I was born in 1950 when very few homes had any kind of electronic device.  In the early 50’s television started to be broadcast in black and white and 2 channels which shut down at 10.30 pm I think, and wished viewers a good night before displaying the ‘test card’ which was a geometric pattern so installers could ‘tune in’.  My parents weren’t too sure whether TV was a good idea, and might displace family activities such a sewing, games, conversation and sleep, so I had to wait a couple of years until they relented.  They were totally right about it displacing family activities.  The television arrived resplendent in a polished wooden cabinet casing, with half of the front a screen and the rest large dials and switches.  It was of course powered by valves.  These are large glass vacuum tubes with heaters in every one.  The TV sucked a huge amount of power, got very hot, and I dare say it was possible to cook one’s evening meal on it.  Giving new meaning to ‘TV dinners’.

The valves burnt out with great regularity, so TV aficionados often had a box of spare valves to plug in in place of the blackened ones.   “Dad, the TV’s gone again and I want to watch Noddy and Big Ears” was the frequent cry.  I also remember having a portable radio with valves and a 67 V battery which lasted about half an hour.  The battery was also used as a child bravery test by putting one’s tongue across the terminals.  Voluntary torture.

Then somebody invented a workable transistor.  My, how the world has changed.  You probably own 20-50 million transistors.  They used to be worth $1 each, but you will be disappointed to learn they have not retained their value, so you cannot retire yet.  There are several million on a computer CPU, or smart phone, or even your fridge or washing machine.  Not to mention your TV, where we started this electronic adventure.  Your car has more computing power than available to Armstrong at the first moon landing.  In the 1960’s an IBM executive said the world market for computers would be about 10.  Which is why they are still making pencil sharpeners.

I really got to the cutting edge of electronics when I went to university to do mechanical engineering, a heavy user of number crunching.  In the labs we had a PDP8 computer to process lab tests.  It was programmed in machine language.  That was digital, or all it could understand was 0 and 1.  I can’t tell you how laborious that was to code onto a strip of paper with punched holes a program, then the data, and instructions to output the results.  It made a slide-rule look good.  Another lost art I mastered.  However there was a mainframe computer in the university that understood high level languages such as Algol, Cobol and Fortran.  One computer for 3000 students.  It didn’t contain any stored programs.   I had to create the internal logic with iterative operations such as ‘if I=20 then go to line 486’ for the program to take each step in computing a result.  I went to a room with typewriters where I punched holes in cards.  Hundreds of them in exact order that I bound with elastic bands and left on the stack of in-going programs.  I got the result perhaps 2 weeks later by daily checking the out stack.  Usually the result was failure with “Failed to compile” with error routines 27,104, 337, 582 etc and it would give a line number.  Then go back to the massive tome of errors and look up the number to find the cryptic words such as “integer not declared”.  I did so declare that integer!!  Then back to a previous line not mentioned as an error to find the card, pour over it to see I had mis-typed a semicolon instead of a colon, obscured by the fuzzy pin printer.  Then wait another 2 weeks for the next try.  Probably another failure.  In my entire time at uni, I managed to get 2 programs to run.  I could see computing was the future of engineering, but that was probably why I went to smoke hash in Kathmandu instead.

All the above is a lengthy preamble to try and convince you that I am not the world’s worst plonker when it comes to electronics and stuff.  Or perhaps to convince myself.  I have recently had a major problem with a mouse.  No, not that thing close to your right hand, or to be stroked on a pad, this was the real thing with fur and whiskers.  It got into the box housing the hydro governor, crept under the circuit board that controls it and got toasted.  It’s boiling body fluids shorted the circuit board, burned holes in it and coated the board with a thick layer of carbon residue.  Not surprisingly, it ceased to function.  Both mouse and board. The first I knew of this was the smell.  I was at the computer and got the stench of burning insulation.  Oh bugger! this isn’t good.  I got down on hands and knees like an airport beagle but couldn’t sniff it amongst the computer/internet equipment.  I went to the laundry where the washing machine was thumping away.  No problem.  Then outside to the mass of electronics that controls the electrical system.  I got the acrid stench of burnt electrics and could see the thick carbon deposits.  It took a while to see the tip of the nose of the mouse peeping out from under the circuit board.  I pulled it out with pliers and had a moment of sympathy with the hapless animal.  Just a moment, before I tossed it off into the bushes.  Oh bugger!  This electronic device was made especially for me as a one-off.  By a company that no longer exists, commissioned by my father-in-law now long dead, composed of components 37 years old, and made by an unknown person who is probably retired.  For those of you who have pursued warranty clauses, you can possibly see a problem.

