LIZARDS

What a week it has been for reptiles - apart, that is, from the usual monitor lizards (goannas), skinks, geckoes, snake-lizards, etc.

The other night Hanneke went out to the rubbish bins behind the office, and there on the concrete was this beautiful beast.  At first glance we said Blue-tongue Lizard.  But it was too slender and graceful, and didn't have the stumpy fat legs of a Blue-tongue.  And besides, its tongue was pink, with blue along the middle, though it used it in a typical Blue-tongue fashion, darting it out frequently, with the tip turned up.

Nothing obviously matching it in our local guide (Wildlife of Greater Brisbane), and the same in Steve Wilson's excellent Field Guide to Reptiles of Queensland.  So we turned to the bible - Cogger's Reptiles and Amphibians of Australa.  There it was Pink-tongued Lizard Heimisphaeriodon gerrardii.  When we went back to the other guides it was there, but the photos weren't so diagnostic - and it seems that the genus has changed - it's now Cyclodomorphus garrardii - can't blame Cogger though, our copy of his book is the 1992 edition.

This morning Hanneke was walking up the track to the vege garden and saw a strange movement in the sandy soil beside the track. A bunch of heads poking out of the sand.

A nest of Bearded Dragon eggs was hatching.  This species (Pogona barbata) is common around here, and in fact we'd seen an abandoned attempt at nesting in the vege garden a couple of weeks earlier.   In 2008 we actually saw a female in the process of digging out the egg chamber, and she later backfilled the hole and packed the soil level with the surroundings.  These eggs were probably laid in October, though the incubation time is pretty variable, depending on weather conditions.  There are five Dragons in the photo above.

They seem to hang about with just their heads showing for a while, maybe watching for predators, maybe just resting after the effort of hatching and digging up to the surface, then make a break for cover.  They seem to be attracted to any higher part of the horizon - clumps of grass, piles of sand or rocks.

We are clearly starting to see a pattern here.  The nest we saw being laid on 7 November 2008 hatched on 1 February 2009.  And back in 2006 Liz found a young Bearded Dragon on 9 January (photos below).

FROM FLOOD TO FIRE

A year ago - 19 November 2008 - it was a flood that washed away our creek crossing.

This year - 21 November - it was a fire.  Some unbelievably stupid arsonist(s) lit about 60 fires along a six kilometre stretch of Wallers Road through the middle of the Helidon Hills last Saturday morning.  Within a couple of hours it was a huge and uncontrollable bushfire.

By Tuesday midday it had burned its way across the hills and was into the headwaters of Lilydale Creek - the creek that we cross to enter our property - in the panorama below (taken from the hill behind the house) you might just make out the smoke coming up from the creek gully in the far right.

By midday it was advancing rapidly down the creek, and though the wind was keeping it away from our place, there was no certainty that the weather would not change.  By 2.00pm the fire control centre had decided that they were going to back-burn from behind the houses on our side of the Hills - something they had been preparing for during the two preceding days.

Two teams of fire-fighters arrived at our place about 5.30pm, one from Parks and Wildlife and one from the Rural Fire Service.  They decided to burn on the western side of the ridge (and buildings), as this was the downwind side, and then to come back and burn the windward northeastern side.  By this time a strong northeasterly wind was blowing.

They used a backpack leaf-blower to clear a line down the path from the header tanks up on the hill down to the workshop, where it then followed the edge of the firebreak around the buildings.  We had asked them not to burn the firebreaks, partly because of the erosion that would be likely if it rained on bare soil there, but also because of the effort Hanneke had put into bringing them back to native grasses and shrubs.  They were willing to do this, even though it meant a lot more work for them in keeping a wet line between the fire and the firebreak.  The photo below shows the beginning of the back-burn at the top of the track below the header tanks.

As they moved around the western firebreak below the buildings it became harder, because of the steep drop of the hillside below the edge of the break.  It must have been like standing on the edge of a furnace.

When they began to burn the windward side it became a lot more difficult, but by this time two Rural Fire Service tanker trucks had arrived with additional water, so they moved one of them close to the fire line and ran out a hose.  Nevertheless it was a spectacular sight, and one that would have been terrifying if they had not been so clearly professional about what they were doing.

After both sides of our buildings had been back-burned, as well as the western side of our access track, the teams moved off to burn from the breaks around our neighbours on both sides.  By this time it was 10.00pm and we were both exhausted.  I've no idea how the firefighters managed to keep going till after midnight when they changed over with fresh crews.  Hanneke went to bed and I sat up till midnight to make sure no embers got into the buildings - and all this time there were fire-trucks coming up every 30-40 minutes to make sure everything was OK - and they continued this after I went to bed.

