My guests generously donate many things when they leave.  Some intentionally and some not.  My usual haul is an orphan sock, some milk and half a block of butter which would not survive a return trip to Cairns.  Sometimes I discover in the fridge gourmet food items I have never tried before, as the $/kg tag shocks my frugal mind when seen in local stores.  I can assure my honoured guests that I do not waste these choice items, and that I am not soliciting for further donations.

This week unintentional donations have been a charger and an i-pod.   Left by different guests and unfortunately not compatible.   I have been in contact with both parties and I am negotiating the safe return.  The owner of the i-pod, or is it a tablet? will have to rely on wet-ware for the coming week.

The most important and beautiful donations from guests have been the photos that have been e-mailed to me.  The one included in this post sent to me by Kristy who stayed here a week ago.  All my best photos are from guests.  A big thank you to all who have sent me great photos.  The header on my web site is part of a picture that was sent to me by a guest who is a professional photographer.  A very dreamy scene of a tropical sunset over the top dam.  Some one recently told me that it has appeared on a postcard released in Manchester UK, which is poignant as I was born and raised there.  Possum Valley could hardly be further from inner city Manchester in distance, climate and lifestyle.  I recently walked along the little street in Stretford where I used to live via Google Earth, and saw my old semi-detached house.  Hasn’t changed much except the front garden has been concreted over for parking space.  Apparently that is quite common now in the UK.  I also looked at Whaley Bridge, then a small village 30 miles outside Manchester where the family later moved to.  The field behind the house where I used to walk in the summer and toboggan in the winter has now been sub-divided into an housing estate.  Sigh.

Also thanks to my guests for sharing your stories with me.  About your travels, your families, your struggles and your triumphs.   And thank you for listening to my own stories, boasts and vanities.

Of course I appreciate my guests who pay the tariff and keep me in the luxury to which I am accustomed.  More than that, I enjoy meeting every one and learning something I didn’t know before.

 

 

Yes, dear readers, I am slowly groping my way to a new relationship.  Perhaps ‘groping’ is an unfortunate word.  Shall we try ‘forging’ or ‘negotiating’?  Hmmm, perhaps not, as one suggests something counterfeit and the other resolving differences by logic and trade-off.  Relationships are after all 90% emotional and 10% rational.  No, I mean some gentle settling in, a relaxation of expectations without either side making demands.  After all, the other party doesn’t have much brains and is without representation.  No, the rules and circumstances of this relationship will have to be entirely defined by me, though the real power lies with the other party.

I am trying to define my relationship to the environment, to Possum Valley.  I came here almost 40 years ago, and the ecosystem came here about 500,000,000 years ago.  Before that there wasn’t life on land, no fauna or flora, and I’d have been talking to rocks.  I guess that makes me a Jonny-come-lately.

In 1976 a friend and I paid some money to another person and ‘bought’ Possum Valley.  What does ‘bought’ mean?  I own and possess the entire land, both trees and plants and all the animals upon it and can change, plunder and destroy at my whim anything already here?  Apparently, as the ‘ownership’ was duly recorded in state archives and now I was lord and master of all I survey.  At that time there were few or no restrictions on what I could do with the land.  In my first months here, I came to see the richness, vibrancy and complexity that I could in no way create or duplicate.  Fortunately for me, previous owners had cleared some land for grazing thus relieving me of the guilt factor associated with destroying some of this environment.  In fact I have preserved only a few acres around the cottages and have let natural processes take over the other cleared ground.

Many cultures do not have the same concept of land ownership.  They certainly had the concept of rights of land usage and fought wars to establish their rights.  But they had the idea that they belonged to the land and were actually defending the ‘country’ when waging the wars.   I am talking about aborigines and north American cultures.  The concept of owning the land was absurd, when generations had come before them and taught them the sacred sites of ancestors and spirits that had shaped the land long before they were there.

I wasn’t taught these secrets, and come somewhere between these two entirely different world views, our ideas converge on preserving and maintaining the richness and variety that was bequeathed to us, to try and hand on to the next generation no less than we inherited.  As human numbers increase and consumption of resources explodes, this ideal is harder to achieve.   I am only answerable for my deeds in the times in which I live.  I perhaps leave an ever more difficult task to my children.  For now, I have begun to understand my role as custodian of Possum Valley.  It has been thrust upon me by the whims of European law, whereas in a traditional culture, it would be the responsibility of all.   I will try my best.

It is that time of year when the change of seasons seems particularly quick.  I wont bore you with mathematical explanations of how with periodical sinusoidal motions, the maximum rate of change is midway between the peak and the trough.  Oh… hang on, I already have.  I will tell you about the signs at Possum Valley.