I dismantled and surveyed the charred remains of the circuit board with little comprehension.  Time for phone a friend.  My techie mate Martin is in Canada but has a mate in Cairns who has been to Possum Valley.  He is willing to look at the problem and thinks he may be able to resurrect this ancient piece of electronics.

Here’s hoping.

 

After much delay by the weather and other commitments such as running a business and one or two days a week looking after young grandkids, I have finally managed to complete the rebuilding of the sauna hut and it is now open for use.  The weather in particular has been most uncooperative with persistent rain up right up until late August.  The very narrow, unsurfaced track is very slippy and one tiny mistake would see me, my vehicle and building materials sliding sideways into the dam below.  The slope at the site is very steep and most times I could hardly stand up on the slippy ground, let alone attempt work.  I am sure you understand it is miserable working in the rain and things go wrong so easily, especially on makeshift scaffolding with muddy boots and power tools.  So weeks went by with no progress.  Also a highly unionised work site so two drops on a shovel and I’m out of there.   So here it is.

I actually prefer the previous model of old timber boards scrounged from around the place, But I’ve done so much scrounging in the last decade, there’s nothing left.  The last bits went into the tree house.  So I had to actually buy the materials and that was a shock to the system.  Not just having to put my miserly trembling hand into my pocket, but also the cost of building materials seems to have moved on in the last few decades since I have done any substantial building.  Especially timber.  I had to settle for Hardi plank compressed cement boards which are strong enough when fixed, but a nightmare for one person to pick up.  They are not that heavy but 4.2 m long and awfully wobbly and when you try to carry one on edge it twists itself at the ends and snaps in the middle.  I had to clamp them to a long stick of wood to even pick them up.  I bought for the first time ever a few metal studs to use around the stove and chimney so I wouldn’t have to build a Mark 3 hut.  Compared with the 3 by 2 hardwood studs they are meant to replace, they are awfully light and flimsy.  Accidentally step on one and it would just crumple.  I understand that most new houses are framed with the stuff.  Hmmm.

I gave myself a holiday in early September, the first one in years.  As I’m the boss here, I can have a holiday whenever I like and for as long as I like.  All I have to do is scan my booking diary, find some patch of white paper and scribble “hols” across it.  In practice, it is not quite that easy as the weekends at least are booked up months in advance, so I have to think ahead.  I’m not very good at that.  So I went to see my daughter Josie, partner Kairne and two grandkids Huon 6 and Evie 4 in September.  I would have liked mid-winter for Darwin, but missed booking it in with myself (how dumb is that!), so went later.  They have bought a post-cyclone Tracy house, known locally as a ‘bunker’.  The walls and ceiling are solid reinforced concrete.  Now that’s something to fix a roof to!  The garden is nice with well established trees and Alexandria palms.  They are fortunate enough to have a pool to flop into on hot days, which is pretty much all year.  While I was there it got up to 36.6C with 80% humidity.  My first day back at Possum Valley the max was 16C.  More than 20C difference.  Somewhere in the middle would be nice.

In Darwin Josie and Kairne had work to do of course, Huon was at school, so I was dutifully hosted by Evie aged 4 in her serious mode as she took me on a tour of the house and gardens, naming the chickens and most of the plants as well as she could.   A most charming host.  This was what I was there for, some one-on-one time with Evie that I had not really had before.  So then we were taking each other’s measure until a little trust was established.  Later I saw her fun mode with squeals of laughter and wide shining eyes.

On that first day I disgraced myself.  I failed to pick up Huon from school.  I didn’t even know it was required to pick up kids from school.  The house is only 200 m from the school grounds.  As a primary school kid I walked over a mile through a city each way, every day, rain or shine.  Evie gently said “Is it time to pick up Huon?”.  Though I hadn’t explicitly been told to pick him up, both parents were at work and I should have been able to work it out.  As I dashed out of the house in panic, Kairne drove up with Huon.  He had been summoned from work concerning an unattended, abandoned child languishing in the principle’s office.  I suspect that will go down in family history.  Perhaps history will also record it is sad that kids can’t walk the streets and roam as I did.

