Transcript of AE 1079 - Walking With Pete: Chasing Wedgies

G'day, guys, this is a walking with Pete episode. Haven't done one of these in a long time. I have- Just in a situation here that I thought would be really cool to share with you guys as an episode because I can describe my surroundings whilst I open a beer here. Got a Fat Yak pale ale in front of me that I brought specifically to enjoy whilst waiting.

And I'm sure you guys are probably thinking, for what, Pete? Dare say. Pray, tell us, are you waiting? What are you waiting for? So, I am currently at my grandparents farm up near Bendigo. They've owned this for probably the better half of a century, to be honest. I think probably close to 50 years, and- I'll just stand up.

We decided to come up and bring Noah up here with my daughter Joanna as well, and my wife Kel, this is the second time she's been up. She came up here when she was pregnant with Noah. And yeah, I grew up coming here all the time and just enjoying the farm that my grandparents had. I, you know, used to come up for the shearing season.

They would have- They had sheep on the farm that were effectively just there for the wool as opposed to, say, lambing or, you know, having the mutton there, you know, having the sheep for meat. So, we'd come up and do that all the time. But then tragically, my grandfather had an accident where he was mowing the lawn with a rather large mower, I think it's called a slasher, one day, and he actually-

I think he tried to kick a rock away from the outside or from behind the slasher, and it was still going when he did that and it caught the leg of his pants and dragged his leg under the slasher and, you know, pretty much chopped his leg up.

Fortunately, he saved it, like his leg was saved, but he could never walk the same again. I think he lost like six inches off his leg that had to be- I think they just had to insert a whole bunch of metal rods and everything, and then he has to wear like shoes with a special extra thick padding on the bottom of one leg so that he can walk properly.

But long story short, the sheep were no longer on the farm and then, you know, we couldn't shear them because he couldn't handle them, do all of the husbandry stuff that he used to do. Just going to have a sit here. And yeah, so it was sort of tragic.

We used to love coming up to the farm. It was a real group event, you know, we used to have different families that were all related to grandpa coming up and we would shear the sheep together, it would be like a one- or two-day event.

We'd also often come up if he had to herd the sheep up, give them medicine, you know, crotch them I think it's called where they remove the wool from underneath the legs so that the- They don't get fly blown. And yeah, I just remember it was such a beautiful part of my childhood.

So, as a result of having this farm in the family for so long and coming up here frequently when I was a kid and then sort of infrequently when I was an adult, I wanted to share that with my son. So, we've come up here for the first time and he is two and a half. Sorry, hopefully you guys aren't getting too much wind here.

I'm trying to angle myself out of the wind, so you're not getting it over the microphone because I forgot to bring my lav mic to be able to record properly. So, anyway, long story short, we're up here at the farm and we- I did a Goss' episode, I'm not sure if it'll be out by the time this comes out, but we talked about the La Nina El Nino Southern Oscillation cycles that happen in the, I think, over the top of the Pacific Ocean, right.

And so, you end up with times in Australia, where you have a lot of water availability, you know, lots of floods, lots of rainfall and everything's great in terms of the vegetation and the animal life and everything like that.

And then you have the El Nino when it's really dry, so at the moment it's La Nina and we're up here and there is so much greenery compared to normal, what I'm used to. There's loads and loads of plant life and the sheep, you know, are fat, they're doing well, eating off all of the plant life that's growing and thriving. And as a result, we've got a shitload of rabbits all over the place.

And- So, we came up to the farm and I remember we were sitting down for dinner. I think it would have been yesterday, last night or the night before. I think it was last night, and I saw something out of the corner of my eye and thought it was a person running down the gully here.

Because we're on the- The farmland we're on is kind of really mountainous ancient basalt plains, right, where you've got lots of this old volcanic rock and these plains sort of go up and down and they kind of lead to steep gullies and everything.

So, anyway, I thought it was someone running down the hill outside our cabin here, we got this wood log cabin. But it was a wedge-tailed eagle. I was like, holy shit, I haven't seen a wedgie, a wedge-tailed eagle at the farm for I don't know how long.

I can't even remember the last time I saw them here. And so, we ran outside and just sort of enjoyed it, watching the two of them, this pair circling around looking for rabbits. So, one of them landed, and that was the thing that I'd seen out of the corner of my eye. And it was looking for baby rabbits at the front of a rabbit warren. And- So, I'm just watching some magpies.

Some magpies are flying by and sort of attacking one another playfully. Anyway, yeah, so I saw it waiting there, I was like, wow, amazing, I'd love to photograph them, right. You guys know I do a bit of bird photography. You hear that? These are the magpies in the background. And I can hear the rest of the family are probably another 100 or 200 metres away calling and responding.

