Intro | Wombat News | Mine news
Monkey Baa and Hitler’s Daughter to Broadway!
Latest Awards | February Garden
A Cook, Not a Chef: recipes for ‘I’m too flat out to cook’ days
She sat just outside the bathroom window, eyes shut in ecstasy, pear juice dripping down her fur. She’d slurped her way down to the core before she opened her eyes and saw me.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a startled wallaby. She’d probably never seen a human before, certainly not one having a shower. She flung the core away and bounded up between the apple trees up the hill.
I’ve seen her again a few times – she’s becoming more used to us, or maybe the ripening pears are irresistible.
There are a lot of pears. And apples. A LOT of apples. I’ve carefully only planted very early and very late varieties in the past decade, but I planted a heck of a lot of mid-season ones before that. Out of about 150 apple trees, and 133 varieties, at least seven trees are ripe now. Which is a big many of apples.
If the heat lets up I’ll ring the cider factory and see if we can take them up for juice. I thought I hated apple juice – too sweet, too bland- till I tasted their apple juice at a Moruya Slow Food Festival. But theirs tasted of apples. Love the thought of being able to give friends bottles of home-grown apple juice too.
But with the valley in the high 30s this week I’m not going apple picking. Just a quick duck out in the dusk for more beans or silver beet, tomatoes, salad greens, corn or avocadoes, wearing gum boots because a grumpy brown snake is living in the lower vegie garden, pretending it’s camouflaged among the woodchips that are keeping the seeds off what will be the bed for this year’s garlic and shallots.
Actually it’s probably a very placid brown snake – I picked a zucchini about 30 cm from it before I saw it and it didn’t strike, or even rear up to threaten me. On the other hand, brown snakes can get stroppy when they’re breeding or if you tread on one. But my legs are safe in gum boots. A brown snake has had a go at biting this particular pair before.
Actually it might be a copper head. But I’m not planning to get close enough to look at the scales to see.
Wombat news
They are fat, mange free and finally doing some digging.
For the last three months of lush grass the wombats have just been emerging form their holes for half an hour or so, eating, then going back to sleep. A holiday from all the years of desperate foraging, I suppose. But in the last few weeks five holes near here have shown the fresh dirt out the front that means wombat renovations.
Don’t know if there are any young in the pouches – the females are all too fat and furry to tell, but there are no babies at heel. Interesting, as I’d expected a population explosion from last year. But wombats never do what you expect. Have a feeling that the ‘breed when it rains’ response works in harsher climates than ours, as the ‘roos and wallabies aren’t breeding much this year, either.
Or perhaps they know something about the weather in the year to come that I don’t.
Mine News
The nightmare continues.
The Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population & Communities has just listed the proposed Dargues Reef Development for assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and they can only proceed if they get approval..
This means there will be a brief ten-day period where the public can make submissions. I know this is short – both State and Federal legislation these days gives the public and independent investigations into developments no real time to make proper assessments.
What happens now:
The Department has asked the developer for further information. Once that has been provided, the public will have its ten-day chance to comment again.
This may be in about three weeks time, but it may be longer. It may also be possible to have an extension to comment on the developer's submission, but it is unlikely that this will be more than a few days – not enough time for a full environmental assessment to be done.
What needs to be done now:
This will probably be the last chance to establish what rare, endangered and critically endangered species exist between one and six kilometres below and downstream of the mine site and how they may be affected by the mining, the loss of water required for processing the ore and the chemicals used in that processing.
There have been many studies done of this area in the past thirty years, but I haven't kept a record of them or even of all those who did them.
If you know of any flora or fauna studies that have been done in the Araluen Valley, State Conservation Area (the area above, around and below the Majors Creek Falls), Deua National park, or Araluen, Deua or Moruya Rivers, could you please contact me?
I have a pretty good idea what species are there, but independent assessment might possibly help.
If any students, or experts on any area, would like to spend a day walking through an almost bewilderingly beautiful gorge, to note or photograph the species there, could you contact me? We would happily provide accommodation and pay any expenses involved. A night's study of frog calls or noting the various species of bat here would also be wonderful. Or help assessing the developer's submission.
The Major's Creek State Conservation Area and the Araluen Gorge is a place of wonder, with more than thirty rare and endangered species, from the Araluen gum to endangered fish, Powerful owls and the green and golden bell frog, that have survived in its shelter and microclimates. It's unlikely though that they can survive a mine and an ore processing centre just upstream of them.