I'll try to expand this posting at some future time when I have a chance to talk about our preparations before the fire, and the behaviour of the fire over the next couple of days.

UPDATE - at last



It has been a shockingly long time since anything was posted on this site. Large gaps in the story of the process of establishing our "Vinegar Hill Complex" - too many to fill at this time. However, here's a shot of the house, from July/August, but looking more or less as it does now.

We are working on the kitchen benches and cupboards now - more on that later.

There has been progress with the workshop too - slowly getting into better shape for doing serious work - latest addition was this new three-metre work bench. It's currently being used to make up the components of the kitchen benches.

We've spent the weekend putting up a shade house in the vege garden - the first thing that has been added there since the 3000 litre water tank late last year. It's made from the frame of one of those temporary car garages that was given to us.

We are going to try out "wicking garden beds" - where the soil sits in a 100mm pool of water that slowly wicks up into the soil as it dries. This is said to signifiantly reduce evaporation and thus result in far less water use - something that really matters here as we move further into a hot dry summer.

Below are a few shots of the new structure - taken using my mobile phone, so maybe not as sharp as they could be.

The tank on the right is the 3000 L garden water tank (it now has a pressure pump attached to it, so we can use it to water all of the gardens), and on the left is a heap of lucerne straw, waiting to be used as mulch on the garden.

The shade house partly completed - still needs the ends closed in.  At the back is a section of one of our first water tanks - actually it was here when we came and had gone through a bushfire.  We cut it into three sections and used them as surrounds for permaculture beds, to keep the wallabies and possums out. The blue containers are trial wicking pots (still more work to do on them), made from recycled 200 L plastic drums used for shipping food ingredients. The tree on the left is one of our lime trees.

House Slab - at last!

The pouring of the slab was supposed to be done in mid-November, but was prevented when our creek crossing washed away in the middle of the month (see last post). After we got a load of rocks and sand in and formed a new crossing, the continued rain meant that the creek flowed over and through the new crossing until after Christmas. This meant that it could not pack down, and it was not safe to risk a full cement truck (20 tonnes) on it.

28 January 2009 - The team arrives to start the slab. These guys are amazing, totally prepared, bring all their gear with them, make up reinforcement and formwork on-site.


Digging the outer footings.


Bit tricky getting the footing trench to match with the plumbing already installed. That's the shower and composting toilet in the background.


Internal footing trenches dug and mounds of road base packed down. Workshop in background - stainless steel rainwater tank on the right.



Morning of the second day - plastic membrane being laid.


Footings being poured - afternoon of Day 2


Beginning of Day 3 - first pour of the slab onto the footings. 11mm of rain overnight, and the driver of this truck said that he had trouble getting up the track from the road.

The second cement truck arrived before the first one had left, and said that he doubted that anyone else would get up the track because of the damage he had done to it. It had already started raining again. While he was there the first truck left - and got stuck trying to get up out of the creek crossing. Gordon arranged for our earthmoving contractor, Bernie, to bring his big back-hoe - before he arrived the truck driver managed to get out. Bernie agreed to stay around in case anyone else got stuck (two more cement trucks due), and while waiting he touched up the track to eliminate the more boggy bits.

No more problems with bogging - thanks Bernie.


The finished slab, looking west to the workshop.

View to the North across the porch.


View to the Southwest.


Looking East at sunrise.

THE CREEKS ARE FLOWING!!!!

Last Wednesday evening (19 Nov), it started raining - hard! And rained and rained and rained. Hanneke was up at 5.00am and the first thing she noticed was the sound of running water from the gullies to the north and south - something we have never heard before.

Time to go and check the creek crossing. What creek crossing? It was gone - completely washed away.

This was the view of the crossing at about 7.00am on Thursday the 20th. The heap of debris piled against the tree on the far bank shows how high the water had been during the night - more than a metre higher. Gordon tried wading across, but got only a quarter of the way and decided it was too dangerous. Exciting, but the reality was that Hanneke needed to get to Brisbane that day, so as to be at the University to give her Masters confirmation presentation early the next morning. We decided that there was nothing we could do at this stage but enjoy the spectacle of flowing water - and we had plenty of that.

Time to check out the creeks in the gullies leading into the main creek.

