Lately we are constantly being warned that we will die if we sit too long at our desks. Fifteen minutes is tops otherwise our organs will all collapse and our cholesterol will overtake the national debt. We are advised to set a kitchen timer and leap up the moment it goes off. I don’t have a kitchen timer and who remembers to check until the kitchen is on fire.

But when I do remember I force myself to get up and take a walk outside.

Whacking pecans off the tree is a good break with the added reward of one of the world’s best nuts, soft enough to crack open with your teeth. I stand in the orchard and swipe at the tree with a branch that’s fallen off a next door Jackfruit tree.

Jackfruit are really disgusting – great swollen things that hang there like Shrek’s testicles. They are the largest tree-borne fruit in the world, grow on the trunks as well as branches and can reach one hundred pounds. Although they are being touted as a new miracle food they stink of rot. No one around here eats them so they drop and decay on the ground turning black and even more attractive.   

Waving at them from across the lawn are the beautiful yellow bananas – great bunches of them hanging there shaded by enormous leaves which are terrific for baking fish in. We ate them by the ton despite those really annoying warnings that keep appearing on screen screaming that you must NEVER eat one -.or you will forever remain a fat pig.

Right now after a whole summer of profusion we are all a bit sick of the bounteous banana. At the height of the season people were hanging them from the rafters and storing them in the bath tub.

I was offered a plastic carrier bag in a fruit and vegetable store recently. Not very exciting by most folk’s standards – but up here quite a rare event. There is a major campaign underway to eliminate the evil plastic bag totally from the world. Given that the amount of plastic being washed up and choking wildlife it’s perfectly understandable that we need to be mindful.

But some people panic at the thought of no bag at the cash out.

“Do you seriously expect me to carry my undies out of the store not in a bag???” asked one girl on an internet forum raging against Target’s bag-free policy (since rescinded) 

And some people get really carried away.

“You’ve got to be real careful who you offer a bag to,” the girl on the checkout told me. “A guy came in here last week. When I offered him one he thrust a banana in my face and started yelling ‘See this banana! It doesn’t need a bag. It’s got its own packaging! It’s called a SKIN!’ I thought he was going to attack me with it.”

Even in these tranquil climes where it’s all pretty mellow and cruisey there is road rage – an infuriated driver recently attacked someone with a spear-gun. There is even surf-rage. This evidently erupts when someone has the bad taste to drop in on another surfer’s wave – the ultimate surfing crime and something the Beach Boys never sang about. 

I doubt if anyone has ever been killed by a banana but banana rage is getting serious. Clearly her assailant had been sitting at his desk for far too long and needed to get outside and take it out on a pecan tree. Or a Jackfruit. At last we may have found a use for the big stinky scrotum blighting the landscape.      

When I moved back to Australia from the USA some years ago I brought my two dogs. This involved fulfilling a list of requirements that made the departure of the First Fleet and its convicts seem like the launch of rubber duckie in the bathtub.

Among the three thousand rules I had to follow was the purchase of two crates for the actual flight from Dallas to Sydney. They had to be large enough for the animal to be able to comfortably turn around during the voyage if the urge took him.

As one was a rather long Basset Hound and the other a not-tiny Springer Spaniel I forked out a whopping sum for two extra large cages. With the help of a company who transports pets around the world the whole thing went off beautifully smoothly and the boys looked well rested on arrival – although the Basset’s loud booming made the luggage arrivals guys jump.

But still, I had no great desire to repeat the experience. Too much bloody red tape.So I was left in possession of two very fine metal crates.

Some time later a local macadamia nut farmer asked if his daughter could have them for her koala rescue group. These tireless saints trek throughout the Northern Rivers rescuing orphaned, injured and other luckless koala bears. Eventually, if they survive, they are released back into the wild. hence the need for the cages.

The orphans are taken to the homes of foster carers who pop them into cozy blanket-lined baskets with a teddy bear for a mum substitute. They are often in the same nursery – aka the kitchen – alongside other orphaned joeys – little kangaroos who are housed in home-made pouches hanging off the back of chairs. Injured baby flying foxes in their own little beds with a dummy to suck on sometimes complete the menagerie. It is tireless, heart rending work for the carers.

When the baby koalas are old enough they sometimes head off to a koala kindergarten – possibly the cutest thing on the planet – to hang out with other littlies and learn social skills. They have to learn how to walk along a branch and pass another kola coming the other way, for example. Out in the big wide world these animals are actually solitary, coming together only to mate, but presumably they occasionally will pass on a branch to somewhere.  

