Wednesday, 17th August …..

It was our Rotary meeting last night. I’ve been quite slack recently and have missed a few meetings through a combination of a car which was not in peak condition and an unwillingness to make the one-hour drive to Deloraine. Because we were expecting to be away until this week, I had applied for Leave of Absence so was under no obligation to attend. The rules of Rotary state that members should attend 50% of meetings at their own club in any 6-month period, unless they have approved Leave. Why are people so ready to accept rules which limit their freedom of movement? It’s almost as if we realise we need an imposed discipline or we’ll become lazy.

Anyway, I was Chairman last night so I had an obligation to make every effort to be there. The business of the meeting was to discuss various questions regarding the running of the Club. It’s called Club Assembly and happens every month or so. There were just two items for discussion last night: requirements of membership (attendance, etc); and views on home-hosting visitors.

Like most Rotary Clubs, we have a number of members who ignore the rule I mentioned before and just don’t turn up regularly. We should get rid of them, of course, but nobody wants to give up members if we can help it. After twenty minutes of going around in circles, we once again handed the matter off to the Membership Committee to sort out. That’s what we normally do when this concern comes up for discussion.

The second issue is an interesting one. In the next few months, we will have visitors from a Sydney club who have offered to help out at the Craft Fair, young people on an exchange from somewhere in the US, Rotarian from New Zealand, and members of our two sister-clubs in the Philippines. Each group will stay for 2 to 3 days and will require home-hosting. Unfortunately, Marilyn and I can’t take more than one small visitor at a time; our little one-bedroom cottage isn’t set up for that. When sister-in-law Janet comes down in November, she will stay in our little visitor’s nook, but it’s too cosy for sharing and Rotary visitors usually come in pairs.

On the way home in the car, I listened to the local ABC station. Annie Warburton has a quiz each night from about 8 oçlock. The questions aren’t particularly hard but I find it so frustrating to hear some of the people who ring in. They seem to be immune to embarrassment and are quite prepared to show their ignorance to everyone who is listening. I would have thought that the best thing to do when you don’t know the answer is to hang up and let someone else have a go. But no, callers beg for a clue, ask anyone who is in the same room as they are and generally parade their lack of knowledge. Nobody can know everything and it is better to admit it and not draw attention to it.

Sunday, August 14th …..

Friday was a beautiful day. I had an appointment in Burnie which is about 165Km away so we decided Marilyn would come with me for the drive and we would have lunch out.

Our friend Greg Leong is Director of the Burnie Art Gallery and I wanted to ask him to be a judge in the Hoffman Challenge Quilting Competition which has now become part of the Craft Fair. Greg has a long involvement with the Arts and is an internationally-recognised Textile Artist. He’s been involved with the Craft Fair, on and off, for years but the first time I met Greg was in 2007 when I arranged for him to have a retrospective display of some of his extraordinary Chinese-inspired and Australian-influenced costumes and quilts. If you look more closely at a seemingly-Chinese dress, you will see tiny embroidered kangaroos. The attached picture is a Carmen dress made of flannelette.

Burnie is a funny town. When we first lived in Tasmania in the 1970s and 80s, Burnie was the wild west. It was most famous for The Pulp, a dirty, smelly pulp mill. The pollution around the town, especially on the foreshore was appalling and in the 1990s, I think, there was a real push to clean up their act. By 2000, the Pulp was essentially closed down and the environmental cleanup was completed. Burnie still thrives although there is very little industry now. Woodchip is exported from the wharf and it is still a major container port, but you are just as likely to see a cruise ship tied up than a cargo ship.

Marilyn and I sailed in there on the Volendam in January 2008. Hordes of people got off the ship to have rushed trips to Cradle Mountain, local wineries, Gunns Plains Zoo, or just to wander down the main street. The big tourist attraction of the town is Creative Paper, a paper-making concern famous for its Roo Paper, made from Kangaroo droppings. Another friend, Joanna Gair, developed this when she was Director of Creative Paper but I prefer the Whisky paper she made for a Scottish Distillery. Apparently you can make paper from any old fibre.

Nowadays, paper-making workshops are held in the new Visitors’Centre. For lunch we went to Fish Frenzy, which is right on the waterfront. Being such a beautiful day, we bought takeaway – two flake fillets and large chips, beautifully cooked and served in paper pokes (heavy paper cones).

