Bob the Possum makes an appearance most nights and seems almost completely ambivalent about our presence. They don’t typically join us for dinner, in fact, we make a big effort to remove all food from the outside area to prevent them from joining us. Tonight, they got to the scraps first, and got stuck right in!
Brush Tail Possum Eating Baked Beans
Luckily for Possum, this tin had a ring-pull lid so the edges were not sharp but nevertheless, I was worried they’d get their head stuck or bite into the tin and then end up caught. On top of that, I was not at all sure that beans were a good choice for this little ball of fluff..
I managed to get the tin off the possum without too much trouble, it then walked off, leaving me to figure out what to do next!
According to the Minton Farm Native Animal Rescue website, Baked Beans are a suitable food to offer possums along withmost fruits, veggies, rolled oats, peanut butter and dry dog food. Pfew!
So I put the rest of the tin (about 2 tablespoons) into one of our metal bowls and after a little while, they came back and finished off their free meal before disappearing once more into the night.
Our friendly Brush Tail Possum returned to the scene of the crime at 1am, waking Aub and I up as they looked for another tasty snack. Unfortunately for them, this time the cafe was closed this time!
I made a note to give the outdoor kitchen a very good clean down in the morning. We know native animals and birds join us in this space (it’s part of life when your living space is outside) so we take quite a few precautions when cooking, cleaning and dealing with scraps. Animal-to-human diseases are on the rise (Corona is one example) as wilderness areas shrink and humans encroach further into the bush. It absolutely is possible to live in harmony with nature as long as we remain mindful of the risks that we pose to them and they pose to us, however fluffy, cute and interesting we all look 🙂
While there is always a lot of work to do when you live out on the land, there’s also plenty of time to sit back, relax and enjoy the views.
Along with other things, we have been making some minor improvements to the paddock bath over the last few trips and today it was time for us to enjoy it!
The bath fills from one of our rainwater tanks via an underground pipe. Turning on the tap fills the bath with cold rainwater which is then heated up using a coil of pipe. The pipe travels through the hot embers of our fire pit, sucking cold water up and spitting hot water out! I believe this is called a convection current system.
One of the changes made was to add a plastic pipe fitting to the outlet where the hot water re-joins the bath. This makes the whole thing a lot safer and it less likely we’ll get burned.
The exposed pipes between the bath and the fire pit can be used to heat towels or hand the clothes you want to wear after the bath. That feels very special, especially on a cold winters night.
The whole thing is quite efficient really. We pop a lid on the bath as it’s warming up to avoid losing too much heat and water to evaporation.
The last step in our outdoor bathing is for me to add some of my homemade Eucalyptus hydrosol to the water. This turns the bath into an aromatherapy treat better than any day spa I’ve ever been to (in my opinion – could be something to do with the fact the experience is free and very private).
It’s a bit too cold outside for us both to go in together. You really do need to be able to dunk your shoulders in every now and then. It was about 6C outside at that point.
I’ve been fascinated by fungi since I was a child. Back then I believed that fairies made their homes and took shelter under mushroom caps. Now I know there is so much more going on in the magical world of mycelium, it’s almost more unbelievable and special.
The horse dung fungi is one of my favourites for dye making. Now lots of people on the internet share their beautiful homemade craft projects with you but that’s not really what I do. I actually get the most joy and pleasure from just looking at and examining nature, from seeing what I can do with it (experimenting with process and technique) and giving a few things a shot. That said, I do find these mushroom dyes take to silk really well making it easy to create a gift-worthy scarf, handkerchief or hair tie. That’s about my limit!
So this is what I’m talking about and they can often be found pushing up through the gravel of our driveway or along the roadside into Fox Hill Hollow. You don’t need much to make some really lovely dye so there’s no need to take more than 1/3rd of one if you want to try.
I usually rub off the dried spore material and leave that around the land in the hope more will grow. The wetter, darker stuff tends to make the best dye as it takes to the water better. The fluff generally floats (hydrophobic) and you don’t really want to be breathing it in. I don’t think it’s particularly toxic but I’ve never heard of fungi dust being a great lung tonic…
Chopping the chunky drier stuff up is a good plan as it increases the surface-area-to-volume ratio and makes it easier for the pigmented chemistry to absorb into the water. I generally start with just water but once it has simmered down a bit I might add something to give the dye more teeth – a mordent in the form of an alkali or salt.
