Of Birds, Bikers and Bats

My garden is becoming more and more of a haven for birds, despite the watchful stalking eye of Basil the Wannabe Big Bad Bird-Gobbler. (Cat Palace erection date: 8-9 April - stay tuned!)

With the perfect amount of spare time at my disposal these days, I recently indulged my inner hippie and made this bird feeder from found/recycled materials. The birds loved it, but anything heavier than a tiny firebrow finch (see Leon Peachey’s great pic below!) kept knocking the top plate over/off, so back to the drawing board I went, scrounged some chook wire from the vegie cage, and a few other bits and bobs, including cat-netting and garden rocks – and I made a scrotumish-looking thingy that has stabilised it beautifully! You can see it in the photo at the top of this post.

Tiny firebrow finches (photo courtesy of Leon Peachey)

The birds were a real treat for the big bad bikers who attended Disorgural 1.0 - the successor to the immensely fabulous Unaugurals that were hosted by BT Humble and Cass for 10 years. A very tiny crowd travelled the vast distances to the remote East Gippsland coast (everyone of them, apart from Tim, in a car!) – and found the wildlife and scenery well worth the trip. (Also the fabulous hosting by moi, ha ha ha.) Despite the size of the non-crowd, we had plenty of laughs and made nearly enough noise to annoy the neighbours! Thanks heaps for coming, folks, and celebrating the Mallacoota lifestyle with me.

Disorg 'campfire' - a far cry from BT Humble's famous conflagrations!

The other very exciting critter to be spending some time in Mallacoota at the moment - apart from birds and bikers - is the flying fox, or fruit bat. This critter, as a carrier of the Hendra virus and the Lyssa virus, gets a bit of a bad rap – but is actually an important part of the ecosystem, helping to keep native forests alive by transporting bazillions of seeds each night. What makes them dangerous is not their batness per se, but our encroachment and destruction of their habitats, so that they gather in places that are often inconvenient to humans - botanical gardens, city parks etc...

The 129,000 strong colony that spends summer in Mallacoota is nestled in the trees of a gully in Karbeethong. Every night these amazing flying mammals flap over my house to head to their feeding ground, then fly home to the gully afterwards. A sensible observer, I treat them with respect and caution. I give them distance, stay in the car when close to the colony, wash my hands after being in the garden etc etc etc. No drama. By day or by night, they’re magnificent – and apparently they’ll stay in Mallacoota for a few weeks yet, before heading to their next stopping-place.

Fruit bats by day - Karbeethong colony. (photo courtesy Geoff Hansford)

 Last night, my mate Kat, her daughter Tash & I went to see them exiting their daytime sleeping place just before nightfall. Oh. My. God. What a sight! The air was THICK with them – one of the most incredible sights I’ve ever seen – and they’re quite BIG! Here's a pic (apologies for the low light, but you can at least get a vague idea of the sheer numbers. This weekend I'll head over again in better light and try for better pics.)

 We also went to Betka Beach late in the afternoon, just to walk around and enjoy the rocks. The light was beautiful – look!

And look at the quirky things people do with the beach rocks - down at the far end of Betka it's almost a 'rock sculpture garden'!

So anyway, with my head chock-full of beautiful images of the natural world, I felt inspired to pen a few lines about the fruit bats, just to try and keep my English teacher skills up to scratch. Here, then, is 

Doggerel for the Fruit Bats: a sonnet

Oh flying fox, oh mega bat, oh Fruity,

Like prehistoric parcels in the trees

You swing and chatter, flap and search for booty

And have a reputation for disease.

Some love you, many hate and fear your power

And those there are who'd see you all destroyed

Despite all this, each magic twilight hour

Deserves to be respectfully enjoyed.

For, like the spider, you have special talents

You transplant seeds and pollen where they're needed

On Mother Earth you help maintain a balance

By making sure our vegetation's seeded.

But best of all, magnificent in flight

You pour in waves above my house each night.

Till next time, this is Batty Betty signing off. Peace, all! (OMG, I really AM turning into a hippie! Are my 1970's roots showing???)

Moon over Mallacoota - the inlet after dark. Why would I live anywhere else?

Post-Unaugural (black and) Blues

A week after my spill on the way to Unaugural 8.0, the cankle has reduced enough for me to get my bike boot on again, but has too many sore spots to make riding feasible right now. Besides, the lovely James has my bike safely stashed where I can do it no more harm for a little while. (You're a star, James!)

