Smoke, continued ...

I've already written about the problems of smoke from bushfires being blown in from New South Wales.

The problem has not gone away - we're still getting smoke blown in, and of course it's worrying, very worrying.

I've written elsewhere about fire planning for the historic site I volunteer at, and unlike all the other times when I went through disaster planning when I was working, this one seems horribly real, and reveals gaps in our planning - fundamental things like which vehicles will we have available and what can we fit in them, especially given that the evacuation might not be as orderly as the paper plan suggests.

But despite everything we're still here. Wheezing a little - you can even hear the cat wheeze when he purrs - but surviving.

Yesterday, we'd arranged to go out to dinner at our favourite restaurant in town for a private pre Christmas treat. And before we went out I did something I've never felt the need to do before - I downloaded the emergency services app to my phone - just because.

While we were at dinner, a fire service truck came up the street, for a moment we almost panicked at the sight of it - we didn't realise, but the fire service volunteers were having a kids's party and fund raiser  at the pub next door, and of course Santa came by fire truck.

What was remarkable was the number of people, myself included, in the restaurant who got up and went out to put a ten or twenty dollar bill in the collection tin.

People are worried ...

Smoke

Where we live we are mercifully unaffected by bushfires - we've had a reasonable amount of rain, and while things are definitely drying out the fire risk is no worse than usual.

I take comfort from the fact that despite some near misses, the town has not been directly affected by fire since European settlement, which is near enough 170 years.

However, what we are getting is smoke.

Smoke blown down from the fires around Sydney. Most of the time we've had winds from the south, and the air's been reasonably clear, but today the wind's swung round to the north and we're already getting smoke. Not as bad as on the horror day three or four weeks ago, when you could see a blue haze in the street outside, but bad enough with the smoke haze obscuring the hills around.

So, what to do?

Well, earlier this year, in August, we decided to flee the cold for a couple of weeks and drive up to Maleny in Queensland where we rented a cottage for a week.

Driving up was a cold experience, freezing temperatures, snow flurries between Tamworth and Armidale, but Maleny was pleasantly warm.

On the way back we had a couple of days being cultural in Brisbane, and the drove down the coast with the aim of a couple of days in Port Macquarie.

When we got there, Port Macquarie was still shrouded in smoke from the Lindfield Road peat fire, and while an onshore winds meant that it didn't affect us much, when the wind dropped you could smell the smoke, and if you blew your nose you got a kleenex full of black snot like you sometimes get in London (or Bangkok, or indeed the dreaded Singapore Haze).

An experience I'd describe as more tacky than dangerous, but it did start to make me think about what we would do if we were badly affected by smoke, given that J is asthmatic, and despite being very fit earlier in my life I seem to be more affected by smoke and dust as I get older.

Now the problem is not so bad that we need an air purifier but we certainly need to be better informed. We could of course buy our own air quality monitor - they're something between eighty and a hundred dollars on ebay, but the individual state environmental monitoring agencies have monitoring stations in Albury (NSW) and Wangaratta (Victoria) both about 40km away and lower down than we are, but probably good enough as an indicator of a developing problem:

There's a number of apps out there that can access the environmental monitoring data, so, for the moment I settled on downloading an app that lets us check the air quality when we're out and about. I chose Airmatters as I liked the way the data was presented.

The other thing I did was buy a pair of good quality Chinese made filter masks, similar to those that you  see people wearing on bad air days in Singapore.

I chose to buy these softer, flexible masks as I thought they'd be more comfortable to wear. We already have a pair of industrial masks with replaceable pm25 filters from when we were doing a lot of sanding and plastering during home renovations and I can tell you that, while effective, they're extremely uncomfortable to wear long term, especially on a hot sticky summer's day. That and they make you look like Darth Vader.

I also have a pack of disposable pm25 masks that I picked up somewhere, but there's a problem - they're made for builders.

I can get them to fit reasonably well on my face, but J, who has a small face, can't get a decent seal, and remember, unless they fit properly you might as well not bother.

