Earthquake

I was having my coffee when things started to rattle. Over the space of what seemed to be almost a minute, it built up and culminated in quite a shake before fading away.    The TV news told us that an earthquake had occurred, with an epicentre near Mansfield and certainly stronger than the mild tremors that we very occasionally feel.    I texted a colleague who happens to be at Mt Buller, who informed me that he had certainly felt it but had no damage.   A (on the other side of Melbourne) rang to tell us that her power was off so she couldn’t make coffee.   So far as we’re concerned, my first thought was the underpinning that we had done a couple of years ago; it had done its job and our house had no cracks or other ill effects.   A couple of pictures on the wall were slightly dislocated, but that seems to have been all.

Solstice

21 June marks the winter solstice.   It certainly feels like winter at present, especially the dark and bleak mornings.

Post surgery

I was glad to get out of the hospital and back home.    Although I’ve nothing but praise for the care and attention provided by all the staff at Cabrini (and the wi fi was fine!), I much prefer being in my own environment, even if there are going to be on-going issues that are definitely going to limit my lifestyle for a while.  There are the obvious ones, such as no heavy lifting and no driving, but the procedure I had comes with its own issues and I am having to work through these.  There’s nothing unexpected; I was fully informed about what would occur, but that doesn’t remove the need to deal with each issue.

The recent storms in Victoria occurred during my stay in hospital, but it was only after I got home that I had any idea of extent of the damage.

Equinox

We’re just about at the equinox — the sun will cross over the equator at  7:37pm AEST on Saturday (20 March), and our nights will be longer than our days.

In Australia, the seasons are defined using full calendar months (autumn is March, April and May), but in some parts of the world the solstices and equinoxes are used to mark the transition between seasons.   Here, the past few days have been lovely autumn days, so it seems appropriate that we’ve “officially” been in autumn for the past couple of weeks.

Phases of the moon aren’t related to the equinox, but right now we’ve got a new moon, leading up the full moon at Easter.

 

Trust for Nature

We all seem to get many appeals from charities, and I’m selective which ones I support.  However, one that I’ve supported in a modest way over the years is Trust for Nature.  This is a not-for-profit that works with landowners  to protect native plants and animals.  It does this by working with private landowners to place voluntary conservation covenants on properties.  It also buys and sell land which has high conservation value.   I’m sure that similar schemes operate in other places, but TFN operates only in Victoria.  TFN has been around for 45 years, and states that is has secured 100,000 hectares of habitat on private land forever.  Part of this includes more than 40 properties which it has purchased and converted to conservation reserves (covering more than 35,000 hectares).

Typically, a private landowner who has taken an interest in the conservation value of their land (and perhaps has commneced rehabilitation work on it) will place a perpetual covenant on it, so that any future owner is bound to observe the specified restrictions.  Some people wish to buy a property that already has this type of protection (“tree-changers”?), and TFN facilitates this.  Of course, when buying, the incoming owner is aware of the covenant, and the purchase price no doubt takes this into account.   In a way, for the original covenantor, it really is “ruling from the grave” – something that some of us would like to do, but in reality is impossible!  But perhaps this really is an exception.

I admit that I only know of TFN’s work through their publications and the website, and there are one or two very minor aspects of their work that don’t particularly appeal to me.  But overall, TFN seems to be doing something very worthwhile, in a relatively low-key but hopefully effective way.

Autumn leaves

The plane tree leaves in our street are always problematic at this time of year.   Somehow we seem to get more than our fair share on our nature strip!

The plane trees are tough of course, so are good street trees – except for their leaves.  The issue of those  leaves comes up every autumn, and so it was again this year.   The leaves were accumulating in the gutter, and the occasional pass by the street sweeping machine failed to make much impression, mainly because there are a lot of parked cars at the time of day when it usually arrives (mid-morning).

But to give the Council some credit, just at the right time, along came a team of guys with rakes who swept the leaves out into the street.

The street sweeper machine came along a little later and was able to collect most of them.

Pity there was a bit of a breeze, and in the time between the manual sweeping and the arrival of the machine, a lot of the leaves had been blown around!

Autumn

While we’ve been pre-occupied with the virus lockdown and related matters, autumn has arrived.  Is it just me, or has it crept up on us this year?

 

Hailstorm

We heard thunder in the distance, and when I looked at the weather radar map, I could see that, even though the sky was clear,  an intense storm was heading for us.

In due course it arrived:  not much thunder but lots of rain and some very big hailstones which thumped down on to the roof.

Lots of hail

Heavy rain

Smoke haze

The smoke haze we’ve been having is very distressing of course, on a number of fronts:  the fact that it’s been caused by devastating fires, the effects it is having on people’s health etc.

But photographically, sunrise one morning recently was quite dramatic:  an orange sun.  Not so different to Delhi, really.

Power Blackout

Things were a bit blustery for a while yesterday.    We were over Caroline Springs way, and the power went out.   In the establishment where we were, the emergency lighting came on, which was just adequate.   But while most of the place was in semi-darkness,  the back up system managed to keep the cash registers going.   And some of the pokie machines too.  A sad reflection on modern priorities?

Over at the sh0pping centre, the place was mostly in darkness – except for the supermarket.   There the lighting was on about half-strength, and presumably the emergency back up was also keeping the chilled cabinets and freezers functioning.   However, the place was closed to customers.

No entry to supermarket

A big branch down

Lots of dust on the car