This is why I wanted to do this episode, so you guys could experience this with me. So, anyway, we saw the wedgies flying around and everything, and I was like, wow, I'd love to try and get some photos of these guys because I've never- They're so hard to ever see, right. You sort of see them and they just disappear or they're really far away.

And you know them because of the characteristic wedge in their tail and they're just, you know, huge. So, anyway, I saw them, and I thought tonight I'd come out and try and wait around the place that I saw them yesterday because they were here again this morning, obviously hunting the same area.

And so, I thought I'd come out tonight with my camera gear here and just hang out during sunset. So, the sun, there's probably about another two hours of sunlight left, maybe a bit less. It's magpies again. And I'm just waiting here to see if these eagles will come back, and I can get some good shots of them. And that's why I brought a beer out because I knew I'd be waiting for a bit.

Can you hear that? It's a crow or a raven actually, I think it'd be a little raven. So, anyway, yeah, out here at the moment, I thought I would sort of describe the scenery to you. All right. So, I've just stepped up onto a rather large basalt rock.

And if I look up the hill, so I'm at the sort of the top, the crest of a kind of a hill, it wouldn't be- You wouldn't call it a mountain, but it's a hill, these sort of rolling hills, we say, because they sort of dip up and down all over the place, over this farm. So, I'm near the top of it. I'm surrounded by, I think, ironbark gum trees. I think that's what they are. They're eucalypts of some kind, I'm not sure if they're ironbark or not.

I've got, if I look upwards, there's these old branches, dead branches like leading out of live branches for this really big eucalypt tree behind me, and I can walk over to it. And you can probably hear, if I do that, you can probably hear how rough the bark is, right. Hence the name, I think ironbark, because it looks like it's all rusted iron. So, these are sort of dotted all over the place here in this part of the farm.

It's really nice, you end up with a lot of birdlife here, as you could hear in the background, right. And you can hear the flies around. And what else can I see? This sort of low grass- Ooh, magpies just flown right up, a baby one who has just spotted me. It's going to crap himself. Yeah, it's flying off. So, yeah, there's like low grass. It's really interesting, there's lots of thistles and thorns.

So, as I walk through the grass, I can't really see it. But as I walk through, I get my legs, socks and shoes covered in these thistles and grass seeds and everything that seem to work their way through the material the more that you walk, the more that you move these seeds, and everything dig in and start scratching the surface of your skin and really irritate you.

And it's beautiful here, because I'm up against this tree, behind the tree here to the West is where the Sun is setting.

I can actually just look to the East, and I can see any shadows from the birds that are flying around behind me. So, it's actually a really good spot to be, assuming that eagles come from that direction because I'll see the huge shadows just, you know, gracefully move across the ground here. So, yeah, the other thing that I noticed as we were driving up the other day, up the dirt road that then leads to where my grandparents farm is.

There were heaps and heaps and heaps of everlasting daisies, which are these kind of really shiny, almost plasticky looking flowers that are bright yellow and they, like, have about a hundred tiny little petals that look like little arrowheads around this, you know, the nucleus of the flower, whatever it's called, where all the pollen is.

And there was just hundreds of thousands of these throughout the bushland that's next to my grandparents farm. And I think as a result of all the water and all the flowers, there were thousands of these really large butterflies.

And they're even here, as I was walking over to this part of the farm, I was walking through clouds of dozens of these butterflies that were sort of orange and black and white in colour, mainly orange, this kind of rusted orange, dark orange colour. And they were sort of disturbed by me walking through the grass.

So, they're all kind of obviously hanging out, chilling out, I don't know, conserving their energy for the night, hoping they don't get plucked up by some other bird or whatever that's going to eat them. And as I was walking through, I kept disturbing all of these butterflies that were just flying around me. It's a beautiful evening. It's about 22 degrees, 23 degrees, I think at the moment.

Today was up to about 26. And so, it's just really- It's just such a beautiful, calm evening. I can hear the wind in the background rustling the leaves in some of these trees, but gently, it's not really very windy at all. And if I look down at the ground, I can see the wind moving through the grass slowly, you know. You know those scenes, I think, sort of like from the movie Gladiator, right.

You know, when he's walking through the field of wheat and his hands touching the wheat and the wind is kind of moving through the wheat. And you see all the wheat kind of undulate like waves in an ocean from the wind. It's kind of like that, but the grass is a little shorter.

It's a little more chaotic, sporadic, spread out, random. But yeah, it's one of these things, I need to try and enjoy these sorts of moments more often, I think where you take a break from everything and, you know, God bless my wife, I'm not a religious man, but it's good saying, you know, God bless my wife for taking care of the kids at the moment.

She's putting Noah to bed. Joanna is already asleep. And Nanna's going to be the one that gives him a goodnight kiss tonight because I'm out here chatting with you guys. So, yeah, anyway, sun's getting low enough that there is some beautiful shadows along the landscape.

