long-toothed hinterland dweller

Cat turns dobber

From the archives of an Australian Cannabis Users’ Website    (Nov 2003)

Cranky cat grasses on pot-growing owner 

In leafy Artarmon, the greenery is not confined to the garden. A cranky cat whose meows worried the neighbours has exposed its owner as a small-scale cannabis grower.

Cranky at having been left alone for the weekend, the tabby meowed so loudly that neighbours called the RSPCA. What they found was a fat and happy feline living among a brightly lit jungle of cannabis plants worth nearly $100,000.

The cat's owner, Rhonda M., 49, an unemployed landscape gardener, had turned her green thumb to hydroponic marijuana cultivation while recovering from a back injury.

She pleaded guilty in North Sydney Local Court yesterday to possessing an indictable quantity of cannabis and faces a maximum two years in jail and a $11,000 fine.

Police said Ms M had used an apartment she lived in to grow 12 cannabis plants, which were 100-150 centimetres high, and 16 seedlings, 20 centimetres high, with a collective street value of $92,000.

On April 19 police searched the two-storey apartment and discovered the plants groaning with buds and housed in an illuminated storage cupboard and shower recess.

The rented apartment was scattered with plant-growing paraphernalia. Police found bottles of "root accelerant", propagation gel and plant food, as well as a 400-watt transformer and globes, timers, a powerboard, timber stakes, scales and bags of dried cannabis and seeds.

The storage cupboard, beneath an internal staircase, was covered with sheets of heavy black plastic. An extension lead ran from the kitchen to a powerboard in the cupboard, which had a small electric fan and a 400-watt lamp connected to it. Upstairs, the ensuite window and shower recess were also covered with black plastic, and a lamp hung above the shower.

Ms M. was arrested on May 6 after she returned from a trip away for the Easter weekend.

Police made the discovery after an RSPCA inspector contacted a real estate agent, who let her into the flat, an RSPCA spokeswoman said.

Ms M. will appear in North Sydney Local Court on December 23 for sentencing.

The grooming of nature

This is the entrance to the Hinterland Regional Park - a Local Government facility still under construction, with significant input from a large band of local volunteers who call themselves the Park Care Group.

Set on 58 hectares of mostly former grazing land, it is being transformed to provide a range of 'low key, nature based, recreation, education and interpretive opportunities' in various carefully planned settings. 

There is a dam to attract bird-life, fish and other creatures such as water dragons, a community forest heavily planted with selected examples of local trees and shrubs, an open common, some patches of wilderness, picnic areas with shelters and BBQs and a well-designed dog exercise area - an outdoor canine gym complete with nattily constructed wooden equipment.

All these components are linked by an extensive system of trails and pathways for use as jogging or walking tracks.

By contrast, on the roadside opposite is this untouched patch of secondary growth stretching in a ribbon along the creek banks in the public reserve.  Pretty, to be sure, but a 20 foot high, impenetrable tangle of Lantana (Lantana camara), Singapore daisy (Wedelia trilobata) and Black-eyed Susan (Thunbergia alata) - not the same Susan as commonly reported from N. America - and various other similarly invasive plants.  Stretching for miles on either side are the gardens of residents, a mix of formal and informal, tropical and native, cultivated and feral.

This is what the Hinterland is like - it can be whatever you want it to be - natural or exotic, tamed or untamed.   Our garden, like most, is a bit of all of this.

A cat-aleptic pose

I thought I'd flaunt my new pet-owner status and get Chatterley involved in the Infinite Cat Project (thanks for the link, El).  I got the page all set up ready for him, knowing it was actually going to be quite difficult to capture his best profile as well as the screen.

He gave me this look which was clearly saying, 'Who do you think you're kidding!'

I had to take it as a cat-egorical no.

Afternoon amble

We particular hinterlanders who live within the Gold Coast City Council area, are well-endowed with parks and pleasant little walking tracks.  This is the secluded climbing pathway, just two blocks from my home, that has been built for walkers and horseriders.  It follows a gully and a (mostly dry) creek bed that runs between two ridges; the ridges all lined with homes built on steep bush blocks.

Taken on one of my walks with dusk approaching, here is the distant view of the highrise buildings at Surfers Paradise, just half an hour away.

I seldom meet anyone on the path when I like to walk, late in the afternoon, but I sometimes come across fresh horse manure after one of the pony clubbers has been by.  Often I think I should be taking along one of those doggy-doo bags and scoopers to collect it for my garden.  Not only would I have it for the compost, but it would save the proliferation of more foreign weeds along the path. 

The worst of these are the umbrella trees that have become a real nuisance in these parts.   (Which reminds me, we still haven't removed those very healthy specimens I mentioned some time ago - the ones that grace the border of natural bushland on our own block.)

I have made it my mission to yank out any I see that are still small enough to uproot.  Here's one that I left on the path yesterday for the horses to trample.

Mystery solved

A painstaking reader has just turned up with the information I had been waiting for.  Apparently the smaller of my my two mystery tupperware containers is a cotton bud holder.  And he's the 'buddy' of the bigger one which is a bin.  This is what she said:

• At first my mind wouldn't go past kitchen gadgets or Big Bird's egg cup, but it seems Tu**erware has gone to every room in the house!  Listed on Tu**erware's 42 pages on ebay I found the 'Bud and Bin'. Noted as very, very rare.  No doubt much in demand, but asking price is only AU $12.  Great for the bathroom or little people's room.  Now, if I had these essentials given to me, I would have known immediately how to use them!