If you can help, please do contact me, and many, many thanks.
Monkey Baa and Hitler’s Daughter to Broadway!
I haven’t quite accepted it’s real, but last week’s ecstatic email from Monkey Baa in Tampa, Florida said that their presentation of ‘Hitler’s Daughter – the Play’ to theatre managers from across North America had been a stunning success. About 15 theatres in the US and Canada want to sign up the production, including the New Victory Theatre on 42nd Street, Broadway, NYC. Suspect there will be more to come..
Have always said I would only go to New York for an opening on Broadway, so it looks like come 2012/2013 I’ll be heading to the US and Canada (if I’m going all that way there is no way I’m missing Canada).
Bryan says he’ll come if we can visit the Space Museum in Houston, Texas, and catch up with old space trackers there. (Bryan worked on the Apollo moon project – see ‘To the Moon and Back’). My brother says his family want an excuse to go to New York again and various friends have said they are coming too. We may be a horde…
Latest Awards
The Night They Stormed Eureka won the 2010 NSW Premier’s History Award for Young People.
Baby Wombat’s Week, co-created with Bruce Whatley, is on the ‘long list’ for The Kate Greenway Awards in the UK… wombat paws crossed that it makes it to the ‘short list’.
The exhibition, The Tinytoreum, that Bruce Whatley and I created based on the characters from The Shaggy Gully Times has won the IMAGinE Museum Award.
Baby Wombat’s Week also won this year’s ABIA (Australian Book Industry Award) for younger readers, too.
New Books
A Waltz for Matilda 
This is, perhaps, the best book I have written. It wasn’t quite the book I thought I was going to write, either. Other voices kept intruding, more whispers from the past. Finally the book was twice as long as I had expected, more saga than story.
With the help of Aboriginal elder Auntie Love, the ladies of the Women’s Temperance and Suffrage League and many others, Matilda confronts the unrelenting harshness of life on the land and the long-standing hostility of local squatter, Mr. Drinkwater. She also discovers that enduring friendship can be the strongest kind of love.
Set against a backdrop of bushfire, flood, war and jubilation, this is the story of one girl’s journey towards independence. It is also the story of others who had no vote and very little but their dreams. Drawing on the well-known poem by A.B. Paterson and from events rooted in actual history, this saga tells the story of how Australia became a nation. It is also a love story – about a girl, and about the land.
Queen Victoria’s Underpants
Queen Victoria’s Underpants should be back in the bookshops – the first printing sold out faster than anyone thought it would.
The revised Chook Book is in the shops too now – twice as big as the original edition and much changed and updated. It’s all you ever wanted to know (and probably a bit more) about how to keep chooks in your backyard or at school.
The last in the Animal Stars series is The Horse That Bit a Bushranger – the true-as-I-can-make-it account of a few of my ancestors and the bushranger Ben Hall. The story of a young convict who rode a giant brumby stallion no one else could tame; who won a race, a farm and a wife… and of what happened next.
Oracle is out, too. It’s the most exciting of all of my books so far; set in ancient Greece at the court of Mycenae, where Nikko and his sister Thetis are acclaimed as the greatest acrobats in Greece, so valued by the High King that they are even sent on embassies to other kingdoms. But Thetis has both a curse and a gift – if she speaks at all, she must tell the truth. And when the walls of Mycenae fall in an earthquake Nikko and the wild horse dancer, Euridice, must follow Thetis as she finds her true place – as the first of the oracles of Delphi.
Other new-ish books
A Year in the Valley
This is a reissue of Seasons of Content, with a new introduction, as well as a new ‘What Happened Next’ section about our lives in the Valley since I wrote the book – more than twenty years ago now. I wrote it mostly for my own pleasure then and only hauled it into publishing shape on an impulse many years later and sent it to HarperCollins. It is about the Valley – the wombats, our lives and the dances of the lyrebirds. It is also very much about food: the growing of it, the cooking, the sharing with friends, human and otherwise.
The Tomorrow Book
Illustrated by Sue de Gennaro, a look at the paradise we could create, maybe just tomorrow.
This is a special book. It’s closer to my heart than anything I’ve written before and Sue’s work is inspired: funny, whimsical and extraordinarily beautiful. It’s what happens when the King and Queen retire and go off in their campervan, leaving the kids in charge and they find the solution to each of the world’s major problems in their library and create… tomorrow.