What a week it's been. My first thought after crashing was “Fark – my ankle!” The second was “Omigod, the soup!” (5 litres of the stuff in plastic bottles in my saddlebags) and the third was “Oh SHIT – how the hell am I going to get around at school? I've been in the job for only 2 weeks – I can't possibly take time off!”

So... in order of those concerns -

Number One - The ankle – or 'Cankle', as Julian Smee so correctly called it – nothing broken, apparently. Pretty colours though! Have a look at the pics, one week after the event.

The foot...and the Cankle...

Boomerang Boy hired me a set of crutches to get me through the week, and for a couple of days I worked at building biceps and deltoids that would give Arnie Schwarzenegger a run for his money. OUCH! After 2 days on crutches my shoulders were screaming. I was whimpering in a corner, trying to hide from the dreaded crutches and rubbing emu oil into my aching, screaming delts.

Number Two - the soup – those big plastic juice bottles are pretty robust. They did not explode on impact as 200kg of loaded motorbike flung me hard onto the gravel. They also did not prevent the ensuing lever and blinker carnage on the bike, dammit. The soup survived, and some of those ausmoto folk actually got to breakfast upon it – a hearty start to a foggy and hungover Sunday after our wild and raucous Saturday night.

And the biggie - Number Three - getting around at school... OMFG!

The staffroom is at the top of a rather steep flight of stairs. The school (as schools tend to be) is rather spread out. Most of my classes are in the one block, but up and down stairs. As for getting to the library for Year 9 Geography assignment research, or the chapel for, well, God-type things, or my post on the bloody school cross country circuit.... aaaaaaaaaagrh - it was agonising!

However – my lovely staffroom colleagues mothered me and swapped classrooms with me... most of them are half my age, and they figured the Old Girl needed looking after, and got playfully stroppy when I tried my Independent Tough Old Bird routine – thanks folks, you're wonderful. They found it highly amusing, though, when I hopped across the staffroom with a thermal mug full of coffee in the pocket of the Coles supermarket eco-friendly cloth bag that I hung around my neck to carry all my stuff in (so classy!), and didn't spill a drop!

Also – I was so incredibly moved and totally impressed by the lovely manners of the kids at my school. Kids I don't even teach would dash to hold doors open for me as I hopped about the place on my crutches. I heard it so often that the words “Do you need any help, miss?” and “Can I carry anything for you, miss?” are still echoing in my head. What beautiful, beautiful young people.

By about Wednesday I was ready for the moon-boot that the hospital sold me after The Willy-Willy Incident last year – just as well I kept it! The foot was still mega-swollen, but I could put a bit of weight on it. By Friday I could walk on the moon-boot without a crutch.

Today I can abandon the moon-boot. My foot will fit into my joggers. In fact, it fits into my bike boot again, which is great news. It is, however, still multicoloured and still too painful to be relied upon to hold me up, so I've extended my crutch hire for a week. Thank goodness the new job pays well – I've also had to extend the hire of that nice little red car for a week.

Unaugural 8.0 - Hard Luck & HTFU

I wouldn't miss an Unaugural for anything – a freezing night in a tent out in a paddock in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of like-minded crazy people – what's not to like?

Oh yeah, the 6kms of gravel road at the end of the trip to get there, which seemed particularly bad this year – corrugations galore, and guess who came to grief on what will henceforth be known as “Betty's Bend”? (closer to Funkytown are Tara's Folly and Jo's Gate – I'm not the only person to have had, um, difficulty over the years!)

Ouch ouch ouch, and there goes another bloody clutch lever, gear lever and indicator.

Peter from Melbourne appears, picks up the bike for hopping Betty, and goes back to Funkytown to get help, which arrives 10 minutes later. Minx to the rescue! (dramatic music please!)

And James, bless him – I had never met him before, but he rode my broken bike to Funkytown for me. Painkillers were sourced, a custom walking stick was fashioned, and the party began.

Thank goodness Pisshead finally arrived, and let me use his crutches. Yay! I could actually get to the dunny, instead of having to crawl to the Wee Tree!

There was quite a crowd there this year – apart from our fabulous hosts, BTH & Minx, there was Bamfy & James, Nev & Jo, G-S, Peter, Marty, Zippy & Marian, Big Iain and his better half, Moike, Crazy Cam, Fred Murtz, Tim C, J5, VTR250, Pisshead Pete – even Smack came up from Tassie. Andre put in a brief appearance, as did Funkytown's next door neighbours.