There will be no more sweaty days.  To work up a decent sweat, I will have to do some hard yakka… god forbid.  Many days will not creep into the 20’s centigrade.  But I don’t rely on the thermometer to tell me the change of seasons, as it is the average day/night temps that matter.  A reliable instrument is if I can spread butter on the bread without totally destroying it.  I am one of the few in Oz who doesn’t keep the butter in the fridge.  Here it never gets hot enough to separate into ghee and whey,  Or is that curds and whey?  Anyway, it doesn’t go into a slimy mess.  So my next purchase of bread spread will be of ‘softened’ butter.  In other words contaminated with vegetable products.  Sigh.

Another token of the season change is the young black snake that has taken up residence in the power supply control system.  The electronic devices produce a steady warm glow most attractive to animals of the serpentine persuasion.  I have to watch where I put my hands, but I have confidence it will keep away the rodents who are the summer residents.  I have also been sharing my shower and bathroom with a frog for the last few weeks.  If a frog comes in out of the rain, you know it is a bit wet outside.  Frogs are quite agreeable house-mates, as they are the scourge of the insect population.  Call me prejudiced, but I prefer my soft flappy little friend to the host of six and eight legged invaders clamouring for the real estate I thought was mine.

To my friends in much higher latitudes, I have to admit that the change of seasons is nowhere near as dramatic as you enjoy, or endure.  The length of day is much the same, the temperatures drift from from the pleasant but sometimes a bit hot, to the pleasant but sometimes a bit cool.  No, we don’t have the drama of light and dark, hot and cold.  Nor the almost complete cessation of plant growth that so affected neolithic societies.  When the autumn harvest was in and the produce preserved and stored as best you could, then you could calculate with a deathly precision, could the family survive the winter?  Bad harvest?  Then best take the grandpas and grandmas to the dark forests as soon as possible.

On that dark thought, I leave you to contemplate our wealth and ease.

Every business has difficult times, makes mistakes and disappoints customers.  It is what you do from there which makes the difference.  Sometimes the circumstances are beyond your control, but still how you respond makes the difference.  What gets up peoples noses is when nobody cares, when your are referred to somebody else to get rid of you, and you have to state your case again and again.  Where you can’t even contact anybody with the authority to make a decision or resolve the issue.  We’ve all been there.

Enter B&B.  Or ‘Hosted Accommodation’.  In nearly all cases, the owner is the operator on a property they own and consider home.  I am one.  I not only consider it a business obligation to provide the best service that I can, it is also part of my pride and emotional well-being to share my beautiful environment to provide  an enjoyable and satisfying experience.  And you have to go far to find the boss who can make decisions and resolve issues, he or she probably greeted you on arrival.

Recently cyclone Ita molested this part of the coast and brought inconvenience to many.

The cyclone was only a cat 1 when it went somewhere near a couple of days ago.  Pretty windy but only one tree across the track, not like the hundreds in the last 2 cyclones.  But it rained a bit. 246 mm yesterday and most of that in 3 hours in the afternoon.  In the middle of that wind and pelting rain, a guest arrived but I told him to stop at the top of the hill as the creek was 30m wide, navel deep and doing quite a rate of knots.  Couldn’t even risk wading through.  Fortunately, there is the bridge near Blackbean Cottage. It wasn’t visible, being 400mm underwater, but I assured him that there was one and please follow directly behind me, as it is quite narrow.  I had one end of his wheelie suitcase.  I disgraced myself twice by missing the bridge and plunging into the water, but had the presence of mind to let go the luggage which he manfully struggled to keep above the waters.
He later agreed that although he is very well traveled, he has never before had quite that experience when arriving at a hotel reception, with storm and tempest and disappearing receptionist/porter. Fortunately, he had a sense of humour.

The rest of the party has arrived yesterday, having flown from Sydney , but the plane made 2 aborted landing attempts before the pilot made a decision between discretion and valour and headed back to land in Brisbane.  My guests were accommodated and flown back today at the airlines expense.  Both the Gillies and Kuranda range still closed, probably land slips, so they came up the Palmeston.  I do appreciate the effort they all made to get here.  Lesser mortals would have just cancelled out.

Next day I assembled the able-bodied guests down at the bottom of the waterfall in the rainforest also known as ‘leech central’, due to their abundance there.  The occasion was hauling the hydro generator out of the creek as it had been swept away in the floods.  It weighs 110 kg and I needed the help.

B&B’s can provide personal service, direct involvement, interesting experiences and perhaps even an educational opportunity.  A hotel or motel can provide predictable comfort ranging from adequate to luxurious depending on your budget, but B&B’s often provide something special that you have never experienced before.

