Okie Weather

I saw the big Sydney dust storm on the news, and assumed it must've passed us by. But that same evening the sky darkened too early, and the next day there was wave after wave of gritty, chewy dust in the air, and deposited across everything, including my lungs. I'm still finding things that are covered with it and wiping them clean three weeks later.

Our genocidal campaign to rid the bottom of the garden of camphor laurels has resulted in an ever-growing view of Blue Knob and Sphinx Rock from the back verandah - I'l put a photo up once we can actually see the whole ridge of the mountain.
We have booked a local tradesman to insulate the roof, to take advantage of the federal rebate of $1,600 for insulation materials. With luck that should be done before the height of Summer, and should make a big difference to how long the house stays cool on Summer mornings.
We've been busier than ever at work - tackling multiple projects and keeping fingers in various pies, including our first ever local client - the excellent networking wizards at www.magedata.net.
I was very excited that our friends from Wisconsin, Alex and Linda, were sending us a present. Unfortunately, the Australian customs did not approve of the packet of (doubtless delicious) wild rice, and confiscated it all. Probably to make a risotto.
My latest improvement to my diet is learning how to make chocolate walnut liqueur brownies. The way I see it, at least I know what's in them (fat, carbs, and alcohol) so that's got to be healthier than eating shop-bought biscuits. There's a picture of K tucking into a plateful on her blog here.
The first weekend in October saw us at the Nimbin A&I show (what would in England be called a country faire - local crafts, farm produce, awards for best iceberg lettuce and so on). This was a rare opportunity for us to mingle with the "other" Nimbin - the respectable one. And extremely nice folk they are too.
Apart from the always excellent Perch Creek Family Jug band (shown above) the most interesting event was something I had always assumed would be very much in-your-face in Australia, but which I hadn't come across until now - snake education and awareness. Radoa did an outstanding presentation, and condensed into five minutes all the information required to not die when coming face-to-face with taipans, death adders, and king brown snakes, all of which are native to this area. Any doubts about the danger posed by the snakes the presenter was handling were dispelled by counting the fingers on his right hand. Later the same week, Ben, who is helping us sort out the studio downstairs, spotted a red-bellied black snake in a wood pile less than ten foot from the door (yes, yes, I know, I shouldn't have a wood pile ten foot from the door).
On the following Friday we took advantage of a very generous invitation from Marcus to share his campsite at Woody Head for a night (he had 2 large tents set up, and it was just him plus his daughters, so there was plenty of room). It only took an hour and 40 minutes to drive there, and it is the prettiest campsite I've seen in Australia so far, and far and away the best for a family camping trip, with a safe beach, rock pools, gum-tree forest down to the sand, and great facilities including a cook-to-order facility for those days whenyou don't feel like camp cooking.
When we got home, we discovered our mulberry tree was heavy with fruit, so we got busy picking the ready mulberries (K on a strict rota of one for her, one for the pot of course, followed by a very generous impulse to share the sweet black juice with all the soft furnishings in the house).
Now I must stop blogging and get busy making a mulberry and apple crumble. And custard.

Python and PHP

In complete contrast to this time last year, the dry weather has now continued for over 8 weeks. In the last two weeks it has also gone from cold to hot during the day, with one day being hotter than any day was during last summer, by a good three degrees, which cannot be normal. The unseasonal weather has also brought the snakes out early, and they are very active as well - I've seen both adult and baby pythons around our house, and the one pictured here was asleep on our verandah table yesterday lunchtime. She left after I disturbed her, but in no great hurry.
We've taken advantage of the soil and undergrowth drying out at the bottom end of our block to get in and kill the invasive species - camphor laurel and pollonia trees mostly. The next step is to draw up a list of native shrubs and perennials to replace what we've killed, and do a big mission to Fireweheel nursery.
The dry sunny days have also made it easy to finish painting the new railings, and rip the defective ceiling panels off downstairs in readiness for the final touches to that space before the council inspector comes to give our efforts the yay or nay. To remove the panels, I used the orthodox new-dad technique of cranking up the manu chao on the stereo, then balancing on top of a stepladder with a toddler swinging off my jeans, squinting up into the falling masonry dust and prodding vaguely with a Stanley knife until each panel fell on me and toddler, and then picking myself and the toddler up and starting on the next panel. K has never giggled so much in one afternoon before in her life.
I've been drawn into the planning for Nimbin's Software Freedom Day too - I even did the notice in the Nimbin Goodtimes after swearing blind that there'd be "no more IT articles from me this year"! I'm looking forward to the event - it should be a fun social afternoon, and a good basic grounding to kickstart my almost nonexistent knowledge of Ubuntu (and apache, and PHP, and Perl, and all those other things I've scratched the surface of but nothing more).

