Not So Pure

Well it seems that now is the time when the heinous untruths I have been spreading across the internet (well at least on my own blog) are un-masked.

Given my wicked nature, I have woven an element of truth into all my falsehoods to more easily ensnare my victims.

So which are the lies? What is the truth?

1. I have a very rigid routine. I have so much happening in my life the only way I can keep it all flowing is if I diarise absolutely everything.

This is my first LIE. I have a terrible tendency to fly by the seat of my pants. However, I do use a diary fairly consistently at work. Otherwise, my natural tendencies to random behaviour would be fatal to my credibility as a manager.

2. During my surfie period in my youth I was waiting to catch a wave when suddenly a huge shark burst out of the wave next to me. I have never been so frightened.

This is true – almost (but not quite). I was once sitting on my board out behind the breakers waiting for a larger wave. As a wave began to build, I saw in the water a massive shadow racing directly at me.
Naturally I thought “shark” and was expecting to end my short life in a patch of blood soaked foam. Then out of the building wave popped a bottle-nosed dolphin, I swear it laughed at me, before disappearing back into the wave. So the fear was real, but technically the shark is a LIE.

3. When I was a toddler I lived in a house that had no less than 20 of the deadliest snakes in the world in residence. They didn’t frighten me because I was simply too young to understand the danger.

This is actually the TRUE yarn. Although taking a little poetic licence I have made it sound much worse than it was.
My dad was a herpetologist, probably one of the leading experts on Oz reptiles in the field.
His passion – snakes. My Dad had literally dozens of Eastern Browns, Copperheads, Red-Bellied Blacks, Tiger Snakes, Bandi-Bandis and Death Adders all living in the house. Fortunately for little me they were all enclosed in cages.

4. Again on the subject of houses, I have lived in a large number of places over the years. In fact the total number of houses I have now lived in is nearly 20.

This is also a LIE, although only technically. You notice I said “…nearly 20.”
My eldest daughter E has already lived in “..nearly 20” houses (18 to be precise). I have in fact lived in 58 houses I can remember. If my Mum is to believed (and I always listen to my Mum), there were at least a dozen in the first three years of my life.
Why so many? It’s a long story probably best reserved for a post of its own. My throw away line is “I have a gypsy for a mother and I married a gypsy too.”

5. Deb and I first met when I sat next to her in a lecture hall on our first day at university.

This is also a LIE. In fact I sat next to a guy who was at that stage Deb’s boyfriend. So I met a certain charming young woman through him, again it’s a long story.

6. I was on a ship in the Suez Canal when the 1967 Arab-Israeli war broke out.

Fortunately this is also a LIE. However, I was actually on a ship crossing the Indian Ocean bound for Suez and London when the 1967 war broke out. Can you believe people actually travelled the world by ship back then? My Mum’s Dad had just died so she took us to England to visit our Grandma. Because of the war we were diverted around the Cape of Good Hope and went to England the long way.

7. When I was 18 I wrote off (totalled) my first car by crashing it into a tree.

Again this is a LIE. I did write off a car when I was 18, but it was my Mum’s. Also, I didn’t hit a tree. It was much more dramatic. It was wet, the tires weren’t great and I was young and silly. Very silly.
I was driving much too fast on the Pacific Highway when I skidded across in front of oncoming traffic. I hit the table-drain on the other side of the road and cart-wheeled the little FIAT 850 I was driving end over end. I didn’t touch the roof.
I have a vivid memory of looking down through the windscreen as the car was flipping over. I was absolutely convinced that I was about to die. I felt no fear, just a profound regret that it was all over so soon.
To my total surprise, when the car came to a halt (right-way up), I was still alive. The driver’s seat had collapsed so I was lying on my back. The engine (in the back of an 850) had pushed partway through the firewall and was sitting by my head. I thought “It could catch fire, I’d better get out.” Amazingly, I got out of the wreck under my own steam. I had severe bruising (one on my leg as big as a dinner plate) and whiplash, but other than that I was uninjured.

So there you go, Al is revealed as a terrible liar! Only Anne the Piedmont Writer guessed correctly that Number 3 was in fact true.