There was archery, astronomy, a celebration of the Pumpkin that Ate Tuggeranong (pictured at the top of this post); a big bonfire and a BBQ, all washed down with copious amounts of BTH's home brewed ginger beer, beer and cider, and all manner of other wicked drinks. Fabulous awards were awarded, and hopping Betty actually got one this year (some people will do anything to get their hands on an Unaugural award). Here's mine.

To tell the truth, I can't remember who won the other awards, as the, er, painkillers were being extremely effective by that time of the evening, and things were a little hazy. What a night!

Once again, Pisshead forgot to actually get into his swag, and almost got hypothermia. The day dawned with a pea soup fog, and many hangovers. My real pea and ham soup supplemented BTH's bacon and egg breakfast, to warm people from the inside, and those from far away – Melbourne, Coonabarabran, Sydney – were soon on the road, while Pisshead and I sat like a pair of cripples nursing our sore heads and watching BTH, Bamfy & James do the hard work of pulling down the remaining tents and loading up the truck with all the Unaugural goodies.

The fog burned off, the day turned gorgeous, and we were out of there before midday. Was great catching up with everybody again – thanks everyone, and thanks BTH & Minx for another great Unaugural weekend.

James rode my bike back to Canberra (my Jacket and Gloves actually fitted him!), Boomerang Boy met us at my place with a new set of hired crutches and all is well with the world, except for the hopping around on crutches bit. The good news is that nothing appears to be broken, but omigosh, where did my ankle go?

Unaugural 2009! Wheeeeeeeee!

Why on earth would around 20 allegedly sane people from three states plus the ACT gather in a paddock out the back of Tarago, rural NSW, in early May to freeze their bits off overnight?

Because we're motorcyclists. We do weird things.

The 7th annual Aus.moto Unaugural Rally was held at the usual venue on 9 May – and was great!


I'll tell you how great it is – unco Betty dares to ride 6kms of GRAVEL road to get there (and this was my fourth Unaugural!) You know how much I hate gravel, and I don't reckon the road to Funkytown ever gets any easier.

There were slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (only lost 3 arrows all up), snoring Pissheads by the campfire, ice-covered motorcycles and people with the most amazing coffee-making apparatus.


After the archery exercise and the lighting of the annual conflagration, food was plentiful and the Beer Witch stayed on duty for most of the evening, defending the fridge against all comers and curtseying tres elegantly *chortle*. A new tradition may have been born, with the introduction of SOUP! Bacon, sweet potato and sweet corn soup was a nice early morning warmer today (it was very cold - look at my poor bike as it was this morning...)


The awards were spectacular – outstanding achievers were:

Bill scored the “furthest” award because he was actually going from Townsville to Brisbane, but decided to come via Funkytown (a distance of over 2000kms. Townsville to Brissy is about 1300kms. Bill likes to take the 'long way' round.)

It looked for a while as if Bamfy might get the Hard Luck award, coz she chipped a nail – BUT - Jo edged her out by making a grand entrance, falling over at the driveway to Funkytown. (Driveways SUCK!) Nev, Jo's loving husband kept going - keen to get to the beer, no doubt - leaving Marty, Moike and G-S to help Jo pick up her Beemer. Jo – I am currently holding your award hostage, heh heh – but I'll make sure I take it to Wintersun for you.

Newcomer Tim C got the smallest capacity bike award for travelling all the way from Coonabarabran on his GS500F – about 550kms, and he's only been riding since about February – what a trooper (bet his bum's sore after riding all the way home again today!)

Aeeek got the award again for the longest distance on an unpowered vehicle – he rode 104kms on his bicycle. On my way home this arv I passed him, pedalling valiantly up Smiths Gap. Phew, too much like hard work!

BigIain scored the most elaborate coffee-making apparatus award (again – what a surprise! - although Bill almost gave him a run for his money this year!)

Old Fart Moike got oldest bike & rider, with a spectacular total of 88 years (his bike must be truly ancient!) and in his acceptance speech he thanked aus.moto antiques Johno and Theo for not showing up, heh heh!)

Pisshead turned up late (what a surprise) in his mum's Corolla (an even bigger surprise!) and downed most of Big's bourbon (no surprises there! I believe they are accustomed to drinking each other's bourbon) - and then provided a very melodic background to the campfire chat with his 2000 decibel snores.


Another successful Unaugural – thanks heaps, BTH & Minx – was really terrific!