Thursday 29th April. (Actually 4am Friday morning)

I’m pleased tomorrow/today is Friday, it makes Monday that much closer.

My pet rat that won’t eat rat poison is fast becoming a nuisance. It hasn’t the grace to look startled when I catch it at 3am eating the bananas on the bench, it sits there, looks at me, then casually waddles over the bench top, drops to the floor and walks behind the fridge. After which it becomes a lot of banging, shifting furniture, opening and closing back doors, front doors, verandah doors, moving chairs, cushions, trying to chase the damn thing out of the house.

By then it’s 4am, I’m wide awake, and going to be in a slightly tired frame of mind for the rest of the day.

Tiff got back Wednesday. She had a fairly good time in Brisbane, despite having no money for the week due to a miscalculation. She never told me in her emails, I could have sent some WU if I’d known, but too late afterwards. She got to our suppliers in Brisbane, and bought back a thick folder of pamphlets, catalogues etc, full of stuff I’d love to have in the nursery but in practical terms it is too far above what we are doing to need yet.

Her laptop shrunk, from the big Toshiba we actually need, to an Acer with just enough to be useful, but not enough to be practical.

The elections, whenever they are, July/August is the closest guess so far, will be interesting. The $20 million RCDF (Rural Constituency Development Fund) annual allowance, has been fully paid out to the departing MPs, so they will have bribe money to pay their wantok for votes, instead of using it to fix roads, develop business, agriculture etc. The Solomon Star is printing editorials that are slightly irate in tone about it, and the letter section is disapproving to say the least. Still, it isn’t as though it is something new here.

There aren’t fixed political parties or groupings here, the Governments are a loose coalition of 10 – 20 various appellations, single members, 3 – 5 people with a slogan and name, all jostling for first place at the money trough. If they get elected it then becomes a matter of paying off the people that voted for them, and keeping the money flowing to get re-elected next time, without upsetting too many people who miss out on the slush funds.

There is still no movement on the Cattle Fund, I doubt it will ever go ahead, it looks good on paper, the practicalities of it seem doomed to failure with the lack of accounting, responsibility, knowledge.

Our office/classroom building is finally on paper and has been submitted to Planning for approval. No, we didn’t attaché a CASH cheque for an undisclosed sum to it, although that may not be a bad idea.

With the extra area we gain by squaring off the back of H-D, we gain a lot of space to consolidate the non-productive buildings, storage, office etc, and have more space for actual nursery production. And it simplifies the water lines as well. We can run the lines around the perimeter of the block, instead of across the traffic areas, it may mean a bit more pipework, but it simplifies the system. Here is the revision 4 drawing so far, I think it will be the final design, any ideas please send.



The little truck is back to its usual refusal to start in the mornings behaviour. We tow started it this morning, well, more Joel towed me to the top of the road, and I coasted down the hill for a bit before throwing it into gear and finally getting some noise from the engine. It starts with no trouble for the rest of the day after that, it may be a fuel problem again with the fuel pump, or electrical with the glow plugs, I’ve given up trying to work it out. If I could find a tin of QuickStart, or ether, or something to spray into the air cleaner first that might help.

It’s been considerably drier this year than last, looking back to what I wrote last year at this time, we have had less rain and heavy storms than then. Some due to the el Nino that lingers on, and some due to the slightly cooler temperature. Less evaporation, less clouds, less rain. Since reading Willis Eschenbachs Thermostat Hypothesis, I’ve been taking more notice of the daily cloud buildup, and it has been later and later in the day until the accumulated heat over a few days creates enough backlog to really lift the water up high enough to cool and fall. It’s going to be a long dry summer I think if the el Nino persists.