Later I did get to see a lot of Huon’s school.  I spent a day on a school outing to the NT Wildlife Reserve sponsored by the government and very professional and interesting.  I attended classes to assist Josie give a small group assistance to cook choc-chip cookies.  I was fortunate to attend the school concert.  I was blown out by the difference in philosophy and practice from my day of ‘talk and chalk’ and quills and inkwell in the desks.  Yes quills, just like Shakespeare except that we had up-graded to metal quills rather than feathers.  They had giant touchscreen monitors which the kids confidently manipulated with sweeps and taps to bring internet news and events.  The whole open plan area was stocked with physical resources just waiting to be used.  The kids went in small groups without direct supervision and later reported back to the class what they had achieved.  Another positive is the huge cultural diversity and ethnic mix of Darwin.  Innuit were a bit thin on the ground, but all the world’s people were there and celebrated at the school concert.

In Possum Valley news, it is sarsaparilla season with the trees blooming in profusion.  This pic from my bedroom window.

There is a reason, or several why I haven’t made a blog in over a month.  The first excuse reason I haven’t blogged is that I haven’t done much that is noteworthy.  Mainly due to the wet season hanging on with drizzly days making progress on the sauna rebuild and other projects impossible.  I have other feeble excuses for my sloth, such as being fully booked for accommodation and looking after my grandkids aged 3 and 5 for 2 days a week.  I can get some things done while the kids are here, such as servicing a cottage, or a bit of building, but they require regular feeding, beg for book reading, demand that I watch them drill holes in wood, cut grass with scissors, or splatter paint on paper and proudly proclaim it a landscape.

So I regretfully report I have missed the winter deadline for the sauna rebuild.  Both my guests and I could really use a sauna at the moment with a drizzly day that reached a max of 13C.  God what!  You’d expect better in Glasgow.  I’ve just looked up Glasgow.  Gales and rain but 17C.  I’m wearing socks would you believe!  After a brief glimpse of the ‘dry season’ with brilliant sunny days, I am disappointed by the return of cloud and drizzle.

My other grandkids aged 6 and 4 came over from Darwin last week to stay for a few days.  Yes, they did bring parents to take care of logistics.  It was great to see the cousins reestablish relationships.  I have just put the floor in and waiting to nail off and coat it on a dry sunny day so the coating will dry rather than go to a tacky emulsion.  It was drizzling and 15C when I took this (30 mins ago).  Give me a break Huey!!  I had my grandkids when laying the floor, and they played happily while I laboured on, but they were playing with my tools, and elder Henry 5 has understood how important tools are from me and his dad, so wanted my tape measure when I wasn’t using it.  Partly my own fault for stressing how important measuring and numbers are to ‘do stuff’ so that when he gets to that stage in school, he knows what it is for.  Which left me negotiating with a 5 year old to get my tools back.

Recently, the hydro generator had a burnout of a brush and slip ring.  Nothing unusual as it happens every 6 months or so, but while trying to turn down and refurbish the slip ring it came loose.  It was a paper thin strip of brass worn down by constant friction.  Re-engineering required.  I managed to bodge it up to last for a very limited period, so I could press-gang Blue, my daughter’s partner, to help me carry down an old generator to replace it.  I know it is old because the manufacturers ceased production pre 1982. We arranged a date for the ‘big grunt’.  The track down to the hydro site follows the waterfall and is very steep, slippy and littered with loose rocks.  The generators weigh about 65 kg.  Rather like mountaineering in the high Alps but carrying a body on a stretcher.  One wrong step launches everyone off down the hill.  The most difficult sections negotiated by lowering the carrying cradle by rope.  I wanted to install and fire up the ‘old’ generator before trying to lift the failing one up the hill in case the replacement didn’t work.  A few adjustments were required as the support feet had different dimensions, but when I started it off I could tell from the sound it was taking up the load.  You beaut!!!!.  Rather like me, you thought you were past retirement, but still good to go.

