8 May 2011 - Koramba Cotton, NSW

Mothers’ Day, Snake’s Big Day Out and Encounters with Others Day; just too much excitement!

We are still enjoying beautiful weather, fresh mornings at about 6 degrees and warm sunny days at about 24 degrees. The forecast for Moree which is about as close as you can get for here, is for gathering clouds this afternoon and a chance of thunderstorms tomorrow, followed by days of divine autumn weather. The word “chance”, no matter how you say it, is always the sticky bit, the one that will have the workers here dangled on a string. If we knew straight out that there would be no work tomorrow, Chris could commit to coming with me into Goondiwindi, however it is more likely that I will go alone and return to find that he is still sitting in his work clothes waiting for the yay or nay.

Last night just after sunset, I heard women’s voices at the caravan adjacent and noted that the two rugged types had returned early from the gin. There was also a child there. This morning before seven they all returned from the mess where they had obviously had their breakfast and prepared the men’s lunches. Soon one of the woman was farewelling the older of the men, all of whom left for work, and within the hour the women and child had also departed. My theory is that one was the wife of the older man, the second came to keep her company on the long journey for the weekend, and the younger man is simply a mate who is sharing the older one’s accommodation while they both work. Problem solved; it does now make sense that they have a large caravan. However Chris stopped to talk to one of the woman as he headed for the gate this morning and may have gleaned the true circumstances which will have absolutely no resemblance to my suppositions.

Last night Chris turned up at about a quarter past eight, armed with some shears and a rake as promised. This morning he was out immediately after breakfast cutting the long clumps of grass under our awning with some old shearing clippers. He then raked it up and we now have a shorn terrace. The tools have been duly returned to the supervisor, but will no doubt be requested again before we depart this place.

While moving the long cut grass, I took the opportunity to deal with rubbish. Some days ago we had found that boxes and bags of rubbish ready for collection live outside the kitchen door. When I bagged up the smaller bags of our rubbish and the flotsam that I had gathered doing my Tidy-Kiwi thing, I encountered the scurrying of small mice. I bravely persevered however the last few rags at the bottom, I left for Chris to lift. Their presence explained the small holes in my tightly secured plastic bags. I then rolled the 44 gallon drum, without it’s rusted out bottom, further away from our personal site thus alienating any further tiny visitors.

You may think the word “bravely” a bit over the top, however I have an absolute ridiculous, absurd and pathetic terror of small rodents. I have been known in the far distant past to entertain the entire New Zealand CB listening population when I stood on a desk in Port Vila frantically radioing the father of my first child for help while a very small mouse cowered behind a bookcase.

As an aside, I was listening to the agricultural report on the radio a few days ago when they were speaking about an absolute plague of mice in parts of New South Wales which is of course an absolute scourge on the grain crops.

This morning however it was not mice I found evidence of, but something much bigger, big enough to have taken a bag of dinner scraps out of the rubbish bag, out of the drum and on to the grass. Possums? Perhaps. We shall have to go out with torches after dinner one night and see if we can spot any.

Last night Chris arrived with the team leader, Adrian, in tow. He needed help, or more particularly, my data card aerial. He had an urgent banking matter to attend to but was unable to get reception. He disappeared into the night with his saviour, promising to return it this morning.

This morning he turned up all a dither, having been unsuccessful because of having no reception on his cellphone on which he needed to receive a password code to finalise the transaction. Could he come back during the day and sort it if Greg, the supervisor, would let him. I replied in the affirmative and told him to go ahead and use the aerial and space under the awning if he turned up while I was still out.

I took Chris’s cellphone with me when I set out this morning for my walk and managed to get through to my mother with decent reception, to wish her a happy Mother’s Day. It was good to talk to both her and my father, albeit so very briefly. They, as I, have the old fashioned attitude to the extravagance of toll calls; that they are there for the purposes of message bearing rather than passing the time of day. I guess I will go to my grave still thinking like that, while our grandchildren will just think we have poor telephone manners.

Setting off again, I suddenly spotted an animal ahead of me in the low scrub of the overgrown portion of the track. I stopped and then realised it was a tortoise shell cat and called to it, “Hello, what are you doing here?” It turned, saw me and took off like a shot, obviously not a domestic cat which  would have considered me with some curiosity, even if cautiously so. One of the many pests that together with the foxes are in the same league as possums and ferrets in New Zealand.

On another ten minutes, I approached the one locked gate I have to deal with.

