Amamoor Amore

Spent the weekend up at Amamoor, south west of Gympie. Friends own a sprawling property bordering state forest, way way up the top of the Amamoor Ck valley, and what a spectacular place it is, surrounded by wild bushland out in the middle of nowhere.


View Larger Map

The view from the house overlooks chiarscuroed mountain ranges with a boulder strewn creek running down below. On the Saturday night the sky was clear, with low cloud rolling in from the north east, but by late in the evening, it started to rain - and rain - and rain. Then all day Sunday it rained full on and the creek came up. The plan for the weekend was to walk the beautiful creek bed, climbing staged levels of gentle cascades and crystal clear rocky pools, but by the time the party set off, the cascades had turned into raging torrents and thundering waterfalls.

G-Man, wary of breaking a limb or worse decided not to risk it and walked back to the house to where I was. I had completely chickened out because I had hayfever and an ear full of fluid that was bound to affect my balance. No rock hopping for me. But the others did it.

On the way back they checked out the creek crossing at the entrance to the property and found it way too deep to drive out, so we had to sit out a second night. Thankfully we'd overcatered for one overnight BBQ and breakfast the follwing day, but the smokers were afraid - supplies had dwindled. By morning the creek had gone down a little, but certainly not enough to cross with my tiny little 4x4 Vitara, so it is stil there. We have to go back Wed to collect it if the rain stops.

It was pretty hairy - the road crosses the creek 13 times - most of them just concrete fords. The deepest was half a metre - no way my car would have got through - and it's on loan from a friend - not even mine!

But man, it was bloody exciting. Wonderful weekend. Thanks guys.

Love Your Flag of Convenience

FLAG


Here is the G-Man's take on the flag issue, after my bad hair day on OZ Day.
The music uses snippets of a jam we did a week ago with our Iranian muso mates, Mohsen Squared (they are both called Mohsen, and very fine players).

Real Australians do not wave flags.

In Western philosophy, misanthropy is connected to isolation from human society. In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates defines the misanthropy in relation to his fellow man: "Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable...and when it happens to someone often...he ends up...hating everyone.

I'm with Aristotle. Here I am, optimistically believing in the essential 'good' in mankind, but what do I get? FKN Australia Day.

It hasn't been this bad since the seventies at the height of the Australiana craze that gave us the apalling 'football, meatpies, kangaroos and holden cars', Paul Hogan, Baz Lhurman, occerist shite (I'm looking at you Singo) advertising campaigns to flog low grade uncompetitive products to the dumbest end of the market. But thanks to way too many years of Howard politics and the rise and rise of bogan insensibility, now I have to suffer the embarrasing spectacle of every second car in creation festooned in FKN Australian Flags. Not only that, all the long sufferening staff of my local IGA have to dress as jingoistic morons to take my cash at the checkout in their 'fight back' advertising campaign to sell me "Australian' products for this 'one day of the year' marketing exercise. And everone, it seems, is in on the act - if you're marketing lamb, it's appartenty 'International Australia day"!

Oh, paleeze.

Then, down at the beach today, every lowlife and their dog is sporting an Ausflag bikini/boardie/towel/beach umbrella and all I want to be is FKN HVK with a gun, and a sniping position from which to cap the muppets. The only thing Australia day inspires in me is misanthropy. I find myself bubbling with rage and loathing of my fellow [sic] Australians. All the shallow sentiment, all the bullshit longing for belonging, all the hollow platitudes, turn my stomach and make me wish them ill.

Hello! Real Australins DO NOT WAVE FLAGS for Fk sake. We do not respect authority, we do not rally around empty nationalist symbols. We are post modern. We define ourselves by what we refuse to be. We do not and have never wished to be American in this - or Nazis for that matter. All I see when a car goes past with those ludicrous fluttering flags are nascent brownshirts.

Perhaps it's just Queensland - maybe in the rest of this great sunburnt country the extremities of stupitidy aren't so obvious. Maybe the extent of fkwittedness isn't so pronounced, but man, up here, it's a battlefield. I have NOTHING in common with an aesthetic that demands total removal of one's frontal lobe.

So, a pox on all the houses of the ignorant fools who think that waving a flag is going to sustain the values of a (mostly anglo and white up here at least) minority populace that thinks that a culture of cricket, alcoholism, biggotry and escapism is sustainable in the face of immigration and reconcilliation. And I extend my misanthropy to first generation migrant kiddies who think that draping themsleves in a tatty piece of fabric will allow them access to the fat aussie bastard club too.