It was a great day out. Greg agreed to be a judge and it was worth the drive just to enjoy the lunch.

Wednesday, 10th August …..

Les and I had a very busy day yesterday trying to finish the back verandah enclosure before the rain set in again. We’ve had lots of rain over the past few days and it’s great to have a break in the weather to finish off this project.

We tried on Tuesday but didn’t get much done before we were forced inside by a heavy shower. I had discovered that we needed a bit more Hardiplank so we decided to take our tape measure and saw into the local hardware to cut what we needed inside their big shed. The stuff comes in 4.2m lengths and that’s a bit long for a little trailer. We needed lengths of about 2m and I can fit that in the back of the Territory so off we went. The rain was still teeming down when we got back to Dilston so work was abandoned for the day.

Wednesday morning was clearer although the ground was a mess. Our house is built on clay (what does the bible say about the man who built his house on clay?) and the area around our work site was a quagmire (lovely word!). Wellies were the order of the day. I couldn’t get the music of Billy Connelly’s song about wellies out of my mind all day.

If you didnae hae yir wellies
Where wid ye be
Ye’d be in the hospital
Or the infir-ma-ry.

It’s a joy working in soft clay. The legs of the ladders kept sinking, climbing clay-covered rungs was dangerous and we were delighted to attach the last piece of Hardiplank and call it a day. I’ve attached a picture or two of the work in progress.

Good management(or good luck) meant that we had very little left over and almost no waste. There’s one more window to put in but it’s still attached to Les’s house. When he comes back from his holiday in Bathurst he will remove it, replace it with a heavier model more able to withstand the occasional flood he experiences, and deliver it to us. However, for the time being he has departed and it’s over to Jamie and me to finish the job – painting, tidying up the approach to the verandah, etc.

Tomorrow’s job is to clean up the tools, pressure-clean the verandah floor and start planning for the paths, etc.

In the meantime, Simon and Trevor are erecting the shed. We left them this morning just as they were starting and expected it to be complete when we arrived home. Not so! There is a rectangular piece of framework on the slab, one portal seems to be complete but there’s a long way to go before we can move in. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. I’m sure even the pharaohs had to deal with days of little progress when they were watching the pyramids being built.

Friday, 5th August …..

The weather was a bit miserable yesterday but Damo turned up as expected to get on with hacking away at the long grass and blackberries to try and tidy up the front part of the block. The previous owners had let the maintenance get away from them and the most that would be done would be an annual slashing of the grass by Graeme’s dad. We were promised that the dad would slash the grass before we moved in but, when we asked when he would come, were told that he had decided to leave it until after the winter. Huh!

We couldn’t live with it any longer and Marilyn rang a young man who used to work as a groundsman at Grammar. He has now set up his own business and, like all people in this situation, he is having trouble making ends meet. Not our problem, of course, but it will be a help if he can get rid of the worst of it and leave Jamie and me to keep up the momentum.

He arrived on Wednesday with all the gear and immediately started with the brush-cutter. I thought he would be limiting the brush cutting to small patches but he used it as a lawnmower to clear most of the area. Once the long grass was lopped, he raked it up and started up his ride-on mower and tidied up what he could.

He worked hard for two days and what a difference he has made. It’s not a lawn by any means. It’s far from level and tussocks don’t lend themselves to bowling greens, but certainly the basis for a long-term project. Marilyn had asked Damo to make a special effort with a patch of blackberries right at the front of the yard which was entangling a nice little cluster of shrubs. Even after a couple of reminders, he still hadn’t got to it. What is it about tradesmen that they ignore what you ask for and do their own thing? Damo didn’t get around to the blackberries until after dark, so he had to use the headlights of his mower to see what he was doing. It rained on and off for most of the day but that didn’t deter him for an instant.

He was a bit disappointed that we didn’t invite him back today but we’ve got some other expenses coming up and want to watch the budget.

Now that the grass is tidier, a couple of plovers have moved in to set up a territory. They prefer short grass for their nesting sites and we now fit the bill.

Jamie has already started in another part of the garden, with his new whipper-snipper and the mandatory helmet. Of course, not being silly, he has chosen a fine day, and we've had lots of those.

