With a little help from my friends

We have this thing here, when you find a lost hub cap you prop it up against a fence, pole or something in the hope that the owner will see it and get it back. Do you have that where you live?


Anyway, I recently bought a new car (not new, you understand) it came with the worst, nastiest hubcaps you ever saw. I spent the first week joking to everyone that they would have to pay big time to get them off me.



Eventually I had the time to take them off and repaint the wheels a decent silver like uncle Toyota intended. (Mission brown just did not look good)
On our recent camping trip, with the help of a few many beers, my son-in-law and I came up with the perfect way to get rid of them…



I took them for a drive and simply leaned them up against posts, fences and bushes as if they were lost ones. Some poor sad weird madman will eventually pick them up and ruin his otherwise tasteful car with these nasty imports. I’ll keep an eye out for them….I bet they turn up on a Volvo!






.

Lets go camping

Pats 'stick' Scorpion


Smallish female Australian Sea Lion on the beach in front of camp.


A large female Orb Weaver right in the camp.


The small Bandy Bandy in our Billy. (hows that for clever naming of a species)




Yep, lets go camping in Australia folks, these pics are taken from just one four day camp near Port Gibbon in Southern South Australia.
Other countries have great scenery, great mountain views and forests and lakes...we may have all those things but we're too busy looking down to see what we're treading on...
Of course we all know that the biggest White Pointer Sharks live right here in our waters together with the quite deadly Blue Ringed Octopus and many, many other poisonous sea creatures. Everyone knows that most of the worlds most dangerous snakes come from right here, while I was looking up this small snake I found that of the 27 snakes found here 23 of them are poisonous...hell, that’s near enough 100% for me!
..and spiders? It’s getting too cold for the Red Back now we’re into Autumn, so they can only be found under bark, tin or other cover but now it’s the time for Orb Weavers and other hunting spiders like the Huntsman or Wolf Spider which can be seen pretty much everywhere. One of our campers used his hand to collect the odd little Orange and Black snake (Bandy Bandy) and was very sick the next day and for several days after…though he insists he did not get bitten another camper says it looked like he did.
While I was Googling to see if he was likely to die or not it occurred to me that we Australians are pretty blasé about the deadly critters we share the country with.
Indeed our barefoot kids and grandkids were running around camp and playing while one camper lay sick and I was busy looking up his symptoms on the laptop.
Next day my daughter was busy in the camp kitchen (housework follows you everywhere) and noticed a ‘stick’ stuck to her shoe. Upon further inspection she realized it was a Scorpion she must have annoyed… she now holds the record for the fastest removal of shoes. A day later she was showing me where that happened and we found another one… or the same one that came back. (does anyone know about the homing instincts of Scorpions?)
Each evening the huge Orb Weavers quickly spin a new web to catch as many insects as possible before it gets too cold for them and they have to retire to their hides. The one pictured used the light streaming through the cars window to hunt right in front of us each night. There's nothing freakier than walking through an Orb Weaver web in the dark… you know that spider is in there somewhere. I’ve been bitten by Orb Weavers many times now…it’s about the same as a bee sting.
Danger was not reserved just in the camp though, the sand hills are covered with Snake, Spider and Centipede tracks…BIG poisonous Centipede tracks.. and the beach is home to Australian Sea Lions. Not your cute and friendly Seal types, these Sea Lions grow huge (over a ton) and have teeth like giant Rottweilers. If you surprise them or if you happen to disturb them they chase you with every intention of either crushing you or biting you, I know this from experience as I got too close many years ago and was chased up a sand hill. (OK, so it was only a few metres but it was just as well I had brown underpants on that day) During the day they haul out and lay in the warm sea weed, near enough invisible as you walk by, should you happen to invade their personal space however…
So why do we take these dangers in our stride and ignore the possible threats to our lives?
Fucked if I know!



* No animals were hurt during this camp, however one or two of the campers may still die.


.

Why I Dont Work There Anymore

A collection of photos from my workcover/resume folder, I've no ides why I'm finding it hard to find work....any ideas?

















.

Fishing For Dummies

Typical of the many miles of foreshore around Pt Lincoln, nice eh?


The forest where we camped for several days, quiet and full of critters to check out...like the hand sized spider Kev found. (I'd have taken a pic but was laughing too much as Kev crapped himself)


Another bit of the forest, a natural arch.