I had no silk left at home to try the dye with so I used this off-cut of muslin cloth. The dye took well enough to see a pattern and I only left it soaking for an hour. The general rule of thumb with dye making I’ve found is to make it concentrated, to experiment with different mordent-type chemistry (could be a citric acid, tartaric acid, bicarb of soda, ammonium carbonate (that’s quite good usually but can be hard to get) or even a little iron from a rusty nail in the pot. Natural fibers tend to take dye like this better than synthetics and sometimes leaving the cloth in the dye for a few days helps but in most cases, a couple of hours is enough.
I find this type of activity brings me closer to the land and allows me to see and relate to it in a different way. It’s nice to balance the scientific observations with a little unstructured play. I often remind myself that not everything has to be factual or functional. I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with this rag, tye-dye isn’t really a favourite of mine but it does look quite cool! Maybe I’ll use it for washing up!
We met two types of people when we first moved to Australia from the UK. The first were people who’d never seen snakes but feared they were everywhere and as such, either avoided the bush entirely or approached it with a level of trepidation that was unnerving to watch. The second group had seen one or two snakes in their lifetime – usually from their car windows as they road-tripped across this great wide land and were respectful but not overly worried, seeing them as a theoretical rather than actual threat. Both groups typically voiced the opinion that us ‘Lilly-white Pommies’ would be better off worrying about the sun than anything that slithered as that was more likely to kill us.
After taking that on board we decided it was best to plough our own field so to speak (work this out for ourselves). We bought this book, took some first aid classes where we could and started learning the habits of the native killer wildlife. Then we moved to the bush…
One of the First Books we Purchased after Emigrating to Australia Many Moons Ago.
Within two years of being here, we’d seen more wild snakes than any of our original friend group AND we were still alive (by some miracle). Maybe snakes don’t like how the English taste…
Both Aub and I come across snakes quite often both at our Blue Mountains home and out here at Fox Hill Hollow. When I’m bush walking I purposefully have my ‘snake-eyes’ on at certain times of the year and in certain environments. That doesn’t mean I always see everything – If I’m walking alone I don’t know what snakes I fail to spot but avoid anyway. If walking with someone else it can easily be the case that the first walker disturbs the snake, making it more likely to move and be spotted by the person following behind. That’s definitely happened before. I’ve also had one very snake-infested occasion when dog walking where a snake decided to make a quick get-away from both myself and our dog by slithering between the dogs legs! I only caught on as the snake was halfway past our Staffy. Thankfully the dog was oblivious or that could have been nasty. Suffice to say, snake eyes or not, you go into the bush, you must be prepared for these things to be there too.
Eastern Brown Snake – Pseudonaja textilis
Warralang – Wiradjuri Language
Fast forward to this week and me ‘meeting’ our resident Eastern Brown snake, The Eastern Brown has the second most deadly venom in the world and this one has taken up residence within about 5 meters of our outside lavatory under this bit of corrugation. Sorry, the video quality isn’t amazing but I did feel it was best to give them some space.
Eastern Brown snakes love debris like this and are often found around farms and semi-cleared areas so if you want them far, far away from you, keep everywhere tidy and bare!
Eastern Browns are typically solitary and like to hunt during the day with some of their favourite prey being small lizards, birds, rodents and rabbits. The recent rains have brought out an abundance of small mammals so old BrownEyes could be a blessing for us – keeping our feral rabbit population in check and preventing another mouse plague. However, suffice to say, wherever there’s plenty of prey, there will be plenty of predators. 2022 looks to be a bumper year for snakes so I for one am going to get a refresher on my snake first-aid and make sure I’m modifying my behaviour to keep the odds in my favour.
