It has been awhile since I've put together a good read on here but I reckon this one should be worth the wait…

There's something undeniably satisfying about reconnecting with nature and producing my own food. I spend a lot of time in the garden these days, preparing for a visit by students working on the school demonstration garden to give them a chance to see what an established garden produces. There are now four compost bays installed with the first batch nearly ready and the plots are now yielding radishes, zucchini, pak choi, kale, silver beet, capsicum and muchicha (amaranth). With tomatoes, onions, leeks, pumpkin, peas, carrots, squash and watermelon on the way, I could get used to this.

Anyway enough of that hippyesque rant, I promised a few good stories. As it happens one of these did occur in my beloved garden, or at least in the immediate surrounds. The garden is pretty isolated, surrounded in a horseshoe shape by a creek and long grass, so after a hard afternoons work, as dusk approached, I thought there no problem in quickly "giving my chickens some water" among the long grass in the middle of nowhere. (Check the earlier blogs if you have forgotten what that means). Sighing, content with my efforts, my feeling of relief was cut short when I felt eyes on me and looked up to see a local hunter had heard me and perhaps thinking I was a wild pig, had snuck across the creek and was now watching me just five metres away, complete with a spear, machete and bamboo for hanging his catch.

AWKWARD! That'll make you feel better next time you're stuck in a cubicle with no toilet paper…

We exchanged confused looks for a few seconds before, thank god, Tunza's barks broke the moment and I could zip myself up. As I tried to control Tunza, the hunter walked into some long grass and disappeared as quickly and as silently as he had arrived. Tunza my hero!

As if that wasn't enough excitement, we've also had a car wash into the river here since my last blog. There are no towns with cars for miles, so immediately we were concerned with who it was (I won't go into the details but most of the possibilities weren't appealing). Fortunately, (though not for them), it was a safari vehicle from a nearby park (by nearby I mean at least four hours drive). They had been sent to help a vehicle another few hours away which had been stranded for a couple weeks. So the driver, who had no knowledge of the land, headed off through an area of impassable roads and rivers that no one drives in the wet season, with no straps, rope, jack or winches. He then attempted to cross the river with an unweighted cabin. People have lined the river with rocks in the area where vehicles cross but with an unweighted cabin the force and depth of the river lifted the back of the car off the rocks and into the mud.

I do feel for the guy whose first instinct was to run and who apparently took some convincing not to do so. He was still visibly shaken up two days after the event, when he finally came to ask for help. Two days of delay took its toll though and by the time we went to assess the situation, the car was bonnet deep, electrics and engine stuffed, smack bang in the middle of the river and parallel with the banks. I've been told stories and seen photos of a legendary bogging here a few years ago, which required several vehicles and resulted in damage to all of them that didn't look as bad as this. So there wasn't much I could do except offer up some advice, straps, cable and a jack. It was amazing though, once the villagers realised I wasn't going to do anything, they rallied together and pulled the thing out by hand! So there's now two broken down vehicles 50 Kilometres apart with no more to send in for help but at least they aren't in the river. More proof it's a dangerous game out here in the wet!

Well these blogs don't seem complete anymore without something thrown in about the weird and wonderful wild things here and these next inclusions should not disappoint. First up another scorpion, we found this one crossing the path on the way to checking out the vehicle, when it was still in the river. This one was about five inches head to tail, black, aggressive and pretty scary all round but Kauga was not to bothered by it at all, telling me that the smaller one I had been playing with back in January was the one with the poison I should worry about. I hope I don't get a chance to draw a comparison myself but with Laurensia taking one off her bed, that had gotten past the mosquito net the other day and another inch long beetle crawling across my bed as I type (True! Into the box it goes for a photo tomorrow) there is always a chance.

I'll finish up with a description of the other critter worth a mention today. This one is a real mystery it was a caterpillar but it took me some time to figure that out. Sitting down to a selection of shallow fried and jam spattered toast yesterday morning, I noticed, near the fireplace, a plate sized patch of white powder on the ground. I took a closer look and there leading from the main site was a distinct trail of powder ending at a separate, white and slightly hairy clump. I thought it had to be a fungus at first, which had come loose from one of the trees above. Then it moved, only slightly but it definitely moved, so I got a twig and turned the thing over to find six obvious legs, far more distinct than anything resembling a head. The large patch of powder leads me to suspect that the creature had indeed fallen from the tree above and that it was the point of impact but the volume of powder alone would be double the size of the individual caterpillar. So here's a challenge for anyone up to it, fifty bucks for anyone who can get me a name or anything about the thing. There's a picture in the March folder and close-up in the critters folder...

I'll write again soon as there's a few other bits and pieces that have happened and everything kicks off tomorrow with the casual workers arriving to manually slash the airstrip. It takes about two weeks so they should be finished about just in time for the charter. (I'll take some photos for the Turfies back at Urrbrae)

Not long now!