Possum Valley is a bit on the wild side.  Many offer gentle luxury.  Choose carefully.

 

“The jungle is neutral” is the title of a book I read umm…. shall we say about 50 years ago.  It was about soldiers fighting the Japanese in 1944 in the jungles of Burma.  A terrifying place to fight.  There was the discomfort and strange flora and fauna, a lot of the latter wanting to take a piece of you.  But the scariest thing of course was the Japanese wanting to take more than a piece of you, and the fact you can only see a few meters and the danger of an ambush is ever present.  The author gradually came to the conclusion that the Japanese were definitely scary, but the jungle was not.  It did not favour anyone.  Every single organism was doing its own thing with little heed of the strange new visitors.    The same terrors were repeated in Vietnam and many a ‘vet’ permanently changed.

Guests come to Possum Valley with a variety of experience and attitudes.  Most have at least a little experience, and put up with the rain and leeches with whatever good grace they can muster, and realise that in an Australian rainforest at least, they themselves are the scariest creatures in the jungle.  By far the biggest, strongest, most adaptable pack animal to be found in the forest that day.  Others seem quite intimidated and ask nervously about the plethora of lurking dangers.  I answer very matter-of-fact that if you see a snake, keep a separation distance of at least 1m, and pick and flick the leeches, resisting the temptation to wind them up with stories of drop bears.  Though come to think of it, tree kangaroos could fit the description quite nicely and they do have long wicked claws.   Still, a few people exit the forest in haste or even screaming at the sight of a leech.  They must have brought these fears with them.  Children very easily pick up on the fears of their parents.  If the parents freak out, the kids are sure to follow.  Here is a guy having a face-to-face interaction, heroically defending his valuables, and appointing himself alpha male.

The problem is of course the separation of the modern lifestyle from any effective interaction with the natural environment.  For the first decade of a kid’s life, the major interaction with fauna may just be pigeons crapping on statues, and cockroaches and mice trying to invade the house.  Maybe fling a few crumbs to the former and exterminate the latter.  Those households with pets at least give a kid some connection with an animal, however artificial the environment.  Zoos serve some function, though the animals are plucked from their environment to be conveniently arrayed in ours.   Australia, with its vast space and low population, offers much more opportunities than most places for people to take themselves out of the human constructed environment and put themselves into a wilderness where nothing is crafted for human comfort or convenience.  Alas, many take every convenience with them.  I always did like minimalist camping.  A decent swag and a blackened billy doesn’t put up too many walls around you.

A rainforest is a very active environment and I can’t stop critters from invading my house or the cottages.   I do deal with situations as they arise, like removing a snake from the bathroom or the roof, catching mice, wrangling possums etc, but I can’t guarantee a sterile environment.  If you like sterile….. don’t come to a rainforest.   The Belgian family who left this morning were most co-operative.  I told them on arrival that there was a problem of a family of melomys in the cottage.  Halfway in size between a mouse and a rat, a rainforest native, only distantly related to either, rare,  quite cute and a protected species.  They had been pillaging the guest’s food, frightening the faint-hearted who thought they were rats, and the worst crime was ripping up my sheets and chewing holes in walls and doors.  Just a few days ago I had found a mouse trap of brilliant design that I though might catch them.  I had for years tried various commercial designs, and even built a custom design of a commercial trap tailored to their size.  Without success.  Wily little buggers.  I had success on the first night, and they have been happily re-located to deep in the rainforest.  Well, I am happy at least.  Another guest recently was confronted with a centipede.  I call them wood centipedes as they often inhabit rotten  logs.  They are about 15 cm long by 2 cm wide when grown up.  Sort of yellowy-green and and cruise briskly along like a train on their substantial rippling legs.   I can tell you, if you get one down your gum boot, you’ll dance the jig.  If you think you may be the sensitive type, not open to confronting experiences with nature, you might want to give Possum Valley a miss and try the Cairns Hilton where they diligently ensure such experiences are kept to a minimum.

Here is a girl here last week, open to new experience, who may remember this for the rest of her life.

As I gradually come to in the morning and cock an eye to gauge the weather, I usually review what I might do in the day.  Ah yes, going shopping today and an appointment in Atherton at 10 am.  A few more press-ups with the eyelids then stumble out of bed and totter off to the shower.  No alarm clock and no hurry in my daily rituals, as if I have something I must do, it is generally in the middle of the day.  Part of my ritual is checking the rain gauge in between an orange juice and some cereal.  Only 11 mm, just a dribble.  Then as I pass the power system  control cabinet, I notice a slight flickering of a light bulb.  An old incandescent bulb specially kept from ancient times to indicate how much surplus power I have and where it is going.  From experience, there are 3 reasons it might flicker.

