An animal, a place, a plant. The Murray Darling basin.

This is a project my Son and I recently completed for his school. 

The requirement was to document an animal, a place and a plant that is part of the Murray Darling basin.

Red Bellied Black Snake

Pseudechis porphyriacus

The Red Belly Black Snake is glossy black, and sometimes has a very lightly tipped brown snout. The outer sides and belly is bright red fading to dull pinkish red.

Red Belly Black Snakes are found from the Northern parts of Victoria along the Eastern coast of NSW and southern parts of Queensland and throughout the Murray Darling basin.

They like to live near water. They can forage widely and males in particular will travel some distance in spring looking for mates. Although the habitat of this snake is usually in the vicinity of water, they can be found away from the river.

Usually seen to flee away from noise. The snake will often hide in water. While this snake may bite if injured or attacked, generally it will move away or try to bluff its way out of trouble.

The Red Belly Black Snake eats frogs, but will also take lizards and occasionally will eat other snakes. Red Belly Black Snakes don’t lay eggs like most snakes.


Wilcannia

Wilcannia Post Office 

Wilcannia was once an important and busy river port for western NSW. There are many historical buildings in Wilcannia.

The old centre lift bridge, the post office, the courthouse and the police station were all built in the late 1800’s and are all historically important. The buildings are built from locally quarried sandstone.

Wilcannia is located 965 km west of Sydney. It is on the very edge of the New South Wales desert experiencing only 250 mm of rainfall per year.

Half way between Broken Hill and Nyngan, Wilcannia is situated on the Darling River and is where the Barrier Highway crosses the river.

River Red Gum

Red river gum tree 

The river red gum Eucalyptus camaldulensis is the most widely distributed eucalyptus species in Australia growing along watercourses throughout the country. It lines the Murray and Darling rivers. The trees are usually 20–35 m high with some over 45 m, with a diameter of 1–3 m. The canopy is dark green. The trunk is brown-black with patches of grey bark. The branches are often twisted and the root system is often partly exposed.

The red gum needs to be near rivers that flood sometimes because that is how the seeds get distributed. Old rotten limb hollows, or broken branches, provide nesting hollows for galahs, cockatoos and various parrots.

The timber is a reddish colour with a strong grain. It is hard and durable and rots slowly. The hard, heavy red gum provides foundations for buildings, and timber for railway sleepers, wharves and fences. It polishes beautifully. The flowers are white to pale cream.

The Aboriginals used the tree for medicine.

The River: A Journey through the Murray-Darling Basin


Ecosystem Response Modelling in the Murray-Darling Basin


Murray Darling Finishing Salt - Gourmet Salt from the Australian Interior, Large

Of snow and ice and booze vs Mike.

G'day there, when I was a young bloke in my 20's I went off the rails a fair bit. Anybody who knew me during that stage of my life is no doubt emphatically nodding their head right now.

In the due course of time and circumstance I found myself living in the Snowy Mountains. Now in summer this region of Australia is a fairly subdued rural area with the quiet country towns with their average country town pubs.

Come winter and this changes, Jindabyne becomes the focal point for for the Ski season's massive influx of punters, the entertainment and the wild nights that accompany the scene. Every night is Saturday night and it's a wild ride. Jindabyne is the last town on the roads up to the Thredbo and Perisher Blue ski fields so it is a thriving winter community of punters, money and partying.

Most of the local people who are not directly involved with the tourism and ski industry keep a pretty low profile in winter and there is a definite undercurrent of resentment between the locals and the punters. Occasionally this spills over to violence and crime so the Pub and Club bouncers and the Police have their hands full.

The media pumps the whole thing along with every major metropolitan TV channel, radio station, magazine and newspaper catering to the twenty something crowd making it clear the snow is the cool place to be in winter. The music scene ties right in to the money with every major band hitting a venue in the Snowy during the Ski season sooner or later.

Despite the prevailing party atmosphere the Snowy can be a cruel and unforgiving place, with the climate itself taking centre stage. Money is everything in the Ski resorts, and this whole industry is geared to cater to the spoilt rich kids of the city fat cats. 