Our friends Louis and Mbweda have moved to near the Tuntable community this week as well, so we should be seeing a lot more of them - and when we went to the monthly Tuntable hall dinner, there were at least 30 people there we knew, so we're starting to feel more part of the Nimbin community, at long last.
I'm still pursuing my plan to get a complementary currency established in Nimbin, but am also still coming to appreciate the amount of inertia that will have to be overcome. The Nimbin sustainability forum were keen when I described my plan, and one of the organisers of the Maleny complementary currency scheme (Baroon Dollars) is going to come to Nimbin to give us a presentation and hopefully provide some pointers for our next steps. Rome wasn't built in a day, and the sestertii probably weren't minted that quick either. No quantitative easing or fiat notes either. Progress.

Badger, badger, badger, badger......

The first week back after holiday should be easy in theory. In practice it can be a hard week to get through. Spring officially begins on September 1 in Australia, and I can see why - many of the trees are already in bloom, the lowest temperature at night has probably climbed by five or six degress in the last three weeks, and the midmorning sun is something to be afraid of once again. After the horror of 41° in the shade in Kyoto, the weather here seems pretty perfect however.
As we had to drive down to Nimbin on the Saturday, but were not in a hurry and didn't have too much to do, we decided to vary our usual route down the motorway, and instead swing inland at Nerang, and take the tourist road that cuts through in between Lamington national park and the coastal plain. As soon as you are out of Nerang, it's a really pretty drive, as the road climbs up almost to the level of the Lamington National Park plateau and then the view opens up across the Tweed Valley all the way to Byron Bay. It probably takes about an extra 40 minutes to get to Murwillumbah, but if you're not pressed for time it's definitely worth it. Oh yeah, and there's a cafe with home baked fudge cakes on the way.
We were looking forward to a reconfigured and functional bathroom at home, but it turns out that I hadn't quite asked the plumbers to do what I thought I had. I thought that I had asked for the shower and sink to be plumbed in, and that that would mean both would be assembled and connected to the water supply. Unfortunately, I wasn't specific enough in my email, and I now realise that the quote we received was to assemble and plumb in the shower, but only to run pipes to the sink, and not assemble it or plumb it in. Fortunately, the Ikea flat pack sink unit was quick and fairly intuitive to assemble, and by this morning, we had it set up and at least ready to plumb in to both the waste pipe and the water supply. We need to buy a couple of pipes and connectors, and we should be able to finish the job in a couple of hours.
Having been away in Japan, the house and garden and deck were all a bit of a mess, and there were off cuts, and pieces of fibroboard left by the workmen and the plumber which needed to be tidied away. This was sweaty work, which meant that we had to test whether the new shower was working properly. It's pretty powerful, and there's room for two.
In our absence, the local wildlife has taken up residence. As we arrived, we saw a large spiny lizard, sunning itself in the last rays of the sun, and several too-large-for-comfort spiders ran away as I loaded things into the basement. When we drove into the village to get bread, the joey that we saw two months ago with his mother was back, by itself this time. It has grown to almost 3 foot high, and developed a shiny silver pelt on the front. It's also more paranoid than before, pounding off into the bush as soon as it becomes aware that you're watching.
On Sunday morning, C went to clear some of the lantana away from the chicken coop. As she was working, she heard something rustling in the bush next to her - and when she looked, she saw a fair size snake moving through the grass towards her. Once she figured out it was no threat, she called me over with the camera. It seemed it was attracted by the scent of the chicken coop - which is quite incredible, given that it hasn't contained chickens for almost three and a half years! We watched it sniff its way along the ground, and then once in the centre of the cement chicken coop, begin to follow its nose up the wall, to exactly where the roosts were positioned. After a few moments, it figured out there was nothing to eat, turned around, and continued on its way into the neighbour's garden.
Disconsolately, we tidied, and packed, and drove off, back to Brisbane.
Our weekend however, was not entirely over. When we got two Sphinx rock, there was a local band playing of the cafe, and a fair crowd had gathered to watch them. They were called Channel Free; a funky five piece playing rootsy psy-dub, with an amped up didgeridoo, and a synthesiser doing interesting percussion effects. We sat in the late afternoon sun, on the grass by the creek - and didn't care that we'd get back to the city a bit late.