Big Swamp
An advantage of living next to the BIG Swamp in Bunbury is the close association with wildlife.
Sometimes when I open the front door at night, a frog plops into my lounge and a couple of frogs have taken up residence in a letterbox I planted in the back garden. A baby turtle that was wandering on my rear patio was returned to the swamp. Often, duck couples bring their hatchlings onto my front verge. Today, a couple of swamp hens were pecking around the couch grass, which pretends to be a lawn in my back garden. Last week, an ibis was pecking in my garden.
Port Community Liaison
“Alcoa workers and Port Community Liaison committee members have been given a firsthand look at Bunbury Port’s bauxite export operations.” (Bunbury Mail, Nov. 15th)
It would have been interesting if they and the public were given a firsthand look at the devastated Jarrah forest, which was the source of that bauxite.
Lost Photos
After returning from the Pacific cruise on the NZ ketch ‘Kiwi’, I was asked to crew on the Victorian sloop ‘Birralee’ in the 1959 Sydney to Hobart yacht race, so I moved aboard the Birralee in its berth at The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia for the 2 weeks before the start. During the cruise, I had taken a dozen rolls of 36 colour-slide photos and sent them to Melbourne for processing, from where they were posted to my family in Kalgoorlie. Many people at the yacht club asked to see the photos, so I asked my father to send them by registered mail to me but someone he knew up town convinced him that it would be cheaper and quicker to air-freight them. The photos never arrived so they never saw them again but at least my family had seen them, although they complained that there was no commentary. The people at the yacht club and I didn’t ever see them at all.
The start of the Sydney Hobart race was very exciting with a huge fleet of boats and yachts on the harbour and masses of onlookers lining the shores. Birralee was a 36-foot sloop owned and built by Jack Savage, who had a large boat-building business in Melbourne. I think Birralee was the first fibreglass hull to start in the race.
ATM Episode Just before noon today, I inserted my card into the BOQ ATM in Victoria Street, Bunbury. Soon after I entered my PIN, the screen went blank and the machine commenced hiccupping but retained my card. After a couple of minutes waiting, I entered the bank and told a teller of my problem. She replied that there had been a power cut and I was welcome to take a seat in the bank and wait for the return of power. This I did until I saw a middle-aged woman at the ATM, whereupon I went out to tell her of the situation. She was walking away and I noticed that she had a card which looked like mine in her hand. I called out to her and she turned around and handed me the card, saying, “That machine just spat this out”. I went back into the bank where the tills were working again and told the teller what had happened. She said I was lucky and if the card had stayed stuck in the ATM, they would have cut it up when they retrieved it if I had not waited there and proved it was my card.
Arabs In his letter, Bunbury Mail, March 22nd, M Sheldon describes an incident in which an Arab man offered his young daughter in exchange for a tin of biscuits, implying that this was an example of Arab lack of love for girl children.
It could also be an example of the desperation of a man with a starving family. This situation is not rare in Arabia, which has been ruled by despotic kings since the Sharif Hussein entered into an alliance with the United Kingdom and France against the Ottomans in June 1916 during World War 1.
In February 1945, King Abdul Aziz met President Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal. A historic handshake agreeing on supplying oil to the USA in exchange for guaranteed protection to the Saudi regime is still in force today. It has survived seven Saudi Kings and twelve US presidents.
By mid-2012, many Arab Spring demonstrations were met with violent responses from authorities, as well as from pro-government militias and counter-demonstrators
“For in the two long centuries since Napoleon landed in Alexandria, the moral foundation of modern politics — popular sovereignty — has been absent from the Arab Middle East. The Arab people became the object for colonisers, dictators and imams, with their call to submission and arms. Never a subject for thought and action, the people lacked political agency, powerless to forge a collective moral self, let alone a nation to demand self-determination: the right to tell right from wrong in the public sphere.” (Uriel Abolof)
Poverty is a prime cause of family disruption as well as environmental degradation. The cause of nearly all poverty (and war) in the world can be sheeted home to Western imperialism.