We had a great meal last night. We’ve been watching Masterchef and I’ve been inspired to tackle some of their dishes. Most of them are too fussy and have too many ingredients but now and then there is an exception which is within my capacity. So I had a go at Osso Bucco. I didn’t have celery or fresh thyme so I just ignored that bit, and the result was spectacularly good – a very rich, delicious winter dish which was very satisfying.

Wednesday, 3rd August …..

Jamie received an interesting invitation on his Facebook page this morning, encouraging him to be part of an event organised by a couple who had sadly lost their little girl who was still-born a year ago today.

He was asked to acknowledge the loss of this baby by carrying out a random act of kindness in her memory. He has no idea where the invitation originated but it has been passed on by hordes of other Facebook users and ultimately reached Jamie via a friend in Launceston. Apparently, 25901 people have accepted the invitation to take part in the event, 5186 may attend, and 115494 people are yet to respond.

It’s wonderful that people today, struggling to cope with the loss of a child are able to reach out, through the internet, to tens of thousands of others who can express their sympathy in a tangible way. Forty years ago, you had to look for support from your immediate family and close friends; even the family doctor just expected you to get on with your life, and didn’t even offer counselling unless it was demanded. Times have certainly changed, and for the better.

If you want to check out the event, the link is: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=238436836167242

We’re having a break from builders today, although there is still work being done in clearing the block. Damo, a friend of Marilyn’s from Grammar, has brought his whipper-snipper and ride-on mower to have a go at the thick grass at the front of the block. He’s fast and is making a real impression.

We won’t see Les again until Saturday when his brother will deliver the windows for the verandah enclosure and we can get stuck in to finishing off the job.

We’ve been in the new house for 7 weeks and Marilyn is starting to murmur about how nice it might be to go on a cruise. We’re certainly not the type of people who can be content to sit in our little cottage and watch the days pass by. We need to have a goal to look forward to. There’s talk of a trip to Borneo next year in April/May and we’re certainly keen on that but something between now and then might be nice.

There are some attractive Christmas cruises: the Diamond Princess sails from Sydney on December 16th, the Volendam leaves on the 19th, and the Celebrity Century on the 24th. But we’ve sailed to New Zealand before. There are a couple of possibilities to the South Pacific islands, on the Zaandam and the Rhapsody of the Seas but is summer the best time to be in the South Pacific? I have to say my preference is for an Asian cruise in mid-November. We would fly to Beijing to join the Diamond Princess on November 11th, and sail to ports in Korea, Japan, China and Vietnam before arriving in Singapore. The cruise is 16 days, a good duration, with some very interesting ports and not overly expensive. We’ve sailed on the Diamond Princess before and it suits us well. The only drawback is that it is very soon after the Craft Fair which doesn’t finish until November 7th but we could have our bags packed and be ready to go. Our sister-in-law, Janet, will be staying with us until November 10th but we could fly back to Sydney with her to get our connection to Beijing.

Oh, well! It’s easy to dream

Monday, 1st August …..

The sun’s shining again today but the forecast is for more rain so there are no workmen on site. It was all go on Friday with Les and I starting on the enclosing of the back verandah and Trevor and Brendan here to finish the laying of the slab.

Les is a bit casual in the way he works so we had no drawings of what the construction should look like and our tools were not really up to the job. We held the lengths of wood against the side of the house until they looked right and then attached them to the existing verandah with bugle screws. After we had the fourth one up, we realised we hadn’t allowed enough space at the top to attach the roof beams. Clearly there were two options. Get up a ladder and cut a bit off each upright with a hand saw or take them down and start again.

We opted for the latter. We also needed to upgrade our tools, too, so work stopped for the day. We were using cordless drills to put in the 100mm screws and they just didn’t have enough grunt. Les has a more powerful drill at home so will bring that back next time. Jamie and I went to Bunnings (great shop!) on Saturday morning and bought a light-weight drill and a fantastic box of all the drill bits we might conceivably want. Cheap Chinese stuff, of course, but will look great in our new shed.

It was a bit daunting for me to be posing as a builder when there were two real builders on site laying the slab. By mid-morning, the road base had been put in and they were waiting for the cement truck which arrived around noon. First problem! It got bogged about 50m from where the cement had to be poured. After a frantic phone call, another truck arrived and pulled him out. On the second attempt, taking a different route, it bogged again. There’s nothing for it, said Trevor, we’ll have to use barrows. Another phone call and two barrows arrived.

