The Gift of Wings

On a clear blue Friday afternoon, the sound of the Stearman climbing from the airstrip immediately caught my ear. With a nine piston radial engine, the crisp drone gives itself away the minute it crests the horizon.

I hadn't seen it for months and expected it sold or moved on, but 3.00 Friday is lazily skirted the low hills and wind-breaks and the lined up the house and shed for a low pass and return wave. It is always a breath-taker !

(The Bi-plane is owned and piloted by our old neighbour, who just recently moved just after we got to know him and found some common interests. After years of grining like a fool at the aerobatic antics of this blue and yellow plane, pulling stalls and loops above our place, I finally met the bloke across the road, and yes, it was him.)

We had organised a few opportunities to get a picture of the FJ and the Stearman together at the airport, but we were never in the same spot, so when he came to move away I suspected I had missed my chance.

The plane banked around to the west and B-lined back to the runway. I grabbed the keys to the Holden and headed on down, not to miss this chance.

We said G'day through the fence and then trundled the ute onto the tarmac in front of the hanger and grabbed a few photos. (I forgot my camera, so the phone had to suffice).


 


The 'little' Stearman is a wonderful thing up close, and this one is restored beautifully. Fabric covered wings, steel tubular fuselage, twin leather seats (one behind the other) and a big high sitting nose bristling with piston heads. 
It sits here cooling and clinking post flight in the afternoon sun, when my neighbour says ' well, you ready for a fly ?'
Too right ! I cant squeeze my mellon into the undersized skull cap quick enough. I am sitting up front with a grin from ear to ear. We power up, taxi down onto the grass strip and are away, wind in the hair, the roar of that big motor just in front of my feet and the familiar local countryside turning into a patchwork.

The Stearman cruises at about 140 odd km/hr and can take off and land in less than 300 metres, so the plane was an old favourite for bush pilots and crop-dusters. It can be landed on a grassy paddock or on a gravel road. The plane was bigger than I expected. It has about 10 metres of wingspan, but is shorter than it's long. Gauges are sparse, the sight glass hanging below the upper wing lets you know there is still fuel in the tank and the stick control and pedals are all linked through by guy wires. Classic ! 

We followed the road out to our place and pulled some wide sweeping banks above the paddocks. HD and Tess are down on the back drive giving us a wave and reconed' they could see me smiling from the ground.
We skirted the local neighbours, kept an eye out for the taller wind breaks and then took a pass over the house once more and up into the clear blue yonder.


The voice is distant in the head-piece "How about a loop ?". 

Surprising, I had to talk myself into it. I asked C, "when was the last time you did a loop?", 'about 40 minutes ago'.... OK' I thought, there may never be a second chance "lets go"
The nose dropped groundwards, there is no brake, a 3600 ft roller coaster and I can see the roof of the house and shed and HD and Tess pointing at us. I'm conscious of not touching the stick in front of me ! 
We pull out after gaining speed, I try to glimpse the dials on the dash but the view is crazy. Above me the sky turns to ground and everything is inverted and weightless. We roll out of the loop and slowly everything falls back to normal.
I am suitably impressed through my fuzzy adrenalin fueled thinking.  We pass low over home, across the paddocks and big dams, gain and return to the strip. 

Out of the cockpit, I stood by the nose, looking at my flat battery phone. (I got 3 photos while up there) ' 'That was huge ! Mate, you dont need to be told, but that was a major thing for me, Thanks!' 
The best I can offer is help clean the Stearman in the morning. 

Another 3 hours was spent really enjoying this plane up close the following day, giving it a good spit and polish. 
HD and Tess came out to the hanger to say Hi. Tess wandered around the planes with wide eyes and asked plenty of why questions. We had a cuppa and scones sitting in the shade and just soaking up the view.
The thunderstorms brewed up by lunch and we pulled the Stearman back into shelter and closed up the doors.
I was still buzzing about the fly a week later, and I still crack a wide grin thinking about it now.
Anyways, Thanks kindly C for sharing the Stearman experience that afternoon with us, it will be a long lasting memory for me !
         