Above is the creek some of you will have seen (Sandstone Pool Creek) - it usually contains water only in a couple of deep sandstone pools where the wildlife comes to drink - that's one of the pools overflowing at the top of the photo.

Every gully was flowing and the Back Creek was rushing. Hanneke's Mum and I walked along this creek in August when it was dry. Totally unrecognisable now.


Further up Back Creek there's a rock ledge that we have never seen water flowing over. It must have been truly spectacular when it was at its height during the night, with another 50cms or more of water flowing over it.


Higher up Back Creek there was still a good flow of water.

By lunchtime we decided we had to do something about getting Hanneke to Brisbane. There was no way we were going to drive across the creek that day, so we packed our bags and waded across and then walked out to Vicki's place and she drove us to the bus stop near the Gatton University campus - where we waited, standing on the seat of the bus shelter to avoid the wind and rain as three storms swept through the area - and eventually the bus arrived 55 minutes late. In all it took us about five hours to get from home to Brisbane.

Hanneke gave her presentation on Friday morning (she was accepted) and we got a lift home with one of her examiners who lives in Toowoomba.

Of course we had to walk into our place and wade across the creek, but the water had dropped a good half metre or more. It was now obvious that the flow had scoured out a 60cm deep hole on one side that would have to be filled before we could think about getting the Subaru across.


So we loaded up the trailer with a good heap of rocks -


some of them a bit bigger than others -

and kept dropping them into the biggest holes until we had a "reasonably" level surface on which to drive across.

And that's how we are getting in and out until we can get Bernie (our earthmoving wizard) to re-build the crossing.

Southern View

Just one of the reasons we live here - view to the south across the Lockyer Valley early on a cloudy morning.

Slab for the New Shed

Progress on the new shed at last. Here's the site levelled - the house site is to the left of, and behind the trailer.
Formwork in place - though it took a bit of pressure to get them to put in all of the holes for the piers under the columns.

Plastic moisture barrier under the reinforcing - also helps to control termites.

Pouring the concrete - all done in one day - all 15 cubic metres of it. The slab is 100mm thick, with a 200x200mm beam under all edges, and piers 300mm deep and 350x350mm square where each of the columns will go. It's 12m x 9m overall.

These two guys did all of it. Very hard work.

Nearly finished. It started raining gently just after this, then got heavier as the night progressed. We had to put covers over the two awning slabs around 7.00pm.

Most of the material for the shed was delivered the same day. The erector expects to start putting it all together around 11 June - should take about a week to put it up, weather allowing.

Our Green Frog is Recovering!

Remember the Green Tree Frog with the major wound on its face? There's a posting about it in the January 2008 archive.

Well, we got an email from the frog expert in Brisbane who took it in to see what the "disease" was and what could be done with it. Pearl is amazing - she knows so much about frogs and is so caring. She figured out soon after we left Frog with her that it was most likely a severe wound, and not some rampant virus eating into its face.

Here's the latest news Pearl sent on 17th May:

I still have your frog she is doing well and still eating lots of crickets. She will probably be getting ready to “hibernate” for winter soon. Just a recent photo- as you can see the face is still crooked but has healed in the upper jaw and there is a large area on the lower that needs to heal over still. I will leave her alone til it gets warm again.

And here's the photo that Pearl sent - quite a change in just a few months.

Solar Power System Installed - at last!

After many delays our new solar power system has been installed - where before we had three panels (total of 290 watts at 12 volts), we now have 12 panels (total of 1980 watts at 48 volts).
Hanneke cleaning the dust off the panels before we connect them up to the control gear. That's the satellite broadband dish behind her.
A view of the panels on the roof - taken from the roof of the shipping container we are using for storage.
Gordon spent about four days helping Dave (the designer and installer) put the system in, as well as another 4-5 days lining the walls where the internal controls are mounted, and building a box to house the 24 batteries. One day the whole shed (to become our office) will be lined.

Both Dave and Gordon ended up with "battery back" after lifting all the batteries (32kg each) into the box one evening and positioning them accurately so that they could be connected up. Those are (some of) the batteries in the box at the bottom of the photo.

It is amazing to have so much power available, after years of limiting ourselves to only two lights at a time and not being able to run things like power tools, washing machine, or iron unless we turned the generator on.

First big test was to do a load of washing in our antique, $100, washing machine that uses gross amounts of power and water. We tried it in the afternoon when the batteries were near fully charged - it didn't even take any power from the batteries, just some of what was coming from the panels on the roof, with some left over to go into the batteries. Wow!