And here’s a short video on the treatment of snake bites. Note, there is no longer any need to identify the snake that bit the patient as modern anti-venoms work across the board. Another point I’d make on this for those living and working rurally (like us out here) is to note and have an emergency plan for calling for help BEFORE you need it. Few people think rationally in the height of a crisis…
And here is a longer video showing an Eastern Brown close up for those who have a bit more time and want to see a better video of the snake.
Our camera traps have been picking up a lot of animal activity recently and while it’s always interesting to see what happens when we are not around, not all visitors are welcome.
Foxes are a pest here in Australia and just because we’ve named this place ‘Fox Hill Hollow’ doesn’t mean we want them to come and visit. The name by the way is a reference to my family name of Foxon, Hill is Aub’s family name and hollow because we are at the bottom of the hill by the creek.
Like cats, foxes are responsible for killing numerous species of native wildlife including birds, small mammals and reptiles. We really do need to get rid of this one as it’s been lurking around for a while, our problem is in just how to do that…
Landcare has traps we can borrow and set out and now we have some idea of one of the paths the fox uses to traverse the property (you can see the Fox marking its territory as it passes through the fence), there’s a chance we could trap it. Only trapping animals and then not going back and killing them fairly soon afterwards is very cruel so we’d have to time those efforts when we are around for a few days. Then there’s shooting the fox. This is another option and something we could try and organise with a professional pest controller, that is someone who is licenced to come onto a property and hunt.
Aub and I grew up in Fox Hunting country back in the UK but there the hunt was more a chance to dress up and gallop across the countryside on horseback than what we are talking about here.
The Fox Running between our block and the neighbours.
Then there are the rabbits, another (great) idea from our British ancestors. Apparently genetic testing of Australian rabbits has tracked them back to the east of England. Back in 1859, a shipment containing rabbits arrived in Melbourne (this article in Nature has more background information) as part of the ‘make-Australia-England’ initiative. Well now they are everywhere, including all over Fox Hill Hollow…
I wonder if it’s possible to get the Foxes to develop an appetite for rabbits… Maybe they already do, I don’t know. In any case, that wouldn’t solve the Fox problem unless the Foxes liked eating rabbits so much that they got too fat to run after our native species. Somehow that doesn’t seem very likely…
One or another feral bestling has been ripping up the land. I immediately thought it could be pigs as there are wild bore around here but then I remembered the goats, deer, cats and who knows, maybe even elephants (anything is possible…)
We’ll get the cameras out and see what we can find but as is often the case with this type of damage, the animals come in, dig up then ship out…
Meanwhile Aub has also been busy grading the drive and keeping the boundary path clear and in good order. He’s has done a magnificent job, without this type of up-keep the property would be much harder to manage and care for.
He’s also been chopping wood and carrying water, as you do when you are enlightened 🙂
The paddock bathroom has had a make-over and while it’s not quite finished yet, it’s already looking fabulous. Can’t wait for our next bath with the stars…
We’ve been giving the outdoor bath a bit of a make-over including moving it a bit further away from the trees which have grown quite substantially over the last year and a half.
The bath was one we were given by a friend and have re-purposed for use outside. Water is supplied from the rainwater tank on the top of our container and is gravity fed to the bath through the pipe you can see there. That pipe is buried underground only popping up there!
Cold water goes into the bath and is then sucked up into the pipe that leads to the fire pit and drum. The drum contains an inner coil of pipework through which the water is heated up as it travels though. The water is then returned to the bath via another inlet and the bath is heated! It’s all very ingenious and is the same technology as has been used on battle fields and campgrounds for hundreds of years (well, approximately so).
With the bath in a newer better position we could start work on making the surroundings look a little nicer. We’ve used old pallets around the side and are using some old tree trunks that were left here from when we bought the place as timber seats and a side table for our cups of tea!
Since these photos were taken Aub’s made a small adjustment to the placement of the hot tap for safety reasons and done a little more of the panel work. All in all it looks great and works really well!
There’s something really special about being out under the clear night sky. Where we are you can see the milky way so clearly, it’s amazing. One of the things I love best about being out west is the lack of light pollution and the massive open expanse of sky. Bathing under that feels like floating! It’s just as good for the soul as it is for our aching backs, hands and feet!
Fox Hill Hollow Blog 