The Conservation hunting debate

What is Conservation hunting?

The concept of conservation hunting is the use of recreational hunters to control feral (pest) animals. The main types of feral animals in Australia are rabbits, feral goats, foxes, feral cats, wild dogs, wild pigs, cane toads and camels. These animals cause billions of dollars worth of damage to both farm land and the native Australian environment every year. The shooting associations across Australia have been lobbying to gain greater access to National Parks and forests to hunt these animals. It has been long debated whether recreational hunters should be part of the feral animal control plan. Other methods of feral animal control include poisoning, trapping and professional aerial culling. It has been argued that recreational hunters are inefficient in feral animal control. This is because traditional hunters have a mind set of hunting only selective animals for food and trophies.

I had a discussion with a old hunter about this issue and how this is affecting the public's perception of recreational hunters. When I mentioned about conservation hunting the old hunter believed that I meant that we limit the kill to make sure that there are always feral animals to shot. This is the old way of thinking and I believe that it is counter productive to the cause of getting access to more hunting areas. If the public believe that recreational hunters will have minor impact on the feral animal population they will not get the support required. 

I believe that an education program should be created for recreational hunters to help them understand the importance of proper conservation hunting. Only once the recreational hunters understand that the only good feral is a dead feral, they will be taken serious as a part of feral animal control.  

How to lose weight - "put down the fork fatty"

About 1 month ago I started to realize that I had out grown my life and it was starting to hurt. You know you've got a problem when your bathroom scales stop measuring at 120kgs and when you get on the needle goes all the way back to the start. Great I am 3kgs! Sadly, no I am not I am 123kgs, damn.

At work I have to wear an equipment belt. This belt weights at least 8kgs and everything on the belt dug into my stomach and sides when I sat down. If I ever fall into a river I have no doubt I am going straight to the bottom.

Lucky for me the last two times I fell in to the local river the water was only up to my knees. Unlucky was the fact that I was crossing the river with a couple hundred on lookers watching.

Anyhow in the past I have lost weight through diet shakes, exercise, subway diet etc etc. They work but all have the disadvantages like the diet shakes that are expensive and taste awful or the subway diet that requires going to a sudway store to buy lunch everyday.

But my own diet I have had the best results. In 20 days I have lost 8kgs. I call it the "put down the fork" diet. It is easy and simple. Eating more fruit and veg and less white bread, potatoes, and fatty crap. Here are some example of things that are not healthy:
#eating a family block a chocolate everyday;
#eating a bowl of ice cream with cream and chocolate sauce everyday;
#eating a hand full of choc chip biscuits after dinner everyday;
These are examples of things that I actually ate everyday. Looking back I can not believe that I am not as big as a house.

Here are some examples of what I am eating in the "put down the fork" diet:
# Muesli was dried fruit
# whole grain bread
# Vite weat bisuits
# Logicol spread (lower cholesterol absorption)
# Ryvita rye crispbread
# chicken caesar salad (home made)
#lots of green apples and vegetables  

In 2008 I started a work out program at the gym. I got two lots of advice one from the gym manager and one from a know it all friend. The gym manager told me that 70% of getting healthy is eating right and only 30% is exercise. The know it all friend's advice was to exercise hard and eat what ever I wanted because the exercise would burnt fat. The latter advice was wrong. But in my wisdom I worked out hard and got minimal results. Why, because I was not eating properly. I lost enthusiam and gained the weight I lost and then put on even more. In 2008 my starting point was 115kgs and at the beginning of September 2010 I started my new program at 123kgs.

This time around I have been losing weight quickly by eating right and doing only minimal exercise.

Shade sail project

In 2006 we moved into a new house on a 2 ha paddock block. The block had no trees at all and I had a whole lot of children who wanted to play outside in all sorts of the weather. The weather range in the New England of NSW is a winter of below 0 (degrees Celsius) with wind gusts that will blow a grown man off his feet and a summer where the temperature climbs up to 40. I realised that the trees I planted 2006 would not grow up high enough to cause shade till the children were adults. A shaded play area was required and it would have to with stand the most extreme weather conditions. 

