potoroo palace python poo…what is it good for you?

…perusing through today's sydney morning herald (I buy only the monday issue just for the tv guide's funny movie reviews by doug anderson) i come across the headline "rodents put beppi's on 'name and shame' list"… the east sydney eatery, the oldest in the city with the same owners since 1956, has been fined $2640 after health inspectors observed rat activity on the premises…

…which reminds me about a well-known tip around here on how to deal with rat infestation… if you have already tried a mousetrap, blue cake poison, or even the hi-tech sonic repellant… you might want to try something different… my neighbour and many like him, takes in a carpet snake as boarder in his ceiling… the reptile is not venomous and the rodents merely get their lives clinically squeezed the bejeezuss out of 'em…

if you, like me, can't stand these slithering serpentines, however non-poisonous and cute they're according to friends who  incessantly try  to convert you to snakism (like trying to cure you of your fear of height)… you could try this fool-proof rat remedy - python poo

apparently those vermins couldn't stand the sight of these snake shits let alone the smell, which is, to put it mildly, phenomenal… the nice people at the potoroo palace animal sanctuary 9km  outside merimbula will let you have some python poo for free… they will be made available in spring when the pythons wake out of their hibernation - if you like you could donate a couple of dollars towards the animal charity while you're there… if you're unfamiliar with this snake do-dats, you will be informed that it stinks to high heaven… some even say they prefer the rats…

did you not know that...there are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee; of these, only 26 have been tested, and half of them caused cancer in rats...

teh tarik and other milky tales...

while ruminating, the cows get fabulous view...
princes highway, bermagui to narooma ©240612

…there is a secret around the coast concerning buying cow's milk… the real stuff, still warm … literally straight off the cows' udders... because it is not treated, it is quite illegal to buy this directly from the farmer… unless… unless...

...I remember when I was a child, after my mother had given birth to her umpteenth baby - she had borne 13 in her lifetime, an average number among mothers in the malay villages and little towns… one of my uncles sired 25 kids by his three wives - my father would get a couple of bottles of milk from the local sikh cowherder for my mother during her 44-day postnatal recuperation... this was special and we got a little taste of this amazing stuff after it had been slightly warmed on the kerosene stove... coffee sold in the town's chinese coffeeshops was usually served in thick white porcelain cup and saucer filled with half-inch of sweetened condensed milk left unstirred at the bottom of your cup - you just stir the amount of sweetness to your taste and you pour the coffee onto the saucer to cool it and you slurp from the saucer... tea, the 'teh tarik', sold from the Indian roadside 'mamak teh tarik', was also pre-sweetened with condensed tinned milk and poured from a great height into a glass to froth and cool it... however, coffee served  in homes everywhere was almost always black and pre-sugared - you wouldn't be asked how you'd like your coffee - and poured from a huge aluminium teapot... so everyday use of milk was the tinned condensed stuff whilst babies' bottles contained the powdered kind, a popular brand among families was 'dumex' made by the infamous nestlé - it was so prevalent even one of my cousins was nicknamed 'dumex' until well into his adolescence... sorry, I digressed a bit…

…and so coming back to how to get real milk around here… you can get it by asking around nicely to get yourself onto the discreet list - it took ages  to get onto this secret list:  the last owner of the house consumed raw milk… got her to divulge the name of another local woman who regularly drove to a nearby dairyfarm… understandably the farmer got a bit jittery at first when I turned up with a camera, which I always carry, to get some shots of his beautiful spread... he could be in for a fine of fifty grand no kidding...

...there is a line in a great australian movie ( "the odd angry shot" I think...?) the dairy farmer said something along the line "oh, we don't want the city folks spoilt now do we?" when referring to supplying his creamy milk to his friend, a character played by the great aussie jack thompson...

…for a dollar a litre, you turn up around the late afternoon milking time, about 5 o'clock…you don't notice the cowshit atmosphere, operate the tap yourself from the huge stainless steel cisterns while the ladies are being milked at the back… leave your money in the tin box provided, say goodbye to the farmer and away you go with your delicious loot… rest assured that you pay a dollar a litre to the farmer, whereas he gets 22 cents per litre  from the corporation that comes to collect his milk every morning...

...there's hope yet for city folks though… I never knew this in my thirty odd years  in canberra …bu t if you want raw milk you can get it quite 'openly' by going to the belconnen market… to get around the law, it is called 'bath milk' and they will sell it to you for $9 for two litres under the label cleopatra (legend has it that the famous  egyptian used to bathe in the stuff… someone told me there's an enzyme in milk that does amazing things to your skin)… enjoy… in your tea, coffee or bathtub… udderly fantastic...






