Comments

This is really a post about fiber so for those of you not interested, here’s the photo of the day.

We’ re here in the autumn and there’s no central heat. It shouldn’t get too cold but both bathroom windows are permanently open with louvers. There’s a portable oil electric heater in a pinch. The old gas heater in the living room doesn’t seem to work. I knew this ahead of time and bought a kit for a merino, mohair blanket from the Elegant Ewe in New Hampshire with yarn from Mountain Colors. I started it after we left home, worked on it in New Jersey, Tasmania and Finished it on Deal Island. It’s lovely: soft, light and warm.

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My hair is a bit, ahem, unruly. Especially in the winds we have here. So I knit another calorimetry headband with yarn leftover from the blanket. It keeps my hair in check and my head and ears warm.

I brought a charkha loom with me to spin cotton. I hadn’t been able to use it successfully at home but with time, patience and great instructions from urbanspinner, I made thread. I spent several Hours and literally made a spool of thread. But it’s my thread and I was able to put it straight to work.

I am knitting a Shetland shawl with miles of cobweb yarn, which I wound into balls before I left home. It begins with a provisional cast on and I used my new thread to crochet a chain to use as my starting point. I love the loom for all it’s gadgets. There’s even a skein winder. I wound the skeins on to paper quills and then plied them together using clothes pins to create a tensioned lazy kate. So cute and it all folds up into a little box shaped box.

Finally I need a belt and a pair of slippers. There’s too much Cape Barren Geese poo to wear my crocs inside and out. So I found an easy pattern I’ll make sometime. For a belt, I brought my cards for tablet weaving and some mercerized cotton. I also brought 3 spools of thread if I decide to make ribbons with sewing thread. Or if my spun thread is strong enough, which I highly doubt, I could use that. It may be possible because I brought some silk (empty of their larvae) cocoons and if I can figure out how to spin silk from them, the thread should be very strong.

So anyway, I needed to create a loom on the go. There are c-clamps in the workshop but then I’d have to weave indoors and it is too beautiful for that. I saw an old article in TWIST which showed an interesting tensioning device. It used to pieces of wood that the warp wraps around an holds itself tight. So found a scrap of wood, cut it I two and drilled a couple of holes. A scrap piece of wire holds the whole thing together and laces through two belt buckles on my jeans. So it works like a backstrap device without the back.

Just trying to have fun.

Oh the horror

March 19, 2015 / one2travelfar / 2 Comments

There are no photos to depict the scare I had yesterday. I had spent a good part of the day indoors because rain squalls kept blowing through. Two boats are anchored in the coves.

On my way out to run, I brought compost to the garden and eyed the silverbeet for dinner. I turned and saw a fat rat sitting in the garden path. We had set rat bait and I thought, “Oh, they just die in their tracks”. I stamped my foot a few times, nothing. Walked gingerly by, nothing. But it looked bizarre. Eyes open, just sitting there.

So I decided to wait until morning to shovel him off to the rat cemetery and went running. I stopped back in the garden to pick my veggies and….he was gone!!! He played possum with me and was not demonstrating how effective my traps were! Aaah! As Tim likes to say, “There’s no such thing as paradise”. Or as the beloved Gilda Radner, of SNL of yore, used to say, “It’s always something”.

So I cut silverbeet and returned to the caretakers’ cottage.

I’ve included other views of the compound where we live.

This shows the back of the oil and paint sheds and a glimpse of the former superintendent’s quarters, which now houses the museum. The green structure to the left is the garden. It’s fenced, covered in chicken wired, including the top, and surrounded by a wind screen. You can be sure I’ll patch any obvious faults in it this week. Way off in the distance to the left is the lighthouse.

The superintendent lived in the lower compound and the assistants lived in houses at “the top of the world”, next to the lighthouse.

Our local wifi spot

March 18, 2015 / one2travelfar / 1 Comment

Weather has changed a bit as the result of at least one cyclone traveling south but nowhere close to us. With the fog and low pressure, we lost internet service in the house. Luckily there’s a hotspot on the island. This is our view from it. Why are we on the internet?

Tim calls it a lukewarm spot.

I am fine with the down time. I finished my merino mohair blanket and experimented with my charkha spinning wheel. I even spun some acceptable cotton.

We’re still entertaining visitors. Today we had tea with a retired physician from Sydney who has been visiting Deal Island for more than 20 years.

Yesterday was foggy but I also smelled smoke. I chose to run to winter cove. I was concerned because I still smelled smoke and saw wafts of fog drifting in but that’s all it was, fog. Apparently there was a controlled burn in the mainland, which we could smell because of the wind.

We celebrated St. Patrick’s day with a shot of single malt scotch and chicken pot pie. Good cheer to you!

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Island and North Country Life

With fiber, felines and fotos

A day of two songs

A tree falls

All in a day

Chasing rainbows

Marooned

Dramatic weather

I’m not at home until I’ve waxed the floors

Fiber interlude on Deal Island

Oh the horror

Our local wifi spot

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