Every one of the solutions really does exist – and the possible tomorrows are very, very good indeed.
P.S. Sue created the extraordinary artwork in collage, using materials she found in her kitchen, from tea bags to labels. It is too magic to even have words to describe it.
Dance of the Deadly Dinosaurs
The sequel to Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior continues the crazy adventures of Boo, werewolf and hero-in-the-making!
The Night They Stormed Eureka
A fresh look at the history we thought we knew, and winner of this year’s NSW Premier’s History Award for Younger Readers
Are the history books wrong? Could the rebels have succeeded? Could we too have declared independence from Britain, like the USA?
This is the story of Sam, a modern teenager, thrust into the world of the Ballarat goldfields, with the Puddlehams, who run the best cook shop on the diggings and dream of a hotel with velvet seats, ten thousand miners who dream of gold and rebellion, and Professor Shamus O’Blivion, who tries not to dream at all. But there is a happy ending for Sam, who discovers that when you stand together, you really can change the world – and your own life, too.
Schedule for the Next Few Months
I’m sorry I can’t accept every invitation – there are often two or three invitations to talk somewhere each day and, much as I’d love to, there is no way I can do them all, or even most of them. Basically, I can only do one trip away from home a month, and that includes trips to Canberra, so I mostly only speak to groups of more than 200 and when it will take no more than six hours travel each way (except Western Australia). I’ve also stopped doing early morning and after-dinner talks.
But as I have friends and family in Brisbane and Perth I always love an excuse to travel there... or anywhere that might involve a stopover in Perth, too.
New South Wales bookings are done by Lateral Learning (bookings@laterallearning.com.au); Queensland bookings by Helen Bain at Speaker’s Inc,; Victoria by Booked Out, (simon@bookedout.com.au); SA bookings by Carol Carolle(c.carroll@internode.on.net); WA bookings by the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre; and for other bookings contact me at jackiefrench72@gmail.com.
February 17-19, 2011: Talks in Darwin. Contact Barbara Hickey at the Darwin City Council Libraries for details of the sessions.
March 1-4, 2011: Probably talks in Melbourne. Contact simon@bookedout.com.au if you’d like to make a booking.
March 19-21, 2011: Keynote address at Wombat Conference, Albury. (And if any schools or libraries nearby want talks while I’m there, this is the time to book.)
March 31, April 1, 2011: Newington Literary Festival, Sydney.
May 9-13, 2011: I’ll be in Adelaide and country SA, available to talk some days.
May 18 and 19, 2011: Talks at Queensland schools. Contact Helen Bain, helen@speakers-ink.com.au
July 18 and 19, 2011: Talks at Brisbane schools. Contact Helen Bain, helen@speakers-ink.com.au
July 20 and 21, 2011: Cairns Writer’s Festival.
October 24-31, 2011: Fremantle, Perth and Albany, WA. Contact the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre for details and bookings.
The February Garden
It’s hot – finally – and humid here and probably much of elsewhere. I’m leaving the veg garden to the brown snake for a while, just bunging in enough broccoli, cabbages et al to see us through winter. Will leave all else – including more spuds and peas and flowers for winter – till March.
Meanwhile, here’s a piece on sharing your garden with snakes and lizards, to propitiate the brown snake.
Sharing Your Garden with Snakes
Snakes are probably one species you won't want in the garden – though remember many snakes like tree snakes, fresh water snakes and pythons aren’t venomous, though of course like most animals – including dogs – they can give you a nasty bite if threatened.
Other snakes like the white-lipped snake are venomous but their fangs are too small or the snakes themselves are too small to inflict serious damage or the snakes are shy and not aggressive.
In fact snakes are very rarely aggressive – you occasionally find a nasty one, especially browns and tigers in their breeding season, but mostly snakes try to disappear as fast as possible and people are bitten only when they try and catch them or tread on them accidentally.
If you have snakes in your garden you'll find they get bigger every year and will usually manage to defend their territory against new snakes who may not be as used to your habits. Some of the older snakes we have here have been with us for many years, and know to keep away from us and aren't easily startled. It's the new migrating snakes that we worry about.
