The Agrinautica

   This past Saturday my dear friend Billie came up to visit. She used to live in this area but since moving several hours East she hasn't been out this way in years -- usually I'm going over there to visit. But she was going to attend the airshow that's in this general area (well that's still an hour east of me) on Sunday she decided to come visit me. We decided to go visit some waterfalls.
   She arrived at 0800, and I think we talked over coffee for at least an hour before heading out. Then our first stop was the magic book shed in the next little hamlet over -- it literally just looks like a nondescript shed but has a "BOOK SALE" sign out by the street and when you go in it's densely packed with shelves of books! I bought a Bill Bryson book (A Walk in the Woods) and Billie bought three books -- we're both big fans of books. (:
   As for waterfalls, I thought I'd been to all the publicly accessible waterfalls but had more recently noticed one I hadn't been to -- "Sabine Falls," so we headed that way. To get there we a fair bit down a road I hadn't been down before deep into the Otway forest. The trail itself is official so it was well maintained, but because it's one of the lesser known waterfalls we didn't see anyone else there and it seemed much less trafficked, so that was nice. It was about a kilometer through thick foliage to get there. At the end there was a little viewing platform looking across across a foliage filled gorge to the waterfall. It was hard to get a good picture of the waterfall from there so here's the picture from my "Waterfalls of the Otways" book. It's apparently one of the tallest in the Otways.

   After we got back to my car we wanted to find another waterfall from the book, which has the details of 226 local waterfalls in it ... but the damn book, while it does have maps in it, it doesn't have the waterfalls MARKED on the map. It just has a generic regional map. And the waterfalls have their GPS coordinates (in a kind of weird half decimal notation without punctuation (that is without the degree symbol or the decimal dot) so it was hard to figure out how to input even one waterfall into the phone to find its location and not really feasible to figure out which waterfalls were where from leafing through it. But by looking at a different waterfall brochure I had (I've got all the waterfall stuff!) we determined there was another waterfall we hadn't been to not too far away, just off the Great Ocean Road (the GOR).

   So we drove down to the GOR and to the carpark for this other waterfall (Carisbrook Falls). The only other vehicle in the parking area was a van of the type people living the #vanlife live in, and moments after we parked a young man climbed out of the back pulling his shirt on followed by a young woman fixing her hair ... we suspect we interrupted their sexytime. It was a very short walk to this waterfall, during which Billie pointed out several interesting things about plants that I've already forgotten. Like Sabine Falls, this one also one couldnt' get very close, here's the picture I took from the viewing platform.
   Then we crossed the road and poked around the tidepools a bit before continuing on.

   We drove to the town of Apollo Bay and had a light lunch of prawns and scallops at a fish and chips place (actually the "fisherman's co-op" just by the marina). The view from here was really nice:



   The guy sitting next to us overhearing us talking about various trips we've either taken across Australia or want to take, joined our conversation with some recommendations of his own. He apparently has a youtube channel about his sailing adventures.

   From there we headed to a waterfall that we both actually had been to but not in a few years -- Marriner's Falls. My big book and all online sources reported it as closed, but we both had been there after the alleged date it was closed so were confident we could get in. I had stumbled upon it rather by accident I think and just stepped over the gate at the time.
   It was at the back end of the valley Apollo Bay is located in, at the end of the road. Even though it's been closed since 2011, the carpark is still maintained. One can no longer simply step over the gate, there's a tall fence, but we found one just needed to cross teh river (I kept my feet dry stepping across stepping stones, Billie just sloshed through it), and there was a decent trail on the far side. The trail was obviously not maintained by the Parks Department, there were fallen logs one had to step over or crawl under and blackberry brambles closing in on the trail enough to pluck at passersby -- but someone was obviously maintianing the trail enough that there WAS a trail through the blackberries. We suspect the landowner just beside the trailhead, who appears to host people in yurts on his paddock, is probably happy to keep the trail maintained as his private trail due to it being officially closed. Anyway the fact that some bushwacking was required made the journey all the more fun.
   Like all the best of these waterfall trails it led through a narrow gorge full of moss and ferns. The picture at the top of this entry is Billie during one of several river crossings. When we finally got to the waterfall, it was gorgeous -- a good flow of water coming down a solid cliff face like a wall, with moss and ferns on it. The waterfall fell into a pool of crystal clear cool water -- we took off our shoes and stood in it, it was very zenful and serene.



   By this point it was around 7pm, fortunately it's still light out late and it was still pretty well lit but we realized we'd have to hurry to get food before most kitchens closed at 8. So we hurried back out of there. It was after 8:00 by the time we got back into Apollo Bay but fortunately the pub there keeps its kitchen open till 8:30. It was a lovely evening and we sat in the outdoor area looking out at the rising moon:



   Unfortunately we still had to take the curvy road up through the forested mountains in the full dark of night, and me with only one working headlight. But that went without incident -- I did actually see a koala starting to cross the road from the other side, but there was nothing for it but to wish the fella the best of luck.

