Smoke, seaweed and strange doings at school...
It amazes me how quickly one becomes acclimatised in a new country. It is a cold, windy day today, and by that I mean that it's only 18.5° C outside (and it feels a couple of degrees cooler than that with the wind factored in). A year ago in Bristol I would have considered that T shirt weather and here I am, rugged up in jeans, jumper, socks, sheepskin slippers and a fleece, huddled over my nice warm lap top and looking forward to using the wood-burning heater at our new place! My hands are freezing...
Outside it's quite misty but the 'mist' is actually smoke, accompanied by a pervasive smell of burnt wood. Yesterday, if you drove into town, you could see a huge column of smoke rising up behind the hills west of Coffs Harbour, and the clouds had a yellowish tinge to them. I'm not sure where the fire was, but I'm presuming it was in the Orara valley - I'm waiting for the arrival of the local newspaper to see whether it was a wild fire or whether it was the Rural Fire Service 'burning off' the woodland understorey in order to reduce the fire risk later in the year. Last week there was a notice in the papers about controlled burn-off, but it was supposedly up the coast not inland.
Anyway, we did lots of things this morning, including visiting our friends Carol and Ian's newly purchased house up at Lake Russell Drive which is about 10 kilometers north of here (so when we move into the new rented house at Wakelands Road we'll be their side of Coffs Harbour too), and going into the property management agent for our new place to sign the lease and sort out the bond money. I can't wait! Well, I could do without the process of moving, but I am really excited about getting out of here and into there... Our removals company (Australians use the term 'removalists' but that sounds strange to my Pommie ears) dropped off some boxes this morning, and we're going to use a combination of us packing and them helping us pack. I'll be starting the process later this week when I've finished trying to do the company's Year End accounts. I'm not sure which is worse: frankly I'd like to put off both tasks for as long as possible, but that's not my way and I'll be digging into my envelope of expenses just as soon as I've finished this blog entry.
Toby was a good boy, sitting patiently in the car waiting for us to finish our business before we took him for a walk along the beach. It amazes me how quickly the beach landscape changes. A week or so ago we had really strong southerly swells that have completely changed the shape of the beach, and which deposited large quantities of shells on the sand. Ella and I have had great fun collecting things - Michael may have a point when he questions the amount of scavanged shells and rocks and interesting 'bits' that we now have lying around in plastic tubs! - and I've taken to bringing my camera down to the beach every time we take Toby for a walk. Here are some photos of some of things I was talking about in a previous blog post about the beach landscape:
The beach looks like a lunar landscape with big lumps of sea-plumes washed up
You can see the ends of the columns where the feathery things come out and catch plankton in their plumes
This colony was ripped out with so much force that its rock anchor was pulled out too!
Red sea urchins are all over the beach... If they've still got spines attached they're quite newly dead...
I found a couple of paler, orange ones this morning for the first time
This is a sea weed - a beautiful fan shape
Some colonies of sponge end up 'infected' with algae that turns them red
They look lovely against the darker green weeds...
Another clutch of egg capsules. I wonder what they are?
Oh yes, I was going to tell you about school... Well there I was mentioning about how quickly I've become acclimatized, but Ella's getting used to Australia pretty quickly too. She came home the other day and told us that her class has had to vacate its room - because of maggots dropping from the ceiling onto the kids!! I was horrified but she was very matter-of-fact about it. I had noticed - and commented to the teacher - that the heating wasn't working at the end of last term, and I was pleased to note that this term the classroom seemed nice and warm in the mornings. Apparently, shortly after the start of term the occupants noticed a sickly smell that got worse and worse, but no-one thought anything of it until dozens of maggots crawled across the ceiling and started dropping onto the kids and the desks, and people began to notice large numbers of maggots on the floor... Of course something has become trapped and died in the ceiling and is gently decomposing in the heat, but whereas this would - in the UK - be a cause for further investigation and alarm (and possibly reassuring communications with parents), here we are just going to wait until the unfortunate corpse has become skeletal, and then the kids can go back into the classroom again! Meantime they have to work outside or in the school hall.
Outside it's quite misty but the 'mist' is actually smoke, accompanied by a pervasive smell of burnt wood. Yesterday, if you drove into town, you could see a huge column of smoke rising up behind the hills west of Coffs Harbour, and the clouds had a yellowish tinge to them. I'm not sure where the fire was, but I'm presuming it was in the Orara valley - I'm waiting for the arrival of the local newspaper to see whether it was a wild fire or whether it was the Rural Fire Service 'burning off' the woodland understorey in order to reduce the fire risk later in the year. Last week there was a notice in the papers about controlled burn-off, but it was supposedly up the coast not inland.
Anyway, we did lots of things this morning, including visiting our friends Carol and Ian's newly purchased house up at Lake Russell Drive which is about 10 kilometers north of here (so when we move into the new rented house at Wakelands Road we'll be their side of Coffs Harbour too), and going into the property management agent for our new place to sign the lease and sort out the bond money. I can't wait! Well, I could do without the process of moving, but I am really excited about getting out of here and into there... Our removals company (Australians use the term 'removalists' but that sounds strange to my Pommie ears) dropped off some boxes this morning, and we're going to use a combination of us packing and them helping us pack. I'll be starting the process later this week when I've finished trying to do the company's Year End accounts. I'm not sure which is worse: frankly I'd like to put off both tasks for as long as possible, but that's not my way and I'll be digging into my envelope of expenses just as soon as I've finished this blog entry.
Toby was a good boy, sitting patiently in the car waiting for us to finish our business before we took him for a walk along the beach. It amazes me how quickly the beach landscape changes. A week or so ago we had really strong southerly swells that have completely changed the shape of the beach, and which deposited large quantities of shells on the sand. Ella and I have had great fun collecting things - Michael may have a point when he questions the amount of scavanged shells and rocks and interesting 'bits' that we now have lying around in plastic tubs! - and I've taken to bringing my camera down to the beach every time we take Toby for a walk. Here are some photos of some of things I was talking about in a previous blog post about the beach landscape:
The beach looks like a lunar landscape with big lumps of sea-plumes washed up
You can see the ends of the columns where the feathery things come out and catch plankton in their plumes
This colony was ripped out with so much force that its rock anchor was pulled out too!
Red sea urchins are all over the beach... If they've still got spines attached they're quite newly dead...
I found a couple of paler, orange ones this morning for the first time
This is a sea weed - a beautiful fan shape
Some colonies of sponge end up 'infected' with algae that turns them red
They look lovely against the darker green weeds...
Another clutch of egg capsules. I wonder what they are?
Oh yes, I was going to tell you about school... Well there I was mentioning about how quickly I've become acclimatized, but Ella's getting used to Australia pretty quickly too. She came home the other day and told us that her class has had to vacate its room - because of maggots dropping from the ceiling onto the kids!! I was horrified but she was very matter-of-fact about it. I had noticed - and commented to the teacher - that the heating wasn't working at the end of last term, and I was pleased to note that this term the classroom seemed nice and warm in the mornings. Apparently, shortly after the start of term the occupants noticed a sickly smell that got worse and worse, but no-one thought anything of it until dozens of maggots crawled across the ceiling and started dropping onto the kids and the desks, and people began to notice large numbers of maggots on the floor... Of course something has become trapped and died in the ceiling and is gently decomposing in the heat, but whereas this would - in the UK - be a cause for further investigation and alarm (and possibly reassuring communications with parents), here we are just going to wait until the unfortunate corpse has become skeletal, and then the kids can go back into the classroom again! Meantime they have to work outside or in the school hall.
posted by Sara Bowen at 3:39 am
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