I put my brother and father (both engineers) to the task of designing the structure. They designed a six pole shade sail structure. The six poles were angled out from the ground to provide strength and the poles were different lengths to hold the shade sails tight (see photo).

I ordered six square metal pole with an extra 1 metre on each pole to secure them in concrete filled holes. I marked out where I wanted the holes and a friend with a bobcat drilled six holes (1 metre deep and 450 mm wide). I then drilled holes for the chain eyelets and screwed the weather caps to the top of the poles. I did this before putting the poles into the ground as it was a lot easier to work on them while they were on the ground. 

Now came the tricky part I had to form up the poles to pour the concrete. I used some old form work boards and large clamps to hold the poles. As each pole needed to be angled out from the ground I had to form all the poles up at the same time to line them all up by eye. Once the form work was finished the shovelling began. Lucky for me I had got an electric concrete mixer for this. After a day of mixing and pouring and a couple days allowing the concrete to set the poles were very strong. 

I then put two shade sails up with strong chains and a set of turn buckles for tenioning onto the eyelets. Then the job was done.  I would recommend that what ever parts you look at getting always buy the heaviest duty parts you can get do not underestimate the strenght of the wind

  

Kid proofing the kitchen with a wooden gate

In 2006 I moved into our new house with a pregnant wife and two children, since then our family has grown to 6 children. The open design of this house looks great but is a nightmare as far as keeping the children out of the kitchen. I was faced with a problem as the walkway into the kitchen was over 1 metre wide and there was no commercially available kid safe gate wide enough to block the walkway.

One day I visited my brothers house and noticed that he had built a picket fence style gate for his back veranda that leads down to a 3 metre set of stairs. I got some engineering advice from my brother and got down to designing my own gate.

One of the important things to consider when using timber is, the stronger the gate is the heavier it will be and the stronger the hinges and mounting bases will have to be to handle the weight. At first I attached the metal gate hinges to a narrow strip of timber that was screwed into the chip board of the kitchen bench. This worked for a while till one of my evil toddlers climbed the gate and it pulled out of the kitchen bench. I fixed this by reinforcing the gate mount with a narrow strip of timber on the inside and outside of the kitchen bench. I replaced the wood screws with three large bolts that went all the way through. The bolts were anchored with washers and nuts.

While the two kitchen benches on the sides of the walkway looked like they lined up they were out of line by about 5cm. I had to make a raised timber mounting plate to line the latch bolt to the catch squarely.

Tools used:
#Electric mitre saw or docking saw
#Set square
#tape messure
#hand saw
#pencil

Timber (pine) sizes used:
1000mm x 90mm x 35mm x 2 rails (top and bottom)
1050mm x 90mm x 35mm cross brace
800mm x 40mm x 20mm x 11 pickets
800mm x 40mm x 20mm x 2 hinge mount reinforcment strips 

With a quick paint the gate was ready for use. This gate has been in use now for two years and is still keeping the toddlers at bay.

    

Vote for the donkey says Mark Latham

Former leader of the Australian Labor Party Mark Latham has had his 15 minutes in the spot light in an election where he is not even running. After Mark's loss against John Howard in 2003 he disappeared from public life till about a month ago. The Channel 9 show, 60 minutes decided to give Mark a soap box to stand on. With a camera crew in toe Mark went out wearing a media pass and joined the media pack. Mark used guerilla journalism tactics to ambush Tony Abbott and Jullia Gillard as they were walking to events. As the campaigns were getting boring the media pack turned their attentions on what Mark was going to do next.

On Sunday the 15th of August the article aired on Channel 9 and I must admit it was well put together with interviews with the Greens leader Bob Brown, former pollie Pauline Hanson and people on the street. The article looked semi serious till the end where Mark told us all to donkey vote. That's right he wants us not to vote at all in a protest against the two major partys. Well one of the parties is going to have to win and I would like to think that I had a say who it is.