I can't say I'm deliriously happy there are snakes in our garden – if St. Patrick and his snake charm arrived tomorrow I think I'd welcome him... but my more rational mind knows I'm overreacting. As long as we take reasonable precautions (don't go tramping in the gladdies with bare feet, call out and thump the ground a bit as you approach to let resident snakes know you’re on my way so that they have fair warning that you are around) it's highly unlikely we'll be bitten – and the snakes eat the frogs and the frogs eat the mozzies… and maybe our population of frogs wouldn't be so healthy if we didn't have snakes to pick off the slow and the ill.
Attracting Snakes to Your Garden (for those strong-willed enough to follow their convictions)
If you want to attract snakes to your garden, have plenty of lizards, frogs or even rats... and if there are snakes in your area they'll colonise your garden whether you want them or not. A small pond is a good way to attract snakes or a chook pen, with eggs, baby chickens and juicy rats after the chook feed.
Avoiding Snake Bite
If you're worried about nearby snakes, the best protection is wide paving around your house.
This not only helps with bushfire protection, it makes snakes visible so they feel vulnerable and don't come close to the house, and you can be sure that toddlers and people in bare feet won't tread on them accidentally.
We have a pergola above our paving covered with deciduous vines so that our house stays cool in summer (it's a lot easier than mowing the lawn).
Remember that snakes will love rockeries as much as lizards – and any other places they can sunbake with a convenient shelter to dash into if disturbed. Learn the preferred snake habitats in your area, and avoid them... or at least go cautiously – and always let them know you are coming.
Snake Repellents
I've experimented with various folk lore including wormwood – wormwood was supposed to be planted around the Garden of Eden to keep the snake in, but obviously it didn't work as there are snakes throughout most of the world, and wormwood doesn’t repel snakes in our garden either. Neither does mint or scented geraniums or other supposed repellents. Nor can you trap a snake with a saucer of milk – snakes prefer water.
We did read of a trap consisting of leaving a can of beer with a little beer left inside – the snake is supposed to put its head in and drink the beer and not be able to get its head out. However none of our snakes appear to be alcoholics.
I've yet to find a successful snake trap. If you do need to get rid of snakes near your house call your local National Parks and Wildlife ranger, so that they can call in an expert snake catcher.
Don't panic if you see a snake – the chances are it will have seen you first, and will make sure you don't see it again either by continuing on its travels or staying out of sight. Of course knowing a snake is lurking around trying not to be seen may not reassure you – but really snakes aren't very dangerous if treated with respect and if you keep your lawns mowed or garden paved... and don't go dancing in the tomato patch in bare feet unless you've poked it well with a rake first to warn the snakes you're coming.
Pythons and Carpet Snakes - 'pet' snakes
Carpet snakes are a type of python and are found throughout Australia except Tasmania and the ranges of south-east Australia, though other pythons can be found in those areas (except for Tasmania).
There are more species of pythons in northern Australia than in the cooler areas. They are generally more active at night. Pythons have heat-sensing pits in their lower jaw. They use these to locate their warm-blooded prey, like rats and mice. They either eat these whole or squeeze them or suffocate them to death – or at least until they are still enough to swallow. All pythons lay eggs.
Carpet snakes can grow to between 3 and 4 metres. They love trees, hollow trees, tree trunks, hollow logs, shed roofs and even house roofs or chimneys, as well as hollows under rocks. They mostly come out at night but can often be seen sunbaking, particularly in the early morning. Carpet snakes lay between 15 and 30 eggs in a clutch, sometimes more. They love rats, mice, birds and the occasional lizard. You often see them around sheds and chook houses where there are lots of rats and they can be wonderful rodent controllers and were often encouraged around feed sheds, granaries and warehouses for that purpose. (I remember a wonderful python in a flourmill in my childhood: it had wrapped itself round the beams and stared down at us. It's a bit of indelible magic – this giant shadow among other shadows up by the roof.)
Be careful with carpet snakes - they don't like being grabbed and a bite can be nasty, though they don't reoccur every year. That's a myth.
Sharing Your Garden with Lizards
Lizards make wonderful companions in the garden – they not only help to clean up pests and give you the feeling that you are part of a diverse world but they can also become quite friendly.
Many lizards will become used to humans quite quickly especially if you're willing to sit still for long periods of time with small amounts of food on your finger.
I remember a lovely two-hour period up the creek tempting a skink with Christmas turkey. By the end of that time the lizard was quite unafraid of us. The lizard residents of your garden may soon get used to you, particularly if you leave a bit of food out for them. We sometimes have golden skinks running over our feet. (Ours are the fattest skinks I've ever seen, and truly golden sometimes. Kids adore them.)