   Fortunately my housemate Trent had moved out literally the day before, so I had a guestroom for Billie. She departed at 6am for the airshow and I spent Sunday doing beekeeping stuff, and trying to recover my voice from all teh talking I'd done on Saturday! The end.

   This upcoming Saturday I'll be on a major Melbourne radio station garden show (talking about bees obviously), and Wednesday next week I'm presenting at a Melbourne beekeeping club meeting. That's all the latest!

   Saturday (this past, the 18th), we awoke in Marlo for the penultimate day of our expedition to the far eastern end of Victoria. After probably eating a simple breakfast in our nice little hotel room, we checked out and went down to the shore of the Snowy River, where people had been so frolicksom the night before. It was perhaps cooler now than then but still a comfortable temperature, and dad wanted to go swimming. Mom and I suggested swimming across but he prudently pointed out every now and then a motorboat hoons down the river probably not looking out for swimmers, and the current in the middle is an unknown factor. So he swap upstream for awhile and then came back. While he did so I explored a nearby nature path along the bank, through literal littoral rainforest and vine thickets (I was sorely tempted to just substitute literal for littoral there but people probably would have assumed I just made a dumb mistake). As usual dad declared the swim to be great.

   Then we commenced on our way. The first bit of the journey was parallel to the Snowy River, which was separated from the sea by a big brush covered sandbar for awhile. Then the road turned north and meandered through stately tall trees.



   Once we rejoined the A1 Princes Highway (again I note this is the very highway that goes past my home, if we hadn't taken all these sidequests to see other things we could have done this whole journey on just this one road) and headed east on it, the road mainly took broad swoops through forested mountainous terrain. The trees were huge. This area had badly burned in the beginning of 2020 (remember when we thought the year was starting out badly with half of Victoria on fire and some other natural disasters and that was even before Covid showed up). We also noticed after awhile a suspicious... lack of roadkill. Obviously it's sad to see roadkill, but to see a complete absence in an environment that should have plenty (high speed two lane highway through thick forest) is ominous. It makes us think the animal population of the area has not yet come close to recovering.
   Finally we got off the Princes highway, which continues from the eastern end of Victoria north all the way to Sydney (and if one were to follow it west from my house it takes an equally circuitous route to Adelaide at its other end). About twenty minutes on the smaller road to Mallacoota and... we were there! (about two hours after leaving Marlo)



   "Some believe that the name came from 'malagoutha' a local Ganay Aboriginal term of uncertain meaning." (google result from "what does Mallacoota mean" ?) but there's an interesting either potential explanation or remarkable coincidence -- Mallacoota, generally regarded as a little paradise by many, means, my Iraqi coworker informs me, "paradise" in Arabic. Could be someone who named it knew some Arabic (and hey, isn't Walhalla, where we were earlier, also a sort of paradise in a non-Australian language). Honestly in balance I think it's probably a coincidence but it's still interesting to note.
   Anyway, we discovered Mallacoota to consist of a small core of a town of houses and cafes surrounded by an extensive caravan park surrounding it on three sides and totalling 60-75% of the land area of the "town," and surrounding this a picturesque bay with many little boats moored up, a maze of reedy islands beyond. We were feeling a bit hurried because we still had a four hour drive to where we'd be staying the night. I perhaps had had a bit of "target fixation" getting us here but hey we made it. It was now around 14:00 and we figured we needed to be on the road again by 16:00.
   We looked at the cafes but none of them that were open actually appealed to us greatly. We were keen on the bakery but it turned out to be closed. Mom was suggesting we just have cheese sandwiches again but I was at the end of my rope with gosh darn cheese sandwiches. So we went to get food at what appeared to be the most popular place, a chinese restaurant. While there we observed the clientel was positively geriatric. They hobbled about feebly, barely navigating the step at the front door. We got our bowls of stir fry and took them to a picnic beach by the bay (about from where the above picture was taken), and found the food to be thoroughly thoroughly bland. I reflected back on the clientel and mused that their customer base probably likes it that way.
   Then we went on one of the shorter walks I had identified in the area. We were feeling really pressed for time but I felt like if we didn't go on a walk it would feel to much like we just came here and turned around. The walk was nice though, we heard many bird calls we hadn't heard before and at one point two smallish kangaroos (but bigger than wallabies) bounded across the trail just in front of us. There wasn't actually that much evidence that this area had burned, if it had, but there were a few blackened stumps. The big trees here seem to have survived and the smaller shrubbery thoroughly grown back.



