Pictures don’t always tell the story

We’ve been buffeted by a gale for a couple of days. It began with a front with lots of rain that pounded the roof. We had caulked leaks in the roof in preparation, to no avail. We listened to the beat of water dripping into a couple of bowls the early part of the day. Then the skies cleared but the wind remained and we went for a walk to Squally Cove on the southeast side of the island. We were exposed to the wind on some bare spots and at times I had to keep my head down to prevent the wind from blowing me away. This posture enabled me to see some interesting ground photos though.

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When we got to the cove, we were surprised to find three boats there. One fisherman had been anchored at Hogan Island, to the northwest of us, but got blown out to sea in 50 knot winds. While we sat on the beach, we saw sea smoke: clouds of water blown across the surface. We initially thought it was sand, but there are only rocks in Squally. As we watched the water, we saw williwaws hit the surface and the water would spiral out from it as if a fan had blown it in a circle.

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The picture of the tree in the compound looks like a nice, bright sunny day. What it doesn’t clearly depict is the tree’s leaves being blown in 30 knot winds. I think we had at least a Force 7 on the Beaufort Scale.

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Wonders on the walk to Little Squally Cove

It’s been a little while since I have had rock visions but they are back. We ran a shopping errand and took a trip to our local Lowe’s. Little Squally Cove is exposed to the southwest and gets all the lumber which falls off ships. It’s a good source of wood for projects on the island.

Lowes Little Squally Lowes

I looked up and there was Porky Pig.

Porky Pig

Next I spotted an armored Ninja Turtle.

Armored turtle

On to the real creatures, this could be a white lipped snake but I’m still not sure a snake has lips. Does a chicken have lips?

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This might be a blue tongued gecko but he wouldn’t stick out his tongue for me. I think he was bashful.

? Blue tongue

Monday morning quarterback

Morning light

Well actually Monday morning spectator. It’s 11:00 am on Monday, February 7, and we are watching the Super Bowl, live, on Australian television. How weird is that? To celebrate, I made a batch of pretzelsSuper bowl pretzels but the beer may have to wait for a more reasonable hour of day. The advertising ads don’t compare and are, in fact, rather depressing.

The most common one is for “Senior Insurance” to lure people over 50 to sign up for insurance to pay for funeral costs. Benefits up to $15,000, no medical needed. Nice and uplifting for the game. I’ll get my cane and hobble up the hill later today. How cute was Cameron Diaz feeding popcorn to A. Rod? It’s just not the same without the E*Trade commercials or a bet riding on the game, or at least those box scores for each period (or is that quarter?).

We have watched cricket here without really having a clue as to what was going on, and, apparently, the match can last for days.

Enough of spectating, time to get back to action. The garden produced the perfect tomato today. I’m starting to tidy it up again and make sure it’s in good condition for the next caretakers. The only trouble is we have had record cold temperatures and I just planted a bunch of seedlings. They’re out there shivering and blowing in the wind.The perfect tomato  

After dinner, we fired up the computer to watch the American Super Bowl ads. Seems like a strange activity but it was a way to do what family and friends were doing at home. We don’t want to miss out on pop culture during our three months. We had to stop because the colors outside were incredible, bright orange and pink as some clouds and a brief shower passed by. Then a rainbow at the end and a glorious sunset.

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P2070149.JPGEvening sky Evening rainbow  

Sunset

Deal Island record rain reported on the news

Our record rains were reported on the news last night. I missed it. The rain has stopped and the weather today reminded me of a crisp fall day in Maine. It will be windy for the next few days and with a southerly wind (perhaps from Antarctica) and I had to find my wool socks again. Tim went off to do manly things and I hung around the house. He found some of the culverts we just cleared full of silt after the last downpour. I guess it’s back to the rock pile for me.

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I spoke with the crew of a boat, which anchored at Erith Island last night, and gave them the weather forecast. it looks like they will be here for a few days. They made an ill fated attempt to leave this morning and encountered big seas and 30 knot winds. So they came back.

P2050134.JPG P2050156.JPG Bunch of carrots

The garden is a big success. I’m pulling carrots out in bunches. I finished spinning a skein of alpaca on the drop spindle.   And it’s sooo soft.

