I took this picture with my mobile phone today while walking past the West Beach Primary School. The birds were squabbling noisily and at one stage were pecking and pushing each other.

I’m neither a botanist nor an ornithologist, but the birds are some type of parrot and I guess the bush is a bottlebrush.

I’ll mention too the weather has been remarkably cool for Adelaide in February over the past week.

Temperatures have been around 20 to 23 degrees for several days, which I’m quite happy about.

I don’t mind hot weather when I’m on holiday, but not while I’m working.

I used to like playing along the creek’s banks when I was a kid. It was pretty rough in those days (70s) with lots of blackberries, but in the town at least it has been pretty well cleaned up today.

The creek used to flood significantly as well, but mitigation works have eased the threat.

This week, the water had largely subsided by the time I visited again.

millipede

At Robe on the weekend they were everywhere.

I haven’t given much thought to millipedes before, probably because I haven’t previously encountered them in such prolific numbers as here.

The CSIRO has declared the imported black Portuguese millipede “a nuisance pest” in southern Australia.

A native of Portugal, it was accidentally introduced to Australia, first appearing in South Australia at Port Lincoln in 1953.

It has now spread throughout southern Australia.

I guess being close to where the little buggers first landed means we may encounter more than our fair share.

The CSIRO says it is not harmful to humans, but can occur in plague numbers, invading houses, contaminating food and infesting carpet and bedding.

To discourage predators, the millipede releases a pungent yellowish secretion when disturbed. This may stain skin or clothes and is extremely irritating if rubbed into the eyes.

Charming.

The Age reports Victorian homes are being invaded by black Portuguese millipedes revelling in ideal conditions created by recent rains.

“The critters are being seen in their largest numbers in eight years, says Melbourne Zoo’s invertebrates specialist, Patrick Honan.”

Rainy weather in spring, and particularly autumn, stimulates activity.

Mr Honan’s advice:

“The best thing to do is to not squish them. If you can, sweep them up and put them outside. They actually don’t like being inside and certainly don’t breed inside but they come inside because often there’s just so many of them.”

I don’t like them being inside either, and it’s difficult not to squish them.

Interesting trivia, courtesy the CSIRO:

Although millipede means “thousand feet”, they don’t really have that many. Most species have more than 30 pairs of legs and some are known to have about 350 pairs.

Curiously, the CSIRO is not researching millipedes, despite the nuisance value and potential threat to crops.

We stopped just over an hour from Mount Gambier between Coleraine and Hamilton in Western Victoria to see the Wannon Falls.

The falls were created by lava flows that surged upstream to the Wannon River.

They feature a 100-foot vertical precipice of hardened basalt lava over which water cascades into a deep plunge pool below.

Further downstream, rapids wind their way around large blocks of basalt, dislodged over time down the embankments of the narrow valley.

There’s a great viewing platform, toilets and an interpretive display. Camping is available nearby.

There was some good rain last weekend, so the falls were flowing nicely. I imagine they could dry to a trickle in drought conditions.

The marsupial lion is regarded as part of Australia’s “megafauna” which became extinct about 45,000 years ago.

These were giant versions of wombats and kangaroos, and in this case a carnivorous predator.

The lion’s disappearance is unexplained, although it’s generally linked to climate change or the arrival of humans.

I reckon these beasts would have eaten any blackfellas who came after them, but one theory is the humans introduced fire which changed the lion’s habitat.

It’s a fascinating story and fun to ponder what happened.

Daniel Peric said he now would not leave his two children, aged five and seven, alone in any part of the house, after the “enormous” python ate his silky terrier-cross chihuahua.

Mr Peric said in the weeks before, the family had found their cat’s body, which looked like something had attempted to swallow it and on Sunday a smaller python had eaten their pet guinea pig.

Add cyclones to the location risk, cane toads and various marine nasties, and you have to wonder why anyone would live in the tropical north.

Australia doesn’t have lions or other large animals of prey, but we do have plenty of hairy eight-legged creatures and slippery ones with fangs.

In the water, watch out for sharks, jellyfish and stingrays.

And as Baino wrote in her blog earlier this year, beware the Drop Bear. This great scary kangaroo pic came from there too.

I’ve actually seen more wildlife on these walks than in the Karlkurla nature reserve.

There isn’t much grass on the golf course and the “greens” are sand. For those who don’t know, an 18-hole international-standard grass course was supposed to have been finished by now and it is supposedly still under development.

There is some grass on the Hannans course though and it greened up nicely after last week’s rain. In the dawn light it looks quite attractive and the kangaroos love it.

That’s a little surprising when you consider that journalists are writers. But when you think about it, we are craftsmen while novelists are artists. We ply a trade while they follow their creative spirits. We have responsibilities, they don’t.

Three good books about newspapers come readily to mind. PG Wodehouse wrote Psmith, Journalist in 1915; Evelyn Waugh wrote Scoop in 1938 and Terry Pratchett published The Truth in 2000.

In Wodehouse’s classic, Psmith arrives in New York on a cricket tour and becomes involved with the home entertainment weekly “Cosy Moments” which he transforms into a hard-hitting investigative journal. He rides the bumps of organised crime and American politics along the way.

In Waugh’s story, scribe William Boot is mistaken by the publisher of the Daily Beast for a war correspondent. He is uprooted from writing country garden features to covering the civil war in Ishmaelia. Both novels are cleverly satirical.

Pratchett’s The Truth is a typically fantastic work from the author of the Discworld series. The hero in this case is William de Worde, who teams up with dwarfs to print the first newspaper in Ankh-Morpork.

As usual, Pratchett offers some tremendous insights into human nature. His observations of the newspaper profession are also very sharp, suggesting excellent research or personal knowledge. For instance, he offers a rare literary tribute to the unsung work of sub-editors.

I’ve just finished reading The Truth for the second time. I found the focus on hired assassins to be distracting and kept wanting the story to get back to the trials and tribulations of The Times.

There are some great one liners, like when the dwarfs make a typesetting error with the newspaper’s logo, which becomes: “The truth will make you fret”.

I related personally to the serial pest who kept coming into the office with remarkable vegetables. Anyone who has worked on a country newspaper will know there are people in most towns who like to show off their giant tomatoes or funny-shaped parsnips.

I admit it’s one of my long-term ambitions to write a satirical novel about newspapers. I started taking notes of strange but true incidents last year, like when one of my reporters disappeared while on the trail of visiting Mongolian detectives.

I have heaps of material; just need the time to write it.