The generator will retire now, until we get at least three days of no sun, when it will be needed to charge the batteries - maybe. Not sure just how many days the system can go without reaching a critical level, could be up to five.
You can see how the panels sit down low on top of the eastern and western awnings - to keep the wind loading down as much as possible.
All the bare ground is from the levelling for the house and new shed sites. The two steel pegs in the foreground with the yellow tape on them mark the western end of the house (one day).
[photos by Dave Keenan - system designer and installer - contact me for his details]

News - late March 2008

Our secondhand shipping container arrived on Thursday afternoon. The truck that brought it could only just squeeze around the bends and between the trees on either side of our 2km track. When he got to the top of the hill the driver wasn't in a particularly happy mood - unlike most people who arrive at the top and immediately exclaim "Wow! What a great place!"

But then, he probably realised that he had to get out again.
Anyway, he put the container down with the most amazing precision - within a couple of centimetres of where we wanted it.
On the way out the truck had a lot of trouble getting up out of our creek crossing - a combination of lack of weight over the back wheels and the track still being damp from the rain that morning. Took him four tries before he got out, and then it was only because he tipped the tray of the truck back so that it increased the weight on the back wheels.
It looks kind of huge alongside the shed, and takes quite a bit of getting used to. We are eventually going to move it a bit, so that it is parallel to the shed and then put a roof over it that will extend to the awning of the shed. This will keep the container cooler, and make sure it is weather-proof, as well as giving us a carport alongside it. Maybe one day when we have finished the house we will put some windows and another door into it, and make it into guest accommodation. But for now it is much needed storage space.
We spent Friday moving the stuff that came back from Holland out of the rented storage in Gatton (the cost of that had gone up 40% in six months). Then on Saturday and Sunday we sorted through the boxes and got out things that we needed, and put back stuff from the shed that we didn't need to have access to for a while.
Also moved some boxes into the container from the shed - these boxes came back from Cambodia two years ago and we were very glad to have them out of the shed. Quite an effort, and by Sunday night we were both exhausted.

Our Red-necked Wallabies have been back around the shed every evening - the new grass in the forest is probably getting a bit older and tougher and they seem to prefer the new growth on the grassy area that has been mown. They are obviously the same ones that were here before the rain, because they are so used to us and our noises. Strange to see them sitting not far away and taking no notice of us talking or moving things around, but then stopping and pricking up their ears and looking toward distant noises from down in the valley. Feels great to know that they are so accustomed to us.
We think that this group is an older female, with a quite young joey (we haven't seen it out of the pouch yet, though it feeds on the grass it can reach as its mother bends down to eat), and a male that is probably her last offspring from then end of last year.
We had a fight outside our bedroom window in the middle of the night last week - we could hear the loud "thump" as they kicked each other in the body with their back legs, while balancing on their tails.

Rainbow

Life and Death on the Garden Path

Was walking back from the path gardent the other day and, just as I was about to step over a patch of longer grass, a lizard (skink) about 7cms long dashed into the grass. There was a sudden movement, the lizard disappeared from view, some thrashing about in the grass, then the lizard appeared, belly up, in the jaws of this monster.

It's a Burton's Snake-lizard (Lialis burtonis), and specialises in hunting and eating other lizards. Doesn't have any legs, just a couple of "flaps" on its sides where the hind legs used to be.

See the line above the eyes? It's a "hinge" that allows it to take big mouthfuls of its prey, and to bring the tips of the jaws together when it has something big in its mouth. After grabbing the skink it adjusted its grip until is was putting pressure on the lizard's lungs, and kept this up until it stopped struggling (i.e. dead). Then it quickly flipped it around with two bites, till the head was in its jaws and proceeded to swallow it head-first. Took only about 3-4 minutes to swallow the whole thing.

Boring, boring, boring

The digger / excavator / post-lifter-outer. Drilling here to check the depth to bedrock under where the slab will be for the house (one day ....). The post behind me is the corner of the house, and the other corner is in the vege garden in front of me.

The pumpkins are taking over the world - they not only grew all around the outside of the garden but are now climbing up the trellis which is supposed to be for beans and tomatoes. BUT when they grow on the trellis they produce far more pumpkins. Can't figure that out, but it is good news. We now have about ten small pumpkins and one that is bigger than a soccer ball - by about 50%.

Hanneke figured the other day that we are producing about 80 percent of our vegetable requirements. We are talking about where to put the chicken yard, but that may be a few weeks yet.