Australia – Page 50

It’s Etiquette …

Filed by our Warracknabeal correspondent …

Australian bush etiquette is world famous but in case you may have forgotten the finer details …

In General:

Never take an open stubby to a job interview…
Always identify people in your paddocks before shooting at them.
It’s tacky to take an Esky to church.
If you have to vacuum the bed, it’s time to change the sheets.
Even if you’re certain you’re included in the will, it’s rude to take your ute and trailer to the funeral.

Eating Out:

When decanting wine from the box, tilt the paper cup and pour slowly so as not to bruise the wine.
If drinking directly from the bottle, hold it with only one hand.

Entertaining at Home:

A centrepiece for the table should never be anything prepared by a taxidermist.
Don’t allow the dog to eat at the table, no matter how good his manners.

Personal Hygiene:

While ears need to be cleaned regularly, this should be done in private, using one’s OWN ute keys.
Even if you live alone, deodorant isn’t a waste of money.
Extensive use of deodorant can only delay bathing by a few days.
Dirt and grease under the fingernails is a no-no,it alters the taste of finger foods and if you are a woman it can draw attention away from your jewellery.

Theatre/Cinema Etiquette:

Crying babies should be taken to the lobby and picked up after the movie ends.
Refrain from yelling abuse at characters on the screen. Tests have proven they can’t hear you.

Weddings:

Livestock is a poor choice for a wedding gift.
For the groom, at least, rent a tux. A tracksuit with a cummerbund and a clean football jumper can create a tacky appearance.
Though uncomfortable, say “yes” to socks and shoes for the occasion.

Driving Etiquette:

Dim your headlights for approaching vehicles, even if your gun’s loaded and the roo’s in your rifle sight.
When entering a roundabout, the vehicle with the largest roo bar doesn’t always have the right of way.
Never tow another car using panty hose and duct tape.
When sending your wife down the road to fill up a petrol can, it’s impolite to ask her to bring back beer too.

Hotter and hotter …

It’s worse than we thought. Gee, it’s getting hot.

All the models show it and according to the consensus we all know it.

The thermometer, however, has been uncooperative. To counter this Australian thermometer readings have been homogenised, that is adjusted.

The Bureau of Meteorology have published the improved temperatures as the ACORN data set. The result – an increase in temperature of 0.9 °C over a century. QED.

Two issues cloud the matter somewhat. One is the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Increase the bitumen and the buildings around weather stations and you expect a warming bias in the record. The second issue is the adjustment process. One would expect that, for urban weather stations, either the modern records would be corrected downwards or older records to be corrected upwards, in order to compensate for the UHI. The mechanism the BoM uses for temperature adjustment has not been published. But trust us, we are from the government and are here to help. As was said of another government “the future is certain, only the past is subject to change”.

The past has left a record. In 1933 what was then called CSIR published 74 years of weather records. Twenty years later The Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics published an Official Year Book of Australia which included the mean temperature readings from 1911 to 1940 at 44 locations.

One Chris Gillham has been working very hard to compare the historical records with the ACORN set. And guess what … the older records have been adjusted downwards. Almost half of the vaunted warming has been due entirely to changes in the record. My guess is that the rest is due to the UHI.

My source is Jo Nova where you can find far more detail.

Australia Day …

Around about 85,000 years ago my ancestors, and yours, took advantage of a bit of climate change and escaped northwards from Africa. They weren’t the first people in the genus Homo to make the break but there is good genetic evidence to suggest that all modern people outside of Africa are descended from that group.

They initially spread along the coast and by 74,000 years ago they had reached as far as China.

Mt Toba, a volcano in Sumatra then went pop, big time. Volcanic ash covered India and Pakistan, it produced a winter that lasted six years or so. The human population went through a bottleneck, there may have been no more than about 10,000 adults that survived this event. If you’re reading this your ancestors were in the lucky few, oh that gossamer thread.

Sometime in the ten thousand years after that folk in the east shook hands and said “good luck”. Some continued east and colonised Australia, others headed back west, and when things thawed out a bit colonised Europe. There is a nice summary of events <HERE>.

On 26 January 1788 the First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson and the descendants of those brave, early Homo sapiens were reunited. We are all one species. Your ancestors are my ancestors, my ancestors are yours. G’day.

Emerging from the bush …

A happy new year to all and sundry. I am full of optimism, it can’t be anywhere near as disastrous as Tim Blair predicts …

I woke up to 2015 in Victoria’s Sunset country not far from this sign …

This is the part of Australia that achieved fame when Apple Maps was launched. Version one directed people going to Mildura into the wilderness. The press made much of the prospect of people dying of thirst or succumbing to snake bite. I did neither but I did make an excellent start to my 2015 bird list.

