poor fellow my country

i'm using the title of Xavier Herbert's significant contribution for good reason. 

"This book is the decisive story of how in those vital years, Australia threw away her chance of becoming a true commonwealth. The dream of Australia Felix, The Happy South Land.The book will long remain in the memory and is undoubtedly Herbert's supreme contribution to Australian literature."

Australia has now been handed to a party of  environmental destructivists.

the Liberal Party, led by someone whose avowed mission it is to cut down the last of the tall trees we have left, is going to be in charge of our sinking ship.

Australia is in deep environmental trouble. each bushfire that burns thousands of acres of forest contributes to reductions in rainfall. reduced leaves, reduced transpiration, reduced clouds, reduced rainfall

and when rainfall reduces, then regeneration does too. or we get massive crops of woody weeds instead of trees. so with the countryside already under threat [and remember we are the driest continent]

and with all the raving about reducing carbon emissions - wouldn't it make sense to leave the last tall trees [which are basically carbon + water + a few other things] standing to get on with the business of converting carbon dioxide to oxygen

rather than being pulped to provide newsprint and toilet paper. 

poor fellow, my country. 

ontrack in the wide brown land

it's been a while, but
i have been enjoying gentle wanderings in very good company in this beautiful Wide Brown Land

along with my friend r
who kindly spent two days stoking the fire under this marvellous cauldron

and who took the photo below as proof of the pudding [the workshop was held in the building second from the right in the distance]

the group shared splendid lunches [** a hint of turnip/swede in one of the delicious soups took me straight back to a similarly warm and friendly workshop at Gore NZ some years back. KiaOra in case any of you are reading this!!]

we enjoyed much laughter and story-telling, joyful singing and lots of bundling

wonderful colours were produced

and did i mention the Prickly Bears? sometimes Cochineal insects can be found on them...

on a less pleasant note...short-sighted politicians and mining companies have a plan to dig up this magnificent piece of country, literally the food bowl for the region, in order to flog the coal for short-term gain. sure there might be a few jobs for the next decade or so, but after that it will be a desert. the soil here is like chocolate cake. it's been built up over millions of years and will not easily be restored if the carnage goes ahead.

lastly for those of you nibbled from your sleep by kittens at dawn on Sunday May 13 and in need of something to put you back to sleep
a link to Radio National's small soundbite from yours truly

september 11

so far the quote of the week, for me, is this...
" i can't remember the last time i walked on grass with bare feet"




today is the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks
that have been seared in to all of us forever

we remember where we were
just as we do, those of us old enough, with the assassination of President Kennedy
while stitching this week
people have been
inevitably
sharing their stories of september 11, 2001

they all begin with

"it was such a beautiful day"

this morning we will go and stand in our grassy field
and take a quiet moment
to remember not only the horror of september 11
but also other atrocities perpetrated by human kind

needless wars
grandmothers schlepping sewing machines across Europe
grandfathers being railed to Siberia in cattle trucks
recall that somewhere
someone
is even now contemplating strapping some explosive device to themselves
or
worse still
to someone else

read a poem
say a prayer

remind ourselves that life is precious
and can be beautiful
and that every day we wake up breathing
is a gift
and should be cherished

wear/where will it all end?

while i'm trotting about the countryside on my high horse
i thought i'd share what i found in the Ecouterre newsletter today

so-called "Pollinator Frocks". i'm sorry, but this is taking idiocy to the extreme. the frocks are indeed pretty [printed with leaf pix and macro-images of pollen] but what they are planning to do
that is
feed bees with sugar
is precisely the opposite of what bees need



why not plant a backyard meadow
instead of [as they suggest] hanging a sugar-impregnated garment on the washing line for bees to have a snack at?

sooner or later some clot is going to wear one of these frocks
and wonder why s/he is covered in bees
or flies
they like sugar too

what is the point? bees need pollen, not refined sugar. lovely as it is, sugar weakens bees. use it to make salt caramel or rum and grow bee-friendly plants instead

it's almost as good as the suggestion somebody made back in 2003
about creating artificial trees to "reduce the carbon levels"

so far as i can tell they look like giant tennis racquets with venetian blinds attached. mmm, attractive. i'll go sit under that one for a picnic for sure

wouldn't it use more non-renewable resources to construct such things?

what's wrong with planting a tree?
and - flash of lightning thought - it might even do something useful for the bees!!!!

here in Oz, it's simple...plant a eucalyptus [think of it as a vertical meadow]. they all have lovely flowers and
might drop the odd windfall for your dyepot as well....

what are they all going to eat when farmers give up?

the latest brilliant idea from the cunning rats who run our state is to make farmers pay for water used from farm dams.
it's already impossible to make a living from a small-holding such as ours [470 acres] without working off the farm, unless of course you don't mind working 24/7 doing every single task yourself so as not to have to pay someone else.
at 52 that kind of back-breaking labour is getting well beyond me. which is one of the reasons why i wander about the whirled telling anyone who will listen how to get pretty colours out of leaves.

