A good weekend

It's been a hard weekend at Wirra Birra, but a very satisfying one.

Saturday started off with a long run into Stirling and back with J and Z, stopping off at the Organic Market for coffee, as a small celebration of Z's birthday. Everyone seemed to be in fine form, despite the niggling injuries that we're all dealing with at present, and the 15km or so of running went past effortlessly.

Then it was off into the bush for a few hours of bushcare work with Bearded Dave. Wirra Birra has been infested with Pinus radiata in the past (and to a certain extent still is), so Saturday was about cleaning up a few of the larger trees that had been ringbarked years prior, and had tumbled into the creek. A few happy hours were spent on the chainsaw, chopping the logs into manageable bits, then piling up ready to burn.

Some purists might argue that the wood should remain where it falls, but the tangled pile of limbs in the creek, seemed more likely to harbour weeds, than to assist in regeneration. Pulling the logs out though did reveal a number of seedling eucalypts and acrotriche underneath, so I reckon the effort was well spent.

Saturday night was the annual trip to Coromandel Primary School for the Quiz Night, and once again our well-seasoned team stole the major prize. Highlight of the night was realising that "23 P of C in the BH", is short for "23 pairs of chromosomes in the human body" - can't believe no-one else got that one.

And Sunday was the bonfire. With the help of our friends The Maddens from Lockleys, a pleasant day was spent in feeding most of a large, dead pine tree into the bonfire. A bonus was taking a short walk in the nearby bush, and coming across a patch of Red Beak orchid (Pyrorchis nigracans). These guys weren't in flower, and probably won't be until such time as a fire goes through the place, so all there was to see was their unprepossessing leaves. But it's good to know that they're out there.

Meantime, by my count, there are another seven large pines in various stages of dying, along the same short stretch of creek. So this won't be our last big burnoff by a long way.