Port Lincoln from the lookout, really beautiful in Autumn.





The plan was a good one, fishing, camping and Geocaching for a long weekend away with a friend. Now this bloke claimed to be well experienced in camping so naturally I didn’t tell him what to bring, I just told him where we were going, what the camping and fishing places were like and gave him a time and date…
So I get there to find the usual big pile of stuff to load into the car, I didn’t take much notice of what was there, I just crammed it all in. (as you do)
Once loaded up we hit the road with nearly 300km to our first stop at Port Lincoln. I guess we’d done nearly 80km when I realized I hadn’t seen any fishing rods in his stuff… I ask the question and it turned out he’d left all his fishing gear at home including several pounds of rapidly rotting bait on the kitchen table…
Not to worry though, he assures me that he has remembered absolutely everything else.
I commented that they were famous last words…

I've brought only two of my many rods, a few lures and tackle, about a thousand dollars worth all up, he has nothing, so a quick trip to a well stocked fishing shop and he has his brand new $5.00 hand reel with no tackle whatsoever. (Did I mention he’s tight as a fishes arse?)
We sought a few Geocaches and hit the grain loading jetty with all the other tryers.
I did well enough, Tommy Rough, Salmon and a few Leatherjackets came my way in the next two hours but then the Sea Lions turned up and that was the end of our fun. I released everything alive because we didn’t have storage for our catch. He caught next to nothing as his pre-rigged handline had huge hooks. (I ignored his plight)
We found a forest to camp in just before dark, it was only then he discovered he’d forgotten to take most of the food from the fridge before we left home. He had no bread, milk or most of his fresh food, just a few cans. He had no plates or cutlery, only one blanket and no airbed, pillow or warm clothes.
I know you're feeling sorry for him at this point, and thinking I must be a heartless bastard but this is our fourth camping trip and he’s just not learning. He nearly froze to death during the first trip because he only had one blanket then as well, and the one I gave him got rolled up so he could use it as a pillow…because he forgot that too. He woke in the morning covered in frost and unable to walk.
I'd given him camp supply lists…he lost them. Id suggested things he would need so he could add them to his list… he just didn’t.
He grumbled miserably the next day when he had to buy the food he’d left home then continued to winge all day about the cost…
I fished on and regretted not bringing my iPod to drown him out.
I didn’t have it all my way though…my pillow was harder than I would have liked…

During the entire trip he’d caught less than a half dozen fish…sad, suicidal fish!
I’m hoping he actually learned something this time because there's a big camp in a few weeks…another long weekend with 20 to 30 people this time, a big group of family and good friends.
There are two kinds of people in the world…quick learners and Kev..

I’m not complaining…I’m laughing!



.

World of Barbed Wire

Part of the display in Hall 12, 'The Wire Room'. Early and antique wires from around the world.


18th and 19th century wires from Hall 12


More barb wire fittings...wait a minute! No sorry, this is from the History of Dentistry blog for next week...


The very best of the strainers and joiners from Hall 10 'Strainers and Joiners'


This is just one level of the security to get into this renown museum, after this is the strip search, x-ray and ultrasound.


A tiny section of Hall 7 'Droppers and Spacers'


Strainers and Razor wires from the 'Detention Centers’ section.


Down in the basement of Hall 12 showing the early wires and pre-steel barb wires. The very sharp 'Ribbon wire' at the far left centre was made by blind people..."Ouch, thats sharp...Ouch, thats sharp..." (Yes, it really was)


You will not see this anywhere else on the web folks, in fact there is only one place in the entire world to see this wonder. I hope you truly appreciate the risk I went to in smuggling my camera through the tight security, into the inner sanctum to get these shots of: The largest Barb Wire collection in the World!

Spread out before you here are all the various types of barbed wires from way before the invention of steel, through WW1, WW2 and beyond to the modern concentration camps we in Australia call ‘Detention Centers’.
Here to you can see every kind of wire strainer, tensioner, joiner, post banger in thingy and post rip-er-out thingy. (actual scientific names)
To be sure to get these breakthrough photos to you I was forced to swallow the HDSD card and wait the several days to…er.. you know. Next time I’ll take the card out of the camera first. (Too much information?)



.