Autumn eats

Hot weather is now at an end! As is normal here in Perth, the seasons change rapidly and suddenly, taking us all by surprise. With only just over two weeks to go before my next Camino, the lower temperatures make it easier for me to do some serious training at last. In the meantime, I have been cooking some Autumn dishes.

Friday night dinners:

Spaghetti Marinara (including the dog’s).

Risoni w red emperor.

Apple and plum crumble.

Pumpkin soup for lunch.

Toodyay and the camels

Alert: this post may contain more info about camels than you ever wanted to know - and then some!

Val and I went on a MALA (Mature Age Learning Association) day trip to Toodyay, stopping off for an unusual visit to a camel farm. We were greeted by Max  Bergmann, the blind cameleer, with his guide dog and a group of camels:

Max was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa at 8 years old, which meant he had only a tiny amount of peripheral vision. This has not stopped him from following his dream to own a camel farm and to turn it into a successful business, DromeDairy. It’s a play on the word Dromedary.

His camels are rescued from the Australian outback, where they are regarded as pests, and often shot as part of a government led culling scheme. In fact, they are far better suited to the Australian climate and harsh conditions in the bush, than sheep and cattle which the early settlers brought here from Northern Europe.

Camels came to Australia in the 1840’s as pack animals to carry sleepers into the regions for railway building. They were known as “ships of the desert” and could walk up to 70kms a day. Their iconic hump does not store water as is commonly thought, but is in fact fat storage and affords some protection from the sun. They have knee pads on their elbows, so that they can hover above hot sand when they sit down. They have double eye lids which also provide protection from the sun. They are able to easily adjust their body temperature, going from 40% to 30% at night. 

Max has developed a mobile milking parlour, based on a system invented in Lithuania. It is more environmentally friendly to take this out to the camel paddocks by tractor, rather than have the camels come into one central point (as with dairy cows). The baby camels stay very close to their mothers at all times. They suckle first, in order to get the milk flowing, then the mothers are hooked up to the milking machine which does 6 at a time and measures the intake. They are milked once a day, each camel providing only 2.5 litres. This is why camel milk is so expensive at $16 per litre.  Also, camels only become profitable when they are 5 or 6 years old. They are pregnant for 13 months and cannot get pregnant again when they are lactating. The calves are kept close to their mothers for about 18 months. This is in contrast to dairy cows, where the calf is taken away immediately, so that the cow can become pregnant after a month only. The camels walk away from the milking parlour together with their calves, having received a treat of pellets as a reward. They are actually eager to be milked and queue up at the paddock gate when they hear the tractor arriving.

Max demonstrates his mobile dairy.

Max is involved in various experiments with a view to prove that camels are not a pest in the landscape. One is “co-grazing”, whereby a couple of camels are kept alongside a dairy herd. Cows and camels graze together and over time this improves the gut of the dairy herd which becomes more productive. In May, he is going to Kenya to advise on his mobile milking system, and possibly later to Pakistan.

The business of DromeDairy has expanded into skin and beauty products. Max discovered that his rough farm labourer's hands became much softer with all the camel milk that fell on them. After researching the subject, he discovered many useful properties in the milk. These products are now sold online, together with dried milk powder. They are particularly good for people suffering from eczema and other skin conditions. I bought a sample travel pack:

...for young looking skin and hair!

After the camel farm, our coach took us to Toodyay for lunch. Val and I had a picnic down by the river. Others went to the Coca Cola Cafe, which houses a Coca Cola museum!

Down by the river at Toodyay.

We saw a spoonbill.

Cocal cola toys.

Coca cola mirrors.

We ended up at the oldest winery in WA for a little tasting:

Inside the cellars.

Nice label.

Ancient convict bricks.

They needed a rest after all that!

YouTube video about the camel farm here

Mosman bushwalk

We tried another new walk this morning, in the leafy suburb of Mosman Park. This area is the most expensive real estate in Perth, with houses right on the river front looking across towards Point Walter, where we have walked many times. We started at the northern end of Rule St and walked from Rocky Bay to Chidley Point and back. Robyn and Chris had researched the route and provided us with snippets of local history as we went along. In the early days, there were some industrial enterprises such as a sugar factory and a fertiliser factory - now replaced by million dollar residences.

We parked near this building, which was built by Arthur and Robert Bunning, founders of the huge hardware business. They had migrated from London in 1886 and started off in sawmilling in the south-west. Bunnings now has a market share of 50% of the DIY business in Australia.

We stopped to admire this beautiful Yellow Flowering Gum, with its bright red operculum:

Eucalyptus erythrocorys – Illyarrie.

There was a lot of river traffic down below us, including this dragon boat:

I was fascinated by the luxurious residences and their immaculate gardens. Some had tried to claim ownership of the river frontage, but there had to be a public footpath going along. One place had imported a Balinese-style doorway (modelled here by Jack):

There were two gazebos whose copper sheets had been stolen from the roof:

The trees were lush, all the way along:

On the way back, we came across an enormous female spider. She had woven a long and intricate silken web, with some of her prey trussed up in it (including her tiny male partner who had come to a sad end!):

It was a lovely walk: I want to do it again!

P.S. The spider has now been identified as an Australian Golden Orbweaver (Trichonephila edulis) on iNaturalist, together with some interesting facts about it on Wikipedia.

