dublin

Fuchsia thrives all over the place in Ireland.

A little 'corner' shop still survives despite large supermarkets not far away.

A garden snail goes for a wander, all that rain keeps everything damp and green.

An hour or so drive out of Dublin is Newgrange. It's a Megalithic Passage Tomb built about 3200 BC (so it is older than the pyramids at Giza). The 19 metre long inner passage leads to a cruciform chamber with a corbelled roof. It is estimated that the construction of the Passage Tomb at Newgrange would have taken a work force of 300 at least 20 years. The passage and chamber of Newgrange are illuminated by the winter solstice sunrise and we visited at summer solstice so nothing exciting happened but we did get rained on while the guide was giving us a brief history of Newgrange. For winter solstice a shaft of sunlight shines through the roof box over the entrance and penetrates the passage to light up the chamber. It lasts for 17 minutes at dawn on the Winter Solstice and for a few mornings either side of the Winter Solstice.

around about now...

I should be doing this, coming in to land at Dublin airportand then meeting up with the evilmooses for a mystery tour of Ireland and a reunion.

Update: the plan went a bit off course - the flight into Manchester was late, the flight to Dublin left on time and I missed it so I arrived a day late but the sun is shining and everything looks lovely and green.

longhorns on the way to deni

First we came across a plastic bullock team pullling a log buggy at a roundabout in Deniliquin

then the new entrance for the Deni Ute Muster, an event held each October just outside Deniliquin, NSW. In 2008 a record 7,242 utes attended, other records are attempted each year - utes with a dog in the back, utes driven by a blue singlet wearing driver etc. and a competition for the best "you beut ute" (most ariels, lights and shiny gismos) amongst others.

Above is the longhorn scuplture, the other is a ram's head with curly horns.

clouds and fire extinguishers

The rain has just about gone, our three days of drizzle came to a very welcome 92 points (23mm) of rain but there are still lots of interesting clouds around. This was taken on the way home from a fire extinguisher training course.

Fires were lit and...

successfully extinguished, several times and with different types of extinguisher.

dew drops

The casuarina tree sparkled with dew drops after the sun cleared away the fog clouds. Some more dew drops.

stroppy cow

Cows are like human mothers, they vary from the highly protective to the... well, casual. This morning B24 decided to be over protective with her new calf (second for her) so the ute was needed for tagging and weighing the calf. The calf was caught quite easily and hauled up on the tray of the ute. The lassoo (rope over the side of the ute) wasn't needed and though B24 was concerned, watching very closely the things being done to her calf, she wasn't as incandescent with rage as some cows in the past have been. With luck she won't make a habit of being over protective or her card will be marked.

Calf returned safe and sound with new yellow eartags, E16 (the London postal district of Victoria Dock by the way so the calf may grow up to be Vicky), she weighs 43kg (95lb) and below, several cows came rushing up to see what all the noise was about. The calf squawked a bit.

All the lush green grass is thanks to irrigation, though we did have some rain three weeks ago which helped, we are still waiting for the follow-up.

an aussie battler

November 2005: this boree tree on Bundure Station (next to the irrigation area) has lost a branch but looks reasonably upright. The fence is festooned with blow grass which grew following the spring rain that year, then got blown away.

and by March 2007 it looks like this, leafier but leaning over the fence a little.

May 2009 and it looks like the Boree tree is on its last legs, not a leaf to be seen but..

having a closer look I find the reason for the leaflessness is this bag moth (boree moth) - the caterpillars live comunally in a silk bag when they aren't eating every leaf on the tree. This tree actually has some new green leaves appearing. I hope it gets some rain to help it recover from this attack and the caterpillars have finished eating leaves.Campers and picnickers should not use the shade of a boree that has bag moth caterpillars in residence - they shed hairs that can pierce the skin and cause severe pain.

the horse has bolted

Jerilderie has a special relationship with Ned Kelly - Australia's most infamous bushranger - and because of this was given the Ned Kelly Horse which appeared in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony.

When the structure was opened out the "horse" looked like the photo below

and soon after it arrived it still looked like a horse but upside down

But something has rearranged the head so now it looks like nothing recognisable at all (I tried to get a better photo but the sun will not be shining on it again till next Spring .... and then last week it turned into this:

Nobody seems to know where the horse gone, maybe the Council knows.

The special relationship is because of the bold and cunning raid Ned Kelly made on Jerilderie and The Letter now known as The Jerilderie Letter.

camouflage?

Almost works if it wasn't for the rusty bit - a nearly invisible gecko.

rice harvest

I saw this Gleaner header on my way home from work just after Easter, harvesting one of the very few rice crops grown in the Riverina this year. The rice crops were eaten by locusts and ducks, damaged by the very hot weather (rice likes it hot but not too hot) and it was generally not a bumper year. That's rice dust not smoke around the header.