but back to the story.

farmers [and other landholders] already pay water tax. it's called "rates" and these rates are based on the value of the land. this may seem a mere coincidence, but observation shows [quite consistently] that the more rain falls on your property [in South Australia] the more highly it is valued and [consequently] the higher the council rates paid.

installing meters [at farmers' expense] on dams to make us pay for water used [bearing in mind we've already paid for the construction of the dam and all the infrastructure, unlike our city cousins who have it provided for them] is outrageous.

if i'm fortunate enough to inherit the family farm [and this is not a "given", my parents have every right to sell up and go live in luxury on the Queen Mary if they wish] then frankly "farming" is not going to be high on the agenda. i'm thoroughly sick of having to tag each animal with an electronically readable plastic tag. i'm tired of hearing farmers being accused of pillaging the land and emitting excessive rates of carbon [what about all the other industry emissions? the tricky chemicals the politicians can't spell?]
we've just been advised that as stock-owners we'll are required to pay an annual "epidemic tax" [in case some blight descends upon the herd/flock] and i'm not looking forward to the day when we are made to individually weigh our stock and pay methane emissions tax based on their possible gas output [and probably calculated on the basis of feed-lotting as opposed to paddock grazing]. we also had a letter from the MLA telling us that we've been chosen at random to have our "books inspected" to make sure we're not feeding meat products to our stock. what the? if i were stupid enough to feed meat products to ruminants [and unlike the idiots who fed scrapie-infected sheep carcasses to cattle and kicked of the BSE plague i don't], do they really think i'd be writing it all down in a book?

so i'm extremely unhappy about having to pay a water tax on top of maintaining pipes and pumps and associated paraphernalia.


after a cup of tea and a bit of thought, here's the development plan for 'Hope Springs', assuming i have anything to say in the matter.

* discontinue meat production [let the old cows retire in peace for the rest of their days] and only keep a flock of pet sheep [none of whose children will be sent to market]. plant lots more trees and let most of the place become a wild forest, keeping a bit of clear space around the houses so there's a chance of eluding the inevitable fires. [there are plenty of kangaroos to graze under the trees.]

* grow enough fruit and vegetables to feed the family and trade with the neighbours. carrying the water in buckets from the dam should keep us all quite fit, no need to go to the gym so there's another saving [not that i go anyway, he he]

* compose a lovely "nyah nyah i told you so" song to sing when the government starts bleating about food shortages because nobody wants to be a farmer any more


oh and while i'm having a food and farm rant - the next semi-vegetarian who tells me they don't eat meat on principle but DO eat kangaroo because it's a soft-footed native animal that doesn't damage the country might like to have a little think about how that soft-footed animal is "harvested".  these gentle creatures are chased at night by men in 4WD vehicles with spotlights and guns. they die in agony [very rare to knock an animal out with a clean shot to the head] and in terror.
don't tell me that's sustainable meat production.

sorry about the rant folks, but had to get it off my chest. time for a coffee and then back to the sewing room...

one more thing, as my friend from Soewnearth has kindly reminded me [see comments]....the other item on the grand plan is to consider the installation of meters on our rainwater tanks and charge us for usage as well... i may spontaneously combust at some point.

retreating to FELT

a cheque arrived in the mail today, the balance of payment for a workshop i am leading next week.

but if the typing is to be believed, there may be a disappointed student

i am very much hoping it is a typographical error [and at the same time more than a little curious about what was wandering through the mind of the typist!]

the three day class will be about feltmaking, stitch and dyeing.

definitely no felatio!

overheard at breakfast

"must be the German in me"

"you German, honey?"

"Russian, German, same difference"

"oh, no...there's a wall"

"not no more they ain't no wall"

"Russian women, they SCARE me....they so ANGRY"

new heights of idiocy for beaurocracy

whilst in Canberra (our nation's capital) last week various gems of governmental gossip floated past my shell-like ears. the usual response is to chuckle, stifle a yawn and order another Margharita...but the following piece of nonsense is too ridiculous to be ignored

apparently some bright spark who clearly has too much time on their hands has decided that farmers also need extra entertainment. the plan is that we are to weigh all of our stock individually on a quarterly basis, advise the tax office of the total weight and then be taxed on the estimated methane output.

every farmer i've shared this story with so far has given the same response ...'if that's the plan, we'll sell the sheep/cows/chickens/pigs/wildebeests and plant trees instead'...and that's our plan as well

enjoy eating your tree-flavoured cereal in years to come, washed down with soy 'milk' because there won't be any steaks, chops or bacon and certainly no yummy milkshakes

soylent green, here we come...