You can see- I can see in front of me here, if I look towards the West here, I can see the sun up in the sky and then below that there are these rolling mountains or rolling hills. And it's funny, the further away they get, the lighter they are. The closer to the sun they are, the lighter they are, and the closer they get, the darker they are. And I can see the sort of different shades of greens and golds through the grasses along these hills.

And then if I look up the hill and down the hill, the lava that's been left over in these balsam- Balsamic? Yeah, balsamic vinegar. What's the word? God damn it. Basalt. Balsamic. These balsamic rocks. No, these basalt rocks. They kind of trace lines down the hills, and they kind of- It looks like the back of a crocodile. It's almost like you see these lines of scales popping up through the soil, and this is the rock that is all broken up.

So, I think it's the lava that's left over from hundreds of millions of years ago. I don't know, maybe tens of millions of years ago from when there were- There was a lot of volcanic action here in eastern- Is it eastern? No. Western Victoria, the central sort of Victoria area. So, anyway, there's a lot of it around. You've got to be kind of careful, you could sprain your ankle pretty easily.

Yeah, sitting here waiting, hoping the Eagles come back, and I can get a shot of them in the golden hour, right. That evening hour where you've got the best light from the sun and everything is really soft and beautiful, but no sign of them up until now. Sorry, I'm sort of walking around trying to get a good look at the horizon. I can't see any of them. So, either way, it'll be good. Either way, it'll be good.

Just chilling out here and enjoying the sounds of nature, watching the butterflies dance again, there's two in front of me that are sort of courting. And there are a few dead trees, old, old trees that were obviously really big once upon a time, but then have since fallen over. And they go grey if they're left here long enough.

I think- I don't know if they're like sun bleached, but all the logs here and everything out in the sun, the eucalypts, the wood seems to just go grey and wither away. And there's a lot of stumps on the property as well, and I think, you know, they're again, so old. They must have been from when this place was first cleared by squatters, you know, 150 years ago when they were moving through here.

And it was- This area was the gold rush, you know, the gold rush in Australia happened here in Bendigo and in Ballarat. So, yeah. Anyway, I hope you guys, wherever you are, I wonder if- I hope you can hear these magpies in the background. It's one of my most favourite sounds, you know, Australian sounds is that magpie chorus that you hear, when the family of magpies call to one another, usually in the morning or the evening.

So, you'll either be woken up by it or you'll be given a lullaby, an early lullaby. Yeah. Come on, Eagles, where are you? But it's funny these gum trees, bits of them just die. And so, like the one in front of me here, half of it looks like it's been burnt out. Half one side of it is burnt at the bottom, so it's clearly been killed by a bushfire because it's like hollowed out and burnt. Maybe it died first and then got burnt.

And then if I look up the branches and the trunk and everything reach into the sky, right up there, you know, it's probably about at least 10 metres, maybe 15 metres above me. And these trees are actually really dangerous. If you go camping in Australia, never set your tent up below a gum tree that has these kinds of low dead branches, especially horizontal ones, because they're likely to fall on you in the middle of the night.

And I think they have that nickname, the widow maker. And you'll often see, you know, a good idea, I think a good one would be red river gums, so is it river red gum eucalypts. If you see those in photos, you can probably do a Google search, or if you drive around parts of Australia and see those gum trees, you'll often see just dead branches below lying along the ground below the tree.

That is a bad sign because they just get too heavy, they die for whatever reason, and then they just fall off. Anyway, I'm wondering if that's a good place to leave the episode, guys. Still, nothing. Might hang out for a bit. Might see the odd fox or kangaroo come through as well.

We saw a few of them yesterday. Foxes are like the rabbits, invasive species, pest species. Dad saw one this morning that had caught a baby rabbit. And that's the thing, right. You end up with a shitload of rabbits because there's loads of grass from the La Nina, all the water that's here in the system.

As a result of having loads of rabbits, you get a lot of predators, you get things like foxes and cats as well as, you know, these are the invasive species, but as well as things like eagles that are going to be feeding on those animals. So, it's a cycle. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I hope it wasn't too slow and boring, the pace is a bit slower in these ones.

Now I'm watching some swallows darting really low to the ground along the hill, up and down. Seem to almost be weaving through some of these basalt rocks. Not balsamic rocks, basalt rocks, catching insects. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for joining me, guys. Let me know what you think. If you enjoyed this episode, I'll try and do more of them. Maybe it'll encourage me to go out into nature a bit more and just soak things up and enjoy it.

But, yeah, I definitely encourage you guys to get out there a little more by yourselves. Take a beer. Take a drink. Take whatever you want and just observe what's around you. What are the animals doing? What are the sounds you can hear? What are the plants doing? You know, what can you see around you? Yeah. Anyway, see ya.