   Then we drove to the bay entrance, where the above picture was taken, and then it was time to get back on the road! This was a four hour drive back across land we'd just covered, but it was all beautiful and interesting so at least as a passenger I didn't mind it. I'd offered to do some of the driving but dad seems content to do all the driving himself, and other than commenting that it was a lot of driving he didn't really complain. We passed a few random signs for walking tracks I wouldn't have known about if I hadn't seen the signs there, and if we were in less of a hurry it might have been nice to check at least one of them out. So for future note they are the "MacKenzie River Rainforest Walk" and "Cabbage Tree Walk"

   As is traditional for family road trips, we had some idle musingful conversations, like the subject of words that are almost the same but not, and whats the difference between them? Like I maintain there's subtle differences between "squish" and "squash," "floofy" and "fluffy" and "puttering" vs "pottering" about. I won't get into all of these (maybe a subject for their own entry?), but as to the last one, I think they both imply kind of doing various little tasks around the house, but while one might be accomplishing things while pottering about, one isn't really accomplishing anything while puttering about. And a special mention and this might literally be just a me thing, but I feel "hover" (hah-ver) and "hover" (huv-er) have subtly different meanings. Helicopters "huver," bumblebees "hahver."

   Anyway the purple line in the map at hte top of this entry is the new area covered headed out West on return from Mallacoota. It was mostly forested hills and low intensity pasture land until bairnsdale (which dad mispronounced as Brains-dale and I'll never be able to say correctly again!), and more thoroughly agricultural land west of there. We arrive in the town of Sale to get groceries and were rather shocked by how empty the town was. Traralgon (pop 26,000) on a Thursday evening had been really happening, Sale (pop 16,000) on a Saturday evening around the same time was like a ghost town. Also like a god damn labyrinth, major roads seeming to dead end. We wanted to go to Coles because we're more familiar with it, but literally couldn't find a way to get to the front entrance of the store and settled instead for a Woolworths we stumbled upon.
   Then we went to get KFC for dinner since we just wanted something quick. Here we had perhaps an error of differing national standards -- I never eat at KFC so I don't know the sizes of things, but my parents felt one piece of chicken for each of them would be sufficient and two for me. We asked for two breasts and two thighs but the bemulleted adolescent who took our order apparently interpreted that as two drum sticks and two breasts for some reason. And when my parents saw the small size of the portions they had gotten themselves they were very sad (I offered one of my two pieces, even though that was also insufficient for my appetite, but they declined). But that comes later because we took the food to the airbnb to eat there.

   From the town of Sale we continued on to our airbnb down on Golden Beach, arriving there just after the sun had set. This bnb, when we had looked at hte listing, had said "sheets aren't included but can be provided for a small fee." We thought that was really odd, who travels with their own bedsheets?? But whats a small fee, $5? $10? So we booked it and sent the host an inquiry about sheets. He had responded with "no worries" and a phraseology which lead my dad to think the host understood we'd need sheets and was agreeing to provide them.. and the fact that the "small fee" was $60 a bed (!!!!!!) WTF! We could probably buy our own sheets for that much! We actually considered doing so. But despite a lot of grumbling we were committed.
   Anyway, arriving at the place we found... NO SHEETS! And also no running water. And the host somehow had 4.83 star average and "super host" status. WTF. We sent him messages politely expressing our alarm and soon he was on the phone -- he hadn't thought we'd actually requested the sheets. He seemed reluctant to admit there were sheets on hand but eventually said they were in the locked garage and if we had a screwdriver we might be able to remove the lock deadbolt ... but that turned out to be removable simply by hand.
   As to the water, the host said tehre'd probably been a power outage earlier in the day and the pump needed to be turned back on. Which required dad to open a hatch on the side of the house and crawl ten feet in the (utter darkness at this point, with flashlight), under the house to figure out the right buttons to push to turn on the pump.
   And it's AFTER all this shenanigans, that we FINALLY sat down to enjoy our dinner, at which point we found ourselves looking at these meagre meagre portions. Fortunately we still had some leftover bland bland chinese food (it was so bland even now we didn't finish it and tossed the rest) and some other leftovers.
   OTHER than all these problems the house was nice, and right on the beach (though the ocean wasn't visible due to the sand ridge running parallel to the beach). Dad did go look at hte ocean and report back to us, mom and I just appreciated the sound of waves crashing from the house. Also mom saw a possum on the fence, which, since it froze when she shined the light on it (playing possum, as it were), we were able to approach closely and have a good look at. This one had a naked tail, I think it was a ring tail possum -- the only other possum here I've had a good look at was "Sancho" in my garage, who had a floofy tail and is, I believe, a brushy tailed possum.


I still think these things are uglier than American opossums

   And then we put the sheets on the beds and went to bed. The end (until tomorrow).