What Lizards Like
Lizards are timid – mostly. They like shelter – from cats, dogs, larger lizards, snakes and birds – but most also like to sunbake as well. If you've got a good protected spot to sunbake you'll probably attract lizards. To keep bluetongues happy and contented in my garden beds (they are fabulous snail predators) I place lengths of terracotta pipe strategically around the beds and once a lizard moves in he or she usually lives in that pipe which is a safe and defendable home until he (or she) outgrows it.
Lizards are cold-blooded reptiles – they rely upon heat from an external source to regulate the temperature of their body. If the weather becomes too cold lizards become dormant and so, like many reptiles, they love to sunbake.
Skinks, geckos and legless lizards can discard their tails if they're threatened. The tail usually comes back again – not always – but will probably be a different colour and sometimes a particularly different shape. I've even seen one skink grow back two tails at once, one longer than the second one.
Most lizards like to shelter underneath rocks or in stone walls or underneath mulch or branches. Others prefer rocky outcrops and crevices. A few like to burrow in sandy soil while others prefer trees. A few also like to spend most of their time either near or sometimes in water like water monitors, though these are rarely found in gardens. In southern Australia most lizards hibernate during the winter in rocks or branches or rock crevices or anywhere that will give them some protection from frost.
Feeding Lizards
Lizards mostly eat insects, worms, small snails – even very large snails which they suck out with great gusto – fish, tadpoles, smaller lizards while larger lizards will eat birds and even mammals. Some lizards eat plants but none are totally vegetarian although most like a bite of juicy strawberries when they get the chance.
Like birds, wild lizards should always be allowed to rely primarily on their natural food supply. But a little – a very little – hand feeding does no harm, as long as the food is fresh and you are careful not to introduce disease.
Monitor lizards for example will happily feed on eggs left out for them or even eggs that haven't been left for them and you want for yourself.
Skinks will eat mince, eggs, little pieces of banana and sometimes pieces of grated fruit. Geckos, like skinks, love worms but can be fed very small amounts of soft fruit or even jam.
A neighbour of ours used to leave mince out every day for a bluetongue lizard to stop it stealing the eggs. The bluetongue happily ate the mince, and thrived, but still ate the eggs. Bluetongues have also been known to love a little mashed banana.
How to get rid of a lizard
You may well ask why would you want to? But there are a few odd people in the world who don't like bluetongue lizards under their beds or on the front steps, and who scream if they see something slithery. Those people need counselling... but in the meantime they need to be placated before they attack the source of terror with the sharp end of a spade.
Buy a water-pistol. Fill it with water. Stick it in the freezer till it's really cold but not too frozen to squirt.
Now fire it at the lizard, goanna, bluetongue etc. Reptiles hate the cold and this will burn like fire. The lizard will retreat, probably hissing all the while. Repeat two or three times. And it may go away for good.
Hopefully though it won't come to this. The scared human may feel comforted just with the feel of a gun, albeit a plastic one, in their hands and be able to brave passing the bluetongue instead.
The Life of a Lizard
Most lizards lay eggs, usually among leaf litter or timber or under rocks or in holes in the soil. The females then leave them alone for anywhere from 6 weeks to 10 months depending on the type of lizard, the temperature and humidity. Some of the skinks however give birth to live babies. Most lizards are awake during the daylight.
There are dozens of different lizards in Australia, and many good books available to identify them.
Some common garden lizards:
Skinks
Skinks will also come inside. If you find what appears to be a dead skink on your cool kitchen floor, don't toss it in the rubbish. It may simply have suddenly become dormant in the cool of inside.
Pick it up very gently and take it outside, and put it in a warm safe place, to see if it will revive. You can also try holding it on your hand to see if your warmth will bring it back to life. This can be quite magical as the creature suddenly wakes up. However, once it's woken it will probably dive away – skinks rarely understand that giants are their rescuers – and you may lose it under the bed or under a sofa or under a bench where it will become comatose again and may be sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.
If you are going to keep skinks in your hand until they revive, always do it outside, preferably sitting cross-legged on the ground so the skink does not have far to fall to safety.
The most common garden skink is probably the Fence Skink (Cryptoblephorus boutonii). As its name implies it loves fences, as well as heat and insects, loose bark on tree trunks and flat stones or paving. It eats flies and small insects.
