Ulladulla Wildflower Reserve

I have lived in the area now for over 30 years and never been to the Ulladulla Wildflower Reserve.

It lies to the west of the town on the edge of ever increasing spread of suburbia.

The co driver thought it would be good for a walk there.

There are a number of walking tracks so we took the longest loop.

Being early spring that season’s wildflowers were just starting to appear.

Luckily there were some prime examples of the Waratah, a brilliant red cone shaped bloom which is the state flower and also the name and emblem of our hapless state rugby team.

It was a beautiful warm windless morning.

The path was well signed and easy to follow. 

Occasionally there was a comfortable bench to take a break.

A short video of our walk can be seen on this YouTube link.

Unfortunately we didn’t see much wild life apart from some crimson rosellas but did hear some scurrying as we approached. 

Goannas? 

And there was plenty of bird song.

Unfortunately the reserve was a victim of the 2019/20 bushfires but regrowth, particularly the understorey has been substantial over the last two and half years. Only evidence left of the fires are the blackened trunks of the trees, some of which are quite large and obviously very old.

A highly recommended easy walk in the area.

It took us an hour to do the loop before we headed back into town for our morning coffee at Craft.

Australia / Very Hot Dry Summer Predicted

Climate experts are predicting a long and hot Australian summer with increased risk of drought and heatwaves despite the lack of an El Nino declaration from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM)
The prediction follows record-breaking 2023 winter weather, during which the national mean temperature was 1.53 degrees above the average temperature from 1961 to 1996.

The BoM has only issued an El Nino alert, indicating a 70 per cent chance the weather system will form, but is waiting to see if the right atmospheric conditions eventuate before formally declaring the event is under way.
The bureau has become an outlier among global weather agencies by declining to declare an El Nino event.
The other agencies made their El Nino declarations based on the unusually high sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, which drive hotter weather on land.
The northern hemisphere sweltered through record-breaking heatwaves this year and there were severe bushfires in Europe and North America.
The World Meteorological Organisation declared July the hottest month on record globally, driven by soaring temperatures in the water between Japan and Canada in the North Pacific, as well as the North Atlantic.
Bushfire danger area predictions for Australia are immense and concerning.

We are not on this map due to being burnt out in 2019/20 but substantial rain in 2022 has caused considerable regrowth in our surrounding forests, particularly the under storey.
We are certainly not complacent and will have our evacuation plan and kits ready.

The Voice / Upcoming Australian Constitutional Referendum Explained

Australia’s Indigenous people have faced a long and painful history of colonisation and dispossession. The country’s First Nations people often experience the worst outcomes in health, employment, social and emotional wellbeing and incarceration rates – with efforts to close the gap between Indigenous Australians and the rest of the country consistently failing over decades.
The country will vote in a referendum on whether to establish a “voice” through the nation’s constitution. Supporters of the measure say it will help to improve the lives of First Nations peoples.
A ‘yes’ vote in the referendum would recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the constitution and create an Indigenous body to advise government and the wider parliament on issues and policies affecting Indigenous people.

Australia’s Labor government and other prominent Indigenous groups are leading the campaign to establish the advisory body.
The federal opposition Liberal party is opposed to establishing the body, arguing it would not alleviate protracted issues facing First Nations communities, while claiming it would divide the nation. Some Indigenous people and groups oppose the voice, instead pushing for a treaty to set out the terms of their relationship with the Australian government, as well as stronger actions on critical issues.

The referendum requires a double majority to pass, meaning a majority of voters nationally must approve it, as well as at least four of the country’s six states.
Supporters want the advisory body within the constitution so it cannot be abolished at the whims of changing governments, as has happened with other advisory groups.
The referendum is to take place on 14th October, 2023.

Sarah Collard-Guardian Australia

Sydney Shootings

There have been an inordinate number of shootings in Sydney lately.
Not mass shootings but more like targeted assassinations.
Almost up to one a day, in public, in busy areas.
The latest was one of more than a dozen gangland murders since late 2020.
Got a lot of people thinking, given the strict gun laws in this country, how Sydney, a major Australian city, compares with those in the rest of the world.
Of course TV news projects these latest rounds of shootings as the city’s descent into lawlessness.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In reply a Sydney Morning Herald article produced the graph below.

Update: 28th July: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/27/sydney-shootings-gang-war-greenacre

1000 Blog Posts!

It’s taken almost 20 years to get there but here we are.

1000 posts!

This blog was originally set up mainly to keep distant family and friends up to date with our day to day lives. 

It was also a personal diary (journal) of our trips around Australia and the world.

Compared to the vast majority of blogs, visitor numbers with a total of just over 265,000 so far, are minuscule.

Comments have not even cracked 200!

The stats show the wine oriented subjects were the most popular. 

One, Fish, Milk, Eggs and Nuts in Wine, was on top of a Google search list on that subject for many years and is still right up there, #3 at the moment.

The 19/20 bushfires created a fair bit of interest as did Australia’s ‘battle’ with Covid-19.

The audience demographic is interesting.

Vast majority have come from the USA followed, disturbingly, by Russia.

Hackers?

Thankfully my ‘local’ audience came in third.

The question is now should I continue the blog.

Our lives have quietened down substantially and the wine growing has ended which has reduced the frequency of posts considerably.

But I guess the odd one now and again is not too much of a chore.

Thanks to those who have taken an interest in our lives. 

Decaffeinated Coffee

The co driver is into decaffeinated coffee, mainly the afternoon one.
I’m not.