And all this crap about a new Australian flag? Fk it - lets not have a bloody flag at all. Let's be the first country in the history of civilisation to give the whole idea a miss.

The absence of a flag and all the low grade racist crap that goes with it is something I'd actually consider saluting.

3 days, 2 guitars, 1 dulcimer & 5 slabs of beer

Apart from the cow disasters, we did manage a little joy over the festive season. Friend and long time musical colleague of G-Man's, Phil (Beck) Beckett came to stay over. We recorded this over a couple of intense days. Beck is an amazing drummer, but also plays guitar and writes a mean pop song. His is the first track - Last Day which, as it turns out, we did on New Years Eve.
G-Man is main vocals and guitar and I'm doing harmonies and playing Dulcimer. It's rough and ready, but it's all recorded on the fly with no electronic footling or overdubbing later on - what you hear is what we played, live in the Green Room (our studio).

A total hoot, and about the best fun to be had in the breezy cool of under-the-house with an instrument in your lap and a couple of slabs of beer at hand. What can I say - it's damn thirsty work.

Track 4 is for you HVK - a theme song.

Madonna and child

This is all that is left of Number 6, the cow that died with her calf on board. She went down in a dry creek bed on Christmas Day and was pretty much in this state a week ago, except that the black stain around her bones was a bit slicker and oozier than it is now. It is as if her body liquified and was sucked into the thirsty bed.

If you enlarge the picture by clicking on it you can see her full term calf's bones lying within what would have been her belly, which confirms my theory that it was either in breech of transverse presentation and she couldn't deliver it.

The thing I find astonishing is the rate of decomposition. 10 days for all that flesh to simply melt into the ground. You can't watch something like that happen without it crossing your mind that we share the same fate; all that life, all our dreams and imaginings, all that energy will bleed back into the same earth in the same way.

But I find it strangely exhilarating rather than depressing. Getting up close and personal with death is oddly refreshing to the soul in that it renews your sense of purpose and moves all those 'things to do before I die' to the top of the list of daily priorities.

All we have in life, really, is time. Best not to waste it.

Not so happy new year

Another cow down, but this time with either three day sickness or tick fever. Either way, her back leg is stiff as a board with paralysis, and though it's now seven days since we found her at the top of the hill with her calf marming at her to get up, she's still alive, just not kicking.

When we first found her, she looked terrible, shaking and panting and we had to visit the woman down the road to see if she'd be available to put her down - she has a gun and a licence for it - but it being Christmas, no one was home. The vet was also no where to be found and as we'd had a cow recover from three day sickness before, we decided to give her a chance. That's been G-Man's entire festive season, every couple of hours he's headed up the hill to pour water down her throat and offer her lucerne and molassas. And still, she's hanging in. She doesn't appear to be in any pain, just unable to mover that stiff back leg, but I'm getting worried that if she doesn't get up soon, she'll be too bloody weak to get up at all, and it will all have been for nothing.

Makes you think when you're faced with a sick animal. Conventional wisdom says that the animal should be 'put out of its misery'. Sure, she's elderly for a cow, and lack of nutrition has left her immune system low on steam, but she is still breathing and eager to drink, which makes me think that she's still eager to live. Who the hell am I to go reaching for a bullet on her behalf. I know what it's like not to be able to get up for days because of a slipped disk in my back and certainly don't expect anyone to be thinking of putting me out of my misery. We did everything we could to make Geoff's mother comfortable after her fall and consequent broken wrist and pelvis, and my own mother is currently in hospital having had a turn, and no one is thinking of reaching for any final solution for her 'suffering'. So bugger it - we are here and have the time and the patience to make Number 82 as comfortable as possible untill the swelling goes down in the hope that she will get up and walk again.

We've since found out that three day sickness can take weeks rather than just three days. Perhaps it may not actually be three day sickness. Perhaps she lost her footing on the newly muddy slope and fell awkwardly and has broken her hip. On Monday we'll get the vet out to look at her and tell us what her chances are. If it is a broken hip, then maybe the only option is to have her euthanased, but the vet can do it with an injection. After tending to her there is no way I could do the deed. Having looked into her eye for the past week I am comvinced that she is as conscious as I am - a big animal like that has got to have a level of consciousness to match its complexity.

The three month old calf has had no choice but to wean itself, and has thankfully been adopted by another member of the herd who broke through two fences to get to it. take it into its custody and teach it to eat grass and suck water from the dam. Besides, it was impossible (but wildly comical) for us to catch the little critter in the open field, and she's saved us the trouble of poddying the youngster.