The Striped Skink, (Ctenotus lesueurii), is found over most of Australia. It likes to burrow under fallen rocks or branches or bark mulch and sandy soil and it also eats insects.
The Garden Skink, (Leilopisma gichenoti) likes rocks and very loose mulch – the looser the better. It only lays two or three eggs at a time but any garden usually has quite a lot of skinks. Garden skinks eat insects like flies, mosquitoes and pests like aphids as well as moths and worms.
Cunningham's Skink (Egernia cunninghami) lives in rocky areas in south-east Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. It lives in colonies in rock crevices, hollow logs or stone fences. Its colour can vary from area to area.
Cunningham's skinks eat worm, snails – and often very large ones – as well as fruit and small plants.
Geckos
Geckos are found over most of Australia, though they are more common in tropical areas. They generally come out at night and can be a nuisance pattering around the ceiling. Some Geckos prefer the ground others prefer trees or roofs or sheds. Geckos have a wonderful skill – they can walk totally upside down or on almost totally smooth vertical walls.
Geckos mostly eat insects, both large and small.
Bluetongue Lizards
The Bluetongue lizard (Tiliqua scincoides) occurs from south-east Queensland to eastern New South Wales and through Victoria. It loves to sunbake on rocks or even in the middle of the lawn or at the edge of garages, scuttling away if disturbed, though if cornered it hisses loudly and pokes out its distinctive blue tongue. If it's desperate it can bite but the bite won't be serious.
Bluetongues love snails, insects, mice and fruit. The young are born alive usually about ten each time.
Frill-necked Lizards (or Frilled Dragons)
Frill-necked lizards, Chlamydosaurus kingii, sunbake on the ground or retreat to trees if threatened. They erect their frill to intimidate anything that frightens them and they may also stand on their hind legs and hiss loudly (being able to stand up and even run on their hind legs is a characteristic of dragons). Frill-necked lizards eat insects and mice or even small rats.
Jacky dragons, Amphibolurus muricatus, can be found along the eastern and southern coast. If they're frightened they rear up on the hind legs and race away, or turn towards you and try and look as threatening as they can with their mouth open showing the bright yellow inside. They also climb trees. Jacky Dragons eat worms, small lizards and insects.
Monitor lizards or Lace monitors or goannas, Varanus varius, can grow to over two metres long – like most reptiles they continue growing all their life though progressively more slowly. You'll see them either on the ground or climbing up trees. Their appearance varies enormously from area to area sometimes with yellow and black stripes and sometimes just a mottled look (there are various other monitor species which can be confused with the lace monitor or goanna).
Goannas are often found around chook yards – they love eggs but they also eat birds, wild bird eggs, small mammals, small reptiles – and absolutely love rotting meat – the smellier the better. Around here goannas also climb peach trees and eat peaches or apples, though they much prefer the fermenting apples in the dump. A drunken goanna is smelly, ridiculous and often bad tempered.
Goannas usually lay their eggs in termite mounds, letting the heat from the termites hatch the eggs. The young goannas look like tiny dragons, about 28 cms long, with very pronounced stripes which they often lose as they get older.
Goannas definitely get used to humans and will ignore you once they realise you're no threat. They are very good judges of character – one goanna I knew marched into a friend's kitchen, grabbed the leg of lamb off the table and marched out again, quite rightly ignoring all their screams and threats. It knew they were only bluffing.
Goannas in the Chook House
We had problems for years with goannas eating our chook eggs – we like to leave the chook door open so the chooks can free range throughout the day. We finally realised that chooks can fly but goannas can't. Our chook gate remains shut all day, except when we want to go inside.
Instead Bryan has put a window in one wall of the chook house with a perch about a metre either side. The birds jump up onto the perch, and fly through the window onto the perch on the other side. The goanna has made many attempts to work out how to get through the window, but so far it has been foiled, and sits on the roof of the chook house lashing its tail and hissing wildly and peering at us with little piggy eyes. The chooks have become quite used to it and ignore it.
Other ways of keeping goannas out of chook houses include putting down stone eggs presumably to give them indigestion or filling hollow eggs with mustard, chilli and white pepper.
We found though that our goannas (who may of course be more intelligent than most, ignored the stone or plastic eggs, as well as the mustard-filled eggs – and only went for the good ones.