A couple of people have taken on the challenge of the Calendar Game. I will post my progress from time to time, hopefully they will inform us all of their progress in comments. So far this year I have seen 110 species, so I’m safe until April 20th.

Summer is harsh. Weather is always a topic of conversation in Victoria because it changes frequently. The cycle runs from a hot north wind through a cold change from the west, a couple of cooler days then the wind turns northerly and things hot up again. The dramatic moment is the change itself, it can drop the temperature 15 degrees in half an hour. In summer that’s usually very welcome.

When it’s very hot and windy the fire risk is high. Fires tend to start during the northerly, all too often because some nutbag deliberately lights it. Initially the fire front travels south, burning embers often travel ahead on the wind, starting spot fires that make firebreaks ineffective. Despite reports that it travels faster than a speeding bullet the front is likely not to exceed 16–20 km/h. After five or six hours then the area affected will look like a relatively narrow triangle with its base in the south about 100 km from the apex at the fire’s origin.

The change arrives with a strong westerly wind, the fire front now becomes the eastern side, much longer than the southerly base. If the change is accompanied by heavy rain … great. In summer it often isn’t. In Victoria the loss of life and property is usually greater after the change.

The most recent weather cycle produced the fires in the Adelaide hills, South Australia, which has destroyed at least 26 houses, and fires in western and southern Victoria that have been less destructive. Looking west from my front gate the change looked like this …

My fire plan is simple. There is a road leading south and another going east. Fire from the north, McGee goes south, fire from the west, McGee goes east.

But on a brighter note, my meanderings over the last couple of days have turned up some beautiful sights …

The old trestle bridge at Archdale, and below a Rainbow Bee-eater at Newstead.

Ah, Port Fairy …

Jewel of Victoria’s west coast.

I have the enormous luxury of spending a few days here.

It is 290 km west of Melbourne where the River Moyne reaches the southern ocean. This coast was home to a small whaling industry from the 1830’s, a store opened here in 1839 and the Post Office in 1843. It is the home of Victoria’s oldest continuously licensed pub and some other fine heritage buildings. If it wasn’t for the sand on the beach and the better weather it could be an English seaside village.

It is still a working port. Less than a hundred metres from where I’m staying there is a guy making wicker cray pots on the deck of his fishing boat. A couple of days ago they were just a bundle of rods soaking in the river.

The tourist can walk along the wharf, take a stroll around Griffith’s Island, the early whaling base, or visit the koalas and emus at Tower Hill fifteen minutes drive away. Have lunch at Rebecca’s, tea at the Lemongrass Thai Restaurant and recharge the soul. They tell me the folk festival in March is not to be missed although it’s not my scene.

It is a splendid place for the bird watcher.

The best place to stay is Doc’s at the Mill, right at the wharf and an easy walk into town or to the beach. The old flour mill was built in 1860, it’s the only three story building in town. It has had a colourful history itself, as you can see from the photo the third story is now wood. If you want to see the stone that used to be there you need to look at the tower of the Anglican church in Regent Street!

It has been converted to luxury accommodation with three bedrooms. Contact Langley’s +61 3 5568 2899.

Home on the Grange …

Dear Mr McGee,

It is very kind of you to send me the splendid bottle of 1969 Grange.

Whilst I am very happy to receive your congratulations, I am sure you will understand that, under all the circumstances, I must return the bottle.

Yours faithfully

Mike Baird

Premier NSW.

Australia explained …

For my many overseas visitors, a little explanation is sometimes in order. A couple of current topics are cases in point.

The first thing to remember is that Australia brought its governance style, constitution, respect for the rule of law etc from the Old Art, ie England. It is no surprise that to understand some aspects of our lives we must look to English history. First cab off the rank then …

The Star Chamber (Latin: Camera stellata) was an Englishcourt of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster from the late 15th century until 1641. It was made up of Privy Councillors, as well as common-law judges and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters. The court was set up to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against prominent people, those so powerful that ordinary courts would never convict them of their crimes.

Court sessions were held in secret, with no indictments, and no witnesses. Evidence was presented in writing. Over time it evolved into a political weapon, a symbol of the misuse and abuse of power by the English monarchy and courts.

In modern usage, legal or administrative bodies with strict, arbitrary rulings and secretive proceedings are sometimes called, metaphorically or poetically, star chambers. This is a pejorative term and intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the proceedings. The inherent lack of objectivity of politically motivated charges has led to substantial reforms in English law in most jurisdictions since that time.

It is also handy to know that Penfold’s Grange is Australia’s premier wine, a 1959 can cost an entire career …

From the Penfolds website (my emphasis) …

Grange is arguably Australia’s most famous wine and is officially listed as a Heritage Icon of South Australia. Grange boasts an unbroken line of vintages from the experimental 1951 and clearly demonstrates the synergy between Shiraz and the soils and climates of South Australia.