Got me to wondering how coffee is actually decaffeinated.

There appears to be two processes.

One is called the sugar cane process where the coffee is steamed for 30 minutes which opens the pores of the beans allowing full caffeine removal.

The beans are then soaked in a solution of water and ethyl acetate (EA).

The EA bonds to the chlorogenic acids within the coffee and the caffeine begins to migrate away from the beans. 

The last of the caffeine is removed after 8 hours.

Low pressure steam removes all traces of EA.

Coming from an industrial chemical background I wondered about the ethyl acetate.

I generally know it as a solvent for use in paint, adhesives etc and is manufactured large scale generally by the esterification of ethanol (alcohol) and acetic acid ie. The Fischer Method.

A bit of research established that the EA used in decaffeination comes from alcohol created by the fermentation of molasses derived from sugar cane which is then mixed with acetic acid.

I was also aware of this alcohol/acetic acid reaction from wine making where a certain amount of EA, especially in young white wine, creates a ‘sweetness’. However excess EA in wine is a fault.

The second process is called the Swiss Water Process.

This involves hydrating the raw coffee then continuously circulating Green Coffee Extract (GCE) around the coffee for 8-10 hours which causes the caffeine to migrate to the GCE.

The coffee 99.9% caffeine free is then dried, polished and packed.

This process ensures that if the raw coffee had organic certification prior, it will retain that certification post process.

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.

‘South Coast Islands New South Wales’ / Book Launch

Helen Moody has released a book about our South Coast islands.
For three years she and Mike Jefferis led walks and kayak trips to, past or around the 61 islands of the NSW south coast.
There are 20 coastal islands and 41 in the estuaries, rivers and lakes open to the ocean. 

This is the first ever book on these islands.
And it isn’t just a book for walkers and kayakers.

It’s a book for south coast residents, visitors to this area, and anyone who loves nature and discovering wild places. 

Nearly all the islands are small and uninhabited; some are mere specks on a map. 

Yet each has something special about it. 

Several are wildlife havens with significant biodiversity values.
Some have ancient and ongoing spiritual significance to First Nations people.
Some have fascinating connections to early explorers and settlers.
A handful are privately owned. One has a superb native garden.
It is likely most people have never heard many of their names before, or even been aware of their existence.

There are over 200 photographs from over 20 photographers as well as maps and description of how to visit every island, whether on foot or by boat. 

The self published book was launched on a perfect autumn day on the shores of Lake Tabourie last Saturday.

We joined an enthusiastic group of supporters to be welcomed to country by an Aboriginal elder with deep ancestral connections to the area and hear the launch by the mayor of the Shoalhaven Council, Amanda Findley and, of course, the response and presentation by the author.

All this was followed by cake and bubbly.

Five hundred copies of the book had been already pre sold.

We picked ours up at the gathering.

It is really well worth having.

Purchase details from the author:

southcoastislandsbook@gmail.com

RRP: $50 plus postage.

Autumn 2023

In a country where native trees are always green, a splash of autumn colour is a welcome diversion.

Many years ago a neighbour, (a homesick Pom), planted a row of deciduous Liquid Ambers along his stretch of our community road.

Normally they turn yellow late autumn but this year red is predominant.

The science of autumn (fall) colours is explained here.

Autumn for us is also the best time for beach walks. 

Coolish temperatures, low humidity and gentle breezes make for an enjoyable stroll.

Plus the beaches are virtually deserted.

Melbourne Now Exhibition / NGV Ian Potter Centre

On the Saturday in Melbourne we decided to visit the Melbourne Now exhibition at the NGV Ian Potter Centre.

Two hundred plus contemporary projects and events were spread across all three levels of the exhibition hall. From fashion and jewellery, painting, sculpture, architecture and ceramics, to video, performance, printmaking and publishing.
After around four hours we started to suffer from sensory overload so headed for an excellent at their cafe.
It really needs two day visit to take it all in.

And here’s a preview of a video of other less static exhibits that can be seen on this YouTube link.

ANZAC Day 2023

 

They shall grow not old,

as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them,

nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun

and in the morning

We will remember them.

A Selection of Australian Art / Ian NGV Potter Centre.

A selection of 19th, 20th and 21st century Australian art.

 

MELBOURNE LANE ART (Hosier Lane)

A short walk from Flinders Street station is Hosier Lane, the most popular graffiti tourist spot in the city. 
It is a bit of a tourist magnet and the most famous graffiti laneway in Melbourne.

Most times of day and you’ll see crowds of selfie taking tourists and many artists painting the walls with their Instagram handle on display. Certainly if you want your art to be seen and photographed then this is the street to go to.

But this is not the only place to see great street art.
Here’s a map and a web site to go to to find more.

A TRIP TO MELBOURNE

The co driver wanted to go to the Australasian Quilt Show in Melbourne.

So we decided to take a few days there and use up the last of our airline pandemic credits.

It’s a two hour or so drive to Canberra airport and then a fifty minute flight to Melbourne.

We stayed in the ‘happening’ suburb of Fitzroy with its huge selection of restaurants and bars and only a short walk to the Royal Exhibition Building were the quilt show was being held.

While she spent half a day at the show I did my own walking tour of the city’s tourist icons including the Lane Art area and Southbank.

On the other free day we visited the Melbourne Now exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre of the National Gallery of Victoria,

And of course we indulged in a bit of food extravaganza which totally shot our diets to bits.

A video of our time in the city can be found at this link.