As you'd expect, there's a lot of people out there trying to make a buck out of the current air quality problems in Sydney and Canberra and asking silly prices, but I managed to get a pair of reasonable ones with replaceable filters for about 10 bucks from ebay, and at that price they're cheap enough to leave in the bushfire/storm panic box until they're needed.

Hopefully we'll never need them, but at least we've got them if we do ...

Moth crypticity

A zillion years ago, when I was a real scientist, I became interested in crypticity - like why are some potential prey camouflaged, while others are not.

There's also a question here about fruit colouration and the evolution of colour vision in forgaging primates.

As I said, all that is a long time ago, but I've retained a fascination with insect camouflage, and this morning there was a nice example on the outside wall of our house:

note how the moth is nicely coloured to match the pattern of lichen growing on a tree branch ...

A great sooty owl ?

Last night, about two in the morning, we were woken up by a strange noise.

J accused me of snoring in a strange manner, but then it came again, a long descending noise, louder this time.

Noticeably, the possums who live in the hundred and fifty year old elm trees that line our street had all shut up and had stopped playing soccer on our roof.

It sounded once more, and then after a long pause,  we could hear the possums starting to creep about.

The cat, of course, had been woken up and wanted to go out, however if there was a predator about, one capable of scaring possums, it would probably be capable of doing some damage to an elderly and rather visible white cat, so we kept him in, much to his annoyance.

At first we thought it might be a powerful owl, which has been recorded in this area, and certainly there's enough prey in the forest and scrub on the old gold workings to sustain them - that and being happy to live in urban areas - one has even been sighted living in the middle of Canberra.

But the call didn't sound right - not hooty enough. A bit more searching on bird call websites and we came up with another possible candidate - the greater sooty owl.

Now, the greater sooty owl is not normally known in this area, tending to live in the temperate rainforests on the wetter east side of the Great Dividing range, rather than here in Beechworth on the western slopes where it's bit drier, and the native forest is drier and scrubbier with fewer old growth trees.

They're not known to wander far from their established territories. But of course, this year the forests in East Gippsland have been unusually dry, with bushfires closing the great Alpine road.

So possibly, just possibly, a sooty owl or two has crossed the divide in attempting to escape the fires and is trying to establish itself around Beechworth.

Certainly New South Wales Environment reports them as being present in the Alpine National Park, end Environment Victoria has published a paper that suggests they're not unknown in this area.

We'll see if we hear them again ...

Canberra and the NSW south coast

You might remember my little tale about getting X-rays sent from Albury to Canberra.

Well the imaging company in Albury realised that a DVD might be a bit of a problem, given that its 2019, so they gave us printouts from a film printer - even more retro but as always, lowest common denominator wins on accessibilty - the Canberra surgeon even had a nifty little led viewing panel in his office.

As for the rest, we did our family thing, took the opportunity to go to my optomerist, and did a whole 360 degrees on Canberra - when we left I was really over Canberra, its blandness and its expense.

Coming back, initially I felt it was a bit more urban and sophisticated - or at least the veneer of something like city life had got as far up Northbourne Avenue as Dickson, but after a day or I came to realise that the changes were only cosmetic, and it was the same bland cold beige place it always was.

While I'm no longer searching out the garlic and crucifixes when  a visit is suggested - it is after all quite useful for some things - Ikea, Muji, and big city department stores, it is still the beige heart of Australia.

So, after that we thought we'd treat ourselves to a couple of days on the coast at Tathra. Still too cold to swim, but we did some coastal walking in the national parks in the hope of spotting some migrating whales but the best we managed was a pod of dolphins feeding offshore.

As well as getting out in the open air we treated ourselves to dinner one night at Il Passagio in Bermagui - excellent modern Italian with fresh local ingredients - although the drive back with kangaroos and wallabies bounding across the road out of the forest was a little nerve wracking.

