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Apr 2011My son Alain and my niece Kelly are back from San FranciscoWe were all very happy to welcome Alain and Kelly back to Barraba after their trip to Sanfrancisco. They had been there for over two weeks staying with my daughter Rachel, her husband Jeremy and her daughters Clair and Julia. They came back full of great enjoyment of their trip and loaded with much stuff including lots of clothes they had bought. They also brought back presents for us all. Our conversations with them were very exciting and we were so pleased that the trip had been so good. Rachel's blog told us that she had been very happy to have them there and that she was a bit sad that they had to come back to Australia. Posted: 30/4/11 8:21 AMIs Barraba an RV Friendly Town?I have had problems with our negotiations with Tamworth Regional Council about the requirements for a town to be an RV Friendly Town. The council did not respond to our request to revise the earlier 24 hour limit on camping in the Barraba Lions Park and they refused to nominate any water point for RV owners to use to top up their fresh water tanks. I recently got hold of TRC document about the Barraba RV Friendly Town and it said that the "Apex" Park was a short term free camping site and longer term camping would have to be at Glen Riddle Reserve which is about 17 km (10.5 miles) away from the town. Glen Riddle Reserve is a nice place but it would be more friendly to allow some RVers to camp for a few day closer to the shops inplaces like the Lions Park so that they would have less trouble restocking their pantries and fridges. Last night at the Lions Dinner Meeting I was appalled to hear that the Lions who were mowing the Lions Park had problems with RV owners camping in the park because one of them refused to move out, maybe he couldn't. The Lion Activities Manager expressed the view that all motorhomers are awful people and I assume that he would have expressed that view to the campers who wouldn't or couldn't move out of the park. Of course I believe that an RV Friendly Town will be considered unfriendly by anyone who has negative responses from locals when they are camping in or near the town. I also think that they would probably pass on their unhappiness to their friends on the road so the reputation of the town could be degraded. Posted: 29/4/11 8:37 AMA Sad ExperienceLast night Sarah and I went to Tamworth to a Landcare Meeting to hear our Federal MP Tony Abbot talk about Sustainability. We were expecting a very pointed presentation about what our community must to to ensure is survival in the future. Sadly most of his stuff seemed to me to be about the problems politicians have in dealing with the future. His initial thought was that they could find no absolute proof of the scientific claim that serious Global Warming could occur in the future caused by human pollution of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. He did talk about the "Carbon Economy" which I took to mean that the proposed carbon tax which is really a tax on carbon dioxide emissions was going to badly affect all other areas of the economy. We came away from the meeting without having been given any new ideas about sustainability and were unhappy that we had had to travel ninety kilometres to Tamworth in the evening and ninety kilometres back to Barraba in the night without having gained anything worthwhile. The only good thing about the trip was the sighting of a kangaroo crossing the road ahead of us without and risk of a collision. Posted: 28/4/11 7:31 AMI have got fit againYesterday I was quite tired after the long morning working at the Artisans' & Farmers' Market. The place was very cold at 7 o'clock when I had to start setting up. Later on the weather improved and it got a bit warm. My cold had pretty well gone away but standing and walking around all the time and talking to visitors to Barraba for most of the 5 hours took a lot out of me. Today I was pretty fit. The weather was quite good and I only had to work on the laptop for most of the morning. By midday I was feeling so fit that I worked on the fence and the water trough in the back paddock so that the some of the sheep could come back from Mark's place when he gets back from his holiday tomorrow. Unhappily my work in the paddock made my shirt and socks collect lots of "sticky beaks", the nasty seed of one of the common weeds in Barraba which hook themselves onto you clothes in pretty large numbers which means you have to take the clothes off and pick of all the sticky beaks and dispose of them in the garbage so they won't grow into more unwanted weeds in your garden. Posted: 24/4/11 3:07 PMThe mower is backI picked up the mower from Rural Traders and drove it back home. I mowed the front lawn and started on the back lawn. At one point the cutter drive failed and I found the problem that Karl had told me about and reconnected the spring to get it working again. The grass was very long and thick and I had some trouble with the mower. It failed to restart so I recharged the battery and it started again. Unfortunately the cutter drive failed again. I checked the spring and it was still OK but I saw that the belt had fallen off the jockey pulley. I wasn't able to fix it because it wasn't obvious how it should be arranged. I will talk to Karl about it to see if I can fix it. Posted: 19/4/11 6:49 AMMore good newsI had to go to the Rural Traders on Friday and Karl told me that