Tasmanian Life

Some pix from Geeveston’s annual car show. This was only a few of the vehicles displayed. Made me wish I bought that old FJ back in the day!

My kids were enjoying a school holiday movie when they saw something staring at them from the other side of the glass.

It was a big tiger snake moving along the brickwork.

It was either very curious or staring at its own reflection in the windows.

I went out to move it along. It was not happy to see me, doing the cobra thing with its neck.

We rarely see tiger snakes, but when we do its not around the dams, as you might expect, but at the house.

A few years ago we had a small one banging its nose against the back door.

We had a bigger one lying next to the bins, which my wife discovered as she took out a rubbish bag.

We forget they are around and get lazy watching our step.

Suffice to say, the recent visitor made us wary again, especially in warm weather.

We hear secondhand stories about horses, dogs and cattle getting bitten in farmer’s paddocks, but it’s not happened here, as far as I know, and we have many pets and other animals roaming around.

As a former Adelaide resident, I found SA’s eastern brown snakes more concerning, as they were common, very fast, and actively hunted in daylight.

The tiger snakes here seem to just mooch around, until disturbed.

Out in the forests, around the button grass and rivers, they are abundant. We often see them while walking.

They move quickly at times and one raced out onto a bush track in front of us, presumably while hunting.

We also see them on roads.

Tassie has two other snake varieties, but I’ve never seen a copperhead or whip snake in the Huon.

Keeping the grass short is important in fire country in summer.

I run a Kubota TG1860 ride-on mover, which I have kept going without resorting to buying pricey OEM parts.

The alternative belts that worked for me are an 11A0890 on the fan, B2692 on the 48″ deck, and a B57 kevlar on the clutch.

I’ve added a relay to the starter solenoid to make sure the starter motor gets 12v+ every time, otherwise it just “clicks”.

The stop solenoid packed it in so I ran a stainless wire though to the engine and tied it to a lever to turn it off.

Replacing the deck bearings has proved easy enough though a bit time-consuming.

Keeping the deck going has required welding of small cracks on the outer edges.

Some day the diesel injectors and pump will need work and it will then be out of my hands, fingers crossed until then.

Can always bring the sheep and horses in when the mower is down and grass is growing.

I am told people used to make fun of the Huon Valley because it was so cold and damp everything went moldy.

Maybe that is true, I don’t know.

What I do know is that it is the driest I have seen it on the farm in our 12 years in Judbury, and the weather bureau is backing up my observation.

According to the bureau’s soil dryness index, Judbury had the driest soil in the state on January 25, 2024.

That’s right – not the dry midlands, not the dry east coast – part of the “cold and damp” Huon Valley was bone dry.

There is no data for neighbouring Glen Huon or Lonnavale, but the available figures show Huonville’s soil is far less dry.

We have had a couple of 40C days during our 12 years here.

But overall the climate has been mild, with a drying trend.

Twelve years ago we had to wear gumboots outside in winter and spring because the paddocks were boggy.

Not any more.

So we aren’t going moldy. Far from it.

What is in store next year?

The once reliable sorta-spring-fed dam in our gully is bone dry.

Yes, it is summer, but I don’t recall the dam drying out like this before in our 12 years here.

It has only emptied when a pipe burst or when I was irrigating too much and it drained out.

The dam was only half full during the winter and the soil has no moisture to top it up.

During our first five years here this dam was always over two thirds full.

Leggo’s tomato paste, which until recently was labelled an Australian product, is now labelled as having less than 10% Australian ingredients (EDIT: Since this was written, it’s now back to being Aussie again – onya Leggo’s!).

It doesn’t say on the jar where the other 90% comes from.

At Huonville Woolworths in southern Tassie a 500g jar of Leggo’s tomato paste was $4.80 (Nov 2023), while a 500g jar of generic tomato past labelled “Produced in China” was $1.40.

Looking further, I found that all processed garlic products in jars at our local Woolworths are from China.

I could not find garlic products from other sources other than fresh garlic cloves.

Given how polluted Chinese water sources are (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-36022538 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8631815/), and that highly toxic pesticides have been found in Chinese produce, including tomatoes (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651321005406), one wonders about the risk of Chinese food products being tainted.

And with tomato paste and crushed garlic products, it appears our only choices are to buy Chinese or from unknown sources, or stop using them.

It is not just potential heavy metal and pesticide contamination that is a concern.

In frozen imported goods such as berries, pathogens such as hepatitis have been imported in Chinese food in the past (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-16/how-did-frozen-berries-become-contaminated-with-hepatitis-a/6120872).