Perth Caravan and Camping Show

The show was on this week. I am not planning to do either, but I knew there would be lots of  stalls with interesting ancillary goods. I spent some time looking at Weber BBQs and sampled their breakfast frittata, but I had come on the train so it would be tricky to get it home. The Showgrounds were enormous, with so many caravans on display and - the latest craze - rooftop tents that are mounted on top of your vehicle. I started off with the courtesy golf buggy ride, going all the way round to check out what was what.

Rooftop tent.

Ecopots.

Pull-out kitchen for a 4WD.

I bought a checked bush shirt for the cooler weather, but the temperature in the Showgrounds reached 31 degrees: too hot to walk around, so I looked at the programme for a sitting down opportunity. This was a cooking demonstration all about Dutch Ovens. Just about everyone who has camped in the Australian bush has one of these heavy cast iron pots that sit in the hot coals of the camp fire. Then they languish in the shed for the rest of the year getting rusty. This is mine:

Leaves stencilled in the rust.

Well, I learned a lot from the presentation: how to clean off the rust and how to “cure” it with oil in a hot oven and importantly how to keep using in in a domestic kitchen year round. 

The presenter, Jo Clews, was full of info.

How to clean off the rust

Soak it in warm water in the sink and give it a good scrub with steel wool. It will probably need more than one treatment and a lot of elbow grease. Wipe it and put it in the oven at 200 degrees.

How to "cure" the cast iron

Rub some oil all over it, especially on the inside. Put it back in the oven for 2 hours. This stabilises the protective barrier permanently. Do this more than once; it will not go rusty again.

Cooking tips

You can make a juicy roast chicken in a normal domestic oven. It's not necessary to put a trivet inside the pot, but one idea is to sit the chicken on sliced potatoes, which will soak up the juices and prevent the bottom from burning.

Everyone has suffered from burnt bottom damper when camping. The trick is to remove hot coals from the main camp fire and make a private cooking spot, with most of the hot coals on top of the lid, with not so much heat underneath. A small rack can be put on top of the coals, in order to preserve an airflow and keep them alight for longer. A BBQ temperature gauge can be used to know the inside temperature, which should be about 180 degrees for 35 minutes. 

Damper recipe

Traditionally, it was simply plain flour, baking powder and water, plus a little oil or butter. When I was in the bush, we tried adding beer or lemonade to get it to rise. Jo suggested putting in a tin of pumpkin soup as the liquid, plus some feta and chorizo. She also made scrolls with a little basil pesto and set them on baking paper, 5 to the pot.

Melangata Station

Jo lives on a historic station north-east of Geraldton. She does station stays during the winter season from April to October: sounds good!

Canning River bushwalk

At 7.30 am, the Bushwalkers assembled at the car park of the Lo Quay River Cafe for a walk in the Canning Regional Park: a popular spot on a Sunday morning. Paddy was in charge, limping a bit with his gammy foot. This was a new walk on our repertoire and I was wearing summer walking sandals: a poor choice because of all the sand and twigs underfoot. It was an interesting walk, some of it right beside the Canning River with its wetlands full of bullrushes.

At the halfway point, we came across the Sikh Cemetery. This was the spot where Sikh funeral pyres used to be held, in defiance of the law forbidding cremations in the first decades of the Swan River Colony. The most commonly used wood for the pyres was sheok, which burned the hottest of all the local trees. You need a lot of wood to burn a corpse.

There are numerous information boards in the vicinity:

Returning to base, we enjoyed our late breakfast under a tree. We sat there for a long time, discussing everything from the latest scams and how to avoid them, to holidays in Russia and China. Lutz liked to keep phone scammers talking, in order to waste their time and annoy them, he said. We also mentioned the recent TV programme about the Cambodian compounds, where kidnapped Chinese were being forced to set up sophisticated scams, following a set script which could be instantly translated into the language of any rich country. Beware, everybody!

Having a ball

It’s the season for school balls. They hold them early in the year so that everyone can concentrate on studying for important exams from now on. First, you need to think about the dress and get it booked at the hire company. A couple of days beforehand, it’s time to get your nails done:

Next, the hair-do.  E had no appointment for the big day, but by chance I had one at 9.00 am so I kindly gave it to her. She perused various internet sites for inspiration and came up with this one:

We didn’t realise how much work went into creating these hair-up styles: much longer than my usual cut and blow dry. Lisa worked incredibly hard to produce a copy of this style (and her next lady had to wait an extra 15 minutes at least). A big thanks to Lee Preston Hairdressers for arranging this!

Ready to go:

Transport was by Rolls Royce! 

One of her friends’ father has a vintage Rolls, which has an exemption from fitting seat belts: who knew?

Some clever photography here:

Return to the wreck

The Nats Club scheduled another visit to the Omeo Wreck for Sunday morning at 8.00 am. On a long weekend, I knew it was going to be busy. Jolanda and Alan were in charge. They had brought along plenty of gear as they do a lot of diving and underwater photography. They offered to lend me some, but I have enough to do just looking after myself, let alone a camera. My wetsuit and snorkel were enough.

The water felt quite warm after our long hot summer, but there was a sneaky little breeze from the south which stirred up the water. It was low tide, so you could almost wade out to the wreck, but there were too many other people getting in the way. I watched a shoal of little fish feasting on the carcass of a bigger one lying dead on the bottom: that’s Nature.

Underwater shot of me snorkelling

... and another!