1) Slow rhythmic flicker probably the generator drive belts a bit slack and flopping about.  Ignore.

2) Fast rhythmic flicker might be the governor ‘hunting’, and a slight twist of a knob to alter the volts just a bit will fix that.

3) Fast irregular flicker probably the brushes on the generator sparking on the slip rings.  This requires immediate attention as the sparks will quickly erode the slip rings into pits.

Oh bugger!  Its an number 3!  Scramble to the workshop and pack a bag of tools and off into the rain down to the generator at the bottom of the waterfall.  Off with the cover and yes, No 1 pair of brushes lit up like a christmas tree so I shut off the water to the turbine and it goes all quiet … and dark.  On a rainy day at the bottom of a waterfall in a rainforest, it is too dark to see what you are doing.  Out with the LED headlight to look at the wreckage.  Ah yes, the stainless steel springs that provide the right pressure for the brushes onto the slip ring have broken, making insufficient contact, making sparks, making erosion pits in the slip ring.  Of course it is the pair of brushes most difficult to get at that require fixing.

 

So here I am, in the wet, in the dark, working in a space about the size of a mouse’s ear-hole, being eaten by leeches and absolutely assured that if I drop any tool or part into the rushing creek below, it will never be seen again.  I’d complain to the engineer’s union, except I’m self employed.  The first job is a lathe job to remove the pits in the slip rings.  I pull all the brushes off the slip rings and start the turbine to use a scraper tool to eliminate the pits.  The generator transformer is a handy tool post.

I manage to rebend the spring ends and reconnect and fit new brushes and fire it up again.  Still a bit of sparking, maybe I can poke it to the right place with this screwdriver.  Wham, bam, flash!!!  The system short circuits and goes into over-speed  as the load goes off and I frantically shut off the water.  The moral of the story is don’t poke live wires and thank goodness for plastic screwdriver handles.

The brushes and callipers I have been repairing have been blown up and require more TLC than I though.  About this time I rescheduled my 10 am appointment.

The generator in the picture has been working 24/7 for more than  30 years.  It does have a few age-related problems.  I am possibly thinking of contacting the makers of this machine with field test feedback.  I find it satisfactory.

I managed to fit new springs, new brushes where required, and now expect another 10 years of trouble-free operation.

I made my appointment by 11 am.

To have your own power system is to feel empowered, literally, to feel independent. To feel confident  and in charge of the things you require.  That is the up side.  The down side is that there is no one to phone and demand they come and fix it.  It’s up to you.

 

 

 

 

 

After a very hesitant start, the wet season has finally come to Possum Valley in the last week.  Before that was only fitfull little showers of no more that 58mm in a day.  In much of Australia farmers would rush onto the tractor and plant a crop on the strength of that, but up here in the wet tropics it passes pretty well unnoticed.  But this last week a genuine monsoon trough has been squatting on the top of Oz.  A couple of weak cyclones have been been dodging back and forth along the trough without doing much damage.

Down here on the fungus farm of Possum Valley, it meant that the hydro system went from half power from lack of water in the creek, to having no power as there was too much water in the creek.  Down at the hydro at the bottom of a water fall, the tail-waters rise, and the turbine trying to do 450 RPM gets bogged.  I don’t have to do anything, it just shuts itself down.  And I don’t have to do anything to start it up again.  As the water level drops, it just starts producing power again.  There is a battery bank that does the heavy lifting when there is no power input and I think it would last a few days with zero input, but I have never put it to the test.  So the guests enjoy uninterrupted electrical service even though the input is off and on. When there is a monsoon trough , the solar panels are doing nothing under the heavy clouds.  They can’t even remember why they were invented or what the sun looks like.  I can always patch in a stand-by generator if all else fails.  The power system here is more reliable than the mains, because of the hybrid system and the alternative options available.

Being at the top of the catchment, the floods come and go very quickly with the creek level dropping down an hour or two after the downpour.

Heavy rain also carves channels in the roads and washes the gravel off.  That requires money and labour to fix.  An inconvenience and an expense.  But the other extreme of no rain and no water is so much more devastating as it grinds huge areas of Australia and the world to dust.  The middle east, northern China, much of Africa, western America and other places will attest to the fact that drought is the curse, and rain the blessing.

I am fortunate that my guests who arrived today, having to wade through the creek to test the depth for driving through, seem to agree with me and are making the best of this very wet moment.