Episode with a Homeless Man
Time; 0555 1st August 2011
Location: Shelter on North Fremantle Railway Station
Weather: Westerly gale and horizontal rain
Story;
A man in his 40s with a large bedroll and backpack joins me in the shelter. I ask if he is going camping on a day like this. He replies that he always carries all his possessions because he has nowhere to leave them. His name is Kenneth.
Answering a question, I tell him that I am on my way to join friends to display a banner calling for the end of logging native forests and that we hope to put it over Stirling Highway. Kenneth notes that I do not have a raincoat and comments that I will get soaked. I tell him that I forgot to pick up my raincoat as I left earlier this morning.
He fossicked in his backpack and pulled out a hooded rainproof jacket and gave it to me.
I was grateful and reached into my pocket to pay him but he motioned me to leave my hand in my pocket. “I am not doing flash but I don’t need your money,” he said.
We talked about football until the train came.
Bedtime story.
Last night, while reading a technical journal alone in bed, the indication of recent ingestion of an aphrodisiac rose to my attention. The cause of this was a mystery until I went over all the unusual ingredients I had consumed recently. The only one that came to mind was ‘Wild Tassie’ kelp powder that I had purchased from the health shop at Eaton Fair. I had added some to my soup that night as a flavour enhancer. Perhaps it enhances more than flavour.
Birthday Present
Just before my 83rd birthday, a friendly lady proved, with kind patience, that I did not suffer from erectile dysfunction, despite a long spell of celibacy on both our parts.
Perhaps the selenium drench concentrate (for animal use only), of which I add a few drops to my 20 litre drum of drinking and cooking rainwater, had some effect too.
BIG ISSUE
In supposedly soulless St. Georges Terrace in Perth, I saw a lady selling ‘The Big Issue’ to a woman customer. They chatted for a short while and then gave each other a big hug.
Friday Bus
After playing table tennis at Australind, I caught the 3.18 pm bus to Bunbury as I often do on Fridays. As usual, it was packed with school kids. The closest priority seat was occupied by two small (white) children and they dutifully stood up to let me sit there when I indicated that that was my intention. When I sat down, I noticed that the other 7 priority seats were occupied by a Noongar family spanning 4 generations and I overheard the father of the children comment to his grandmother, “that old bloke didn’t pick on the Noongar kids”. None of the family acknowledged his comment but he smiled and nodded to me. When he alighted from the bus, he called to me, “See you, soldier”. The rest of the family ignored me.
Fishing in a most lazy (or ingenious) manner
A weir was made by damming the stream behind large earthen platforms, into which channels were let in order to direct fish as required.
“A black would sit near the opening and just behind him, a tough stick about ten feet long was stuck in the ground with the thick end down. To the thin end of this rod was attached a line with a noose at the other end; a wooden peg was fixed under the water at the opening in the fence to which this noose was caught, and when the fish made a dart to go through the opening he was caught by the gills, his force undid the loop from the peg, and the spring of the stick threw the fish over the head of the black, who would then in a most lazy manner reach back his hand, undo the fish, and set the loop again around the peg.”
This is a quote from James Kirby, who was one of a group of settlers from the outskirts of Melbourne who, in 1843, drove 1,000 head of cattle to the Murray River before Europeans had settled there.
From the book ‘Dark Emu’ by Bruce Pascoe, a very informative read about the ancient sustainable agriculture of Australian Aboriginals. These systems extended into what is now termed the ‘desert’ but were destroyed by European practices.
FIRST SIGHT OF THE SEA
This morning, I was reminded of the first time I saw the ocean in 1944, when I was a primary school kid from Kalgoorlie on holiday with my parents in Esperance. Before then, the biggest stretch of water I had seen was Hannan’s Lake after the rain gauge at Kalgoorlie Aerodrome overflowed the 12-inch mark after a weekend of storm rain. To look across the beach over the seemingly endless Southern Ocean to the horizon was astounding. During the holiday, we even went out on the ocean aboard a tourist fishing boat, which anchored off one of the islands scattered off the coast, where I caught a fish. This all impressed me so much that later I spent years seafaring on yachts and ships around Australia; ocean racing to Hobart and Auckland, being a deckhand on a prawn trawler in Queensland, aboard the Nella Dan to Antarctica and on cruising yachts around the South Pacific.