The next task was to hump the failing generator up the hill to my workshop for re-engineering to be a back-up.  There was some negotiation as to who would take front and uphill position on the carrying stretcher and who would carry the rear.  On steep hills the weight falls on the rear.  My negotiations skills must be failing as I got the arse end.  I called 4 halts in the ascent as I couldn’t gulp enough oxygen.  The legs were willing, but the lungs were weak.  I have installed new (homemade) slip-rings and brush calipers from an old generator to increase the brush contact area and decrease the contact pressure which I hope will give much increased life to the components.  If you didn’t understand a word of that, don’t worry.  Your incomprehension is very unlikely to impact your life.  You only have to be good at one very small thing to earn a living.

Hang in there and try and survive the trifecta of buffoons now running the English speaking world.  With the honourable exception of Jacinta of course.

 

The television doesn’t work.  I went to switch it on tonight and not a flicker or a lonesome LED, dead as a maggot.  Which is an oxymoron of a phrase, as when anything is dead, the maggots certainly aren’t.  however the television dead with no sign of maggots.  Which has driven me to my computer, and having absorbed enough of a dose of dismal news, gives me leisure to compose a post.  Not that I have a lot to report as I have been in hibernation due to persistent rain, mist, mud, leeches and sheets of drizzle driven by gale force winds.  The sauna reconstruction is at a standstill though I did take advantage of 3 whole days without rain to get half a ton of materials down the precarious slippy track.  Even the ducks have had enough and loiter in my patio area undercover in a semi-catatonic state.

I must say that my guests have been taking the dismal conditions with a cheerfulness that defies reality and an optimism that is a credit to the Aussie ‘can do’ spirit.  I am reminded of a Giles cartoon that I grew up on that caricatured the grim British determination to have a good time.

Just departed today is an extended family who have been coming for decades.  They said they a great time and saw plenty of wildlife, which of course doesn’t have the option to go on strike.  I think a large part of the ‘great time’ was the opportunity for 3 generations to get together without piling into one house and creating ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’.  They could come to neutral territory and just muck in together.  Muck the operative word.

Other recent guests have been forgiving for other reasons.  Despite the atrocious weather for the last …… well … forever, guests have seen the golden bower bird in the last couple of days. I had a couple of wildlife enthusiasts from WA and they were thrilled to see platypus out the window and the tree roos, possums and for them the highlight was the golden bower bird. They forgive and forget the mud if they get to see the special creatures they certainly wont see elsewhere.

The few fleeting days when I managed to get some materials down to the sauna was due to a blast of cold air from Antarctica I think.  On a day where the max temp was 12C, my grandson Henry, 5, gets all his gear off and goes round naked.  I had resorted to long trousers while he resorted to just skin.  I didn’t make a point of it as I was sure he would soon realise the error of his ways, but an hour later where he showed no signs of discomfort, I persuaded him to to put on a few clothes.  Philip, 3, didn’t show as much resilience to the cold, but then he had fallen over in the creek and was drenched from head to toe.  I tried to get him to walk up from Blackbean Cottage to my house as I was carrying piles of linen and bags of garbage, but he shuddered to a stop crying miserably and I dimly remembered similar incidents from my own childhood and abandoned my load in the paddock to whisk him to warmth, safety and dry clothes.

To say I was disappointed by the result of the federal election would be an understatement.  I couldn’t believe that a coal brandishing reactionary twit could possibly be elected.  I don’t think there has been a more idiotic result since the praetorian guard in Rome after several assassinations and much wine elected a horse as emperor.  Actually, I think I’d rather have a horse.  Winx for PM!!  Yeah!  At least Winx has a track record, so to speak.  Now our esteemed premier in Queensland has seen the political writing on the wall and is grovelling at full speed to provide Adani with the permits it requires.  We have to leave coal in the ground where it has been for the last 250 million years,isn’t doing and harm and isn’t going to poison the planet.  Digging it up, setting fire to it and choking on the fumes isn’t a rational future policy.  So now my federal representative is Bob Katter and has been since the dynasty was founded sometime around when the pyramids were built I think.  So, what now?  Nothing I think.  It is the business of government to look into the future and make sure it doesn’t happen.  Because they represent the interests of old money and old generations.  The Morrison government didn’t even try to put up policies because they thought it could be a target and anyway a waste of time as they didn’t expect to get back in.  Now haven’t a clue what to do.