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Here are photos of the turkish drop spindle, spinning, then being taken apart

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to result in, like magic, a center pull ball of yarn. Lastly, I take both ends of yarn and spin them together again to ply the yarn (combine two or more strands together). So after about 4 days work, I have 100 yards of 2 ply, lovely alpaca yarn.

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Record level rain recorded by me

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Our one official job is to check the rain gauge daily and report it by fax to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, fondly referred to as BOM. It rained so much yesterday, we read and emptied the gauge several times. This morning, while Tim walked the lighthouse road, in the pouring rain to see how the ditch drainage work held up, I took the fourth and final reading: a whopping 60.0 mm of rain in 24 hours: 2.4 inches. I don’t track the rain at home so don’t know how it compares but it was coming down thunderously. When I looked through the rain records for Deal Island, I found it is the most rain recorded in one day since 2009 when they had 79 mm.

As a result, we have clothes and the flag hanging up to dry and buckets strategically placed throughout the house to catch leaks.

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When I needed drinking water for coffee this morning, I had to don my foulies to go out to the water tank. I probably should have just let the pot outside to catch the rain directly instead of runoff from the roof.

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This means I don’t have to water the garden today and I can work on my knitting and spinning. I’m finishing a pair of socks and spinning some alpaca. But first, time for another batch of yogurt.

Here’s how the sky looked yesterday before the rains began. Maybe it will look that way again tomorrow.

Morning over the swashway of Dover and Erith Islands

Nothing like a good wallaby wrangle to start the day

The local wallaby population has been gradually increasing and this morning we had the chance to shoo a few out. First we open the driveway gate then position ourselves so we head them in the direction of the gate. We managed to get four of seven out. I feel like a shepherd or I guess walherd. Tim was waving the Australian flag like a matador. Here’s a flame robin outside the sunroom.

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The other night, possums were fighting over the barbecue. Tim shooed them away and closed it up and the next day asked me if I had scrubbed it clean. I hadn’t. They did. Maybe they should stay. I could invite them into the house to clean.

The sun came out and there was a fair wind, all the visiting boats we can see have left. Time to do laundry. I can’t convey how good these sheets smell!

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We are all just visitors here

Once again as caretakers, we realize we are the visitors here. This was so well put by the last caretaker at Seguin Island, where we were this fall. Many of the boats who stop here have been here many times. They have seen the changes and improvements on Deal Island. Some met the last lighthouse keepers.

The past couple of days, we had three boats with people who had never been here before and then we get to share the magic of Deal island with them: lovely island, wonderful walks, historic buildings and views. There is a wooden boat festival about to take place in Hobart and many beautiful boats stopped here on their way south. Today’s boat reminded me of the African Queen. They had to leave one crew member behind because of the large cyclone, Yasi, that is about to hit Cairns, near his home.

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There is a fence around the compound, in theory, to keep the wallabies out. In reality, they find their way in and at the moment we must have about a dozen in the outer compound. They and the Cape Barren Geese will be here long after we are gone. We are all fenced in together.

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Caretaker Residence Deal Island
We hope to replicate a table built by a previous caretaker when we get home. i have taken photos of it and we will put it in our living room as a reminder of Deal Island. I think we will leave out the goose head though.

Deal Island Table - 1

How I procrastinate digging ditches while Tim works

We heard an Air-Sea rescue the other night on the VHF radio. Someone fell overboard, we don’t know where or from what sort of boat because we never heard the distress call. But a Coast Guard boat and a helicopter went to the scene to search. We could hear them talking to each other. The people on the boat could initially hear the person but not see them. The chopper flew away for a bit to let the boat listen and they managed to pull the person out of the water. Nice.

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We are on our one day on, one day off schedule for clearing the ditch along the lighthouse trail. The other day, I walked up to the lighthouse to open it up, mop up water and let it air before I started raking. This gave me an hour reprieve. I have to confess I was listening to Michael Jackson on my iPod, who really knew how to write dance music. So i danced on the lighthouse hill in the wind. Nice. It is a good thing the helicopter wasn’t hovering nearby because they may have thought I was in distress.

My work site

We think we only have three days left of work on the road. In the meantime, I found an old map, which says there are five more cairns on the island besides the three we have already seen. I know what we are doing on our off days. I was a whirlwind the other day. After I worked on the track I came back and cleaned the whole house.e think we only have three days left of work on the road.