Another find was the Boneless Vegetarian Cafe, also in Bermagui. They don't have a website but are on Facebook and Instagram, but if you like a decent coffee and brunch they're well worth a visit.

On our way back we thought we'd go back over the mountains via Jindabyne and Thredbo.

Stupidly, when we got to Nimmatabel, we thought we'd cut off the corner and head to Jindabyne via Dalgety rather than Cooma. While part of the road is still dirt it had been recently graded, and with the drought the clay road was as hard and dry as concrete, meaning we could manage between 80 and 90 km/h without being jolted all over the place.

Unfortunately, other people thought so too, as part of the dirt section was closed for a car rally. Either we hadn't seen the warning sign at the intersection, or else it had been blown over in the wind, but basically we were marooned in the middle of the high plains. We asked one of the race officials if there was anyway we could continue without having to retrace our drive back to Nimmatabel and they directed us up a dirt road - no direction signs in the middle of nowhere - which gradually became narrower and rougher and more and more unlikely looking until we came over a crest and started seeing mailboxes and farmhouses. The road widened and became nicely graded, and then turned back to bitumen before bringing us past a rather ornate nineteenth century stone built house and into Cooma.

And from there it was onto Jindabyne, Thredbo and over Dead Horse Gap down to Khancoban.

But that wasn't the end of the fun. It had been blowing strongly all day, but after Jindabyne, the sky darkened and it began to sleet. We abandoned any idea of stopping for lunch at Dead Horse Gap and drove down the other side to Tom Groggin, by which time the sleet had turned to rain, and the day had turned cold, more like early September than mid October.

After a hurried picnic lunch it was back on the road, but by the time we crossed the Murray into Victoria the sun had come out and the countryside was looking like somewhere in rural France or Italy.

Another hundred and fifty kilometres or so got us home - basically apart from a stretch of the Snowy Mountains highway from Bega to Nimmatabel, and another stretch of highway between Cooma and Jindabyne we'd avoided major roads all the way and had an interesting and characterful drive ...

brexit and wartime austerity ...

We watch quite a lot of imported history docos, most of which come from the UK.

Recently I've noticed an increasing emphasis on being 'British' (whatever that is), and have put that down to a reaction to the psychodrama that is Brexit.

I've also noticed an increasing number of articles in UK online newspapers about what to do with all these cans people are hoarding - something that interests me given that I spent a large part of my life as a trainee adult living on vegetables, grains, beans both canned and dried, and the inevitable canned tomatoes. (Margaret Thatcher's economic downturn and being a penniless graduate student had a lot to do with it - that and having a girlfriend at the time studying the ethnobotany of the late neolithic and early bronze age diet)

But anyway, back to the docos. Last night we watched Britain's most historic towns, and last night's episode was about Dover in the second world war, and inevitably there was a section on wartime austerity and rationing.

As always in these sequences, one item was tasted and pronounced 'quite good' and something else that looked like a cross between a fatberg and an elephant turd studiously avoided.

But this did get me thinking - during the Greek economic crisis people returned to a postwar austerity diet to save money - will the Brits do so in the event of  shortages and chaos during Brexit?

And equally, given our dependence on having food trucked all over the country (raspberries in mid-winter? really?) is there something we too can learn from British wartime austerity to eat more sensibly and frugally ?

Koala!

The street we live in, and the surrounding streets are pretty well treed, but on the whole they're deciduous non-native trees, but in our yard we have a big gum tree, like an island of Australianess surrounded by all these alien interlopers.

Thursday evening, after he'd been fed, the cat went out for his usual foray. A few minutes later I went out to water some plants we have in pots and close up the coldframe for the night, and I noticed the cat was staring hard, really hard, at the gum.

I followed his gaze, and there it was, a koala sitting in the tree feeding.

We took some photos, watched the koala for a bit and then brought the cat inside to let the koala make his or her escape in peace.