The event that reminded me of all this happened while I was walking my neighbour’s dog along the waterfront of Bunbury’s Back Beach. At the top of the steps down to the beach at Hayward Street, a lady parked a wheelchair she was pushing, in which sat a teenage boy. He was excitedly waving his arms and silently shouting with his eyes wide and shining, enraptured at the waves crashing onto the beach. His joy was contagious.
Another Great Walk Predicament.
Tuesday’s walk was planned to be about 15 km along the Bibbleman Track over some hilly terrain with a vehicle left at the start so that those with children could walk as far as they wanted and then return to that vehicle to be taken back to camp. At the morning circle, there were several walkers who requested a pick-up point about midway and to accommodate them, it was decided to take the bus down a track which had not been reconnoitred to make a pick-up.
When the lead walkers reached the pick-up point, they had lunch while waiting for the bus, estimated to arrive 2 hours after the start but when the time came, Rona, the bus driver and X walked up with news that the bus was stuck on the track, unable to back out and with no hope of proceeding forward. The lead walkers had finished lunch, so they left Selene to tell the rest of the walkers that there would not be a pick-up and they would have to walk back the 5Km to the start. The rest walked with Rona and X the 3 Km along the steep track to the bus. On the way, they passed a quagmire at the bottom of the hill that the bus was on. Luckily, Rona had had the wisdom and experience to stop proceeding to there. It would have taken major external help to get extricated from that mess.
It had been drizzling and the gravel track was slippery, so that the rear wheels of the bus just spun when Rona tried to reverse. Dry bushes were placed behind the wheels and the whole crew tried to help move the bus back to no avail. Ian had a try at the wheel, taking the bus a little further down the hill to a slightly less steep part and we gave another push and he managed to get enough speed in reverse to pass the previous spot but got stuck again when trying to turn the bus around.
Before letting air out of the tyres, it was decided to try pushing the rear of the bus down the slope while the rear wheels were spinning and that worked. Everyone got aboard to put weight on the rear wheels and we managed to get back to the start point to pick up the weary walkers when they eventually got back. Their age ranged from 4 years old and they showed that they were real walkers.
FROG EXPULSION
After several evictions from my gardening shoe outside the back door, my resident frog lodged in the cardboard box I provided next to my shoes. Now, with warmer weather, the frog has decided that the wet bottom inside my watering can is a more comfortable spot, even if it means expulsion when he/she blocks the spout every morning. He/she is being deposited next to the fishpond in the hope that he/she will change residence again or even join the rest of the family over the road in The Big Swamp.
No Catch
The path from Mindalong Beach to the car park tracks over a high sand dune and in the steep parts, the sand is overlaid with limestone gravel, which can slide underfoot.
This morning, after a swim, I was returning to the car park down the steep part of the path and moved to the side of the path as I was about to pass a middle-aged woman who was walking up the path. Suddenly, I skidded on the gravel and nearly fell.
The woman, who was about half my weight, instinctively put out her arm to stop me falling but I managed to recover my balance.
I smiled at her and asked her if she thought she could have caught me.
She laughed and answered, “I am glad I didn’t find out!”
Irresistible
Conditions at Hungry Hollow beach in Bunbury were perfect this morning. As I went down the steps and along the sand, in front of me, a girl was removing her shoes and socks and then her skirt and blouse. Clad in her sports underwear, she dived into the waves.
In my swimming togs, I followed but soon she turned back for shore. I commented that she had a short swim. She replied, “I have to go to work but I could not resist having a dip.’
So she dressed on the beach and trotted back to the steps and, I presume, went to work in her wet underwear.
I HAVE PM STRESS.
In the context of time, PM stands for post-meridian, i.e., after the sun has passed overhead..
Therefore, 12 PM indicates 12 hours after noon, which is midnight.
