A Wind Storm Day.

The weather bureau had predicted it and issued a severe weather warning the afternoon before.

It started to blow around midnight and got progressively worse as the day wore on reaching a peak around midday and into the early afternoon.

Gusts from the west/northwest reached 80-100km/hr in some places on the south coast.

We had a few gusts that rattled our windows.

It wasn’t a day to go outside.

Eventually a big gust brought down a dead bushfire affected tree onto our relatively new shed.

Thankfully it was the attached woodshed roof that took most of the force.

The wind eventually subsided late afternoon.

We were surprised there were no blackouts.

Next morning I went on a complete boundary walk.

Lots of timber (branches and small trees) down but none over fences.

You can be lucky!

Then I got to work removing the tree from the shed which proved fairly easy.

A good amount of firewood there. 

Just needs to be cut up.

The debris will go to a burn pile.

Just another day of living rural.

“Currowan” by Bronwyn Adcock /A Book Review.

Late 2019 into early 2020, our area was devastated by bushfires.

The main one became known as the Currowan Fire.

It was started by a lightning strike in remote mountain country just to the west of us, burnt for 74 days across 499,621 hectares (1.25million acres), destroying 312 homes and taking lives.

I detailed our experience with blog entries over that time.

http://onthegrapevine.blogspot.com/2019/12/

http://onthegrapevine.blogspot.com/2020/01/

http://onthegrapevine.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-currowan-fire-final-update.html

One of our nearby rural community residents, author and journalist Bronwyn Adcock, has written a book about it.

It is a compelling read.

It describes not only her and her family’s confrontation with the disaster but also that of the local community and those communities beyond.

It makes our experience pale somewhat into insignificance but also confirms how lucky we were to get away with minimal damage, materially, physically and mentally.

The chaos surrounding the fire fight by authorities and the results of official investigations into them are quite sobering.

The fact that this may be only the beginning of more severe bushfire threats in the future due to climate change is a little frightening.

The book is available on Amazon in both hard copy and ebook form.

A Power Outage Date Day

Last week the co driver and I had another date day.
We’d been notified our power would be out all day as the company was doing some major work on poles/lines in our area.
So we headed off up north to beautiful Jervis Bay and its major town Huskisson where she wanted to look at kayaks at a specialist store there. She wanted a much lighter one than she has now and has been looking on Gumtree for months for a second hand one with no luck.
She has difficulty loading and unloading her current one without assistance. They had a good range to look at but virtually none to sell. There’s been a shortage of stock for over a year. They all come from China and there are covid production and shipping delays. Earliest arrival for one ordered now was September.

Anyway the bullet was bitten and a carbon fibre model (VERY green colour) which is about the lightest you can get was ordered. It has a weight difference of around 7.5kg to her one which is substantial. I think she’s going to call it Kermit.
Then after sitting in the sun drinking a coffee to celebrate, we drove further north to Berry for lunch.
The co driver had a number of stops planned along the way but with it being a long weekend (Kings Birthday), we didn’t want to get caught up in holiday traffic heading home too late in the day. We’d spent so long at the kayak shop she had to make a few cuts in the itinerary.
In Berry we had a nice lunch as usual at our fave, The Emporium, which has been taken over by a new owner and modernised. But food standard is still good.
Then we separated and she went to her usual book and quilt stores, while I headed for the local Berry wine shop. I have been a regular customer there for ever. The owner, Justin, has a great wine knowledge and stocks a quirky range of Australian and overseas wines. He tastes each one before stocking it and has his tasting notes readily available.
I hadn’t been there since covid so was a little shocked at the prices in general. There was not much available under my price limit. But I eventually found six bottles, reds, that sounded interesting.

                                          -Jervis Bay-

We then met up at the car park and we headed south stopping only briefly at a quilt store in Nowra.
The drive home was fine with no hold ups. We obviously missed the holiday traffic.
The power was back on when we got home but there was no internet.
I checked with neighbours and they were ‘out’ too.
Our provider said it would be ‘down’ for a few days but was back on late the next evening. They were doing maintenance work on the phone towers from where we get our fixed wireless signal.
So that meant no TV for us as we are totally reliant on the internet for programming. We had ‘dumped’ our satellite service some time ago and cannot get free to air reception in our area without major infrastructure on our roof.

It was a night to drink wine and read books.

A nice change.

Covid-19 Update /Australia

It’s been a while since I have updated the Covid situation in Australia.

In simple terms it hasn’t gone away.

Over the last week, 38,618 cases were reported across Australia, an average of 5,517 cases per day and a rolling average of 25 deaths per day.

We now have bivalent #5 vaccine booster available.

Unfortunately uptake by the under 65s has been minimal.

The nation’s peak medical body, the Australian Medical Association, is urging Australians to get Covid-19 boosters and flu shots, warning against complacency as infection rates take off.
The more than 16.5 million Australians who have not received a Covid-19 booster shot in over six months is a concerningly high figure, they said.
The AMA president said Australia was facing a worrying fifth wave of Covid-19, with cases more than double the average daily rate in March, soaring to an average of 5,517 a day as of 30 May.
Hospitalisations and weekly Covid-19 related deaths are also up.

Despite all this, mask wearing and social distancing are a thing of the past for the general population.

We still wear masks in crowded situations and occasionally get ‘the look’ and even a remark or two.
We have had all our vaccinations including one bivalent booster in the USA ie. 6 in total.
Thankfully we are still Novids.
Full set of stats available here.

Winter is here … even though it may not feel like it.

With today marking the first day of winter, much of Australia can look forward to a warmer-than-average season, after a historically cold May for much of the east coast.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s (BoM) winter outlook points to temperatures across the country being warmer and conditions drier than median figures, from June to August.
As ocean temperatures approach El Niño thresholds, minimum temperatures will also likely be above average.
The BoM winter outlook shows the likelihood of higher-than-average temperatures in July, which is expected to be warmer than June.
A positive Indian Ocean dipole is forecast with the potential El Niño weather event, with Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino saying it would lead to both warmer days and colder nights.
“Those are two climate drivers that promote dry and warm weather in Australia during winter. So with those external broadscale forces at play, we’re most likely looking at drier-than-average weather for most of Australia and warmer-than-average days, but colder-than-average nights.
“Because if they do both develop, they’ll be reinforcing each other and the impacts would be widespread. Mostly inland areas have the strongest influence from El Niño and the Indian Ocean dipole,” he said.

The warmer temperatures come after Australia’s east coast shivered through a month of abnormally cold nights, with Sydney and Brisbane recording some of their coldest May temperatures on record.
In Sydney, both Observatory Hill (coastal)and Richmond airport (inland)recorded their lowest minimums in May since 1957.
“It’s very unusual to see overnight temperatures this cold in May,” Domensino said.
“It normally is a time of year where we start to see nights becoming colder over eastern Australia and more frequent frosts developing, but temperatures have been a few degrees even lower than average this year.”
He said the colder nights followed an autumn that was “in transition” between the wetter La Niña months and the drier El Niño months to come.
“The combination of clear skies, light winds and cold air has caused minimum temperatures to be about three to five degrees below average in parts of New South Wales this May,” Domensino said.
“It’s a combination of those developing climate drivers in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but also the local weather patterns near Australia that have also played a big role in how cold it’s been.”

Source: The Guardian Australia.