Or is it? Do you believe me?

A random photo: Harbour 2008

A quick post.

First a thanks to everyone who commented the other day, it is good to hear from you.
“You’re doing OK, keep it up” is a message I can certainly live with.

Today was pretty hot, (about 38°C or 100°F in the old money). It was also really humid. So it was not at all surprising that the weather built into thunderstorms in the evening.

About 6:00 pm the most amazing black clouds began moving across from the west.

They the sky got so dark and the clouds were so ominous looking that I thought a couple of shots were worth posting.

This is looking diagonally across the road.

And this is looking directly across the road from our front door.

Now back briefly to my throw away statement about Aussie snake venom in my last post.

According to my nearest and dearest, I was telling you porkies.

She hopped on the website belonging to The University of Melbourne’s Australian Venom Research Unit.

According to their data, which I provide below, out of the 25 most poisonous snakes in the world, 1 through to 11 on the list are Aussie species. Further, a full 20 of the 25 are from Oz as well.

The information below is lifted from their site.

World's Most Venomous Snakes

Which snake species is the most venomous depends on the measure used. The average or the maximum venom yield from milking could be suggested, but these measures can be criticised as not reflecting the impact of a real bite. The measure generally acknowledged as best reflecting how dangerous a snake's venom is is that of LD₅₀. The lower this number, the less venom is required to cause death. By that measure, the most venomous snake in the world is Australia's inland taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus). The table below gives the top 25 species in order, their LD₅₀, and their distribution.

	Snake Species	LD50*	Distribution
1.	Inland taipan	0.025	Australia
2.	Eastern brown snake	0.053	Australia
3.	Coastal taipan	0.099	Australia
4.	Tiger snake	0.118	Australia
5.	Black tiger snake	0.131	Australia
6.	Beaked sea snake	0.164	Australia
7.	Black tiger snake (Chappell Island ssp.)	0.194 - 0.338	Australia
8.	Death adder	0.400	Australia
9.	Gwardar	0.473	Australia
10.	Spotted brown snake	0.360 (in bovine serum albumin)	Australia
11.	Australian copperhead	0.560	Australia
12.	Cobra	0.565	Asia
13.	Dugite	0.660	Australia
14.	Papuan black snake	1.09	New Guinea
15.	Stephens' banded snake	1.36	Australia
16.	Rough scaled snake	1.36	Australia
17.	King cobra	1.80	Asia
18.	Blue-bellied black snake	2.13	Australia
19.	Collett's snake	2.38	Australia
20.	Mulga snake	2.38	Australia
21.	Red-bellied black snake	2.52	Australia
22.	Small eyed snake	2.67	Australia
23.	Eastern diamond-backed rattlesnake	11.4	North America
24.	Black whipsnake	>14.2	Australia
25.	Fer-de-lance	>27.8	South America

Here is their link if you want to check it out for yourselves.


So I suppose the moral of the story is: tread carefully in the Great South Land.

A Ramble

I hope you are all ready for this, but I am in a slightly rambling mode this afternoon

This week has (apart from Tuesday’s public holiday) been hectic. Things aren’t quite as mad as they were during the Christmas – New Year period. However, the side affects of us remaining open when other services were closed have been that some people who were not using our service have “discovered us” and have continued accessing us. This doesn’t necessarily mean longer days (although it can) but it does mean more, much more tiring days.

Roll on the weekend. I am mostly free this weekend, only having to work two hours on Sunday. Battery recharging is definitely called for.

I have been looking at what I want to talk about here on this blog over the next little while. This makes me sound terribly organised which is not actually the case. Usually it is more like a last minute “I did this today, people might like to hear that so I’ll post it.”

I began this blog saying I would talk about my publishing journey, battle, non-event, it seems like all three. I am still passionately involved in pushing my (first) book out there, but really in terms of posting it is only the occasional update.

I have raised the flag about posting a couple of things that I have not yet done.