This included taking out the vacuum (for the first time since I sucked up the huntsmen spider from the shower). I began very gingerly and made sure the suction was on right away. When I was done, I changed the bag so we can incinerate the old one, which was full. To my horror, there is no flap, the paper towel I stuffed into the hose may have been the only thing between it and me.

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I have opted to exclude any more spider photos for fear of losing my son as a reader. Then of course when I went to open the lighthouse today, an insect not a spider, was waiting for me and jumped on me when I opened the door. I let out a nice scream. I’ll show a photo of a lizard instead. I have a photo of the insect and while it’s not a spider, it is pretty scary looking.

Our food is holding out if you are not reading the food blog, but we didn’t bring enough chocolate or snacks. The next batch of beer, which was fortified with extra sugar and took forever to stop fermenting, will be ready this Friday. The garden is lush. We’ve finally had our first tomatoes. Yesterday, I transplanted a bunch of seedlings and then we had 30 knot winds for two days. Nice timing. Today I went back and propped up the ones that fell over.

This is what I do while Tim keeps working. I look for nice shots of the lighthouse and have been trying to find the site of a house, the halfway house, which used to be between the compound and the lighthouse. I found a clearing today, but it may just be an old tip. There were relics of bricks there though.While Tim works

Archaeological site

Mowing the tracks from a sardine can

We spent part of yesterday mowing and today working in the workshop. Tim drove the Ute and looked as if he was shoehorned in the truck. There are no seat adjustments and both our feet hit the bulkhead. I went along as copilot.

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We walked down to Little Squally Cove and surf was crashing.

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Little Squally faces the southwest and collects all the debris from the sea. Today Tim cleared the track leading down to the cove. Only a few visitors seem to walk her but it’s a dramatic cove and there are all those treasures washed ashore.

Today we spent some time working in the shop. I am working on a new invention and Tim was changing a flat. It’s a well equipped shop, usually has what you are looking for but you might have to check every bin.

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Words of wisdom in the shop
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Sky over Deal
Wallaby watching

Bush bashing for cairns

 Flag Hill

Sounds like bowling for dollars. We’ve been clearing drainage ditches along the lighthouse road and my body only lets me do that every other day, so we explore or relax on the off days.

We’ve (mostly Tim) cleared the major tracks and have looked at old maps and surveys and found other places to explore. One map shows two cairns on a hill near the house. I had read somewhere that in the 1800’s when they surveyed this area, they placed two survey markers (maybe cairns?). The cairn on Barn Hill on the southwestern bluff is easy to find and has a track to it. I’m not sure when these were placed but the Parks Ranger confirmed they were there and they would mark the north.

Back in the fold

Before we started, we wrangled a baby wallaby out of the inner compound.  It was trapped inside while its mother was still outside and they would hang out on either side of the fence near one another.  The mother didn’t seem too concerned.  We had to get her near one of the gates to lure him out.  Once reunited, he tried to get back into the pouch, or at least stuck his head there.

So off we went, bush bashing. We worked our way through tussock grass to the trees on top of the hill. We passed a tree with what looked like funnel spider webs to me. I wonder if other spiders spin funnels? Funnel spider? face Flag Hill southern cairn

The first cairn was easy to find.

Then we walked along the plateau and saw other perspectives of Erith Island.  

A new perspictive of Erith Island

Aboriginal cave

We think we could see the entrance to the cave on the northern end of the island.  An archeaologist, Rys-Jones, found evidence of aborigines living there 7,000 – 10,000 years ago.

There used to be a mountain range connecting Wilson’s promontory in Victoria, northwest of the Kent Group of Islands, and northern Tasmanania, to the southeast.  The range included these islands and Flinders Island to the southeast.  These mountains were occupied by aborigines until the sea rose and isolated it from both the mainland of Australia and Tasmania.  Now they are islands and the water is about 50 meters deep.  The findings in the cave and elsewhere, suggests the land bridge closed thousands of years later than originally thought.

Lunch lichen

Lichen growing on a tree near our lunch spot.Gnarly old man rock

Gnarly old man rock.

We continued north, over two saddles and found the second cairn.   P1260174.JPG  Pulpit rock P1260206.JPG

The bonus is that we think we also got a glimpse of the elusive Pulpit Rock.  We missed that during our previous bush bash to Pegleg Cove.

We ran into the three stooges on our way home.Apres cairns A good time was had by all.