Koalas are not that unusual in Beechworth. Shortly after we moved here there was one in plain day sitting in one of the ornamental street trees outside of the old post office, and a year or so ago I had to perform an emergency stop going down the hill to put in one of my volunteer days documenting artefacts for Dow's Pharmacy, when a koala came out of the bush next the road and proceeded to amble across the road in front of my car.

I am guessing that the Beechworth Historic park - basically the area of old gold diggings that surrounds the town, and which has now gone back to scrubby native bush, has provided a refuge for the local koala population ...

5527 already

Well,

we've had the solstice, and it's been cold - minus 4 overnight and only just touching double figures during the day. Pleasant enough to sit outside with a coffee after lunch but already too cold to be pleasant by mid afternoon.

Previously we've had a run of wet weather, but on Tuesday evening the temperature dropped and we had a pelting shower of sleet with a little wet snow mixed into it, which fortunately turned back to sleety rain.

Wednesday was simply cold and overcast, and Thursday was not much better.

Friday brought freezing fog and it was so cold working on the documentation project, not only did I have my standard winter clothing - St Andrews University beanie, fleece outdoor shirt, fleece ski necklet (one of these infinity scarves that's basically a short loop of polar fleece), fingerless gloves - that I ended up keeping my puffer jacket on most of the day - truly Dickensian, and probably appropriately so, given the building dates from the 1860's.

The worst thing of course is that when we've freezing fog, the solar panels are really only good as perches for the local parrots - at least when the sun shines we still get a couple of kilowatts out of them in the middle of the day, despite the sun being low in the sky.

But as I said it's 5527, the Inca new year, and from now on the days will start to get imperceptibly longer and hopefully a little warmer, and in time the soil will warm and it will be time to plant ...

Jane Austen and exercise

The weather the last few days has been bloody awful - we've been catapulted from a relatively mild autumn to something redolent of the first days of Ragnorok.

Rain, fog, more rain, and the only decent day we had in the middle of it was cold and windy, all of  which means of no exercise, or certainly no going outside, and somehow on a cold damp day I couldn't face going to J's studio for an early morning half an hour on the cross trainer, even though I know I should.

Cycling is out, as is any serious walking. Too wet, too cold.

But it's not as if I've done nothing.

Like many people, I have a fitness tracker on my phone and it records the number of steps taken (more or less).

Like many such programs the app has selected 10,000 steps as a daily target even though the desirability of 10,000 steps is built on poor science. In fact there's been another study that suggests that in some cases 4500 steps could be enough to confer some benefit. But the benefit of the fitness tracker app is that it can give you a sense of scale as to how much, or how little exercise you're taking.

And what has this to do with Jane Austen?

Earlier this month there was a slightly silly piece on Radio National about how some writer became fit by living like a Jane Austen character for two years.

It wasn't a great revelation - basically walk everywhere and eat a good diet of fresh vegetables and meat - no packaged or prepared meals - but it did contain a germ of sense.

Eating a good diet is a no brainer - we buy fresh as much as possible, and where possible buy local.

This involves a certain amount of planning - our local supermarket doesn't get a delivery of fresh fruit and veg every day, and sometimes things stay on the shelves so long, so sometimes we end up driving to a local Coles (60km round trip) or Woolworths (75km round trip) to stock up, but then we try and buy all the extras we need - clotheswash, cat food, toilet paper in megapacks to minimise the total number of kilometres driven - in fact despite having two cars and living in the country we've done less than 8000 km since Christmas.

The rest of the time we walk. It's 1400 steps to the supermarket and back from our house, 2000 if I go via the post office to collect our mail, or 4000 if we combine collecting our mail with a half hour walk to the lake and along the creek.

And that I think is the key to exercise. By all means go to the gym a couple of times a week, or go for substantial bushwalk at the weekend, but to support healthier lifestyle walk or cycle as much as possible - to the shops, to the post office, and that way it becomes part of your life, rather than being something special that involves lycra.

It's not always practical I know - having to wear business clothes does not always work well with cycling, and sometimes your shopping is too bulky to carry home.