Holden Grease

The old FJ Holden ute that was dragged back to the folk's farm way back in 1989 followed me through many changes, was parked away in several sheds and waited... And waited..... all in it's bits and pieces all packed away in boxes, smothered in peppermint oil and naphalene flakes to keep the mice and rats and wasps to a minimum.
Then came Woodabyna and once a shed was established that could keep the seasons at bay, the old ute came out of the shed at Pullabooka and took one major wash down and off came 13 years of drought bourne dust and dead mice and mud wasp nests by the bucket load.
The project started like a seized cog and stopped, started and stopped again. The HQ's all muscled their way in front of the old Humpy. Even another FJ special sedan had a run before the time came last year to say 'enough is enough !' Let's get this J on the road.
2012 was the 60th anniversary of the Holden ute , so I thought what better to get it finished and take her on down to the All Holden Day at Hawksberry,
Without running you through a fairly standard restoration story, we got the FJ rego'ed two days before the AHD and its first main run was the three hour drive over the Blue Mountains and to the show and swap meet. We even took out an award !
The Idea ; the J has the Golden Fleece theme and livery. The idea came from when I painted the HQ ute in road sign yellow. I practiced a bit of spray painting and finishing on a couple of spare FJ guards, thinking that the coat of paint would help protect the metal a bit while they waited to be used. When I was piecing the FJ together to see how much of it was there, I hung the yellow panels on an otherwise pale blue body. The captive gears clicked away and the two colours began to shout 'Golden Fleece ' to me. Looking through old photos of streetscapes from the 50's and 60's, you would quite often see old utes done up in commercial livery, with twin tone paint. So, instead of a shiny resto job, I decided to do her up as a service station ute and age the paint job so it looked like an authentic survivor from the 50's.
How ? ; No secrets really. The drivers door, roof and tail gate remain as original paint and dents. The rest is off the gun. Undercoat is in thick red oxide coloured primer. On top of that went four thin coats of body blue. I masked up the rear guards and put down the yellow. The wear and tear look on the paint came with a lot of wet and dry sanding and a hard water-compound rub back. All the sign writing was put down mid-sanding and pin striped to a tradies standard. I cut out some stencils for the rams on the doors copied off 1950's grease tins and laid them down while the doors were off. The stencils were painted thinly so that they could be rubbed back and given a faded, long-polished look.
The tailgate was done to give a tongue-in-cheek finish to the project, and also so people get the fact that it the patina is not done to deceive. I get so many people wondering how I came to get an original Golden Fleece work ute. Lower Forest on the bonnet is our old locality name.
The interior really hasn't been touched apart from carpet and a new head lining.
What's it like ? Answer to that is 'like an FJ' and that is what surprised me. I always wondered what an early Holden was like to drive and it is surprisingly good. After the alignment and new tyres, the J cruises very nice. It sits on about 90 km happily, holds the roads and corners fine and is easy to drive. Having the window open and the plenum vent open makes it even better. It isn't overly noisy, you barely need to change gears out on the open road and brakes are adequate for country driving.
You get plenty of waves.

Why ? Because the old thing deserved it. It spent a long like on a farm at Manilla, then it was shipped to Grenfell and stripped to its basics and nearly forgotten. I have loved the FJ for such a long time and always promised myself that one day, I would have one on the road. And now I have, and true to myself, I have made it a little individual.

Is that the rustling of leaves, or the sound of Summer leaving?

Summer 2010/ 2011, what a blast! What a season. It was fairly wet, a bit humid, the grass didn't stop growing, neither did Tess. All in all, a splendid few months.

  What... another one? Yup, this is (will be) the family wagon. A proud 1973 HQ Kingswood Wagon, stripped down to its most rudimentary parts and getting a rebuild.

The colour Ive chosen is green.. really really bright green. There are far too many white, drab silver and metallic gold-grey cars on the road.

As for the M21 (old BSA bike). That has also taken me to another level. Most unfortunately, its not mine and belongs to a mate who allowed me to assist in its rebirth. Kindly he allowed me to hold onto it for a bit while it I give it a tune, run-in, tighten down, another tune, another run-in.... maybe another run-in if the weather is good on Sunday. (So very cruisey).

I'm going to cheat here and throw in a random sample of March.
I will have to browse the going ons of Summer and put in a Summer entry next.... maybe during the depths of Winter when I grow tired of de-frosting the axe before getting the firewood in.

And of course, Tessera soaking up the afternoon warmth on the verandah and enjoying the fact that she has helped HD and I see the sunrise almost every morning for the past 6 months. All of which have been fine :)

Gotta' love a good sunset.

Late afternoon and that sky begins to drip off its heat.

Being an avid sky watcher, I do enjoy a when a free light show comes up. The new year celebrated out west saw the swamp still full and the swamp nearly always provides a good foreground/ backdrop to the western skys.

These were taken on the good old Cannon snappy-happy. Rather than slinging a great wad of a camera around, I throw this one in the top pocket, jump on the bike and go photo hunting. The camera always grabs good shots easily.

As someone once said, 'The main secret to a great shot is just being there!'

But there afternoons that you will never capture, so I dont even try. I will leave the camera behind and go and stand out on the edge and soak it all in. The best sunsets are locked up in my memories.