   I still don't know if the host did indeed charge us the $60 or waived it in a desperate attempt not to get the less than stellar review he was clearly headed for. And for that matter I'll have to check with mom if dad did indeed give him less than five stars -- dad can be tooo nice sometimes, and I think while I could have actually forgiven the lack of water as an unforseen circumstance if the host seemed like he'd done everytihng reasonable to ensure a good stay, calling $60 a "small fee" loses my assumption of good faith.

   Thursday-Sunday I was on another roadtrip adventure with my parents, this time to explore the east of this state (Victoria). I was even well on my way to contemporaneously posting updates, the first day having written up most of the day into an entry while in the car. But then at the end of the day when I went to finish it, livejournal prompted me to "restore from draft," which has never been a bad idea before. Even though I could see the top part of what I'd written on the screen behind the pop up window, if I clicked "no" maybe it would clear that. Anyway, it ended up restoring a previous already-posted entry and I compeltely lost everything I'd written. Back button didn't bring it back, it was all just gone. ): I absolutely hate re writing what I just wrote, so I was too demoralized to write it again, and then I couldn't update teh other days and have it out of order soo no field reports. But now I'm back home on my computer (and my parents are currently somewhere over the Pacific) and I'll have another hack at it.

   The last few days the temperature has been nice, warm, even a bit "muggy," with big purplish clouds rolling over rumbling with unseen thunder and dropped random fleeting showers. When I got home from work it was one of those pleasant reverse-September evenings as I walked across to the other side of my village to for the last day of some training with the firebrigade. My walk takes me first across an open park area that used to abutt an open field with cows grazing in it, though now they've built two houses on part of hte field (urban encroachment!), across a little bridge, through another park, and then along the shopfronts of Main Street. As I was walking past the Historic Center I saw one of the staff of the local newsletter in the open doorway, and stopping to talk to her saw others of the staff in the room inside in which they meet. They waved me in and greeted me with "we were just talking about you!"
   It turns out they want me to write an article about a recent bee incident in town that I was involved in. I'll spare the details here for now and just share the finished article. It should be fun though because I'll get to interview my friend Joe and his kids (appx 14 and 10?) for it. Then the staff invited me to go to the pub with them but I told them I had this training.



   The fire brigade training has been to wear breathing apparatus ("BA"). We met for five Wednesday evenings finishing today, learning everything we need to know and practicing putting the gear on and off (but mostly on), over and over again, as the final test would be to be able to put it all on in 100 seconds. The biggest struggle for me was not getting straps tangled, just trynig unsuccessfully to grab the other end of the helmet strap at the very end could take ten seconds, but in the end I felt I got it seemlessly for the final test. When the instructor said it had taken me a minute and twenty seconds for a moment i thought I'd failed before realizing I'd finished in 80 seconds.
   With everthing finished the members settled in to chat a bit and I was debating weather to socialize more with the brigadees or the newsletter staff, though the fact that I hadn't eaten yet was compelling me towards the pub. When conversation turned to puss filled growths their cows get and "look I have a video on my phone from when I popped it its so gross!" I decided to make my exit.
   At the pub I caught the newsletter staff somehow having only just ordered so I was able to order only slightly behind them (through some sort of oversight in the kitchen one of them actually got their food after me!) and ate this "double baked pork belly" --



   Now I'm sitting at my computer, obviously. I have a livestream of a bunch of different live feeds around Kyiv open on another monitor, which I've been doing lately. At least one of my friends has been trying to pretend the war isnt' happening and apparently muted the group chat due to "too much war talk" but for me it's most comforting to "see that Kyiv is still there." Most of the cameras actually show life seemingly going on as normal, cars drive down the streets, pedestrians walk around.. but every now and then you can hear booms in the background, or the air raid sirens go off... followed by even louder booms. Makes it feel very real. It is very real. To each their own and what they need to do for their mental health but I'm over here sitting with Kyiv.

   Though after a long day of filling 10 liter buckets with honey at work, before I go to bed I need to do one more things ... fill some 10 liter buckets with honey for an order of my own honey.

   I was planning on writing the sequel to last entry the next day but gosh it's been a busy week and I've either been busy or exhausted from being busy every evening.

   Anyway so continuing from where I left off, I was hanging out with friends in the mountains of east central victoria (kind of like how in California we consider San Franscisco to be either about the center or even northern "northern california" when it's really only half way up, here in Victoria when people talk about "Central Victoria" they are usually referring to an area around the center of western victoria. Really Melbourne itself is about the center of the state (or north of melbourne), but the east side of the state seems to be generally disregarded the way we disregard northern northern California).