With the first snowfall of early winter, every business in the region takes a deep breath and makes sure there is plenty of room in the till for the wads of cash the punters will bring.

During my early years in the Snowy I lived on a farm with friends out behind Jindabyne and I was the contract gasfitter for the main regional supplier of LPG, Elgas. This situation kept me somewhat insulated from the cruel tourist industry and the wild partying of the Ski resorts. 

I played Rugby Union for the Jindabyne Bush Pigs rugby club and although we were in a hard competition group having to meet teams such as ADFA and RMC the club did well bagging a few premierships back in those years.

Rugby Union and booze go hand in hand and the weekends could get crazy, but during the week we all had jobs and training which kept us pretty level headed. Life was pretty good.

But that all changed. I secured employment with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service as the Licenced plumber for all of the district. 

My work meant I had to be on hand for the monitoring of the gas, water and sewage infrastructure in the National Park and so I moved into the Perisher Valley Ranger Station. The Man from Snowy River Hotel was 50 metres away over the road, and things got pretty messy before long. 

Drugs and booze were prolific in Perisher and all the people who lived in the valley were nutters in one form or another. I clearly remember getting lost between the pub and the ranger station in a blizzard and sleeping till it cleared in a snow drift. I went to work pretty much every day in winter with a roaring hangover and things were generally miserable.

This was a dream job in a dream location and the world was my oyster, but the bottle and I had other ideas.

After a couple of seasons I was arrested coming home from Cooma where I had gone shopping, and inevitably, drinking. I was charged for the second time in my young life with drink driving. That was the end of my work with the National Parks, a drivers licence was an essential requirement for the job.

From this point things rapidly deteriorated. My girlfriend at that time, having first hand experience with the hell on earth existence of the addict rightly distanced herself from me. I was badly injured playing Rugby and went into a deep maudlin hole. I ended up living in an old bus on a bit of acreage out the back of Berridale with a handful of dogs and copious quantities of booze for company. 

Lacking money in the snowy while sporting a nasty booze and coke habit was not an ideal existence and I became increasingly desperate in those times. It still amazes me to this day the lengths an addict will go to to feed the demons and I was far from innocent during those last few months in the Snowy. I did things that were astoundingly stupid.

Sometimes things would ride smoothly for a week or two when I had the demons restrained. One funny memory from these saner moments was when a great Australian rock band The Baby Animals came to the snow. Near the farm where I lived in the early years was a place called The Station Resort, this was a sprawling place of accommodation, restaurants, bars and staff catering to the lower end of the tourist market during the season and marketing to the regular tourist over the rest of the year with mixed results. 

The Station often billed great bands for shows on weekends and I got to see some great Australian acts there over the years. The Baby Animals were billed to play the main auditorium at The Station Resort and I desperately wanted tickets.

When tickets were not forthcoming I hatched a devious and cunning plan. I arrived early on the day The Baby Animals were playing. I hung around in the pub and watched the roadies, resort staff and crew coming and going from the auditorium. Around two hours before the doors were due to open to the public, I approached the side door with my trusty guitar in it's case in hand. 

When security stopped me at the door I cheerfully said: "Oh shit guy's sorry I'm late, are the rest of the band here?" Damn, I was in! I hid my guitar under a corner of the stage and mingled unobtrusively with the crew inside till the doors opened. It was a superb show, one I'll never forget. Best free concert I ever attended....

The Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive Process and Compulsive Behavior

Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down: 50 Things Every Alcoholic and Addict in Early Recovery Should Know, or How to Stay Clean and Sober, Recovery from Addiction and Substance Abuse

Willpower's Not Enough: Recovering from Addictions of Every Kind

My Mate Corrigan

G'day there, my Dad had a best mate named Corcoran. I couldn't find one. So I settled for the next best thing:
Corrigan. I first met Corrigan in the lounge bar of the pub near home one Thursday night. He was dressed all in white, and even though it was the 80's that was... different. I thought he might be a bloke with an alternate partner gender preference to the rest of us at first.

Well I was wrong about that. Corrigan is the only person I know who has messed around with computers longer than me. We were online before the interweb appeared using a 1200 baud modem and signed up to all the cool BBS sites. We could tell a cool BBS from a crap one because they had better ascii art pictures.

