Gardening Tips

I bought one of them Venus Fly Trap plants the other day and the blowies kept getting on it...I fixed 'em, I sprayed it with a bit of sheep dip.

I planted some beans, and on the packet it said 'Don't water for a couple of days', well I didn't water them, but I was wondering if the eight inches of rain we had would make any difference.

The rain was that thick that the fish were swimming a foot above normal river level without knowing they were up in the rain.

A Mighty Move

Well folks, It looks like my famous writing career has come to an end, Oh! I can still write, but unless I mail the stories to you they will not appear in print.

My flash in the pan is lacking a publisher.   So, what.  I was never going to make a motza anyway, and was only happy that my ego could be stroked.

I love the Outback, I love Australia...Well the Australia I was born in, not this one we have now...I do not want to control people but I do not want to be with people that are out of control...Our soft gutted politicians will let the country be taken over by those that have no idea what he Australian ethic means to us oldies, and when the ethic is completely gone, the ones that changed it will complain more.

We Aussies wont change anything, we are too complacent, and we were happy with the country, and we are too bloody slow to stop the rot.

If you reckon that Gallipoli was a big Churchill blunder, and it was, wait until the full repercussions of our immigrations policy, and the complete failure of the Multi-cultural concept , which is only a blind to hide the truth, causes the chaos it is heading for.

I might write a blog from Taiwan, I have an urge to live out the last days of my life in a different country as a foreigner, so I can try to change the country to what I came from.  Surely Taiwan  had an Outback.

Maybe if I get an old wooden boat and set sail for the Island, I  will be greeted with open arms and given a few thousand dollars to set up, hey?

If you try to get a carer in this country, the per-requesite  is  "How much does it pay"...From what I have seen of the Taiwanese people caring is a natural ability.

Am I sad? No.  Am I disillusioned? No, been around too long for that.  Am I disappointed about no books?  You bet, I have a lot of stories in me yet.

Moans and Groans

My cry for help still remains:: If you know a publisher that is willing to take me on, let me know.

There are many things in life that one can control, and make the best of.  Unfortunately there are many things in life that one cannot control.

I am in a situation where I was helped to attain one of my long time dreams, then that dream was destroyed.  I found it difficult to control the anger I felt.  One would think that a person my age would be able to say, So be it, and move on'.

It is my age, too, that attributes to the anger, and the feeling complete frustration I am now having.  I am too old to go search for another avenue to publish my books, hours of writing, hours of hope, hours of disappointment now with only the latter remaining.

Sultanas in the Stew

This true event happened fifty years ago, and shows that camp cooking is not all it is cracked up to be.

Me, and three other blokes decided to go pig shooting up around Moree in NSW west, we camped in a good spot not far from water hole that held some yabbies, which we caught, laid on the hot coals and ravished when they turned red.

The night saw me cooking up a stew for us all, a rabbit, some yabbie meat, a lump of beef, that was given to us and spuds, pumpkin, onions, tin peas carrots and whatever I could put my hand on.

It stewed for most of the day on a very slow heat, in a two gallon camp oven, and when we got back to camp after a bit of pig hunting, I mixed up the gravy.  Curry, plain flour and water with a goodly dash of hot sauce.

It was too early to serve it up so I lifted the camp oven and put it in the meat safe, and closed the door...I reckon that a stew heated up the second time has better flavour.

The bloke on the property came down in the evening to ask us to have a shoot on his lucerne patch, as the 'roos were eating it out, and what they were not eating they were jumping all over.

It was dark when we got back, and I got the camp oven out of the meat safe, noting that the lid was ajar, but not worrying about it, and put it on the hot coals to heat up for a feed.

I could hear the fellas belly's rumbling from a yard away, and mine was too...Not from a yard away, it was a bit closer. So, I stirred the pot a few times until the bubbles came and then said "Come and get it."

After being knocked aside a couple of times, I sat back and waited from my turn.  The others were slurping away by this time and making comments on how good it was.

"Mate, that is the best stew I've ever tasted, but I don’t go much on the sultanas." Jimmy said.

"Sultanas, I didn't put any sultanas in it...Dunno what  you are talking about."

Jimmy had piled up his 'sultanas on a log in front of the fire, and I leaned over to peer at them close up.  The other blokes had just about finished their feed, 'sultanas' and all.

"I see what they are, bloody blow flies...Did someone open the meat safe?"

Young Paul owned up, "I just had a couple of spoon fulls when you put it in the safe, that's all."

"And left the bloody lid off and the door open."  I complained.

"Don't worry, Old Pete," Bill offered, "I've eaten worse, and they are good protein anyway.

The next time I coked a stew, the blokes went through it like they were looking for gold.

"Darn!" Said Bill, "No protein this time."

Gardening Tips from Old Pete

If you should  happen to use one of those porcelain Guzunders for planting out, make sure you use a good potty mix.

The Adventures

The Adventures are not real you know! they are a fragment of my imagination, and were concocted in moments of aberration and unsteadiness of mind.

I never got to finish the yarn, but they did get to where they were going, so that's summit I 'spose.

There are more issues of the Adventures in this blog, and I must admit that it amazes me to see Adventures #8 getting so much attention????


The Adventures, IN FULL, are now under Adventures part 8, and as you will notice I have used my simple wonderful and brilliant o powers of information provisos by putting them on the page in the opposite order to that of what a sensible person would do.

Nostalgia

I would not really go off crook if someone accused me as being in mock of the great Outback, especially these days.

I live in the beautiful sea side holiday resort on the New South Coast of Australia, writing about the Outback, or Outback  experiences, but it is from memory, most of it, and to me, that is good, as I did go back to the Outback about thirty years after I left there and it was sad, it was disappointing, it was not what I had hoped it would be.

There were Video Hire shops, there were kids sitting in the streets drinking from brown paper bags, and get this for destroying the Outback dream..There were neon signs...Didn't need 'em in my day...we knew where everything was.

Luckily for me, I developed an instant love for that country  in the early days, a bit like falling for a cane toad, I guess, but I fitted in, mostly and earned my right to complain about the flies, the heat, the floods, the droughts the fires and the crook bosses, but only to me' mates...You never want to let anyone else know how good it is, or they  will turn up in droves.  Like now.

It is probably a good thing that I write novels, fiction based very loosely on fact  or Fair Dinkum events that may or may not have happened., which is how fair Dinkum is. I liken this to making a Fair Dinkum bush stew in a camp oven: You toss in some steak, some chops some rabbit some duck lots of spuds and pumpkin, onions and all the stuff that looks like some sort of vegetation in the bottom of the tucker box, water, curry powder to taste, or to take the taste away, and let it simmer...You never really know how it is going to turn out, but you can bet your busted braces that it is going to taste good.....I hope me' yarns are like that.

Now, about the coast: I have two lively doggies that love the beach and the water, and when I toss them into this 'camp oven of happiness', they love me more than ever...That can't be bad, Hey?

In my dotage, I recall the times, when living at Bondi as a kid, my mum and dad would want to walk on the beach, in the long summer evenings.  Times when  you could do that without taking a baseball bat, ifn' ya' know what I mean.

I don't recall my parents ever going out together except for these times, I mean, I was the youngest of seven kids, so even I could see why this happened.

But now, like today, after the doggies had run themselves ragged, we sat on the sand, the evening cooling, watching the ocean, and me thinking of those most beautiful days when Mum, Dad and me would sit like we did just talking about life...Brings a little tear, It does.