Goannas love rotten eggs – we do leave the occasional rotten egg from forgotten nests out for the goanna as a treat. Do not however expect gratitude from a goanna.
Hazards to Lizards in Your Garden
Dog and cats – dogs and cats will both eat and torment lizards, though some dogs will ignore and some cats prefer birds to lizards (cats appear to be either bird or lizard hunters rarely both, except in the wild).
Pesticides - Lizards are very vulnerable to poisoned insects or rats or mice that have eaten poison. Though the manufacturers may tell you there is no flow-on effect, I have seen too many cases to believe this. If you want lizards in your garden, avoid pesticides as much as possible. Use traps, repellents or non-toxic, organic remedies. (Some organic remedies are toxic.)
Digging - most lizards lay eggs or have favourite sheltering places and too much digging or disturbance may damage the eggs or young lizards. Instead of digging, mulch, mulch, mulch – and then just part the mulch to put your seeds or seedlings into the softer soil below. The mulch will provide lizard habitat and insulation, as well as encouraging earth worms and other insects for them to eat. It will also do your plants no harm at all.
Recipes for Stressed-out Days.
I am a cook, not a chef.
Despite cooking in various commercial kitchens, I still cook best when I’m unstressed. When the world is too hot or too heavy the gravy becomes lumpy and the cakes turn into custard.
When I cooked in restaurants I coped with the ’50 meals in 20 minutes’ times by cooking only what I knew well i.e, what was on the menu, with only a few changes each week. A chef, on the other hand, can focus on food no matter what else is happening in their life – and keep an entire kitchen staff focused on it too. (I’d be more likely to have them writing appeals to the Department of the Environment instead of sautéeing the potatoes.
So here are dishes for stressed-out days, reliables you can do with 25% of your brain.
There’s no ‘take-away’ around here, which is both a curse and a blessing. A curse because just sometimes I’d love to be able to get someone else’s version of a Thai vegetable dish or gado gado, but a blessing because it’s forced me to find some dishes that take less time even than calling for take-away.
Grilled Mushroom Sandwich
This is superb
4 large field mushrooms – not tasteless champignons
4 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped and peeled
1 red onion, peeled and chopped
2 tbsps chives, chopped
Heat frying pan for 3 minutes on high; put down on low and add oil, then the other ingredients. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, till the mushrooms are soft and the onion transparent – about 3-5 minutes. Turn off heat.
Take
8 slices incredibly good bread
8 tbsps butter or olive oil
Butter each slice of bread on both sides or brush with olive oil.
Place a quarter of the mushroom mix on four of the slices of bread. Place another slice of bread on top.
You now have four sandwiches.
Place them under the griller and grill each side till deep golden brown.
Serve at once, hot.
Spicy Chicken Salad
Ingredients:
2-6 cups chopped cold chicken
1 lettuce, any type, torn into chunks
1 cucumber, peeled, seeds removed, then chopped
1 bunch coriander, chopped
1 red capsicum, seeded, cut into thin shreds
Optional: chopped chives, or two spring onions, chopped
Optional: added chopped parsley
Dressing:
1 red chilli, chopped and seeded
3 tbsps lime juice (or lemon in a pinch)
½ tbsp palm sugar (or brown, in a pinch)
3 tbsps fish sauce
3 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
Method:
Mix everything just before serving.
Can’t-be-bothered Spaghetti (very good)
Ingredients;
A handful dried spag per person
Handful green veg per person
2 tbsps grated parmesan per person
1 tbsp olive oil per person.
Optional: chilli to taste
Stir-fry veg in oil while you boil the spag. Then add everything and eat.
Egg Salad with Peanut Sauce (delicious)
Ingredients:
6 hardboiled eggs, halved
4 cups torn lettuce, any variety
2 chopped and seeded tomatoes, or 12 halved cherry tomatoes
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, then chopped
Optional: 4 cold potatoes, peeled or not, chopped into chunks
Optional: 2 spring onions, chopped
Peanut sauce
½ cup crunchy peanut butter OR 1 cup roasted peanuts, blended with 2 tbsps oil and salt to taste – much better
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 chilli, chopped and seeded, or ½ tsp bottled chilli
1-2 tbsps palm sugar or brown sugar at a pinch
juice of two limes or 1 large lemon
Optional: 3 tbsps tomato purée or 3 tbsps peanut or olive oil… these are to thin the sauce if it’s too thick.
