12 of 12, October 2017

Today was a mix of work and labour and beaches.

The first beach was actually visited only by satellite image, as the kayaking company with whom I had done my Bathurst Harbour trip had posted a Google maps satellite view of Hobart city which revealed their kayaks in amongst the Hobart docks, during one of their half-day trips. I wondered if they might also show up in the wilds of Bathurst Harbour. Those who know me well understand that I am all too easily sidetracked and ridiculously dogged in the pursuit of the trivial, although it did not take me all that long to find what I was looking for.  Here is a photograph of my computer screen, showing 6 kayaks on Balmoral Beach; if you want to explore Google maps yourself, here is the link (and you can also see just how isolated the area is): https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-43.3454971,146.0666078,585m/data=!3m1!1e3. This brought back quite a few memories; we had lunch at this beach on our trip, although we came ashore at the western end. [I’m not sure how much skill or luck was involved in finding the kayaks in amongst the vast expanse of Bathurst Harbour, but I am someone who has, on more than one occasion, located planes flying over suburbs on their way in to land, in order to write an article about how to use maths to find the plane’s height above the ground. Here is an example (correct as at 12 October 2017): the plane should be at top mid-left; its shadow—useful for determining height—is slightly to its right and nearer the bottom.]

After doing some proper work (as opposed to pafnutying*) I came home, and it rained on my loungeroom window while I was doing some more work.

In the early evening I visited a friend’s place to do a bit of work in her vegie garden while she’s away. We’ve both become quite enthused about this garden, as she has wanted to have one for quite some time and I’ve got caught up in the satisfaction of helping to build it and watching things grow. There are potatoes … although the beeeeans came first, provoking much excitement and the exaggerated pronunciation of their name.

The bracken ferns keep wanting to grow where they are not wanted (i.e., everywhere), however. This one is doomed, next time I see it.

We enclosed the whole area in bird netting, tall enough that we can stand up inside and still wield a pick. The birds can’t get in although the mosquitoes can.

I quite like the native plant known as sagg, although this specimen is a bit hacked, and is about to meet an even more drastic fate.

It’s fine in its place, but this is not its place. Bye.

After doing battle with the sagg, I went for a walk along the nearby beach just after sunset. It was windy and the light was fading but there were still some lovely effects.

The lighter coloured sand in the photo below is actually being blown towards me.

* pafnuty (v.) – to pursue tangential matters with hobby-like zeal. Introduced by the mathematician Philip J Davis in his delightful book The Thread which describes Davis’s whimsical search for the origins of the Russian mathematician Pafnuty Lvovich Tchebychev’s first name.

[The “12 of 12” project involves taking 12 photos on the 12th of the month. This provides the opportunity to get snapshots of the spectrum of life’s experiences, from the boring to the exciting … depending on what happens on each particular 12th. I have been doing this since 2009; this is the 98th 12 of 12.]