In the same context, AM stands for ante-meridian, i.e., before noon.
Therefore, 12 AM indicates 12 hours before noon, which is also midnight.
So please stop stressing me by giving a time as 12 AM or 12 PM when you mean noon. It would also help to use the term midnight if that is when you mean.
Medical Direction
I have medical direction to drink alcohol every day.
Because of my age, I am required to have a medical examination to renew my driving licence. This I did and was presented with a questionnaire which wanted information on how often I consumed alcohol. Truthfully, I admitted, every day.
The doctor hummed and asked for details. A glass of my home-brew beer every afternoon and occasionally a slug of whiskey or wine, I told him.
Examination and tests followed, which led to the advice that I should continue doing whatever I was doing.
Hug a Stranger
When walking through a shopping centre, I was brought to a halt by a near-collision with a portly matron emerging from a shop door. She also stopped so that we were close together and she said, “Well, I suppose it would be alright if we said hello.”I replied, “Well, seeing as how we are within range, would it be alright if we hugged?”
She looked surprised but after a short pause, said, “Why not?” So we did.
After a short hug, we went our separate ways; probably never to meet again, but probably both with a warm feeling.
Banksters
When banks and building societies make any loan, they create new money. Money loaned by a bank is not a loan of pre-existing money; it is additional money created. The stream of money generated by people, businesses and governments constantly borrowing from banks and other lending institutions is relied upon to supply the economy as a whole. Thus, the supply of money depends upon people going into debt, and the level of debt within an economy is no more than a measure of the amount of money that has been created. When he was President of the USA, Thomas Jefferson said, “I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.” Lord Josiah Stamp, former director of the Bank of England, said, “The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin….If you want to be slaves of the bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the banks create money.”
In ‘The Grip of Death’, Michael Rowbotham writes that “The structure of debt finance demands that sufficient debt be undertaken to maintain the circulation of money. If consumers all went on an economy drive, and tried to buy only what they could afford, paying off their mortgages and eating baked beans, apart from the fact that much industry would collapse, prices and incomes would have to adjust to the point at which sufficient people were forced back into debt to continue the money supply. This is the true meaning of debt finance….We are paying the costs of slavery; we are paying with a lifetime of utterly unnecessary economic servitude. When one reflects upon the environmental impact of forced economic growth, the cost of slavery may well include not just our lifetimes, but our lives, and those of our children.”
The ‘forced economic growth’ is the driver of the growth of environmental degradation. This is the disease. The work of environmental groups is praiseworthy but they are battling to address the local symptoms while the disease is pandemic.
MAGPIES AND RACISTS
A man who studied Australian magpies extensively, described their tribal habits, which are very similar to traditional human tribal cultures. For example, a magpie tribe/flock/extended family has definite boundaries around its territory, which is an area sufficient to sustain the tribe as long as the population is managed. This is done by driving out birds of the tribe which have weaknesses, especially genetic ones, and by attacking birds from other tribes which attempt to encroach on their territory. Of course, the neighbouring tribe will usually attack the weak birds driven out and they die. But there is also species preservation; if all the water in a territory dries up, the magpies in that territory are permitted to fly, unhindered, at a certain altitude on a certain route straight to the water in the neighbouring territory to drink and then out again on the same route. In the same vein, in traditional human tribes, inbreeding is prevented by strict taboos and periodic regional meetings where trading in goods and prospective wives takes place between different tribal groups during a truce. No doubt magpies have strategies for the same effect.
In both magpie and traditional human tribes, the behaviour has evolved over millennia to ensure the survival of the species in a sustainable environment. That behaviour may seem xenophobic, racial, eugenic and cruel but it is embedded in the DNA of humans and magpies and all animal species except for modern ‘civilised’ humans. Civilisation, which ended most tribal structures, evolved from the advent of agriculture; portrayed in the Bible as the forbidden fruit promoted in the Garden of Eden by the Serpent. The civilised humans have not displayed sustainable environmental behaviour, as evidenced by the poisoned, polluted and overpopulated planet that has been left for their offspring, so if the laws of evolution are obeyed, those humans will either evolve into aware beings (with unprecedented rapidity in this case) or become extinct. Unfortunately, that extinction option will probably include all, or perhaps nearly all, other species as well.