Method:
Arrange the salad neatly, with the eggs on the top. Mix all the dressing ingredients together till well blended, then pour over the salad just before serving.
Soba Noodles with Spicy Coriander pesto
4 cups soba noddles, or other noodles
1 bunch fresh coriander leaves
half bunch basil
1 cup roasted salted peanuts, or salted pistachios or salted roast cashews, shelled, if allergies are a problem
6 fresh chillies, seeded
3 tbsps fish sauce
2 tbsps soy sauce
juice of two lemons
3 tbsps brown or palm sugar
1/3 cup peanut or extra virgin olive oil… the fire of the other ingredients will cover any olive flavour
2 onions, peeled and chopped
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped.
Cook noodles according to directions on the packet.
Meanwhile, place oil in a fry pan, turn on to low. Add the oil, the onions and the garlic, cook on low for about 10-15 minutes till the onions are quite soft. Add the chillies, cook another 2 minutes, then the other ingredients. Stir on high for two minutes, till the herbs are wilted.
Turn off the heat. Scrape into a bowl and blend all together. Don’t blend too much – the peanuts should still be slightly chunky.
Place a large scoop on top of the hot noodles. Also good cold.
Excellent with roast potatoes instead of noodles, or on fresh white bread.
Chilled Mango and Mascarpone
Mix:
Flesh of 4 large mangoes
250 gm mascarpone
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tbsp Cointreau
1 tbsp grated orange zest – very fine, no white
Serve in small amounts in wine glasses.
Strawberry and Passionfruit Crush
Ease of making: simple
Serves: 4-8
Time taken: about 5 minutes. You can prepare most in advance but assemble it just before serving.
Calories: Not as many as you'd think, as the cream is whipped – far less than say a serve of sticky date pudding.
Ingredients:
3 cups strawberries, as ripe and sweet as possible
half to one cup passionfruit pulp – about 10-20 passionfruit, or use strained canned passionfruit
1 cup crushed meringues – this is one time commercial ones are fine
1 cup cream, whipped
1-3 tbsps caster sugar, optional – if the fruit is sweet you won't need it so adjust to suit.
1 tb Cointreau... leave out if kids are going to eat this and if they are around, they will.
Whip cream and sugar and Cointreau. Cover and leave in the fridge for up to 8 hours.
Hull and chop berries; add to passionfruit. Leave covered in the fridge for up to 8 hours.
Just before serving, mix them both with the meringues. Serve in glasses or glass bowls – the pink, gold and cream colours are divine. So is the taste.
Two-Minute Tiramisu (a peaches and cream version)
Ease of making: Simple
Time taken: 2 minutes
Ingredients:
Fresh peaches, peeled and sliced
Macaroons, either almond or coconut, or sponge finger biscuits
Liqueur of some kind – kirsch, Cointreau, or rum or whisky or brandy, or a sweet dessert wine, or fresh orange juice
thickened cream
chocolate
Crumble a layer of biscuit into the glass. Drizzle on 1 tbsp of the chosen liquid. Add a layer of peaches, another layer of biscuits, more liqueur, more peaches, then pour a thin layer of cream on top. Don't worry if it wriggles down into the glass – it's supposed to. Grate on chocolate. Leave to chill anywhere from 10 minutes to 24 hours for flavours to mingle.
Apple compote
4 tbsps red wine
2 whole cloves
4 whole cardamon seeds
1 cup caster sugar
2 cups water
half a whole ornage, slices, not peeled
half a lemon, sliced, not peeled
Boil together for 4 minutes.
Remove cloves, seeds and fruit slices.
Add:
12 sliced apples. If they have red skins you may wish to keep the skins on. Late season apples have tougher skins, so are more likely to need to be peeled.
Cook on the lowest setting for 10 minutes. Turn off heat – the apple will keep coking for about another 10-15 minutes.
Serve warm or cold, with cream, vanilla ice-cream, mascarpone beaten with an equal amount of cream, or natural yoghurt.
This will keep in a sealed container or up to a week in the fridge.
Variations:
This is also good with pears, yellow-fleshed late peaches, nectarines, or dried apple, peaches or apricots. If using dried fruit, allow to soak in the liquid overnight before you serve it, so they can plump up nicely and absorb the flavour.
In winter, a mix of the dried fruits is good, with fresh apple.
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