Corrigan beat me at computers. We used to play this game called Elite, it was a space trader / pirate / combat game. A requirement of advancement in the game was the demonstrated ability to dock a line rendered spacecraft with a bigass hexagonal line rendered spaceport. The space port revolved anticlockwise and the target docking pad was a rectangular slot about 4 pixels bigger than the ship. Docking was achieved by lining up the post slot sized dock with the correct approach angle, then approaching the sucker SLOWLY while rotating the ship to exactly match the spaceport rotation speed. All while not messing up the approach vector. He was good at that. Maybe that's why he ended up with five Sons?

Corrigan beat me at dancing. This bloke could dance! Dancing was how we met girls and got to talk to them and stuff. There was no SMS messaging then.

Corrigan beat me at girlfriends. He'd wizz though half a dozen cool fun relationships with some really cool girls. I'd hang around with Jan trying to "make it work" and wondering if all women were neurotic and why she was moody a lot. (It was probably me, seems I had that effect on some people.) Then Corrigan met Lil and it was good. She was perfect for him because she could see through all his BS.

Well in the due course of time, they got married and I got to be Corrigan's best man.

And it was good. After a while Matt showed up, he was a sparkly eyed little brat and we loved him to death.

Next came Mitchell, Corrigan and Lil asked me to be his Godfather, which I consider a great honor to this day. After a while Wazza showed up, he was the cute one. Then they had twins! O hooley dooley what a madhouse their place was! During these years I went waay off the rails and had to go get a few of the scars I probably needed to get. But I was always made welcome in Corrigans house, Lil looked out for me like a big sister would through all my messed up years. Corrigan never left my side, the only time I wasn't around was when I chose to go walkabout, but every time I'd come back with my tail between my legs they gave me a place to stay.

Corrigan couldn't beat me at Dumb. I was the champ. Mind though, he gave it a bloody good shot every once in a while. Mr Walton's, if you want to know why yer windows were crook a fair bit please send an envelope with lots of large denomination notes and I'll tell ya a yarn ;-) Also, a note to the staff at the hospital: 

You've probably sussed this out by now, but you shouldn't shoot wasted blokes up with Pethodine. 

His title shot for the Dumb championship was at another wedding. My other mate Chris stole Jan, and they got married. Me and Corrigan were invited to the wedding. He left in an ambulance or at least the ambulance attended, I was a bit wobbly on it myself so I don't remember that wedding much. Closest I ever went to loosing the dumb title that night.

Corrigan couldn't beat me at Pool, unless I was having "one of my turns". I reckon It's time he got his ass on a train and headed out here to blue sky country so we could go play some pool. We probably wouldn't though, we're both getting on now. I'm pretty happy just hanging out at home these days. Plus I've got an asskicking home network set up with some serious state of the art equipment. We'd probably buy a few 2 litre bottles of coke and some Pizza and play multiplayer games for 48 hours straight.

Corrigan has a sister Jane, she's an awesome lady. I should have made more of an effort to be a real mate to Jane too, but I was too Busy running around Yahooing with Corrigan to have much time for sisters. Jane likes dogs, I can tell. It's all she ever bloody posts about on facebook. I often wonder how different things might have been for our crowd from the local inn if we all had smartphones and facebook. While I'm at it in case you are stalking me or Corrigan on the interweb, I'll send a G'day to Pete, Brian, Big Brian, Grandpa John, Allison, Paul, Gennifer, Chris, Jan, Peter the DJ, Joanne, Hindy, Darius, Cathy, Junior (he was an asshat but I remembered him) Donna, Lils sis, Cathy my sis. These two sometimes hung out with our crew but not much. And G'day to all the other randoms who drifted in and out back then.

  

These days I spend more time talking to Corrigan's third born Wazza on ventrillo than anybody from our old crew. Wazza reminds me of me a lot. Smart, quick witted little prick, so damn annoying and frustrating ya just gotta like him. Or find an axe...

Anyways this is an ode to Corrigan, so he gets the last word.

Goodonya mate.