he had looked at the mower, found a spring which had become disconnected and had fixed it easily. I will go down and pick up the mower on Monday as long as it has stopped raining. As soon as the grass dries out I will be able to mow it all again which will be good.. Posted: 17/4/11 11:11 AMSome odd newsYesterday I had an appointment with my dentist to have another tooth extracted. Because my bad cold had not got better I cancelled the appointment. I had another appointment in Tamworth to have my eyes tested for diabetes problems. I didn't cancel this appointment because the optometrist didn't have to work inside my mouth like the dentist would have had to. Happily the results of the test were good. I have none of the blood vessel problems which are sometimes caused by diabetes. Interestingly, I had been advised to have somebody else drive me home because the test includes drops which cause pupil enlargement. I did check my sight after I had the drops in my eyes and didn't have any problems with my vision so I drove around the town and back to Barraba. Posted: 15/4/11 4:57 PMSome good newsToday I talked to Karl who was looking after my ride on mower that I bought from him. He told me that he had come to our place and did some maintenance on the battery connections. He asked me if iI had tested it but I told him that I had lost the key so I couldn't even try and start it. When I came home I searched and searched for the key and eventually found it in among the shorts I had been wearing. I took the tarpaulin off the mower and started the test. The engine started well and I drove round the carport to do the front lawn. Unfortunately I couldn't engage the drive to the cutter and I wasn't able to see what was wrong. I drove the mower back to Karl's place and left the key for him to use when he was able to get the mower up in the air on his fork lift and find out what was wrong with the cutter drive. Karl will be away for a couple of days but I will be in Tamworth on Thursday so I am not concerned with having to wait until Karl is back and able to work on the mower. I had been vary unhappy because I couldn't find the key and didn't expect to be able to use the mower again. Now I am happily expecting a return to the good use of the mower which enables me to mow all the lawns even when they have grown long without causing me to get badly tired and suffering from too much physical work.. Posted: 12/4/11 3:59 PMThe week isn't improvingI had a pretty good day at the Artisans' and Farmers' Market yesterday. My sneezing had almost gone away and I did a good job talking to the visitors, We had visitors fro Bingara, Inverell, Armidale and a couple from Canada who were staying at Tamworth and came to Barraba because they wanted to check out our market. The vendors had a slow but reasonable day because the total number of people who came to the market was a bit lower than last time, Sadly my physical condition has gone off again so I have been avoiding any physical work but have done quite a bit of sedentary work today. Energy mark have sent me a Convenor's pack and I spent quite a bit of time going through it. I am required to enrol a total of ten people including myself in the programme so I emailed an invitation to nine other people in Barraba. I hope that they will accept the invitations. Energymark is a CSIRO project which requires groups of ten people in the community to meet and discuss the technical information provided by the CSIRO on climate change and energy usage. The intention is to inform the people but the programme also requires the group to feedback information about the members carbon footprints and their energy consumption both at the start and the programme and at the end of the programme to see if the people had accepted any of the technical advice. The CSIRO also seek feedback of the groups opinions about the issues so that they can calibrate the community's attitudes all around Australia. Posted: 10/4/11 2:34 PMThe month has started poorlyI have been able to do secretary's work for two meetings already this month. Apart from that I have not been able to do anything. I had to drop out of the Junior Red Cross Breakfast work because I was suffering from some condition that was causing me to sneeze and I didn't want to distribute my condition to the children who were eating the food we cook. Happily we are off duty for two weeks during the school holidays so I hope to be well enough to get back to work after the holidays. I have a problem with the ride on mower which has some kind of fault which stops it from starting and I haven't been well enough to work on it. I am very lucky to have support from the owner of the hardware store who sold me the mower so I guess I will be back at that work soon. I will have to do my job at the Artisans' and Farmers' Market on Saturday but that won't be a problem as I just have to talk about the highlights of the town to the visitors I can catch up with.. Posted: 7/4/11 4:22 PMA New MonthApril is about to start. It will be filled with important stuff. In particular Alain is coming to Barraba to pick up Kelly and take her to San Francisco to spend a couple of weeks with Rachel and her family to celebrate Kelly's 16th Birthday. We are all very happy with this and expect Al and Kelly to come back with a very good impression of San Francisco. The rest of the month will be filled for me with volunteer work. Posted: 30/3/11 5:32 PM |
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