A couple of people asked for my curry “recipe”. I am certainly planning to get that up and I have even almost written a recipe based on what I usually, or perhaps often do in the kitchen. Boy, is it hard to write a recipe when you’ve never done one before. To be totally honest I’ve had a slight crisis of confidence over it and I will not post it until I have a lazy enough afternoon to “test” it and make sure I haven’t forgotten to include something.

I have also said I would talk about the “armed criminals” who were mentioned in my previous post. Theirs is a fascinating tale which I think is well worth talking about when I get round to distilling it. I don’t want to declaim at great length in the style of my mythical “Uncle Harry”, but some stories need a bit of detail to remain faithful.

I also have a couple of nice things to say about work that I hope to post soon. Some of the things I have shared have been about quite harrowing events (and of course about some wonderful things). I always feel that there needs to be some balance and there are some really uplifting aspects about working with any group of people.

That is probably enough rambling for the minute.
I will wrap up by finishing with the things I was going to say on Tuesday evening before I ran out of steam.

To recap, we drove out to Mansfield on Australia Day.
From there we went a little further down to the north shore of Lake Eildon.
Deb and I had a very peaceful picnic sitting in the shade here:Lake Eildon is one of the areas that has really suffered after years of drought. If you click on the photo to enlarge it you will get a bit of an idea of just how empty the lake is. The water is maybe 30metres (about 100 feet) below full. Those patches of white spray on the left side are powerboats pulling water-skiers. The “twigs” in the water are the remains of huge trees that were drowned when the lake was formed, with the lake below 5% capacity they have been exposed.

As we ate we were pestered by this Australian Magpie and her almost grown chick. Did I say we went without any of our girls? A quiet day of just the parents can be most refreshing.
Mum is about to pop a chunk of bread in baby’s mouth.
I know, I know, I shouldn’t feed the wildlife, but I am a soft touch or I wouldn’t keep working for charities.
“Maggies” are normally very fetching glossy black birds with white highlights, but she is undergoing her summer moult and so looks quite ugly.

After our picnic we headed back into town where we stopped for coffee before hitting the road.

As we drove out of town we caught a glimpse of something through the trees.
We threw out the anchor and I waded through waist deep grass to investigate.

I was a little leery about the wisdom of what I was doing. I was wearing shorts and sandals. Normally when I bushwalk (hike) in any weather I wear good boots and usually jeans.

About the only dangerous wildlife in almost all of the Oz bush (apart from the places where you get crocs) are our snakes. So boots and thick pants are a good idea. As I have said before snakes are not interested in biting you. Yet walking through long grass without the right gear is probably not entirely sensible.

I took heart from the fact that despite our native snakes having incredibly toxic venom they almost exclusively bite idiots who are trying to kill them with a stick or similar implement.
By venom toxicity we have 19 of the top 25 most poisonous snakes in the world and 7 of the top 10 (including 1-5 on that list).
Despite this more people die every year in Oz from beestings than snakebite and I’m not about to stop looking at flowers.
Bottom line, leave snakes alone and odds are you will be sweet.

What did I find? This rather interesting (and I think quite attractive) Nineteenth Century industrial chimney. I haven’t done the research to find out, but I would guess this is the remains of a brickworks. Before railways came through in the late 1800s quite small towns often had their own brickworks. With the large distances involved it was usually more economical to build a local brickworks than to bring in bricks by cart.

Mansfield was connected to Melbourne by rail, but as with so many country towns the railway is gone having closed down due to competition with road freight in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Of course with increasing fuel costs the wisdom of shutting down railways now seems questionable.

Now after inflicting rather a long ramble I am going to finish with two points

First, my posts seem to attract an incredible number of comments (especially given my traffic is still quite low). I want to say thank you all, I really appreciate your contributions. I have come to the blogosphere quite late but it seems to be largely a wonderful set of communities.

Secondly, I said above that there are a few things I want to post about soon.
However, I suppose I want to ask what is your perspective of how the blog is going?
Are their any things that you think I could do better?
Anything I could do more? Less?
Anything you think I could cover?
Anything that grates? (maybe a stupidish question, If you didn’t like the blog you just wouldn’t come back).
I would love to hear what you think.