I think I am like many old people who realise we have lived through a charmed period of peace and prosperity but now realise our profligate ways threaten the future of our children and grandchildren.  The worst effects wont impact us as our use-by date is fast approaching, the calamitous results are yet to come.  I am thinking of my grandkids and want to make some real changes to our economy of consumption and resource exploitation.  Little adjustments wont be enough.  More radical changes, even uncomfortable changes are required.

 

 

To the few people interested in my Possum Valley blogs, I have to inform you that you will no longer get a notification email that I have posted a new blog.  In fact you probably wont see this advice because unless you casually check my blog from time to time, as I have already deactivated the ‘subscribe’ plug-in.  I have had about 1800 subscribers for some time, quite aware that most were machines as I really don’t know that many people in Russia or Poland.  I really don’t understand what advantage ‘the bots’ give to their originators, but recently I have been overwhelmed by about 20-30 new user subscriptions every day and all those notifications from my website land in my email.  They are all from the same source as the form is the same with “meet Carmen and Alice (or any combination of girls names)” as a link I have never clicked on.  I first thought I may be able to block them as the were mostly from .ru, Russia, but they are coming from all over the globe now on an industrial scale with different domains and countries.  So apart form my own website spamming me to add to the piles of spam I already get about such things as “SEO optimisation” for my website, when I add a new post, my own website adds to the Worldwide Waste of bandWidth (WWW), with thousands of unwanted emails.  I have inadvertently become a spammer myself.

OK, so I have deactivated the subscribe plug-in but still got spammed, so I deleted the app and all data and still got spammed.  I looked at the front end of my site and the invitations to subscribe are gone but I still get a few from “chat with Carla and Simone”.  But the numbers do seem to be dwindling.  

Amongst my IT woes are my tax returns.  The only work I don’t do myself is tax returns.  Australia boasts the most voluminous and complicated tax laws in the world and when you have a business, however small, it is almost impossible to understand.  So I have employed an accountant for the last couple of decades.  In the first few years I used to take in masses of bits of paper for the accountant to muse over.  Then in 2002 I joined the digital era with ‘Quickbooks’ and took in a CD and then a DVD with the data on it.  After a decade, my program was no longer supported by up-dates and the accountant could no longer open the files.  But I found if I emailed the files to them they could open them.  This has worked for the last 8 years or so, but no longer.  I only found out about this last week when Centerlink was hassling me about business detail updates and I realised I had seen nothing from the accountants since I submitted the data in Sept 2018.  Only when I called in did I learn they couldn’t open the files I sent then.  8 months of inaction left me jammed up against a Centerlink deadline to submit my tax returns.  So I was faced with the prospect of purchasing new accounting software and the nightmare of setting up a company and defining accounts and categories of expenses and incomes, suppliers and customers and all that shit.  

Then my accountant emailed to suggest if I printed out a few reports from my program and brought them in they could process my tax return.  So I printed out the data onto 20 sheets of crushed trees, and took them by hand to the office of my accountant who I have never met, and left them with the receptionist.  It struck me as ironic that after 20 years of digital accounting, I had gone full circle and was again submitting my accounts on paper.

In other news, I must apologize to guests that my rebuild of the sauna burnt down Xmas last year has been much hindered by a protracted wet season, other obligations, and now more bad weather with a cyclone in mid May.  Mid May??!! Yeah, OK, excuses excuses, but I am working on it.  I now have the frame and half the roof.

For the forthcoming election I have already voted like 3 million other people who couldn’t endure the puerile debate.  I wasn’t offered my first choice which was the popular option of kidnapping Jacinda Ahern and chaining her to a desk in Canberra.  Then again, perhaps not a good choice as the prospect of the all blacks rampaging in retaliation in the streets of our capital is too frightful to bear.  

Wildlife gets out there and has to hustle for a living come rain or shine.  Birds, having a high metabolic rate have to do it every day.  Snakes, being cold-blooded can endure weeks of bad weather before hunger drives them to action.  Humans for the most part have divorced themselves from any effect of the weather and now more than 50% of humanity lives in cities and can go from garage to underground car-park in sealed pods we call cars without having to put up with inconveniences of inclement weather.  Those people greatly affected by the weather have dwindled to less than 2% of the population in Australia and are increasingly elderly, but manage to totter about to provide everything we eat and add significant export revenues as well.  We call them farmers.  Somehow, we have entirely taken them for granted and lavish riches on sports stars and IT entrepreneurs catering to our whims.  Actually, I think eating is far more important.