Well, we're lucky, we're retired and we live in a small village where it is perfectly possible to walk up to the shops and buy stuff as we need, but we also have invested in a cheap shopping trolley to carry home heavy or bulky items - after all no one really wants to carry a load of shopping and a couple of bottles of wine.

And I'm sure that if you're busy mum with kids to pick up, or on your way back from work, driving and stopping off at the local shopping centre can seem to make sense - I know, we've been there, but equally, by making some small adjustments in your routine, you can make some big changes in your health and fitness regime ...

Election day ...

Yesterday was election day.

We'd been out the night before at a community theatre even so we had a slow start, scrambled eggs, toast, coffee, that sort of thing and then strolled up to the polling station to vote, chatted to a few other people we knew, cast our votes, and because it was such a nice day we went up to our favourite cafe for a danish and a coffee.

We were quietly confident that the day would bring a change of government, and one that would do something about climate change, the abuse of refugees and the rest.

So confident were we we watched the Freddie Mercury retrospective instead of watching the election results as they came in.

We were shocked when we eventually watched the election news. In fact so surprised were we we thought that they must have got the exit polls wrong.

But no, we were condemned to another three years of being governed by pudgy men with a penchant for ill fitting suits and dodgy real estate deals.

A hundred thoughts flickered through my mind - Vicxit? a Victorian republic unshackled by right wing evangelicals from Queensland suddenly seemed like a good idea, but no, I was being silly.

People had voted honestly and fairly, and this was what we had got. We might not like it but this is what democracy has delivered.

We'll just have to keep on protesting and hope that next time around it's not too late to do something about climate change and human rights, and the growing inequality in society ...

The Eta-Aqurid meteor shower of 2019

Well, we got kind of excited about seeing the Eta-Aquarid meteor shower.

There had been a report about it on SBS news last night as well as coverage in the SMH and the Age.

So this morning, at around 5am, when the temperature was hovering about zero we got up, put on our warmest down jackets and ugg boots and went out into the yard,

It was pretty dark, streetlighting in our street consists of a dim globe or two at the intersections of the cross streets, so we stood there facing eastish and let our eyes adjust.

Well we saw a couple of satellites, a plane flying north, and a single meteor, which was cool, but not quite what we expected - the tv news and the papers had oversold the event.

After we'd retreated inside I found a blog that was a little more realistic about what we were likely to see, which kind of matched our experience. If we'd started earlier and set ourselves up for sitting out with blankets and coffee we might have seen more.

We probably won't have a repeat tomorrow - the forecast is for cloud and showers tomorrow, so I guess that's it for the Eta-Aquarid shower until next year ...

Storms (again) ...

Back at the end of March I posted about our storm preparedness (or lack thereof).

Well, it was a good thing we had a dry (?) run in March because we had an absolute humdinger of a storm on Thursday night.

It started with spectacular sheet lightning to the south of us, lighting up the evening sky like in old film of bombardments on the western front in World War I, and with great rumbling peals of thunder, which was  followed by torrential rain - what I describe as being like God flushing the toilet, so massive was the downpour and the speed of its onset.

This happened at around half past six. after the sun had gone down, and when we getting dinner ready, an Italian style chicken stew.

We were doing normal thinks, cooking, half listening to the evening news on the tv, and enjoyimg a welcome glass of pinot noir - we'd been out all day in Albury -our nearest approximation to a city - dashing to dentists (cancelled at the last minute), getting flu shots, picking up stuff ordered via click and collect, and a host of other tasks. All in all a pretty normal weekday evening.

And then the lights went out, came back on, and went out again. And stayed out. Leaving us in a very dark house.

Fortunately we always leave a torch on the kitchen bench, so we flipped into our storm routine:

• go collect the camping head torches and camping lantern from the study
• brave the elements and get the camping stove from the shed
• find the AM radio and tune to the local ABC station - totally useless on this occasion as there were just too many lightning strikes
• grab the 4G modem and an ipad and check the power company outage tracker which gave us an expected fix time of eleven that night.