Mmmm, September was a big one.

Woah woah woah, hold the date line on the Blog.

Let me tell you about the new addition. (Not the HQ wagon)(That's another story).

On the second last Friday of September 2010 we said G'day to the newest member of the nest, Tessera Jean (or T.J, or TeeJ, or Tess...) our baby girl. A remarkably smooth and mellow entry into the world she was 3.6 kg, 520 long with dark hair, blue eyes and a 'turn the lights back off' look on her face.

I write this 4 months down the track where the bizarreness of being a father is slowly getting the edge taken off it. (Although I do wake up in the night still wondering what was that noise creeping into my dream, and then remember that we have a 3rd member to the household.)

After we found out that HD was preggers, we were both thankful of a good 7 months of preparation and psyching-up and listening to stories and reading. Looking back at HD's pic when she was 8 or 9 months is like 'you were really pregnant wern't you?'.

All good... that stage was fun, HD breezed it in and looked good doing so. Now almost a 3rd of a year is already over and putting together photos for the blog, TeeJ has changed soooo much in so little time.

So onwards and upwards, everything is more or less new for us and her. She enjoys watching leaves on the trees in the wind, quiet contemplation of the blue and green and brown world beyond her hands, discovering her voice.... its all a fresh canvas.

I'm sure she will get a mention in the coming months.

Here's a month by month review in a few pictures..

ZZzzzzapp!

Something had to get up on the blog sooner or later.... This is later.

I went out on dark to lock up the chooks, turned around and was blown away by the HUGE thunder cloud over the mountains, still glowing pink from the setting sun and edged in silver from the full moon rising behind. Then if that wasn't good enough, the lightening show began in earnest. There was amazingly long cloud to cloud bolts, earth to cloud and then earth to space. Long bolts spiraling upwards into a clear black sky into nowhere. And with the moon keeping pace with the building thundercloud it was like someones crazy 70's fantasy airbrush mural.

Thanks to HD for the photos. We sat on the verandah and she caught a few good pics on the little Cannon snappy-happy. 4 worked out of 120 pics taken. Ahh, the joy of digital.

The utes at Ootha

Ootha, up the road from Yarrabandai on the the way to Condo has a turnoff to the south which takes you to an out-of-the way art installation called Utes in the Paddock. As the name suggests it is made up of a line of Holden utes mounted in particular poses and painted or crafted in a number of styles. The work is done by both local and known artists.

Its not a bad spot to grab a drive-break and take a look at the latest art-work and say G'day to the Llama.

I have my own idea to add to the line-up, but freighting my work to Ootha may pose a financial problem.

the children have entered the forest.......

From the photo files of late last summer come a few pics to remind me of next summer.

A rarely visited creek on the central coast always gives me my forest fix. Its not too far off the beaten track, a good camp spot and a half hours walk is rewarded with a cascading waterfall and cold deep pools. Strip off and ease yourself in, just the thing to ease the 7 Mile Beach sunburn.

Last visit we saw eels, fire-flys, a lyre-bird, a big golden snake and stinging trees.

The creek winds down out of a deep gorge filled with slow swirling reflections and carved sandstone. The water rings and gurgles out of shaddowy plunge pools. There are the remnants of old mines and tracks which have been taken back by the bush.

A quiet place to free the spirit.

& Long Cold Nights

11.00 pm and nothing to amuse myself with..... well, lets go out and try a little night photography.

With the mercury dipping down below -5 deg C, I trundled out with the camera into a frozen evening. The full moon was up, the mist was rolling in off the top paddocks and the world was still and silent.

The snappy-happy digital cam allows you to prioritised the shutter speed and let the aperture work itself out (or you can set an aperture)... leave it on the tripod and let it do the work.

Needless to say, she was a bit nipply out there for the hour wander, and not a creature was stirring.... not even the rabbits. ..

11.30pm, the moon through the big Ribbon Gum. The upper part of the tree was covered in silver frost, but the underside was still dripping from the fog. The full moon was casting long beams down through the leaves all the way to the ground.

The family plot... well it looked that way. The rolling fog stopped at the front yard fence and the full moon lit everything up in silver.

The vegi garden gate with the wormwood shrubs was frozen solid.

I lit the lanterns in the slab-hut and let the camera work it out with 20 second shutter.

The big gum at the dam was majic. (Apart from the ice drips down the back of the shirt). The moving fog through the leaves gave the 20 second time-lapse a bit of a fuzzy 3D effect. With a longer shatter speed, The stars would have come up nicely too.... but it was too cold!

The next morning sat at -6. It has been the coldest morning we have seen for years. The chooks were still on the perch at 8.00. Frosty morning, but beautifful winter day following.