Oh dear, I have already gone off-track.  Try again.  In the last week, guests at Blackbean Cottage had a window seat of a tree kangaroo contentedly feeding for 3 hours.  For most of the party it was their first view of a tree roo in the wild.  They could not believe how clumsy it was getting about in the trees.  I’ve seen goats that were more nimble at climbing trees in Africa.  They have got a way to go before fitting the “adapted to environment” paradigm espoused by Darwin.  

 

 

 

 

In a few recent days of sunshine (two to be precise), after a long wet spell, the snakes were about.  Black snakes, probably red-bellied but I didn’t trouble them for identification, were everywhere.  Only the world’s 14th most venomous snake, they are close to harmless.  They are so passive as to be no threat.  The Zen Buddhists of the snake world.  I have stood on them half a dozen times without reprisal.  They do flatten their fore-body though to warn off assailants.  Thank you Mick for this recent pic

I look after my grandchildren for a couple of days a week and Henry the elder at nearly 5 likes me to go along the track hacking back fallen vegetation with my machete that I boast about in my last blog.  So though I didn’t think there was urgent need, I gave in to his demands to clear the track.  He also advises me when the road drains need attention.  Can’t say I have ever come across another kid with an eye for drains. I am hacking away at obstructive plants when he hangs out of the car and says “cassowary”.  He has never seen one but relates to story books I read from the local library.  I turn around and just three paces behind me is a cassowary.  We regard each other for a while before it turns and slowly paces around the car. 

I only intended a quick hack so I had left the engine running.  I turn it off and talk to the kids about cassowaries and how they can be dangerous and have strong legs and big claws.  It continues to circle the car just a few meters away, so I put the kids in the back tray of the duel cab for a better look but out of the way in case the bird is having a bad hair day.  It crosses the road again and we can see its robust legs and long claws even bigger than I remember.  I point out the brilliant colours of its head and neck and the glistening iridescent of the feathers to try and key their memories.  It was at least 5 minutes circling the car when I heard traffic.  Guests arriving and we were just around a blind corner so I walked past the bird to slow down the new arrivals.  The cassowary decided that was too much company and disappeared so they didn’t get to see it, but they didn’t think I was having them on as the driver pointed out some droppings on the road.  A fresh turd bigger than a cow pat with seeds the size of walnuts was sitting in the road.  Many trees with large seeds rely entirely on the cassowary for seed dispersal. 

About a week ago I was on the veranda hard at work with the Times cryptic crossword when a tree kangaroo hopped around the wood stack on the patio in its usual halting leisurely way before climbing the fig tree right next to the veranda.  I knew the guests at Blackbean Cottage were interested in wildlife so I went down to invite them to see it.  We got back there a few minutes later and I was embarrassed to find it had gone as I examined the small 4m high tree.  But the guests looked harder and saw its tail hanging down and then the whole animal.  I knew where it was and just a few meters away but I was unable to see it until I got in just the right spot.  A couple of hours later when it was satisfied it wasn’t being watched, it clambered down onto the veranda and looked around for a while bewildered by it’s new and barren surroundings before hopping down the stairs and off into the forest.  I have an affinity for these strange, clumsy, intellectually challenged animals.  

I think there is the possibility that my grand kids might be the last generation to see any remnants of an intact ecosystem.  It seems that the complete dominance and subjugation of the environment for human needs is imminent and inevitable.  I won’t be around for the end game there, but it seems to be the way it is going.  It won’t end well.

Decades ago I saw this old crosscut saw in a second hand shop for about $20 I suppose.  Not your hardware store version version to use on a sawhorse with a piece of 4 by 2, this was nearly 2m long with big teeth and perpendicular handles at each end formerly used to fell big trees in the rainforest.  So bought it.  I can’t recall why, as it takes 2 people to operate and I had a huge chainsaw that has completely superseded this old saw. It is from the days where they used to cut notches in the tree about 3m from the ground to put ‘spring boards’ in to stand on to fell the tree above the buttress roots so common in rainforest trees.  First they would cut a ‘bird’s mouth’ open cut with felling axes about one third to one quarter through the trunk, and then cut back to the bird’s mouth from the other side with the crosscut.  A nice ‘hinge’ would be formed to control the direction of fall and to prevent any shattering of the timber.  