All the time the storm was battering down. 

I was a little worried by the ferocity of the storm as we've had  problems with an intermittent leak - really just a very slight drip - in the roof when we get heavy rain, but this time, mercifully, no leak.

Given the power company's time to fix of several hours we finished cooking our stew on the camping stove, and sat and talked.

About half past eight the power came back for about ten minutes, went off, came back, and went off again, and then just before ten it came back, and this time it stayed on.

Once the internet came back, I ran round restarting the internet tv boxes - three of them, all different brands just to make my life more complex than it need be - fixing clocks and resetting the internet radio.

We waited about half an hour, guessed that the power was staying on, put the dishwasher on, and went to bed, being careful to take camping head torches with us just in case we woke up to a dark, silent house.

In the event we needn't have worried. The power stayed on all night. The rain finally stopped about four in the morning.

Daylight brought a wet and soggy morning, leaves stripped from the trees, but no real damage, except to my Asian green seedlings in their cold frame - the wind had got in and flipped it open, and the rain had flooded the seed trays, but enough seem to have survived that the loss was annoying, nothing more.

On the way down to Chiltern to my documentation project  I half expected the road to be flooded, or blocked by downed trees, but no, while there had been a bit of flooding the road was more or less clear, and while there were branches lying about you could get through without difficulty - I'm guessing the roads people had been round at first light to do a preliminary clean up, unblock flooded culverts and so on.

Being prepared meant that something that was a bit of drama, never got close to being a crisis ...

Green Tomato Chutney time

Despite the fact that  winter seemed to arrive at the end of March, it was only playing with us - we've had a long drawn out autumn with cold mornings and nights, but reasonably warm days, days when you think about getting out on the bike.

But as can be seen from the photograph I tweeted ten or so days ago, we had a late abundance of tomatoes:

all of which ripened on the kitchen window sill. The yellow ones were a bit boring, but the big red ones were really good tasting tomatoes.

We' ve been eating a lot of tomato and feta salad these last few days, and have finally got close to the tomato even horizon, but even so we still had a problem.

A few days ago we had an almost frost - it didn't quite freeze but it did get down to 0.5C, and the tomato plants didn't like that one bit, which meant a rescue operation to strip the plants of the remaining tomatoes - those that showed signs of ripening went on the kitchen window sill - but the rest ?

Well the rest came to about 5kg, so we selected the biggest and put them to one side to make fried green tomatoes next time we treat ourselves to a big breakfast, and the rest went into chutney.

I think I've probably made enough to feed the street, but for what it's worth here's my recipe

• 2kg green tomatoes roughly chopped into ~2cm chunks
• 2 green chillies roughly chopped
• 2-3 shallots (pickling onions) peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
• 250g sultanas
• 1 finely chopped apple - red or green, your choice
• thumb sized bit of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
• 4 tsp Keen's curry powder
• 350g  white sugar
• 300ml good quality malt vinegar

Keen's curry powder is a traditional nineteenth century blend, and a little different from the 'proper' more authentic kinds - if you can't get Keen's, try for a traditional aromatic blend - it doesn't have to be hot, but you need aroma.

Likewise I used Cornwells Malt Vinegar, as it was the only genuine malt vinegar our local supermarket had in stock yesterday - any good malt vinegar will do, but avoid anything that's not been brewed traditionally.

Put the lot in a big pot - the big 3 litre pot we use for pasta is fine. Bring to the boil while stirring to blend together. Once blended and boiling, turn down to a simmer. Stir every ten to fifteen minutes. After about two and half hours you should end up with about a litre to a litre and a half of delicous sticky chutney - the actual quantity will depend on how juicy your original tomatoes were.

Bottle in jars that have previously been sterilised by being put through the dishwasher on the thermo nuclear setting - ours is around 75C, but anything over 60C is fine.

Leave in the cupboard to mature, and enjoy with a decent cheddar and a glass of shiraz ...

