Responsibility

In August of this year there will be an Anniversary, of sorts.  On the 18^th August 2008 I commenced a 3-month term of engagement with my Governmental agency.  Klara and I discussed what this would mean and how, having moved lock, stock and barrel out of Sydney to Stuki it would by disruptive to our plans.  But it was only 3 months; the money would be useful, etc., etc.

Forgetting for a moment how my employers keep renewing (or at least dragging me back after a few months of insistent “leave”) I want to dwell on what I wanted to achieve in the down-time during that original 3 months: the non-working part of the week.  In the mid to late 1970’s, during my Kendo years, I had briefly sampled the art of Iaido during a seminar in France.  Iaido is the art of drawing a Japanese Katana from its sheath and cutting imaginary opponents.  3 months should be enough for me to reacquaint myself with this weapon and begin to develop the deeper side: the invisible side.  Picture the movements within Iaido as the tip of the visible iceberg.  That tip is held aloft by something nine times larger but below the surface.  Yes, mentally I believed I was approaching the maturity needed for this side of martial arts.

Quite by accident (since I turned up at Bob Brown’s Wollongong Dojo for Iaido but they were practicing some “stick” art first) it is also the anniversary of my commencement of the two internationally recognised forms of Jodo – Seitei and Shinto Muso Ryu.  I would unequivocally state the highs and lows of all these arts have maintained my sanity during our time back in Sydney.  Even Klara has taken up the three (for Seitei Iaido, Seitei Jodo and Shinto Muso Ryu Jojutsu are three separate skills) although she would be the first to profess not quite so single-mindedly. 



Canberra 2009.  Not even in the picture



As time passes by the arts have taken us inter-State to Canberra, Perth and Melbourne and will, in July/August be partially responsible for our time in the UK and Japan.  We’ve also begun to crawl up the line of people within each Dojo as our grades and experience increase.  Part of me is not too keen on this crab-like crawl to the left (seniors are on your left, juniors to your right) as this brings both the responsibility to impart hard-fought-for knowledge and strips time away from active learning.  Tonight this narrow-minded attitude has to change.

Tonight, for the very first time, a Seitei Jodo club is to be opened in Sydney (at a Senior Citizens Centre!!) with Klara and myself as the seniors.  I will not say the Sensei word and we do follow Wollongong’s 4^th Dan Bob Brown in this respect and believe only 5^th Dans and above should don the “S” word with any meaning.  New South Wales has one 4^th Dan, one 3^rd, a 2^nd Dan (me) and a smattering of 1^st Dans (including Klara), however my point is at long last Wollongong will not be the only place within New South Wales where the Seitei form of this Japanese stick art is practiced.  Despite our personal reservations, we do have an obligation to pump something back into the System that formed us and this must be a good thing for Seitei Jodo. 

Eden......

There is a profound contrast between life in Sydney and that at our farm, Stuki.  Sydney isn’t up there in the list of the world’s worst cities and our lifestyle there isn’t that bad but, coming home to our ‘farm’, is like being transplanted to Eden.  If you can imagine the most peaceful place on this planet it still could not compare to the utter tranquillity of the Far Paddock: the paddock where, through toil, sweat and pure bloody-mindedness, we’ve hewed something out of nothing.

When we first cast eyes upon this little valley it was claustrophobic and overgrown with 2 metre-high Setaria grass, Tobacco bush, abandoned, piled-up stumps and unwanted offcuts from two generations of Irish immigrant loggers.  It was a jungle surrounded by a bigger jungle.  The only way out was to follow the creek back to the shed or climb a few hundred metres up hills of impenetrable bushland where you could perish and never be found.  It was home to occasional wild dogs, hidden snakes, big Goannas, leaches and Stinging trees.  Beauty needed a makeover.

Through many weeks of toil with our tractor Issy, pulling the old stumps into a pile and burning them off, the paddock slowly took shape.  I can’t begin to tally the litres of water we needed just to stay hydrated every day.  It seemed unremitting but although The Far Paddock was stubborn it was going to be an Orchard whether it wanted to or not. 

The first Macadamia tree was carefully laid down mid 2008, followed over the next three years by another 150 - not all of which are residents in our Far Paddock.  Perhaps we are a little too far South for this semi-tropical native as it prefers absolute wind-free conditions with temperatures in the high twenties throughout the year – day and night.  We can only offer that temperature half the year, not Winter.  In Winter it can drop to minus one overnight but can still peak well above 25 degrees during a sunny Winter's day.  So far, they’ve been up to the challenge and the earliest plantings are beginning to blossom from saplings to small trees.  Bit by bit they’re overcoming the bloody Curl Grubs (a curse in any area of logged timber due to the amount of dead wood to feed on) and us neglecting them by working in Sydney.  They are turning into an Orchard.  To walk along the lines of saplings and juvenile trees is to be transported to Eden.  If I were to be fatally bitten by a Black Snake I could think of no more peaceful a place to be and leaving them for the long drive to Sydney yesterday was gut-wrenching, as usual.

.....and an Intruder.....



That afternoon, driving back over to the tin shed we call Home we  returned to find a 1.5 to 2 metre Diamond Python  looking to move in. Maybe he wanted to feed on mice or Sharpie and Patches, our Cockatiels. Who knows.   But he wanted in.  Being non poisonous I decided to catch it – it wasn’t happy and proceeded to lovingly try and crush my hand and wrist.  Lucky for me he was only half grown and, apart from the odd hssss, he was reluctantly released a bit further away.   Come back and try again when you’re bigger…… I've seen some of ours: they are over 3 metres long and fat with mammalian prey.