Some time ago I went on a chainsaw course to get a ticket to be able to get a firewood licence.  Creeping bureaucracy had caught up with me and deemed my 20 years of using a chainsaw and felling trees was was without value.  Even more preposterously, two old fellers on the course had started their tree harvesting careers using springboard, axe and crosscut saw like mine, in the days when ox-trains hauled out the logs.  They had imported and used the first ever chainsaw to reach the Tablelands when engines became light enough to lift off the ground ….just.  What they didn’t know about felling a tree probably doesn’t exist but they needed a ticket too to continue what they had been doing all their lives.  I overheard some learned talk between them and the instructor on such minutia as exactly where to hit the strap on a ‘leaney-tree back-strap cut’. 

Meanwhile back at my saw, it sat around for a long time as an ornament until I had a bright idea how to use it.  My little track in through the rainforest gradually becomes a little tunnel, and even that closes in to nothing unless the vegetation is cut back at intervals.  I had been doing that with machete, axe and brush hook, but there is 2 km of track which means 4 km of hacking.  Takes a couple of days of hard yakka.  So I thought of vertically mounting the blade cantilevered off the side of my bull-bar and parallel to the direction of motion and then drive along at 20 km/h like a giant machete.  I used a couple of old bit of railway line to cantilever but hit a snag.  I couldn’t drill a hole in the 1.76 mm thick blade (I’ve just measured it).  Not even on a pillar drill press with 12 speeds and HSS sharp drills.  The bits just turned red-hot and hardly made a dent.  The hardest steel I have ever come across.  I had to cut small slots with and angle grinder for the bolt holes.  Blade mounted!  If this works, it will be biggest jump in productivity since the invention of the wheelbarrow I thought.  It worked!  You beaut! as I did a steady 20 km/h down one side of the track.  For about 1 km until I hit a log hidden by the foliage and the blade shattered.  Didn’t bend, didn’t tear, just shattered with every piece still flat.  I sorrowfully picked up the pieces and limped home.  

There my defeat rested until I lost my machete in the rainforest.  Easily done with both handle and blade a dull brown.  Now I tape my tools in glaring red.  I went to the hardware store where they have heaps of them because this area has Australia’s highest vegetation densities and growth rates.  I picked one up and didn’t like the dull look of the blade, and when I flicked it with a fingernail it gave a short dull ‘thock’ sound.  Putty metal, I would never get a decent edge on that thing.  All the hardware stores had the same thing.  I don’t think the manufacturers in Shenzhou had ever tried using one.  I went home in despair and sulked.  Ping!!  an idea came to me that ping was the sound I wanted.  Although it was years since I had failed to drill holes in the old saw blade, I hadn’t throw the bits away and was pretty sure where I could get the ping sound.  I got a long scrap and sure enough got a nice clear musical ping.  I cut out a machete shape with an angle grinder and formed a crude edge then went to a fine belt on the belt sander and finished off the edge with a hand stone.  The handle was a short bit of branch split down the middle and glued and wrapped with a thin strip of aluminium.  On one side adjacent to the blade I cut a bevel for my thumb so it wouldn’t slip out of my hand when wet.  On test it was even better than I had expected. 

Just a lazy swing would cut through thin or soft stuff and a more vigourous blow would cut through a sapling the size of a banana with one blow.  I learnt to sharpen it with an increasingly finer edge as it went from handle to tip.  That is especially for vines.  In the rainforest sometimes half the foliage mass in a tree would be vines and many are brought down struggling to support the mass of freeloading vines.  Vines have little rigidity or mass and dance out of the way of a dull machete and just cannot be cut.  So I use the finer edge near the tip for vines and a ‘wristy’ action for speed as in badminton.  For the more substantial branches I use the less fine edge towards the handle with a more arm action as in tennis.  That gets the momentum of the blade balanced on each side of where the blade contacts the branch and is known in engineering as the ‘center of percussion’ and leaves little reaction felt through the handle.  In cricket the batters call it the ‘sweet spot’.  