Is Leggo’s tomato paste now made from Chinese-grown tomatoes? Or do they use Italian or other tomatoes? And are Australian authorities on the ball enough to detect tainted imported food?

I put questions about their tomato paste to Leggo’s, they replied promptly but did not say where their tomatoes now come from. Leggo’s’ response, in part: Thank you for your email regarding the country of origin of the Leggo’s tomato paste. Leggo’s has been made in Australia with quality ingredients for over 100 years. We make our sauces and tomato pastes with love and care, sourcing our ingredients from local farmers and communities where possible. At the heart of our operations is Echuca, Victoria, where we make our delicious sauces. Unfortunately, due to extreme weather events in Victoria, there is currently a shortage of locally sourced tomatoes. As a temporary measure, we have partnered with trusted overseas suppliers to ensure you, our valued customers, can continue to enjoy our quality sauces with absolute confidence. Where possible, we continue to use Australian tomatoes in our products and look forward to returning in full to Australian grown tomatoes next season. Despite these difficult times, we continue to manufacture our delicious sauces at our Echuca site in regional Victoria to support local manufacturing.

I hope they revert back to Aussie tomatoes as soon as possible.

Australia’s food labelling laws appear to be woeful, allowing such horrors as “Made from Local and Imported Ingredients”, which is about as cynical as the sales slogan “Buy Now and Save”.

Lastly, below is a screenshot taken from the Leggo’s website today (30/11/2023).

I thought the Huon Valley was under attack on October 18.

Given world events, who can blame me?

But a closer analysis of the audio suggests it’s someone’s car.

Howz the serenity!

I have had some weird experiences on our Huon Valley farm over the years.

Today, while bent over to tend the vegie patch, a magpie crash-landed on my back.

I’ve been dive-bombed by magpies before but this felt a bit different.

Rather than fly off the magpie hopped onto a short fence just 2m away and stood there looking at me.

I politely told it off for being so cheeky as to attack me, and it just kept staring back.

So – as you do – I started warbling at it like I was a magpie.

It took a keen interest in this performance, and then – knock me over with a feather – it jumped down at my feet and started pecking around for insects.

I kneeled down and pushed bits of debris aside so it could grab worms, which it did, in some cases from my hand.

This went on for a couple of minutes, and I had to walk a few steps to find more debris and worms.

Then our bloody cat came along and started lining up the magpie as a prey item.

I hate cats, but that’s another story.

I shooed the cat away, but the magpie got a fright and jumped back on the fence.

Then a curious thing happened.

Two other magpies came flying in fast, very vocal too, and they started chasing my new mate.

They were extremely aggressive, and as the three flew off I felt that the tame magpie was going to be killed.

Perhaps it was someone’s handraised bird, and the other magpies knew it was odd?

Dunno, but I might have had a new mate around the farm if it wasn’t for the bloody cat.

Whatever its story was, I was sad to see the bird go.

It is likely we will have hot summers with severe bushfires in the Huon Valley this year and next.

The predicted El Nino is likely to be a strong one, with record temperatures already being recorded across the globe.

Canada is having an all-time record wildfire season, Hawaii has burned like never before, and bushfires are making news across Europe.

What can the Huon Valley do to prepare?

Apart from the obvious, like removing potential fuel from around our homes, cleaning gutters and having a fire pump handy, Huonites need easy access to river water.

While we have several potable water suppliers in the valley, landowners are likely to need river access this summer or next to fill fire and stockwater tanks.

Dams are likely to dry out and buying potable water for stock is not viable in an extended drought.

Our partially spring fed dam is already half empty and it is winter.

It shouldn’t be too hard to cut landings into the river bank, much like an unsealed boat ramp, where people can back trailers down to fill tanks.

Not everyone is friends with a landholder who has river frontage.

Potable water suppliers may resist the idea but this is an urgent matter, potentially saving property and livestock.

The access points could be limited to being used only during summer, or drought. The landings could also double as canoe launching spots.

If access points can’t be created, alternatively, acreage holders could be given summer access to fire hydrants via a permit scheme?

The Huon River is a perennial river, we have no shortage of water, just a shortage of access.

Something for the Huon Valley Council to consider?

One of my hobbies is to record the sounds of the night around my farm, and also in wild country further west.

I recorded this sound a few months ago.

It is not a sound I have heard before, and I have been recording audio for several years now.

I suspect it is an owl or other bird, but I have not matched the sound to any online bird recordings.

The owl commonly found in this area is the boobook, which sounds very different from this.

This sound happened only once that night, and did not repeat on nights either side of the recording date.

I am keen to know – any ideas?

EDIT: I have since been told it is one of the sounds made by the boobook owl.