Stand Up for Yourself and Your Friends: Dealing with Bullies and Bossiness and Finding a Better Way

Friends: Making Them & Keeping Them (American Girl) 

FART JOKES!

The Fart in all it's volatile fury!

Farts are just plain funny, the fart joke has been around since the days that Neanderthals were hanging out in caves together. It is always a bit of fun to laugh at farts and stir people up when they fart. It's perfectly natural and normal to fart of course, but humanity as a whole just can't help having a snicker when farting is the topic. It must be some deeply rooted laugh therapy instilled in us by the creator I reckon!

Cow farts have been blamed for contributing to global warming.

Farting cows are considered an environmental issue.

Farts can be duct taped, who would have guessed?

Everybody loves kitten farts, they are nearly as good as fat cat farts.

Farts can be used as a form of propulsion.

Fart skyscaping?

Fart accidents can happen too.

Don't fart near annoyed pandas.

Farting in sport is common.

Farts are sometimes worth running away from.

Cats and farts, it's just cool.

There's another fart jokes page here you can take a look at:

http://www.squidoo.com/fart-jokes-

Elsewhere on the web, take a look at my Squidoo posts.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/hakamike

A BOOK FULL OF FARTS

Really Stinky Fart Jokes

Fart Loading Warning Gas Joke Funny T-Shirt

Fart and Wiener Jokes

I LOVE TO FART -Warning Sign- farter joke signs funny

Renewable energy +1, Fat cats -2, Tree huggers -1, Smart houses 0.

So the dust has settled from the Federal budget, whats the guts?

How does this benefit the Australian taxpayer in relation to self sufficient energy generation (sustainability)?

An increased amount of our tax dollars will be spent towards the emergence of the promised renewable energy fund. +1 sustainability.

Tax breaks for company cars will be attacked with a long overdue razor that's -2 if you're a fat cat but scores a +2 on sustainability in my book. It's probably really only a +1 but I get my jollies seeing fat cats cry ;-)

Company cars are going to get less tax breaks. 

Tree huggers -1 But that's OK in my book. It's not really a bright move throwing money at fishes and trees while we continue to burn fossil fuels at an alarmingly increasing rate, which accelerates fishes and trees demise, makes towel heads rich and generally buggers up the planet. It makes reasonable sense to try to check our non sustainable energy consumption and the resultant environmental damage first. Ya gotta pull the three corner jack out of yer bike tire before ya patch her and pump her back up.

The national solar schools program was disintegrating and the money was being stolen by the fat cats in the company cars anyway. It was turning into the pink batts debacle all over again. None of the ridiculous overspend was doing jack shit towards sustainability. On the other hand we were teaching our kids that solar works (just don't look at the bill for it OK?) So that's a break even with a bonus point for the government for dodging the fallout (they hope).

Umm the environmental stewardship program? Who knows, I can read all about it being implemented in the cities, but what about regional Australia? I can tell you for sure there is bugger all stewardship going on in far western NSW. I have a sneaking suspicion fat cats are all over this one too.

National wildlife corridors plan, oh yea that's the thing where drunk drivers knock down the fences around here so the emus can get on the roads so the fuel tankers can run em over...

Emus are a serious hazard on outback roads. 

Renewable energy, the emerging renewables fund is a move in exactly the right direction. Keep the fat cats away from this sector with a big stick, if necessary hit em with dead emu legs and tie them to the cities where they belong with all the spare barbed wire from the wrecked fences!

Renewable energy development, the infrastructure growth and jobs this emerging industry will bring to Regional Australia is a big +1 The fact that we will increase our independence from fossil fuels and reduce carbon generation by diverting energy production away from coal and gas fired power stations is an additional +1.

There was mention of managing population growth in already overcrowded cities, That's smart too, good luck implementing that one. Ship the unemployed out west to solar and wind farm construction jobs if you can. Oh wait, the mines will recruit them and pay them twice as much as the solar / wind farm people will.

How about this for a not so silly idea, stick a bigass carbon tax on all the resources we export and let China pay the bill for our energy Independence?