Posted by: Leonie | August 21, 2005 

Thank you, Leonie.  I can now place them in the guest bathroom with supreme confidence.

When Grands Mother

Well it's good to be back again after four days of full-time, hands-on grandparenting.  The whole business gets harder after you've been away from it for a while - the lifting and carrying, the constant wiping (of hands, bottoms and noses), the reduced hours of sleep, and the reversion to the ears-peeled and eyes-in-the-back-of-your-head alertness.  When it's over it makes you really appreciate the dual freedoms of childlessness and retirement.

I have a friend though, who recently acquired her two small grandchildren to be in her care indefinitely.  At my age, she is back on the roundabout of nappies and bottles, vaccinations, paediatricians, play-school, finding child-care, etc, etc.  She tells me that in their small rural town there are four other sets of grandparents in the same boat - having inherited their grandchildren from their own sons or daughters, all of whom, for various reasons, are not able to parent.  Difficult for all concerned - and especially for those not financially geared in their retirement to provide long term for two or three young dependents.  Tough also, to have to give up the pleasures of being a Granny to become an exhausted Mum all over again.

Of course this is not a new trend, but fortunately governments are becoming aware of the ramifications of the problem and are beginning to provide assistance - financial and otherwise - to those caught up in this situation.  There are support groups too, for the grandparents who are parenting - one such I have heard of calls itself "Off Our Rockers". 

I know that's how I'd feel if it were me.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MILLIE !

I am sending this greeting to Celebrated Blogger, Millie Garfield in the USA, who CELEBRATES HER 80TH BIRTHDAY TODAY.

Millie is famous as one of the blogosphere's oldest participants and she has been an inspiration for many others to take up blogging in later life.

If you haven't yet read Millie you will find her at:

      My Mom's Blog ....

.... where I am sure there is a party happening right now!

Here is a birthday bouquet of Southern Hemisphere wild flowers for you Millie.

WISHING YOU MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY !

First mouse

Chatterley looks as though he doesn't quite know what to make of this.

(Don't worry folks, it isn't a real mouse, just a door-mouse.)

As a proud new cat owner, Hinterlander has decided she needs to advertise her status.  She's currently browsing through a selection of appropriate designer merchandise available for on-line purchase.

House-hunting

This is the view from the back of our house.  The small tree with white flowers in the left foreground is a frangipani that we planted on our block of land.  The tall trees are on our boundary; beyond is a public reserve along a dry creek bed.  There is no fence as the undergrowth along the creek banks have made the reserve inaccessible to the public.

High up in the tree in the centre of the picture is a round hole in the trunk where a large branch has broken off.  About 30 feet from the ground and with a convenient side branch for perching on, it would make an ideal nest location.

Every spring for the past 5 years we have watched a succession of birds come and check out that hollow as a possible nest site.  It is not really deep enough, and so, after careful consideration, they always decide against it. 

Yesterday this pair of rainbow lorikeets arrived to give it the once over, but they too, moved on.

Pity!  We would have liked them as neighbours. 

If we had a ladder long enough, and a head for heights, we'd place a home-made nesting box somewhere up there for them.

Button cute

Soon after being reminded in a comment yesterday of the old phrase, 'cute as a button', I find a whole post elsewhere devoted to just that - cute buttons.   

Brisbane-based Suburbansider is one of the huge band of enthusiastic (dare I say fanatical?) Craft Bloggers, who, when they are not busily blogging (and blogging pages that are oh so pretty and meticulous, too) are flat out designing, cutting, stitching, embroidering and photographing  their whimsical, zany, cuddly - and usually, highly impractical - soft toys and other works of art.  The doyen of this young crafty set appears to be none other than Loobylu, Melbourne toy-maker and long-time blogger as well as young mother, Claire Robertson.  In fact, hers was the first blog I ever read, some 4 or 5 years ago.

These craft bloggers have created a delightful world of their own - full of colour, gentleness and fun - and universally free of bitterness, complaint, or offensive words and images.  Many are young stay-at-home mothers who are also putting in the hard yards rearing their children and as homemakers.  Their blogs carry pictures of silky skeins and fabrics, of bright cheeky prints and cute animal faces and shapes.  They comment freely with their oohs and aahs (Loobylu regularly sweeps up 30 or more to a post) generously sharing their ideas and offering genuine praise for the efforts of others.

According to Suburbansider today, now  'button mania is spreading the web'.  Her post was accompanied by a set of greatly enlarged photographs of various odd and unusual buttons.  It seems that vintage buttons are especially prized - the kind you find in a rusty biscuit tin in your grandmother's bottom drawer.  Off I went to rumage in my button jars, remembering some that I originally picked up from my grandmother.  Yep, there are a few rather good ones there.  Will I take up whatever craft it is that makes use of these wondrous button finds?  Or should I become familiar with e-Bay and discover how much they're worth?

Not a crafty bone in my body I'm afraid, so the 'cute as' buttons are back in the jars for now.  I will continue to look in on Looby and her friends every so often though.  While ever our young can collect buttons and sew 'softies' there's still plenty of good out there in the world.