Fingers crossed for Number 81.

Brush with fame

I've been spending a bit of time getting my photo file in order and came across this one from some considerable time ago in a previous life. On the left is a twenty-eight year old truckie's daughter from the beigest of bland suburbs of Brisbane, and on the right, the one-time Prime Minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam. We are in Venice, dining with artists after the opening of a pirate exhibition staged by my then husband, Ray Hughes.

Never in my wildest dreams, when I gratefully took advantage of the free tertiary education his government provided some ten years earlier, did I imagine that I would sit at table with the great man himself. I was, as you can see, what became known as a dewy-eyed Whitlamite.

Although it looks like he is imparting some gem of wisdom, he is actually telling a joke.

I can't imagine how my life would have panned out without that passport out of the burbs, to aspire to something more than barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen (although I did manage to fit that in too). I will always be in debt to the Australian people for that all too brief moment of opportunity.

Business as usual

Finally, a drop of rain; enough to actually grow the grass! It's patchy, but there was a good solid soaking of 15mm last night, and today is overcast with intermittent drizzle so it won't evaporate immediately.

Even though today is apparently a holiday, the cows don't observe it, so it's business as usual around here.

First thing this moring we moved the breeders into a new paddock to keep them far enough away from the weeners (Panda's calf is still neurotic enough to go through a fence if she can see her ex-mother). That was fairly painless, but still, Number 6 was not with them. She being heavily pregnant, had gone off by herself to calve. G-Man was worried about her and went off on foot to find her on Friday, and found her down. As he approached, she got up and charged him so he figured that if she was well enough to get up and knock him over, she was fine.

But there was still no sign of her in the herd this morning so, after we'd given two young heiffers their injections, we went off with a biscuit of lucerne to try to entice Number 6 back to the herd. There's safety in numbers. But we were too late. We found her dead in a gully. I suspect that she must have gone into labour and been unable to deliver the calf.

She'll decompose over the next week - carrion to crows, goannas, and various species of ants till she's a powdery pile of skin and bones. Poor thing. You feel so damned guilty when an animal in your care dies. There's little we could have done for her out on the field. Really, we should have sent her to market after her first calf died - probably still born. But then her second was fine, so we decided to keep her. But this, her third, was either dead in utero or too large to pass through her pelvis.

Still, it's not all doom and gloom. Number 76 delivered a healthy calf yesterday "and his name shall be called Jesus".

Birth and death continue to turn around the hub of life here in the valley - business as usual.

Bah Panforte

I'll say one thing for Christmas. It does provide excellent opportunities for approach avoidance of the million things I still have to do this year.

One entire morning spent on a batch of Sienna Cakes and a couple of brandy sodden, six-egg fruit cakes. Then of course a trip to town to get all the paraphernalia for gift wrapping and icing - mmmmm icing.

Sigh.

Back to work woman!

Here's the recipe just in case you already don't have enough to do:

Panforte di Sienna

2 tsp. powdered Cinamon

6 oz whie plain flour

4 peppercorns

1 tsp. cloves

1 tsp. ground corianda

1 pinch nutmeg

Half pound candied melon rind

1 oz. candied orange rind

4 oz walnuts

Half pound almonds

8 oz. sugar

juice of half a lemon or 2 tbsp water

3 oz honey

Mix t tsp. cinamon with 1 oz. flour and set aside. This is called polverino and is sifted on top of the cake to protect it from the heat.

Mix all the dry ingredients together with the fruit and set aside.

Cook the sugar, honey and lemon juice in a double boiler till it is all dissolved and part caramelised, then pour into the dry mix and knead to a smoot consistency.

Grease and dust with flour a shallow tin (I use a flan tin with the removable bottom), and place in the bottom either a peice of flat wafer or a round of rice paper, and press the mix into it to a depth of about three quarters of an inch.

Sift the polverino on top and bake atabout 160 degrees centigrade for 30 - 40 min. Let it cool in the mould. The cake can be kept for 2 - 3 weeks.

Right on cue

Well done nana McHugh.

There's another six parked beneath her fuggy feathery fluff.

Got home from the Burger Brisneyfest to find G-Man covered in mud - again. He'd just dragged another cow out of the sludge. Got to somehow entice them out of that paddock and back to the lean pickings of our fields. The only grass we have left is bladey grass, which they hate - very sharp on the tongue - but sprayed with molassas it transforms into cow candy.

He's currently up in the container paddock with a box full of sprinkler fittings, lengths of ag pipe and a pump setting up a watering system to try to get something ANYTHING growing.