Mining is BIG business 

And one last passing shot, I know this one will be a touchy issue. New Zealand supplies 70% of the entire nations electricity demand with hydro power. Australia's sustainable energy input to the national grid is 8%. Lets dam the franklin river! O wait...Strike me days!

Hydroelectricity is a winner. 

Renewable Energy: Power for a Sustainable Future, Second Edition

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air

The Renewable Energy Handbook, Revised Edition: The Updated Comprehensive Guide to Renewable Energy and Independent Living

Fundamentals of Renewable Energy Processes, Second Edition

RIP Nicholas Raymond Brundell, My son, a good bloke, a crazy diamond.

Nic passed away suddenly after a sinus infection spread to his brain, the life support systems were shut down on the 10th of May, 2011.

G'day Nic, I just want you to know I miss you.

I grieve at the injustice of your sudden passing while other people who aren't worth the shit on my shoe live on.You were a brave and serene soul in the turmoil of our family Nic, you were always respectful and loving to your Mum, you stuck up for your sister Jasmine when she needed it. You and Damien always had each others back and you were fantastic with James.

You were a hard worker Nic and you should be proud of that, do you remember jackhammering all that concrete up at Kaiapoi school right in the middle of summer?

I let you invite your mate Phil along to help out a couple of days into that project and even though you two assed about laughing and joking all day you still worked like a trojan.

Do you remember the first time you ever got into trouble? It was me came got you and took you home that day. Mum and I made you write out the ten commandments like a thousand times. You wrote till your hand was cramped up and we lightened up on you and let you have a break till the next day.


Do you remember the chooks we kept in the yard at Stourbridge street? We butchered one and cooked it, none of you kids would eat it.

Do you remember the trip to Hamner in '96? The bullock that came right up to us, so we jumped back into the car. But you locked the door before Jasmine got in, so she was locked out and skitzing big time screaming at you through the window of the car and scared shitless? You and I were in hysterics, that was classic.

Do you remember the countless hours you and I played Gran Turismo on the playstation?


James has told us the story about the time you took him to Laser tag in Christchurch, you were moving around, from cover to cover looking for a target. James was quietly following you the whole time, the instant you finally turned around to check your six there was James and bang, it was lights out for you. You had a chuckle about that and James did the harry so you wouldn't get him back.


Nic you always had a way with the kids, they were drawn to you I think they knew they were accepted without question by you. It was never below you to get down at their level and play cool kid games with them for hours at a time. When we used to mind that wee fella Jamal, he couldn't pronounce Nic so he called you Noodle. He would follow you around everywhere you went. One day you went into your room and closed the door, the poor little fella stood in the hallway crying "Noodle, Nooooodddle, Noodle until you came out to play with him again.

When James was a baby you used to hover around his crib while he was sleeping so that you'd be the first one there to pick him up and play with him when he woke up.

You were helping me tie some flies for trout fishing when we lived at Stourbridge Street, I was holding one in my mouth to tie off the last bits and of course it ended up punched through my lip. I was chucking a wobbly mumbling and swearing about getting the side cutter pliers so we could cut the hook off and feed the whole thing back through my lip, you were more interested in stirring me up and imitating my hook impaired speech, you were smart enough to do that from the other side of the room.


Man you used to do some weird shit on our fishing trips too, I like to think of this arrangement of shark head and guts on a stick as a form of artistic expression:

Do you remember getting me to listen to Tupac and Eminem and I was all: That's not music, have a listen to this 80's Australian rock, now that's music.


Do you remember when we went on a mad kite phase, we borrowed kite books from the local library and built a series of kites. The last in that series was the masterclass stunt kite, you and I stayed up all night finishing that one off talking about how we hoped it would be windy in the morning so we could go test it out. You had it sussed in no time and were pulling figure 8 loops within 2 feet of the ground.

Do you remember that time Damien (God love him) went nato down the sleepout at the Timaru house? You handled that well I reckon. 

I hope the fishing is good there Nic, you always liked going fishing with me. I wish we could go fishing again Nic. I'm proud of you son and I always will be.

Ka kite ano eh hoa, all my love, I'll never forget you. Say g'day to Jack for me.

I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye: Surviving, Coping and Healing After the Sudden Death of a Loved One