The Drought Continues 2

You’ve probably read a lot about El Niño and the Southern Oscillation Index and its affect on Australian weather patterns.
Now read about new research on the Indian Ocean Dipole which is also having its affect.

Highway Realignment / Wildlife Protection.

Back in July 2016 I wrote about the new highway realignment near us and how facilities to protect the wild life were put in place.
We have just received notice that government road people will monitor the success of their program over three weeks at the end of this month.
One of the species initially identified as a potential ‘resident’ was the Yellow-bellied Glider. They installed high crossing structures over the highway to help them negotiate it safely.
But now they want to confirm their presence. This animal is a nocturnal marsupial gliding possum that lives in the native eucalyptus forests of eastern Australia.

A ‘Song Meter’ survey will be carried out. This will include two tests that broadcast recorded Glider calls using a megaphone to elicit responses. It has a distinctive growling call that it uses as a means of communication. It has been recorded to have been heard up to 500m away.
We have been ‘warned’ that we may hear bird like sounds between 7pm and 10pm some nights.
There will also be abnormal activity in the area surrounding the highway as the team carries out their work.
Great they are following up.

Cattle Yard Repairs

The previous owner had installed a considerable cattle handling facility on our property (it was much bigger when he owned it) that included yards, stalls, a crush and a loading race and ramp.
He also had a timber mill on site so the posts and rails used in construction were high quality eucalyptus hardwood.
But over the years some parts deteriorated due to rot and others to termite attack.
We replaced rails with commercial hardwood ones and posts cut from our own trees. The heavier duty posts were supplied by our firewood man, Laurey. Unfortunately (for us) he recently retired meaning a reasonable supply line has dried up.

Over the last few years, the yard deterioration accelerated and a major overhaul became necessary.
When I priced the hardwood rails and posts, I suffered a severe case of sticker shock.
It’s not that we will use the yards to any great extent as our cows are here to stay but it’s good to have them in reasonable condition.
So after some discussion with more experienced cattle men, it was decided that we could go with the significantly cheaper heavy duty H4 CCA treated pine posts and rails. Apart from the much better price, they are simpler to work with being lighter and much easier to drill for bolting or coach screwing especially as we use 130mm and sometimes 150mm M10s. We only snapped one drill bit! And that was in an old hardwood post.
My friend Stirls came down to help and for 5 days we removed and replaced posts and rails.
Getting some of the big old rotting posts out was not an easy job especially when their bases were still in good condition and dug 1m into the ground. Neither was resetting good but heavy hardwood rails to the new pine posts.

So at times it was slow work. With one rain interrupted day, we didn’t get all the planned chores done.
But the essentials are in now in place and the remainder (mostly the race) can be done another time.
We celebrated our achievements, on Stirl’s last day, with a nice lunch of fish, chips and potato scallops at Innes Wharf at Batemans Bay, a favourite of his, thirty minutes drive south.
Neighbour Bob will help me swing a gate off a replacement post sometime next week and all will be good.

Daylight Saving Time

Early on this Sunday morning we go onto daylight saving time.

When I say ‘we’, I mean New South Wales and some other Australian states and territories.
But not all.

DST has been around for quite a while.

During World I and II all states and territories observed the time change under defence acts of the constitution.

In 1968, Tasmania became the first state post war to introduce the practice.

In 1971 all states and territories except West Australia and the Northern Territory followed suit. Queensland abandoned the change in 1972.

Australia: UTC Time Zones During DST

 The two recalcitrant states have run trials with DST over the last 40 years.

Public opinion in Queensland is geographically divided with the no’s in the north and west of the state ie. predominantly rural, and the yes’s in the metropolitan south east.
Western Australia had a referendum in 2009 on the issue after a lengthy trial and the no’s won 55:45.
So the upshot is we will have 5 time zones in the country instead of 3 from next weekend until early April 2020.
But the really stupid thing is there will be a time difference between states on the same longitude.
But we have all learnt to live with that.