Grey water for gardening during the drought

In May of 2006 I moved into our new house that is on a 2ha paddock block. The block had been used for cattle farming and had no trees or plants on it. In July of that year I started planting native trees around the block and gardens closer to the house. The plan was that the gardens and trees would grow up and turn this paddock into a wooded oasis. But I was not factoring in that we were in the middle of one of the worst droughts in recorded history.

Living out of town there is no town sewage. We have a Garden Master sewage system that pumps out the waste as grey water through a sprinkler system. The sprinkler is on a 30 metre long hose that has to be moved around the lawn every couple of days. Our fresh water supply is a 20,000 litre plastic water tank off the side of the house. It gathers rain water from the roof and a limited low flow town water supply. Therefore using the fresh water supply for the garden was competing with our domestic needs.

I had seen an 80 litre wheeled bin converted to a grey water tank in a gardening store. The bin had a tap at the bottom and a hole in the lid. The store wanted about $150 for the bin. I took one look at the bin and realised that I could easily make one.

I than went to the local hardware and bought the following:

#180litre plastic wheeled bin 

#Plastic tank tap kit 

#20 mm hole drill

#Brass tap 

#Hose attachments

Costing about $120

Tools required:

#cordless drill

#hack saw

I cut a hole into the bin and pushed the pipe through from the inside. I had to lay the bin over and climb inside while my wife screwed the outside nut and rubber washer onto the pipe the thread.

Once the pipe was secured to the bin I measured the minimum length required to screw the bass tap onto the screw thread. I used my hack saw to cut the pipe down to size before screwing the bass tap on. I then attached a plastic screw thread for the hose attachment. Now I was ready to use it.

I disconnected the grey water sprinkler and put the hose into the top of the bin. I closed the lid on the hose and put a brick on the lid to stop the hose sliding back out. I could have cut a hole in the lid but I wanted the lid in one piece, in case I wanted the bin for another purpose when the drought finally breaks. 

I placed the bin up hill from the gardens and trees I wanted to water and waited for the bin to fill up with grey water. I then attached a hose and opened the tap to water the garden by hand. The flow of the water was low but if you have the time to put the hose on the garden or trees for while it is a good way to get a deep soaking. One of the draw backs with the wheel bin is that it weighs 180kg once full and can not be moved. If water is a concern on your property it is worth considering using grey water .

Product Review - Campmaster Portable Toilet

Campmaster Portable Toilet


I have just come back from an 8 day long holiday road trip with my wife and 6 children. During the week we travel 2135 kilometres and most of these kilometres were done on the first and last days. Both these days involved early starts and 14 hour driving days in our Toyota Hilux Commuter bus. The disadvantage of living in the isolated countryside of Northern NSW is that towns and toilets are far and few between. After years of stopping behind trees and holding on till you almost burst I decided that this trip I was going to be prepared.

I went out and bought a 10 litre Campmaster Portable Toilet (CM6010) from our local Big W. At first I believed that and this would be the first time that no one in the bus would have a sudden and pressing need for a toilet stop in the middle of no where. However, in my family there are 6 children aged from 6 month old to 10 years old so within the first couple of hours the toilet had got a workout.
Not having to stop at places with toilets meant that we could stop at rest areas and parks saving us money that would have been wasted at service stations buying dodgy pies and overprices chocolate bars.

The toilet was kept in the bus the whole week and used regularly by my toilet training toddlers who for some reason refuse to use public toilets.

I emptied the waste tank a couple of times during the trip. I was a bit dubious about having to purchase top tank rinse and tank sanitiser but when it came to emptying the waste tank they proved their worth.

The toilet worked well and only leaked when one of the children unscrewed the fresh water cap while we were driving through hilly terrain.

With plans for a lot more road trips in the near future this toilet will definetly be on the packing list.