Day 149 Gympie Saturday 3rd November 2012

Hi Folks,

There are not many days on the road where you don't learn something. Today was no exception.

We were up and away with Dan, squeezed in the front of his Hilux by 8 o'clock, destination the racecourse. Here we shovelled the trailer full of manure from the stables mixed with generous amounts of sawdust along with a bit of hay and some lucerne. We drove to the Landcare nursery.

Me using gravity to assist emptying the horse manure at Landcare.

An optical illusion. Susan is not knee deep in manure!

 The manure to be spread on a garden bed to house bee friendly  native plants next to the bee wall. What is a bee wall you ask? The pictures show the form. A bee wall is a home for solitary native bees. There are also two hives for social native bees. The ones here are small about house fly size. They do not produce the honey volume of the Europeans but are very efficient pollinators. They are favoured in nut plantations and there is a guy down the road here who hires hives out for this purpose.

That explains it.

That would be a bee wall.

These holes sealed by leaf cutter bees.

 After we spread the manure Dan went to the nursery to purchase topsoil to cover the manure. While he was gone i had a sticky beak around and talked to mark who was co-ordinating some Helpx'rs planting out seedlings for Landcare. They were staying with he and his wife.  5 helpers, brave man especially since it was the first time for both. Dan returned and we spread the topsoil. It was then back to the racecourse to pile the trailer high with manure for here.

The stinky stuff suitably smothered with topsoil.

On the return trip Dan stopped for a swim in the pool while we perused the shops. Susan buying new imitation Crocs for $5. I mused what the good people of the pool area  would think if they had a whiff of the trailer.

There is a prize if you can guess what this about. Answer below.

We duly returned home Susan making lunch while Dan and I spread all the manure. Julie our next host called in for lunch and we chatted until well into the afternoon. We will go there on Tuesday, at least that is the plan at the moment.

The afternoon was mainly over but Dan started on his new fireplace and Susan started painting an old BBQ table and chair assembly, hindered by the fledgling chickens who insisted on jumping on the wet paint.

Since we are going further from civilisation (i.e. the internet) on Tuesday i decided to test the Optus and Telstra modems in our car router since they haven't been used there for a while. Neither modem worked properly so i pulled the workings out and took it and the old router from the roof bag inside to investigate. Of course everything then worked perfectly. Except of course for Optus which has an excellent signal here but runs like crap (that is an internet technical term). The only bright light is Optus have acknowledged a problem in the Gympie that is supposedly fixed. A fact about which i have begged to differ with them on their customer forum. Anyway if that is the worst thing I have to complain about life is pretty good.

Anyway it was a good day with some interesting new knowledge. We even had sausages for tea!

Night folks

Simon

Answer: Promotion for the suitcase market at the Gympie Regional Art Centre November the 3rd. Oh and the prize is knowing that you are a very clever person!