   Last Sunday the plan was to just four-wheel-drive down to an abandoned steel waterwheel way out in the bush but.. only two of us would make it that far in the end ::the narrator says in an overly dramatic tone::

   First we visited the dam site again because the two friends who had joined us halfway through the day before, councilwoman Kerstin and her boyfriend Dan, hadn't seen it yet. After this Billie's twin Lek, and Sel, departed on an important mission to console a friend who'd just been dumped by her deadbeat boyfriend. The remaining four of us proceeded up the dirt roads and fire roads to the east of the reservoir lake.
   Shortly after we turned off the main dirt access road onto a slightly more four-wheel-drivey road, we crossed a patch of thick mud Kersten and Dan's car became stuck in (wish I could remember what kind of car it was, which might inform the reader as to how well it could have been expected to handle adverse conditions, but I don't recall becaues everything about cars make me snoooore. Billie's car, however, is named Surf, because it's apparently a Hilux Surf which is the Australian name of the Toyota 4Runner, if it interests any of you to know these things). Quickly noticing they were no longer right behind us Billie somehow pulled a U-ie and returned to the scene, where we found them stuck in the mud. They were able to reverse out of it relatively quickly and it was decided that we'd all get in Billie's car, so the other car was parked at a convenient wide place just near there and then...and headed
   ...Billie's car wouldnt' start. She'd had some trouble with the (alternator? the battery not charging while driving as it should) of late. The timing and location of this problem coming up was really remarkably ill-chosen. We had jumper cables and at any of the other many times we'd stopped and started throughout the last few days we'd have had another vehicle to jump it but now we were quite pointedly on the wrong side of a mud puddle the other car couldn't cross!



   Fortunately after a little fiddling we got Billie's car started, and Kerstin and Dan and their two dogs (a greyhound and one of those small curly haired dogs that looks like some kind of teddy bear crossed with a dog.) got in and we proceeded. However, now in an unfamiliar car on a rocky ride sometimes proceeding down slopes at a precarious angle the greyhound was breathing heavily enough that Dan thought it was stressing out and about to hyperventilate or something. So they all got out and Billie and I proceeded down the track a further few hundred meters to see if it got any better, but it didn't, so we returned, re-collected them, and returned from whence we came, back across the mud puddle, and then bid adieu to them and they parted company with us.


   From there Billie and I proceeded up the main gravel road to the nearby summit of Mt Useful, upon which stood a fire tour, some communications antenna, and a whooole lot of guys with mullets and southern cross tattoos, wearing plaid jackets and shorts standing beside their four wheel drives drinking beer. Like literally 80-90% of them had mullets. There was a magnifiscent view from here looking south into the lowlands.



   From there, having studied the map a bit more, we determined that there was another route to get to the steel waterwheel (not that Billie's hilux couldn't have made it down the other track without a hyperventilating greyhound, though her truck is not currently in tip top shape, but mostly I think we had become a bit demoralized with the first track we attempted after having to abandon it halfway so taking a different route was at least a change of scenery.
   This new route proved do-able, the dirt track following along the steep side of the river valley. And it always amazes me that 4x4s going opposite directions somehow manage to pass eachother on these roads. One such vehicle that came past us happened to be some of Billie's former coworkers with DWELP (Bureau of Land Managment equivalent). They gave us permission to bypass the "trail closed" tape they'd just put across the trail to the waterwheel, advising us to just not lean against the bridge rail.
   Shortly later we came to the trailhead. There was space to park a few cars by the river, though we were the only one, and sure enough yellow caution tape blocking off the start of the trail at a footbridge across the river which made out of one solid log. We ducked under the caution tape and didn't test the structural integrity of the hand rails.



   Personally I much prefer hiking over 4x4ing and it was really great. It was a nice sunny day, the birds were chirping, flowering plants were all around us. As we hiked we reminded eachother several times that this was prime snake weather and season, and sure enough, by and by "snake!" Bille exclaimed, holding up her hand for me to stop. There across the trail in front of us was a large snakeB that she identified as a tiger snake, which is fairly venomous.
   Without further incident we reached the steel waterwheel, seemingly completely by itself in the wilderness, though after some searching I found evidence of a building foundation nearby. I climbed up into the waterwheel and Billie took a photo of me there that I think would have been a cool photo.... but her phone was accidentally smashed at work the next day and she hadn't sent it to me yet.


And I took a photo of the informational sign because I rightly foresaw that this same information wouldn't be as readily available on the computer internets

   From there we proceeded west along the 4x4 tracks, which included some crossings of severel-foot-deep rivers but Billie's truck had them well in hand. Just past one river crossing, quickly climbing again, I saw this perfect photo opportunity. Well it would have been better if half the photo wasn't in shadow but hey one can't help that. But 4x4s camped in a remote river bend, insanely steep 4x4 track running up the mountain behind them, this is the Australian offroading dream:



   From there we proceeded to Billie's place, ate the rest of the venison burrito/taco fixins, and I headed off, it being now around maybe 6pm? Which was way too late to catch the last ferry so I had to drive right through the dark heart of Melbourne which was as stressful as I expected. I think you can maybe get right through the city by taking a tollroad but I'm too cheap for that (despite that I'll pay $72 to avoid the whole thing via ferry, but tollroads are bougousie tools of the capitalist pigdogs! ..plus also I haven't the faintest idea how you actually pay the toll since there aren't toll booths and its deducted straight from your soul or something), but without taking tollroads one has to zigzag through surface streets with cars opening their doors along the curb edge (or "kerb" edge as these spelling maniacs spell it), nightmare inducing "J-turns" in the inner lanes, trams, and all kinds of other mischief. I took two wrong turns due to incomprehensible signage, may have been going wrong way in a major street for a moment, I'm not sure it was dark and terrifying, but anyway eventually survived the city to come out the other side and continue home, the end.