Penfolds Grange displays fully ripe, intensely flavoured and textured Shiraz grapes. The result is a unique Australian style that is now recognised as one of the most consistent of the world’s great wines. The Grange style is the original and most powerful expression of Penfolds multi-vineyard, multi-district blending philosophy.

From humble beginnings in the 1950s, Grange has maintained its place as Australia’s most prestigious red wine over five decades. Today, it is a wine of international renown, with each vintage eagerly awaited by collectors both in Australia and overseas.

Penfolds Grange is a wine of extraordinary dimension and power. Richly textured, intensely concentrated and packed with fruit sweetness, these wines, regardless of vintage, require medium to long-term cellaring. They develop into immensely complex, beguiling wines that seduce the senses.

An Australian icon, Grange represents a tradition in winemaking that is totally uncompromising. Grange has bypassed the fads and trends of modern winemaking in the sense that it has maintained an integrity of style and remained true to its origins in the mind of Max Schubert. Penfolds Grange is the quality standard against which all other Australian red wines are judged. To share a mature Grange, 15 to 20 years old, in fine condition, is one of the great wine experiences.

Food Matches

Beef, dehydrated vegetables, shaved mojama, quinoa, braised oxtail and horseradish

Rare roasted aged fillet of beef with a red wine reduction

Wagyu beef

On a roll …

According to The Australian …

A MAN has died after a vehicle drove off a Perth road, entered bushland and rolled over.

Police were notified of the single vehicle rollover off the Great Northern Highway about 30-kilometres south of Wyndham at 10.30am (WST) on Saturday.

It appears the vehicle left the road at or near a bend, entered bushland and rolled over.

From Perth to Wyndham is a roll of 3,215 km … no wonder the poor bastard was dead.

Broome …

The Kimberley adventure brought us finally back to Broome. We finished the trip at the Broome Bird Observatory.

One of the trio still needed a few mangrove birds for his Aussie list and Little Crab Creek, not far from the observatory, would be the place to find them. A tour of Broome including the Port, the playing fields and the sewage works is birding heaven. Add the proximity of Roebuck Bay, which even over winter holds a wonderful trove of migratory waders, Pindan woodland and open plains and a hundred species in a day can be seen with relative ease. I gave a guarantee that I would deliver the White-breasted Whistler and the Dusky Gerygone.

The first morning saw us in the mangroves beating off the mozzies. The whistler duly surrendered and what’s more, the first one to parade for us was a beautiful male, usually much harder to find than the drabber females and young males. But no Dusky Gerygone. Then off to Nimilaica, Barred Creek and back up the Derby Road to Taylor’s lagoon. A great day, some great birds but …

Dawn of day two and we were back in the mangroves, swatting the mozzies, ignoring the White-breasted Whistler, the Broad-billed Flycatchers, Yellow White-eyes, Mangrove Grey Fantails, Sacred Kingfishers, Brahminy Kites and the rest, reputation is at stake, I have never dipped on the gerygone, ever.

The Dusky Gerygone is found only in the mangroves from about Broome, south west along the WA coast to about Shark Bay. Gerygones are little birds, often grey or brown or greyish-brown, distinguished by subtleties of eyebrow or tail tip, and amongst all these the Dusky is distinguished by its lack of distinction, no contrasting tail tip, the subtlest of eyebrows. The clinching detail is the pale iris! You need a good look.

My colleague slapped another mozzie, I distinctly heard him muttering about trusting me instead of trying Streeter’s Jetty. Everybody gets them at Streeter’s Jetty.

A Yellow White-eye peeked out …

Dime a dozen. Mangrove Golden Whistlers are much harder to find, I doubt that one has ever been dismissed as lightly as this one …

More muttering, then …

Reputation rescued.

Geological diversions …

After leaving the Bungles our first stop was the frontier town of Halls Creek where we bought some light beer and groceries.

Then it was off to China Wall which is about 6km away via the Duncan Highway.

The more resistant quartz has weathered out of the softer surrounding rock to produce a miniature version of the Great Wall of China. It snakes through the country for several kilometres.

Maintaining the geological theme we then headed 150 km down the Tanamai to the Wolfe Creek Crater.

Some time in the Pleistocene 50,000 tonnes worth of meteorite came to visit. It’s about 875 metres in diameter and 60 metres from the present crater floor to the rim.

As fascinating as these landforms are our motives were not entirely geological. The creek at China Wall is a known drinking spot for Painted Finch, which sadly we did not see, and one of our number had not seen Grey-fronted Honeyeater which we hoped to find on the Tanamai, and in that we were successful.

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