ajft

A cold wintery day down at Lorne, a morning walk along the beach was nearly abandoned with the wind and spray. The tide was high, but as usual, there was very little interesting flotsam and jetsam to poke around in — I guess there are just too many people around for interesting stuff to remain for long. A three-metre length of weed-covered bamboo was the only thing that caught my eye — dead-straight, it looked as though maybe it came from the mast of a boat, in which case it is probably a long way south of where it started!

On and around to the rocks where the fishermen were congregated, rubbish and cans everywhere. I laughed at the sight of a Spam can, people almost forget nowadays that Spam refers to a a real product, not just the email variety. Old pastic bags of bait, lengths of cut-off fishing line, damaged old floats, beer cans and more rubbish, sure is good to see the environmentally-sustainable attitudes of our recreational fishermen in action...

Lunchtime and home, and down the Kookaburras (Dacelo novaeguineae) came to visit, drawn by the promise of a free feed on the balcony. Showing off in front of my nephews I started flicking bits of bacon rind closer and closer to the four birds... the bolder two coming right up to peck it from my fingers. All of a sudden one of them decided that a fat juicy finger would obviously hold more meat than a skinny bit of bacon rind, so the next peck took hold of a sizeable chunk of index finger. Stupidly, I tried again with the other hand, only to have one of the others take a belt at my other index finger. Kookaburras 2, Adrian nil!.