Da Sheriff

One of the more annoying aspects of my job is having to deal with field-based staff who think driving a Governmental vehicle gives them special privileges to speed, tailgate and generally act like a hoon.  There are serial offenders to this list and, this afternoon, I’m going to read the riot act to one particular individual who must have hailed from the Eastern European tank school of driving.   

Having said this I’m not generally a hard-case manager.  I find I squeeze a lot more from staff by gauging their strengths and weakness and acting accordingly.  To those who give me and their job approaching 100% I’m more than willing to give them the same in kind.  What I do not like, though, are those that “take the piss”.  Governmental jobs do that to, thankfully, a small number but this small number provides an awful amount of unwelcome distraction from my usual chores.  Such people think the System armours them with steel plate excuses and therefore invulnerable to action from the very same System.  I'm one of this tribe who believes we only have ourselves to blame.

This week, the one leading up to Easter, my life is being taken over by official and unofficial (as yet, that is) staff issues: not just of my own but also of those I’ve inherited on a temporary basis and at least one other who feels the System has let his own staff down.  They range from the absolutely serious like allegations of racial abuse, theft and actual violence to the stupid, like speeding in a school zone, to the internally self-inflicted like management bickering over how they deploy their staff and demarcation.

Maybe after then I can deal with the fall-out over the new Government’s embargo on certain sensitive issues like speed cameras and employment.  A few meetings about that this week, let me tell you!

And maybe it’ll be Easter by then and I can go home to our farm and forget everything until late next week. 

The sheriff.  Before the disciplinary interview...

Pretty grim visage and it wouldn't be out of place in a Tarantino film.  Shocking to see the grey hairs in that dodgy mo'.

Sounds like a plan to me.

Will the earth move for us?

Our tickets are booked and we’re off to the UK for a few weeks at the tail end of July.  On the return leg I’ve arranged for another two weeks stop off in Japan.  The Land of the Rising Sun.  Plus earthquakes, tsunami and the odd radiation hot-spot.  Jenna and Jason are flying in a few days behind us and truly looking forward to the trip.

The only time Klara and I stopped in Japan was for an overnighter:  Japan Airlines, while moving us from Sydney to London, did so via a 12 hour stopover and provided a hotel as part of the package.  We flew separately as I had to return to tidy up some work affairs.  Neither of us saw anything of the beauty of Japan: only the dreary, sodden-grey trip from the hotel back to Narita airport.

Looking at the newspapers and advice from various travel agencies it would appear misguided to visit Japan.  I don’t think so.  Annually, and I do mean every year, Japan receives the full brunt of one fifth of the world’s most serious earthquakes.  Every year.  In the large cities tall buildings are designed to withstand major shocks, swaying like treetops in the wind.  Although you may never get me up there to confirm this swaying I feel far safer in the knowledge Japan knows a bit about managing the effects of natural disasters.  “But what do I know?” he ask's, rhetorically.

I do know until two years ago I’d never experienced an earthquake and while Australia has some minor tremors rarely do they cause loss of life or significant damage.  However while sitting relaxing during a lunchtime break at our farm there was a distant rumble.  Rather like a rumble of distant thunder.  Where it differed from thunder was it wasn’t 'directional', was far more visceral in it’s effect and went on for far longer.  An humbling feeling considering the paltry 3.6 richter scale at almost 100 kilometers away.

In August, we aren't there as some eathquake-chasing, vampiric tourists.  We’ll have statistically a good (or bad?) chance to experience tremors or aftershocks but as Japan's situated on the convergence of four tectonic plates that's understandable.  In fact, Tokyo has been waiting another big one for years and it’s overdue by a few years now.  Last time, 140,000 people perished in the area back in 1923: an event commemorated by September 1^st being designated Disaster Prevention Day.  It’s the day we fly back out of Tokyo to Sydney.  Well, that’s the plan but more of plans later.

Chance meetings

Birth is a wondrous thing: especially when witnessed without warning.

Last weekend we were home and clearing up the middle paddock – slashing, digging raised planting beds, etc., - and decided to move the Red-Bellied Hatchery before it was squashed under the wheels of Izzy, our tractor.  Looking gingerly into the tyres I saw one of the eggs hatching and a head slowly moving about.  Strange head though.  Didn’t have the shape of a snake’s head.  And it wasn’t.

I picked it up, helped free it from the shell and it lay there, in all it’s lizard-like glory, gathering heat from my hand and eyeing me suspiciously.  It didn’t look like the head shape of a Goanna but more resembled a Water Dragon.  These Dragons love our riparian zone areas and bask unashamedly in the sunshine until disturbed.  Then they rise up on their hind legs and scamper comically for cover, head-back like the runner Eric Liddell out of the film Chariots of Fire.  I did have an adult version on my shoulder a year or two back.  He/she/it was dormant due to the late Autumn cold, had big claws and was remarkably heavy.  Anyway, we couldn’t keep the hatchling or his brothers/sisters – the vivarium would need to be large and we’d need a licence to keep aussie wildlife.

Physignathus lesueurii lesueurii, the Eastern Water Dragon

Back in the home paddock I was pottering about trying to prepare the beds for a few weeks absence.  We’ve a few tall chilli bushes in pots.  Standing next to the chilli I looked closely and there, waving its body backward and forward, was the most inquisitive tree snake!  NOT venomous, but big-eyed and keen to slither onto my arm and up to my shoulders.  Kik was enthralled.  The chilli must be on its territory as no matter where we placed it down it tracked itself back to the trestle where the plant was.  Another resident of a country we never get to see when living in Sydney.



The Green Tree Snake, Dendrelaphis punctulata

Roll on the Easter break.