There:- that is more than you ever wanted to know about the construction and use of a machete.  But if you have never had to use one for hours on end you can never know the bliss of using “The Best Machete In Australia’ as it ‘pings’ its way through thick stubborn rainforest.  You can never know the proprietorial pride and satisfaction of the perfect tool.  You may get some feeble idea from Crocodile Dundee with “That’s not a knife ……. (swish) THAT’s a knife” as he gazes admiringly at it’s blade, but that is just a dim reflection of the satisfaction a craftsman gets from his most treasured tools.    

So that saw blade, probably made in the first couple of decades of the 20th century, has finally been reborn to its optimal use.  It has been destroyed yet lives on.  Silky oak and other timbers from the Tablelands now grace the Houses of Parliament in the (Dis)United Kingdom.  Perhaps my saw was used in that construction.  Perhaps it is only the knowledge of history that historians struggle to retain that is lost, but the elements inevitably live on.

Well, not exactly. I signed the legal papers with my wife in front of a JP and they will be filed in a court hearing in Cairns. Neither of us will attend as there are no disputes or child custody issues as our kids are grown with kids of their own. We got together at her place to fill out the forms and both of us admitted sadness at the passing of a chapter of our lives. Just to put that in perspective, we met in the late 1950’s as our fathers were associated in business, met every Sunday at a sailing club and spent the summer holidays together at Llanbedrog in north Wales. More than 55 years of history together. I still have some sailing trophies we won together. But we have been separated for about 17 years now and when she suggested we formalize the current reality, I had to agree. Outside the JP’s office, we had a final hug before departing.

We have 2 girls in our marriage who have produced 4 grandchildren, so we will still have connection and communication. I am pleased to say our marriage breakdown was without rancour or blame. We both realised we were part of the problem. For anyone out there with a relationship breakup, seriously look at your own part in the breakdown and do your best to forgive theirs. I offer you a historical example of the Trojan wars as the wrong way to go. Helen was abducted, male pride was offended and 7 years of war and slaughter ensued. Though the legal fee of $900 is nearly enough to go to war about.

I am always keen to achieve efficiency, so took the opportunity to combine getting a divorce with collecting timber for the reconstruction of the sauna as both happened in Ravenshoe. Many guests have lamented the destruction of the sauna and I have finally got round to begin the reconstruction. The scantlings for the framework are now on site. I have reconnected power to the site for power tools. My first priority is to my guests , my second to the care of my grandkids and the third to projects. So combined with limited weather opportunities, the sauna could take a while, but I hope to have it available for you this coming winter.

This post seems really short so I thought I’d tag on something entirely different and more important. Young children’s access to natural spaces. This has been provoked by internet articles about UK children being denied access to outdoor play areas in tower block developments. Yes, kids being denied a chance to play on a few square meters of grass in the sunlight. By council planning regulations, the areas are designated as play areas. Because of preferential tenant agreements, some kids can’t play there. I think that horrific and choking to a child’s development who are denied any access to the natural world, albeit a miserable strip of grass. My outrage is prompted by my recent experiences with my grandkids. During this long hot summer, they have often asked to go down to the creek. There they have played naked in the water, shaded from the sun by the dense rainforest canopy, and had exciting times. I was fearful that Philip, the younger at 2 1/2 years, would find the terrain too difficult and hurt himself, but he proved me to be the wuss. After a little coaching about traction on the rocks, where dry rocks give good grip, wet rocks give poor grip and permanently underwater rocks, covered in slime mold are as slippery as ice. I could see him learning by the minute. Within a hour he could predict which rocks he could run over and which rocks he had to use the bum crawl on. In the turbulent creek with the water cascading over his shoulders, he made his way down between the rocks to the pool below without me hovering over him. You may think me reckless to expose my grandsons to risk of injury, but for them to accurately assess the risk, meet the challenge, feel the sensory stimulation and feel the joy of success is priceless.

Today we are facing a generation of kids who have little access to the natural world, who will have little connection with it and hence little concern for it. For each failure of the ecosystem they will have a technological fix to restore human comfort until collapse, where there is no fix. That is the dystopian future I hope we can avoid.