   Things are now the worst they've ever been here in Australia. I quite rather I told you so about this facepalmably preventable circumstanes in light of there being a vaccine and all. The current outbreak is almost entirely in the state of New South Wales, which is Australia's most populous state (and 65% of its population live in Sydnay).



   The political leader ("Premier") of NSW, "Gladys" Bariunpronouncable, has spent most of the last year saying the state I live in, Victoria, was too heavy handed in its lockdowns, and in this anti-lockdown spirit she was then far too slow to put into effect meaningful lockdowns to stop this outbreak.



   As you can see in the above chart, we had the biggest previous outbreak in Australia but we turned it right around with heavy lockdowns, I really don't think this new outbreak is going to reverse course the same way since I think they let it get too bad there before doing anything about it. As you can see we have a very small bump here, almost entirely from incursions from NSW (though I think they've closed the border but enough people still have excuses to come through that they keep bringing cases in). Easlier in the week I think Melbourne went into lockdown (where 70% of this state's population live) but the rest of the state ("regional" victoria) was just under the usual mask mandates.
   As of Saturday morning we (my friends) were expecting regional to go into lockdown at midnight, and thus the lads were discussing doing something like going bowling while they still could, though it being for once a nice day where I felt I could go outside without dying of cold, I was intent to do some beekeepinh. But then at around 11am there was apparently a "pressie," (press conference) in which it was announced the whole state would go into lockdown in just two hours (!!). I wasn't watching but this was suddenly being commented on everywhere. I had already been planning on going to the hardware and some other stores so I headed out to do that before they closed.
   I live about an hour from town so it was just shy of an hour till lockdown when I got off the highway into town and immediately I saw something bizarre -- traffic was backed up right into that roundabout, which never even comes close to happening.



   While stuck in this traffic I sent a voice message to the standing facebook chat-group of my friends exclaiming about the traffic, and one of them happened to take and send a screenshot of the traffic which is convenient now for a visual aid. I had just come up the M1 "Princes Highway" coming up from the south there and gotten on to what is labeled as "Waurn Ponds Dr" but is actually still sign posted under its old name as the A10 "Princes Highway" (as in you get off the Princes Highway onto Princes Highway, which confused the hell out of me the first time I tried to go into town, and caused me to accidentally get right back on the M1 highway instead of going into town). I quickly abandoned all hope of going to the shops because that appeared to be where all the cars were going -- inbound into the city other than turn lanes into the shopping center were still free, but I kept looking nervously at the outbound lane thinking "how am I going to get back out of the city???" -- if you look at the above map and keep in mind we drive on the left, you'll note the traffic on the outbound side there. I ended up hanging a right past hte shopping center there and was able to proceed out the east side of town, but I was just amazed and flabbergasted by the several-kilometers worth of completely backed up traffic.
   Obviously with the two hours lockdown notice everyone in town had thought ot rush to the town's biggest shopping center ... no doubt to completely ransack the toilet paper (or "bog roll" as they amusingly informally call it).


   Anyway, so yeah now we're in heavy lockdown ... which barely effects me really. Only allowed out of the house for permitted reasons, but essential work is one of them and as an agriculture ("primary production") worker I'm essential, but I do have to carry a work permit with me at all times (which I issue myself, though John Edmonds the other beekeeper I've been working for half time will presumably also issue me one).

   In other news I got my second vaccination dose two weeks ago or so, so there's that.

   I really don't know when this lockdown will ease -- I frankly don't think they'll get the lid back on this outbreak, I think it's already too out of control in NSW. Up until now Australia did not have continous community transmission, just a steady flow of people coming in from abroad and sitting in quarantine with it, and occasional outbreaks from things like taxi drivers who had driven quarantinees or air crews, which were quickly got under control. But I think now it's gone out into the community to an extent that won't be stamped out.

   And vaccine hesitency is, I think, even stronger here that America even. Big protests today in Melbourne and Sydney about the lockdowns, like god forbid the government even try to stamp down on this lethal plague...