Now the very strange and uncanny thing is this: Chris asked me this morning after I reminded him about the long grass I came through at the end of each walk, to shortcut back to the camp rather than going back down and along the road which generates more billowing dust as the morning progresses, “Do you take your tramping stick?”

I responded in the negative, and that I thought that one skinny pole would not be a very effective weapon should I need one, but he assured me that the extra tapping of the stick was an added precaution along with my stamping feet. I saw his point, retrieved the stick from the cruiser and did take it with me today. He also asked about fences I had to go through. I reminded him of the one locked gate and how I always skirted around to the fence on one side where I could squeeze through between the barbed wire. (Australian farmers have a thing about barbed wire. Where my father always erected fences with the barbed wire only on the second from the top, they are more likely to use barbed wire on every lateral.) I told him that I was always careful.

Did he know what was lying in wait for me? Did the flock of Double-barred Finches who cried at me from the mulga know? I stepped off the path, one, two steps, about to plant my third and saw a large brown striped snake, at least a metre long and about the circumference of all my fingers squeezed together, curled up in the sun atop flattened long grass. It looked at me, I at him, it stayed put and I back tracked. This was one of the few days I had gone out without my camera, and my first thought, after “Ohhhhh!” was to regret I couldn’t take a photo of it. It is probably just as well that I did not; hanging about to do so may have been unwise. I now know that contrary to all that I have been told about snakes hearing you from afar and slinking away, is absolute rot! I also now know that despite having not seen any up until now, there are snakes on Koramba.

I crawled under the fence the other side of the gate and went on with my walk, knowing that I had to persevere. Had I turned for home in fear, that would have been the end of my daily walks here on the farm, however the thought of having to return the same way did rather occupy my mind in the interim.

I stood and quietly watched the river, hearing the fish jump and seeing the circles appear in the opposite direction to my vigil. I watched several cormorants and Yellow-billed Spoonbills flying gracefully about looking for lunch; much more graceful than the Spoonbill I saw perched up the top of a dead tree the other day. He looked as ridiculous as did the two ducks Chris and I saw at the top of a tree in Hagley Park in Christchurch a couple of years ago.

When Chris and I purchased Michael Morecombe’s Field Guide to Australian Birds, we chose it above the others because it professed to have “essential information on 850 bird species”. The sheer number of birds in this book makes identification a mine field, and then even when one has combed through the pages and the descriptions, one realises that it is not entirely comprehensive. While not even aspiring ornithologists, we do enjoy bird watching; it is such a joy here in Australia. I often think of Chris’s brother-in-law who is, like us, an amateur, but a passionate one, and who found New Zealand disappointing for its lack of birds. (Hopefully DOC’s dogged perseverance will change that in time.) But of Dave; how he would love to see and hear the birdlife around us here!

Eventually, with the day heating up and my hunger stirring, I turned for home. When I reached the locked gate, my curiosity got the better of me and I leaned over the fence where I had spotted the Gate-keeper basking in the sun, and saw that he was gone. Ever cautious, I crawled under the fence on the other side and made my way on home, watching my path ever vigilantly.

This afternoon Adrian rushed in, plugged in to my set up and was once again frustrated by the ritual of texted passwords. I wandered around the car park with Chris’s cellphone, holding it up in to the air to seek the two bars necessary to receive the text redirected to that number, but still no luck. When Adrian asked me what day it was, I reminded him it was Sunday. He lamented in less than favourable terms the fact that Australian banks don’t seem to have 24/7 calling centres to assist with this sort of problem. He also lamented in a similar vein the difficulty he had had convincing Greg to allow him this time away from work. It is a real problem out here in the sticks, with little communication and the extensive hours, for the workers to attend to personal business, although apparently they can buy their tobacco across the bar at the Boomi pub. Thank God for that!!

No doubt Adrian will call on me again tomorrow. Be assured that it is not my smiling femaleness that brings him (Chris is old enough to be his grandfather given the age of his mother, which makes me ….) but our well planned technology.

And on the subject of male callers or companions, I have continued to avoid the company of Diego, who I am sure as a talented slim attractive Italian would make for an equally interesting companion to while away the gaps in my day. I am sure my comments a few days ago about women venturing into essentially male domains will explain why! Even if the woman is in her later fifties and a bit sun dried. I simply raise my hand in greeting when he passes my view.

My regular caller, The Dog, has been conspicuous by his absence. Faithless friend! I have spotted him riding around on the Toyota landcruiser utes that race hither and thither. He is obviously having too much of a good time to look me up.

Skywatching out my kitchen window: