This week’s essay is brought to you by the letter S – snakes, sharks, spiders, scorpions, stingrays, stonefish and sand flies. Some might dispute the description of the saltwater sand fly or midge as deadly. But itchy bites can sure take the edge off a beach holiday. The odds of being bitten by a sand fly in their territory (saltwater marshes) are probably 2-1, with longer odds for those experiencing extreme reactions (me and She)….
Two days into a five-week pilgrimage to far North Queensland and back, I ran out of suitable reading material. I’d rapidly consumed two of the three crime thrillers acquired for the journey and gave up on the Jonathan Kellerman when the body count reached four in the first dozen pages. She Who Reads Literature meanwhile snaffled the collection of short stories by Annie Proulx I borrowed from the library. When I discover a new writer,…
I had so much correspondence on this topic last week I took up an offer from guest blogger and rainwater tank owner NEALE GENTNER. He writes about his water filtration adventures working in the PNG Highlands and the hard yakka maintaining concrete tanks and plumbing over a 30-year period. I totally agree with Bob’s piece last week on water tanks…except for paying extra rates to council for maintenance “compliance”. Theoretically, under various “Health Acts”, tank…
Yay – the dams are full, creeks and gullies are running; rainwater tanks are spilling over. Everyone’s happy. Our three rainwater tanks are full, as you might expect of a region where two water-starved dams reached 100% capacity in just two days. Not so long ago (2018-2019), things were dire on the Southern Downs, with Warwick’s Leslie Dam at 7.66% (it’s now 28%), and the Granite Belt’s Storm King Dam virtually empty (now 100%). In…