...did you not know that...homo-milk is a genuine produce of canada...

spend a while

…wedgetail glides… prides of gnats cried…

wide vista of sea tide…

laid like foamy loam…

mackerels move meandering so…

mimosa mirth melts in my mirror…

regaling vales, swathing swards
revealing bales of big blue pokes

sway swiftly agrestically more…

hark back to early days...

when nights were dank

and darkness lingered…

where we waited

when what we wished

whom we wanted

to woo

were wowed…

way ahead

salty breeze salves…

shaking through spotted gums

to shores abound with wave thrums…

how succinct you may succumb

twirl through summery curls

…to spend a while at paspalum point…

finally the sea rejoins the lake at cuttagee beach ©140512

nature of the art

rock patterns of gerringong ~ speak a thousand words, million years in the making...at least, i think...

...did you not know that...the rock group pink floyd named themselves after legendary bluesmen, pink anderson and floyd council...?

the king[fisher] and I

…remember postcard?…yes, one of those paper picture thingys that you stick a stamp on and 'post', the word we now use on fb with ease as if it is also invented by mark zuckerberg?…well, this afternoon i went to the local post office to check if there was any mail and there was this pretty picture postcard from an australian friend of ours who went for a holiday in north-eastern thailand some months ago to see her family…

posted from prasat srikhoraphum surin province, thailand

...it was slightly unreal to hold this thing in my hand, to feel the card texture, to look at the picture of a khmer temple ruins on the front… turn over and there on the top right hand corner the [always] slightly askewed 15 baht stamp of a siamese sunset, next to a blue 'airmail priority' sticker… then the handwriting... suddenly I could see the colours in the curls, shades of the blue ballpoint ink from deep blue to fade-out tints... and you could feel the closeness of the writer who has held the postcard to steady it flat while writing on it... the last time I received this endangered item was over 20 years ago…

...the fact is the sender's already back in canberra  arriving 5 days ago, very much ahead of her much appreciated, much missed postcard… someone wasn't kidding when she or he first coined these words: snail mail ! …

...did you not know that... 'øl' is how to ask for 'beer' in danish and norwegian...?

remote control

…at any weekend you don't see many people in their whites play cricket anywhere around here at the coast…not like in canberra where ovals are usually peppered by these players in long pants…but like canberra, we watch the sport on the pub flat screens…

then again, there usually are many different things going on on different screens in any pub here, i couldn't be sure what exactly are the other drinkers watching…perhaps they aren't watching the screens at all…most times these half dozen or so tvs blare out music clips, different rules or leagues footies, car, bike, horse and dog racings, the tennis match between ivan lendl and boris becker from way back in '89, and the cricket of course…and nobody is actually watching any of these flickering offerings…patrons are mostly trying to talk with one another over and above the whole hubbub…


we were all encouraged to try all sorts of sports while i was in boarding school...but i never got around to knowing what a cricket score means let alone how the game is played…then i got this explanation from a book my son left behind…this is how cricket is explained to a foreigner, it says [although it doesn't explain whether the foreigner is one who is from a non-cricket country or someone who is foreign to the game]…it starts like this:

you have two sides, one out in the field and one in…each man that's in the side that's in goes out…and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out…when a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he's out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in…

when they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out…

sometimes, there are men still in and not out…

there are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out… 

when both sides have been in and all the men are out [including those who are not out] then the game is finished…

…and still...i'm nowhere nearer to knowing what a cricket score means…








...did you not know that...watching tv uses up 50 percent more calories than sleeping...?

dead sea lake

...it bugs me when the abc tv journalist said last night, the 'sahara desert' when 'sahara' means 'desert'… it's like saying a 'jewish synagogue,' or a 'muslim mosque' which is a little bit superfluous isn't it?…or a 'coastal beach'…can we say that?…you may say that there are beaches that are nowhere near the coast…like there is a sandy beach in canberra, albeit a small one… I remember swimming from it to a square platform out in the lake which was caked with seagull droppings, and apparently aboriginals call whites seagulls… I begin to wonder now what aboriginals call us asians... I know the aboriginals in canberra call me, just me, brother... 'you from malaysia?... you're welcomed to our land, brother,' one said to me once in an african club in bunda street... I digressed... yes, canberra does have seagulls which is a bit weird, and they hold squawking gull meetings at night in the carpark across from gus' cafe… and wading through the grumbling sea of white, I imagined what musa must have felt when he split the red sea…

...talking about sea, did you know that the dead sea is really a lake?…keep that in mind for trivia nights…

...oh by the way... that swimming in lake burley griffin wasn't a great idea because I was told later on that waste from old canberra royal hospital ran into the lake... he said body parts too but I guessed this was embellishment to the story... this in addition to the lead dregs from captains flat old mines... the pesky european carps in the lake must be full of heavy metals and human parts... could that explain why there aren't many people fishing on the lake... the popular excuse is that the carps aren't good tucker... then again, all these could just be part of the capital's urban myths...who knows...

barragga point ©160612

...did you not know that...'tfbundy' is an acronym used by doctors and nurses for 'totally fucked but unfortunately not dead yet'...?