One of them was motorised!. I’ve never seen one before and I can imagine it will cut down on the difficulties of pushing a heavy barrow across rough ground. However, it only worked for about three loads before it broke down. For some mechanical reason, it can’t be used manually so, if the motor stops, the barrow is just another heap of junk. So, they were down to one barrow to move all the concrete. Because the weather was threatening, they had ordered a quick-drying mixture and time was getting away.

It was after 5 oçlock before Trevor was able to leave it but the final result was great.

In the way of the bush, a wallaby hopped across it during the night leaving a permanent reminder of the other residents of the area.

I think we were premature in cancelling work for today. There’s no sign yet of the rain and we’re missing out on some very productive time. I’ll finish this writing and get on with washing down the sides of the house. You can see in one of the pictures the sort of dirt which is all over the panels. Jamie tells me it is jet exhaust from the planes flying low into Launceston. Whatever it is, it is sticky and I have to use a stiff brush and a bleach mixture to move it. I might try out the Karcher pressure washer to see whether it might make my job a little easier.

Wednesday, 27th July …..

The world of paint has entered an age where the naming of different colours has become a major undertaking. Once upon a time we would have a choice of Cream or Pale Green, Primrose or Duck Egg Blue. But now we are faced with a myriad of colours with bizarre names. I glanced at a Dulux paint chart and found Precious Pink, Wiggle, Ginger Crumb, Caramel Sundae, Rainmaker, Oath and Plumburn, among hundreds of others.

What colour is Oath? Wiggle, I note is Green. Is there a Green Wiggle?

Clearly the names are intended to suggest an emotional response. Caramel Sundae is a classic example: cool and sweet, a real comfort. Rainmaker, a bluey-grey, makes sense, and so does Ginger Crumb.

In our little house where the paint is being touched up, we only have a handful of colours but it’s a pretty good sample of what you might expect if you are starting to decorate. The walls are Hogsbristle, the red wall in the kitchen is Carmen Miranda, a couple of grey doors are Mineshaft, a small patch of brown in the lounge is Cordovan and the wardrobe doors are Blushing Beige. It’s wonderful!

I’m expanding my reading this week following a worrying after-taste which I experienced after finishing The Unnecessary War. In fact, the author, Patrick J Buchanan, started Chapter 1 by stating:

ALL ABOUT US we can see clearly now that the West is passing away.
In a single century, all the great houses of continental Europe fell. All the empires that ruled the world have vanished. Not one European nation, save Muslim Albania, has a birthrate that will enable it to survive through the century. As a share of world population, peoples of European ancestry have been shrinking for three generations. The character of every Western nation is being irremediably altered as each undergoes an unresisted invasion from the Third World. We are slowly disappearing from the Earth.
Having lost the will to rule, Western man seems to be losing the will to live as a unique civilization as he feverishly indulges in La Dolce Vita, with a yawning indifference as to who might inherit the Earth he once ruled.

He didn’t come over as just another right-wing zealot ranting about immigration. His argument is that, for 300 years European nations provided the leadership which brought world development but during the 20th century their stupidity has weakened them to such an extent that they are swiftly being side-lined by the growth of other cultures. Maybe that’s OK. Maybe it’s time for a change and the rise of new cultures could bring benefits. But, maybe it’s not all positive and do we really understand what the world will be like in 50 years, or even 20?

There has been a flurry of comments about the failure, in European countries of multi-culturalism. This debate was re-visited following the tragedy in Norway this week so I thought I would download what is being said by people such as David Cameron and Angela Merkel, and so on. The difficulty in following the discussion is to avoid the racist rants of the radio shock-jocks, but there must be some intelligent words among the dross. I’m assuming this debate might have a great deal to do with elements of our population who choose to live apart from other Australians, transplanting their culture from their native land, without any wish to adopt the way-of-life which has evolved since Europeans first came here more than 200 years ago. I gather, also, that the word multi-cultural is good (as it recognises the diversity in our population) but multi-culturalism is bad (as it has led to groups setting themselves apart from the rest of the population, and outside the laws of the land). Could be interesting.