So, although differences in race, religion, origin, wealth and political inclination have led to the most horrific behaviour in human history, that behaviour must be accepted as a basic human trait and treated as a primitive condition requiring civilising. On the other hand, the treatment for the ‘civilised’ humans who have imperilled their progeny by their unsustainable behaviour requires a drastic uprising by the masses who have allowed their differences to be manipulated by the powerful elite to achieve their ambition for overwhelming power.
Perils of Bus Driving on The Great Walk
The Great Walk camped at Fernhook Falls in about 2005 and I volunteered to drive the bus with walkers on board to the start about 12 Km from the camp. We were all given the job of collecting firewood to put on the bus at the start point but in addition, I was asked to take some of the kids for a ride with me. In a weak moment, I agreed and 5 kids came, ranging in age from under 4 to about 8 years old.
At the start point, we all collected firewood and the walkers took off while I loaded the wood while trying to keep tabs on the kids. The 6 of us climbed into the bus and I turned the start key.
Nothing happened except that my blood ran cold.
I checked the fuses and then got out to look at the battery terminals in the compartment under the bus body. There was the battery- hanging by one lead on the ground. The floor of the compartment had corroded away, leaving me with a non-starter bus and 5 kids, 12 Km from camp and without any way to contact anyone and no tools except for an axe.
The kids were getting bored, so I let them out to amuse themselves while I chopped sticks to jam into the battery compartment to support the battery so that I could connect the loose battery lead. This I eventually did but meanwhile, the kids had scattered and I had to retrieve them.
Eventually, we arrived back at camp, where those remaining there asked where the hell I had been!
PC Ransom
As soon as I selected Yahoo, my screen was locked and an 1800 number popped up, claiming to be Microsoft engineers offering to fix the problem.
I rang the number and let them into my PC, whereupon I was told my Microsoft firewall had been breached but they could fix it for USD 347. ‘They’ then gave me their identity as ‘Live Assist Nerds’ and claimed to be Australian despite the Indian accent.
After I declined their offer, I was warned that my PC would remain locked but the price of repair was reduced.
I hung up and switched off my PC. The Nerds rang again twice but again I hung up.
When I later turned the PC on again, I checked with Microsoft Security Essentials, which is my only protection, and found that all was OK.
Rain Origin
Researchers in Peru have found that 50% of the rainclouds which accumulate over the Amazon originate from over the Atlantic Ocean. The other 50% originates from evaporotranspiration of the Amazon forests. The figures for WA are probably different but would surely show that continued native forest logging is insane in that it further dries the forest by decreasing the rainfall without taking into account the drying from canopy reduction, post-logging burning and increased water absorption from sapling and undergrowth increase.
Swimming cap
For my recent 84th birthday, I was given a swimming cap to reduce the heat loss from my bald head when swimming in the sea. The cap achieved its purpose but did not stop the rest of my body from losing core temperature. It seems I am not sensitive enough to detect the global warming of the ocean.
Walk in a Storm
This afternoon I walked along Bunbury’s Ocean Drive during a storm. It was exhilarating being snug in a Drizabone coat and Sou’wester hat with driven raindrops stinging my face and hands and the cycle/foot path to myself. Big surf was crashing on the reefs and washing sand up over the steps and sometimes spray would shower over the path.
Chook Psychology
When walking along the footpath in Donnybrook, I had to divert around a placard advertising “Hot Chicken”. On walking back, I saw that the reverse side of the placard read “Hot Chook”. Needing to assuage my curiosity, I entered the chicken shop and asked why the two sides were different. The owner was happy to inform me that the “Hot Chicken” sign attracted people from the city heading south, while the “Hot Chook” was more suitable for the country people heading north. I nodded knowingly, presuming that the city folk would be sufficiently countrified by the time they returned north to be attracted by the “Chook” and the country folk vice versa.