   Yesterday (Friday) was a very lovely day. 76f and sunny. My application for permanent residency had just finally been lodged, finally freeing me from the threat of being expelled from the country on the 5th, so I was in a very good mood. For an hour or two at twilight I've been cutting blackberries along the slope beside the river at the edge of town, to make a trail, and this fun project was much on my mind in the morning. The trail is being bored a dozen feet a day through the thick tangle of brambles and was getting very near the comparatively clear "other side" of the entangled slope. In particular just the evening before I had discovered instead of slipping on the loose hillside and carrying the cut tentacle-like branches all the way back out of the track, if I carefully laid them lengthwise underfoot and stood on them they made a great stable trackway. So in the morning I eagerly thought about getting back to that, but first I had a busy day of beekeeping, to take advantage of the good weather!

 Mid-afternoon, around 3pm-ish, I was emerging from the forest when my phone started giving me notifications. I glanced at my phone and my brother (Tobin) had sent me a screenshot of a Trump tweet announcing he (Trump) had coronavirus. I nearly swerved off the road! I had to stop and demand "IS THIS REAL???!?" it turns out, as you probably know, it was.
   The rest of the day I was checking my phone between every hive as the updates continued throughout the day. More Trump allies infected! Trump off to the hospital!

   I'm not gonna lie, this already good day was suddenly upgraded to euphoric. I've seen some hand wringing from people saying its immoral to wish ill on even Trump, and some Trump supporters posting that we should be ashamed, but you know what, no. Trump has downplayed this all along. Becuase of his downplaying this 200,000+ Americans are dead and now he himself is sick. It's his own damn fault and I'm not sorry. He mocked Hillary for getting pneumonia during the 2016 campaign, he mocked the McCain family when McCain died, he deserves exactly zero sympathy. He is a direct threat to the health and very lives of Americans and if this severaly damages his elections then it is objectively good.
   On top of all that, I think there's been every indication he planned to lead a chanting mob on election night to dispute the results, which was a terrifying prospect for democracy, but I doubt he can do that from a hospital bed. So yeah, no, this development may have saved America and I won't pretend some imaginary "high road" compels me to feel sympathy for this ogre.

   Anyway, in this state of euphoric wonderland I mnaged to finish the day, inspecting at beehives until the sun set around 6ish. Driving back to work to unload the truck, legendary cat Cato came to greet me and I held his warm furry purring koala-self for possibly an hour while I contentedly watched the big yellow moon rise. And took a photo:


Here is the moon. Did you know it's surface is "slightly brighter than that of worn asphalt" according to wikipedia?

   This morning (Saturady) wasn't even forecast to be a sunny day but it turned out to be yet another nice sunny day. I eagerly walked over to where the blackberry cutting had been going on and found the other two guys who have been having a hack at it in mornings had actually succeeded to cutting all the way through!! I was disappointed though that they didn't seem to take note of my track-laying technique and had manually lugged all the cut branches all the way out and left the soft bare earth of the slope to be directly walked on.
   And then throughout the day today about every hour we find out that yet another member of the Trump camp has come down with Covid!
   It kind of reminds me of the 30 Years War. Ah it seems like just yesterday ::gazes off into the distance:: but no really, so the war raged across Europe with important battles happening in different corners with important ramifications but the news might take weeks to get across. So for example, RBG dies, it feels like "our" side has just lost a significant battle somewhere a bit far away but turning the tables so things seem nearly hopeless for our side. But then just two weeks later there's another battle, and throughout the day news is slowly trickling down to us of all the major figures of the opposing side who have fallen as casualties in it.

   Though in studying the 30 Years War, which I've been finding fascinating lately, I still can't decide for the life of me which side to root for.

   Anyway, in conclusion, Spring is here, in spirit, in the weather, and apparently in politics.

04/13 2804 active cases in Australia, 46 new cases in last 24 hours.

   In Australia we get a four day weekend to celebrate Eostre, because apparently "Easter Monday" is a thing of some kind. Friday was a bit nice so I checked some beehives, and was pleasantly surprised by how much honey I was able to harvest from them. Saturday and Sunday were so bloody cold I thought I might die the one time I opened the door (it was 53-54f, yes I'm melodramatic about temperatures under 60, I'm from Southern California). At one point we were getting sideways rain and the wind blew a bunch of things over.
   Sunday evening I got good and snug in front of my computer, consumed an unusually large amount of caffiene and started writing. I've been reading other people's travelogues on the writing site scribophile.com and it had inspired me to work on a nice polished travelogue of my own. It's mainly just a writing exercise at this point. So I've been working on the story of my journey into the heart of Tanzania to help the Hadzabe hunter-gatherers. Sunday night, while my friends were complaining about being "bored out of my mind" I was like "I'm reading about the Bantu expansion!!" (which had nothing really to do with what I was writing, so much as I got distracted by the wiki article on it). I actually get a bit annoyed when people complain about being bored. There's so much to do, how can you be bored?? (other than if caught out at the DMV without a reading book or other such specifically trying circumstance)
   My travelogue had some challenges, such as (1) that in my livejournal, my primary "rough log" to use as a foundation, I pretty much just skipped over four days in Nairobi in the beginning -- I don't remember anything I did and my rough-rough log was notes on my phone which were later lost. And (2) yesterday I was trying to jam some regional history in where I visit the museum in Arusha, and trying to make the history interesting and/or fit in nicely. It does appear that the area was "pacified" by a German Captain Kurt Johannes, which is delightfully reminiscent Colonel Kurtz. His apparently cruel second in command was a Lt Moritz "the Hyena" Merker. This stuff at least lends itself to good story telling. As these things go I probably spent 10x more time researching than writing. This kept me up until about 4am which is probably literally the latest by far I've been up in years. But hey I was on a roll.