On the Subject of Snakes

Last Weekend we stayed close to home, only venturing up the Yarra Valley to Warburton (again) and a little past there to the Upper Yarra Reservoir.
This photo shows the dam wall and spillway. Due to prolonged drought I believe there has been no water on this spillway for over a decade.Melbourne’s water supply, of which this reservoir forms part, is down to 31 %. Although the Upper Yarra is at about 68% capacity.
As you can see from this photo, of the bridge over the spillway, the bulk of the dam wall is constructed using rock-fill.This surface is fairly unstable and the Melbourne Water Authority has erected signs warning yahoos to keep off.However yahoos and galahs are aptly named and I suspect the aforesaid signs were not doing their job.
Hence (I suspect) these signs.
I really think these signs are a case of; if you can’t get people to be sensible then scare them into complying.

What am I implying?
That there are no snakes living in the rock fill of the walls?

Not a bit of it. In fact knowing more than average about Aussie snakes, I would guarantee there are a good number of snakes taking advantage of the habitat and shelter provided by the rock fill.
There are snakes pretty much everywhere in Oz. Including, sometimes, in the absolute centre of our capital cities.

In fact as I have said before getting bitten by snakes is pretty much a national pastime.
But I also guarantee the danger people face on this rock wall is broken bones and not snakebites. I suspect people would be as likely to come across a snake in their back garden as they would be on this rock wall.
Why?

Simple, as much as people hate and fear snakes, snakes fear us a whole lot more. We are big and dangerous to them and they nearly always try to avoid confrontation. So on ground like this the most you are ever likely to see is a snake’s tail disappearing into a crack as it hightails (sorry I just couldn’t resist that pun).

The interesting thing about snake bites in Oz is that well over 80% occur on young males as they either attempt to catch, or more likely kill snakes with inappropriate gear such as sticks.
So the moral of the story is leave them alone and they will leave you alone.

What I suspect has happened here is that a clever chief ranger is trying to protect people from their own stupidity. It could just backfire, as those same yahoos who might think it fun to climb down these rocks are just as likely to think it fun to try and find a snake to kill.

I think my sympathy is with the snakes in that contest.

By the way I am being a good boy, I did a couple of hours on the manuscript last night.

A Monstrous Visitor and a Very Early Morning

At 2:30am this morning I was woken from a deep sleep by my other half. Half out of it, I was expecting to find that the house was burning down, or there was some medical emergency and leapt out of bed.
The cry for support was “There is a white-tailed spider out in the hall.”

Now Australia is very noted for bitey things like:

Saltwater Crocodiles:
The largest crocodile species in the world, salties account for a couple of fatalities each year in Oz.










Snakes:





Oz has something like 10 of the top 12 most venomous land snakes in the world, and many species are very common. We have a population of about one fourteenth that of the USA but have about the same number of snake bites per year (8 to 10 thousand). Due to good treatment we only have 1 or 2 fatalities each year.






Spiders:
Our funnel-web spider is legendarily dangerous, although since the development of an anti-venom in the 1980s there have been no fatalities.
The photos I have used in this post are all from the Wikimedia Commons, click to get a link.

So what about the beast I was summoned to do battle with?
A white-tailed spider, hardly worth mentioning in comparison to our other natural denizens.
Now to be fair these are not nice spiders. I use the term nice advisedly, I am one of those rare people who likes spiders and most species I will catch and move outside, for example huntsman spiders (not funnel-webs, in my opinion funnel-webs are too dangerous to mess with).

But white-tails are not nice, they are active spiders that hunt rather than catching their prey in a web. This means they frequently end up in clothes, or beds, or shoes and bites are common. In fact our number two daughter Io, was bitten by one in her bed when she was about 6. The bite caused a small ulcer on her ankle the size of a little finger nail. As a result I tend to get a bit vengeful in my approach to white-tails.

But was the level of risk worth being woken for at 2:30 am?
Besides what was a swine-flu afflicted woman doing wandering the halls at 2:30?
But maybe I am just a grumble-butt, shouldn’t a fellah leap to the defence of his family?
Even if it is just from a very small monster?