My car-less wilderness starts twenty metres beyond my front entrance …
It festures long vistas of bounteous greenery, exotics mixed with native trees …
Impenetrable matted jungles of grasses flow over the contours of Bulimba Creek’s floodway …
The creek itself is almost hidden between the overgrown banks where ducks, dusky moorhens and waterdragons make themselves at home
About five years ago, I reworked what would’ve been the next couple of chapters to submit to Worldbuilding Magazine, for an installment they were running on relationships, V3I3: Gender & Relationships
Since I was extracting the story from an ongoing Lodestar Saga and wanted eventually to be able to come back to it—as I am doing now—I changed Srese’s name and backstory. But, although she is called Kate in this chapter and has a whole different history, she is still Srese. As you will see.
Scrim’s parts in the whole deal have not changed, and that part of his life–as it is described here–fits in well with what’s coming for him.
Enjoy!
I was amazed to see one of these yesterday along Bulimba Creek, getting into the ripe native figs everywhere. Only seen them once before, in my previous stamping grounds.
Picture naturally not sharp, bird was too far away and the photo completely unplanned.
After I took ten photos, scoring an image just twice, the noisy miners took note of me and chased the big bad bird away.
Noisy miners are so aggressive—a channel billed cuckoo doesn’t impinge on them at all —it eats figs too large for them to tackle and lays its eggs in magpie, crow and currawong nests. But still the miners need to chase it away, it’s like they own this stretch of the creek.
A slightly better shot, the bird’s bright red eye put me wise to its identity.
These birds have the loudest most amazing trumpeting calls though this one just said kwark kwark kwark.
They migrate to North and Eastern Australia from New Guinea and Indonesia in spring and stay till autumn/fall.
Urban trees seem to be so confused that a lot of figs are bearing good crops of fruit.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astrophysics/greenhouse-gas-space-x/
This science article confirms what I have been thinking, that space flights adds a bunch of gases to the already warming atmosphere. If these three billionaires can’t keep themselves from adding fuel to the fire, maybe they should be banned from taking any trips out until they’ve proved that they’ve zero’ed all their emissions … Scope 1 and Scope 2 and Scope 3!
Only TWO (!) entities so far are saying they’ll zero all their emissions by 2030. Microsoft, a giant, and Canberra, a small state in Australia.
It’s not good enough to say space flight has a lot of positives. The money being thrown at making the space flights happen should be thrown at getting the emissions down.
I’d love to be reading or hearing some time in the near future that that list of billionaires and a few of their buddies have added themselves to the Zero-Emissions-by-2030 list, as well as a bunch of other entities. Let them compete about that.
Definitions of scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions
from … https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-are-scope-1-2-3-carbon-emissions
Scope 1 emissions …. Scope 1 covers emissions from sources that an organisation owns or controls directly – for example from burning fuel in our fleet of vehicles (if they’re not electrically-powered).
Scope 2 emissions … Scope 2 are emissions that a company causes indirectly and come from where the energy it purchases and uses is produced. For example, the emissions caused when generating the electricity that we use in our buildings would fall into this category.
Scope 3 emissions … Scope 3 encompasses emissions that are not produced by the company itself and are not the result of activities from assets owned or controlled by them, but by those that it’s indirectly responsible for up and down its value chain. An example of this is when we buy, use and dispose of products from suppliers. Scope 3 emissions include all sources not within the scope 1 and 2 boundaries.
We have a new thing in the garden. Ha ha, bet I tricked you there. It’s irony, of course. Of course you didn’t know cats do irony. I assure you I have no difficulty woth it.
Any way, the new thing. The boy brought it. I think he’s trying to soften me up.
After the man and the boy and the prancing foal-child left, the old woman brought the new thing inside. Set it on a dessert plate and on the home-made kindergarten chair.
Within easy reach, she said.
An invitation I could not resist.
See what I did there? It’s the fifth post about The Build, and the post covers 13th-26th September, 2024. Any other way of counting will drive me crazy and probably you too.
In case you’re not convinced? Day 13 is four days after the events on Days 11 and 12. It’s tricky to decide how to count the days for this project. 1) Count only the days stuff is visibly happening? That made it Day 13 on Tuesday 17 September 2024. Or 2) Count calendar days, the easier option. I had to start numbering the posts to be able to keep track of the images as they’re being used.
The day after the first excavator went to another job, I walked to the main gate in Surbiton Court to see what I could see, and discovered the architectural company’s name and details posted at the entry. Note that the that little wall backing the sign was still there that day.
And that afternoon, Tuesday 17 September, a representative of that business (logo on their vehicle) parked in the middle of the great big empty place.
But, let me tell you, just because we in Vista couldn’t see anything happening in the big empty place in front of us, that doesn’t mean nothing was happening.
Another day and another walk, I discovered there was plenty of action down at the front gate.
The new boundary corner peg … between the subdivision and Aveo, I assume …
NBN’s Comm cables have been gathered up into their own ‘banks’ and showing above ground to prevent them being massacred accidentally …
New sewage pipes and other fixtures …
I don’t know what these shade-cloth fences are actually called. I’ve heard them referred to as ‘sediment containment barriers’, a fancy way of saying they’re to stop mud going where it shouldn’t.
Within the green and teal fence, there’s this red and yellow safety fence outlining a deep trench. The trench presumably to house the new sewage plumbing.
One thing that amazed me about the site from this angle, is the amount of vegetation still going strong. There is a flowering azalea in the back corner, and various other shrubs, and even the Grevillea at the front entrance was still there … being outlined by pegs which made me wonder if it was being invited to stay …
This strange looking Eucalyptus sp is growing behind one of the local carparking buildings.
Strange because it’s so dimpled. Never seen a tree trunk like it. Don’t know whether it is natural or an attack by something like a virus.
It’s losing its bark rather early. In Sydney and environs that used to happen nearer to November.
The canopy, what there is of it, is rather statuesque.
Rita de Heer 