   Today, "Easter Monday" was actually a nice sunny day. From the moment I woke up I managed to stay primarily outside until around 5pm, having not gone outside for the previous 48 hours. Town was eerily quiet. I expected to hear kids playing and see people walking about and all that but for whatever reason town was just super quiet.
   My mom convinced me to pick apples from my tree to make applesauce. I actually have a bumper crop of little apples. Usually they're all gobbled up by the cockatoos but the latter haven't been as abundant as usual -- must be socially isolating themselves. Messaged my across-the-street neighbor asking if he had any lemons so I could put lemon-peel in the applesauce and he came over to deliver some lemons ... which he placed on the porch and then ew chatted from a safe distance. It seems the fellow who has owned the General Store ever since I've been here has very abruptly handed over ownership of the store to someone else. I knew he kinda wanted out for awhile but this seems really sudden and I really wonder if it was coronavirus related.
   Trevor mentioned that the store now has fresh produce and other groceries! It always had SOME stuff, like sausages in the fridge, and milk and eggs and a few packs of one kind of pasta, but it wasn't really a sufficient selection to replace a trip to the grocery store. I had bene thinking with the new fear of going to the grocery store he was missing a golden opportunity. And I guess someone else thought so and bought him out with immediate effect. Suddenly the General Store has as many of all kinds of groceries as they can fit!
   I trotted over there to introduce myself and ensure a continued honey sales presence there. So weird to make a new business acquaintance and NOT shake hands. Doesn't feel right!

   Then I mowed my lawns and generally futzed about while procrastinating making applesauce becuase I always put off food production related tasks (but also that would have involved being indoors).

April 4th - 4,935 active cases in Australia, 96 new cases in the last 24 hours, 585 total recoveries.

April 5th - 3,338 active cases in Australia, 139 new cases in the last 24 hours, 2,315 total recoveries. (1,730 recoveries in past 24 hours)

   Looked at these numbers at face value, the numbers for the first time went down from one day to a next. But a sudden 1730 recoveries in 24 hours is beyond belief. Changing medical definition, miracle, or tabulating error?

   Two weeks go, there were 1,609 cases on March 22nd, and 1,887 on March 24th, and being as I believe it's said that the virus can't last more that two weeks, the jump in numbers can merely mean that they've decided to suddenly declare everyone who was diagnosed more than two weeks ago to be recovered.

   It looks really promising but I think we need to wait a day or two before we start celebrating because it does seem pretty strange.


   Another number crunching thing I did was I compared the deaths per million of population in Italy (~250) with that of New York (~400). Obviously both areas have large areas that aren't as bad and then certain aeas that are really really bad but that seems to indicate New York is the hardest hit polity in the world (other than Italian enclave of San Marino, 943 deaths per million, but with only a population of 33,400 and 34 deaths its numbers are too low to reliably compare).
   In other news today was absolutely freezing. I wanted to go to the store because I'm out of ramen, milk, & bread, and I wanted to pick up ingredients to potentially make my own bread, but a combination of it being too bloody cold to set foot outside and the fact that I left my hand sanitizer at work (which is the opposite way from the grocery store) caused me to decide not to go.

   March 29th - 3,727 active cases in Australia, 331 new cases in the last 24 hours. Another set up numbers I just crunched, at the moment the United States has 23.6% of all active cases, while only having 4.25% of the world population.

   Today Cristina reported she went wit the taxi driver who drives her to work to get gasoline but there was no gasoline and too many people. Apparently she was eventually able to acquire gasoline on account of being a doctor.

   Today being sunday, I actually took a day off work. It was rainy in the morning but actually quite nice in the afternoon and I went walking about along the river beside my village. There were many people walking about, either with their dogs or their kids. When meeting we would greet eachother in a friendly manner while edging around eachother to maintain about twenty feet of distance.


picture from my walk today

   I submitted a little article for the bi-weekly ("fortnightly") town newsletter today, but was told the issue after this next one might not go out as scheduled. Personally I think they should keep at it.