And suddenly it's winter

Well, not quite, but definitely autumnal.

Autumn has arrived with a crash and a bang this year. After last week's big storm, we had a series of calm days with chilly mornings and warm afternoons, but this weekend the wind has swung round to the south, bringing with it heavy and very cold rain from the southern ocean and gusty winds making the yard look like a painting inspired by Shelley's West wind.

Today though, the wind has dropped and while it's still cold and damp it's more like a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, a time I always think makes this part of Victoria look like an attempt to reimagine Herefordshire with church bells ringing through the mist and damp apple orchards.

However, unlike Herefordshire at an equivalent time of year we still have tomatoes and chillies trying to ripen, and I've only just pulled out the last of the zucchinnis.

Hopefully we'll get a little bit of sun during the week to help them along, otherwise we'll being making green tomato chutney again this year ...

Storms ...

Yesterday we had a sticky 31C, not bad for the autumnal equinox.

But overnight that all changed.

When my phone played it's irritatingly cheerful wakeup music this morning the house was dark, and quiet. No bedside clock, no powerlights on the bedroom tv and internet decoder, and the study was equally dark, no printer or status lights. Only my windows laptop showed any life, and that was only because it was asleep but using its internal battery.

In fact the only thing showing any signs of life was the cat, and that's because he's learned that my phone going off means a tin of Whiskas for breakfast is in the offing.

So, feed the cat by the light of a led emergency torch we keep in the laundry. Take the tin to the bin and check that none of the neighbours had any lights.

In fact its was quite atmospheric with lightning crashing and crackling through scudding clouds and the occasional spatter of ice cold rain.

So we had no power. No power means no internet.

Fortunately our Huawei 4G travel modem includes a backup battery. Checking my phone I could see that we had a signal, meaning the backup generator had started at the cellphone tower. So out with my ipad to connect to the internet, and onto Ausnet's outages webpage.

Ausnet, the company that manages the power network has this really good outage tracker that shows you where the fault is, more or less, and lets you know an approximate time to fix. The only problem is that the display is designed for an ipad or a laptop and not the smaller screen size of a phone.

Hence the travel modem and ipad routine.

Once I connected, it was obviously a bad one - the whole of Beechworth was out, as were quite a few other neighbouring communities and the website was showing a fault location right in the middle of an area of rough hilly bush. Either a tree had come down or lightning had taken out a transmission pylon.

Anyway, the bad news was Ausnet gave a estimated fix time of 1100.

Now we're all electric. No gas at all. We did use to have a bottled gas stove, but chucked that out in favour of an energy efficient induction cooktop.

So if we wanted coffee, and we did want coffee, it was out with the old gas camping stove. Nipping up to Project 49 or Peddlar for a takeout coffee was not an option.

I knew where the stove was - it was in my gardening shed, but finding it took some time as it had got pushed behind some plantpots and seed trays - but once found it was out with the old stovetop coffee maker, and soon we had a brew on the way.

We of course had no radio, but we do keep an old AM radio pretuned to the local ABC station in the kitchen drawer for emergencies, and you guessed it, the batteries were dead. Fortunately I did have some spare batteries, so a couple of minutes later we had the breakfast show telling us of trees down, road closures, power outages and the like.

In the event the power came back just before 1000, and we were able to rejoin the 21st century. What it did show was our woeful preparedness for winter, so before the next one we need to

• make sure we have spare batteries for the AM Radio always on hand
• keep a spare gas cartridge (or two) for the old camping stove in the shed
• buy a couple of small battery led torches
• buy and keep a couple of cans of soup in the pantry
• get a small camping kettle for making tea and instant soup 
• keep the travel modem and ipads reasonably charged
• ditto for our phones

and of course there's the knock on - the supermarket didn't have fresh baked bread this morning, and the local servo had had to close - no power for the petrol pumps - and of course no one could do eftpos or tap'n'go transactions this morning - it was all cash, so I guess we need to keep some small notes and change handy ...