Apart from a former Australian Tourism Minister who once told the press that the country’s national symbol was a horrible little bugger that stank (they actually smell like nice cough drops) and pissed on you, most Australians are very fond of the cuddly marsupial.

So I was delighted to be heading down the driveway home one day when a large male wandered casually across the path in front of me and leisurely climbed a big gum tree. As I watched he settled himself on a branch, gripped it with both hands and turned his head in a classic koala pose. It was pretty funny.

It was also pretty unusual to see one in broad daylight. They are of course nocturnal and usually spend between 18 and 22 hours sleeping. This is to conserve energy as their diet requires vigorous digestion of rough and toxic eucalyptus leaves.

Since then I’ve seen a few others on the property but it really takes practice to be able to spot them as they are usually incredibly high up.

Romain my neighbour is great at spotting them. He has also heard them fornicating at night.

“What does it sound like?” I asked him.

“Loud,” he said. “He grunts and she screams.”

Hmmm. Maybe it was just the neighbours.   

But all the breeding in the world can’t keep pace with the calamity befalling this beloved species. Galloping urban expansion into koala habitat has forced them into smaller areas where they are under attack by dogs, disease and cars. 

In the Ballina area of Northern NSW a major road project is entering its final stages of completion. The dreaded remodeled Pacific Highway is finally about to see the light of day. But unless the agency overseeing the project agrees to a last minute change of course – a very minor one – the local koalas may not be seeing much light at the end of any tunnels. 

Literally just hanging on by the nails they will then have nothing left to cling onto at all. 

 As the old gag goes, how much can a koala bear?

 Friends of the Koala http://www.friendsofthekoala.org

The first “long” book I ever read was “The Faraway Tree” by Enid Blyton. Up I climbed at every chance I got to find another magical world and its very un-suburban characters at the top. Moonface and Silkie, Dame Washalot and the Saucepan Man were my choice for favourite dinner party guests from history.  The Angry Pixie who was always throwing things at irritating people was someone I wanted as my next door neighbour.

You never knew what magical world you were going to find up there in the clouds at the top of the tree. The Land of Take-What-You-Want, the Land of Dame Slap, the Land of Topsy-Turvy, the Land of Spells, the Land of Goodies, the Land of Dreams and the Land of Birthdays all seemed like a much better way to spend the day than going to school.

My older brother and sister who are twins were precociously reading the classics by the time they were six. When I was still banging on about the Faraway Tree at eleven worried glances were exchanged. I had, after all been run over by a post office truck one Christmas.  Was I simple in the head?

Quite likely!

Today I live right beside the Faraway Tree. It looms next to my little sandstone cottage.  This gigantic ancient Morton Bay Fig with its swirling necklaces of twisted strangler Tarzan vines sits at the centre of an enchanted grove. Red succulents, twisting ginger plants, huge bird nest ferns and dozens of bright green palms and tropical lilies decorate its base. Great roots stretch out like giant’s fingers. Within its trunk and branches hundreds of animals and insects make their home.

At night the flying foxes come to feed on the figs. They make a hideous screeching noise but are very cute up close. Their little furry faces look just like a fox terrier. Some locals say that the faeries ride them by the light of the moon. I don’t believe in faeries although plenty of otherwise sane people do. Arthur Conan Doyle was a believer and so is most of Ireland today.

In her entertaining book “Castles, Follies and Four-Leaf Clovers: Adventures along Ireland’s St Declan’s Way,” Rosamund Burton came across whole roadwork projects being reconfigured in the west of Eire to accommodate the gathering places of the wee folk. 

So too in Iceland where a strong national belief in faeries has recently halted a major roads project near Reykjavik. The problem is the elves who live among the rocks and would be disturbed.  And who could sleep in their beds at night knowing that? More than half of the country’s population it seems.  The matter will be decided by the Supreme Court of Iceland in a case a case brought by a group known as Friends of Lava. Their concern about disruption to both the lava and the elves has been successfully mobilizing hundreds of citizens to stop the bulldozers.

It would be like the US Supremes ruling on Bigfoot’s right to live a peaceful and wholesome life in outer Dallas.

As journalist Rose Eveleth concluded, “Perhaps if they give the elves their own tiny carpool lane, everybody will be happy.” 

I like to sit and read under the big tree in the garden. Most of its inhabitants, like the possum and owl are nocturnal. Apart from the odd cane toad and visiting cockatoos I pretty much have it to myself during the day. Gazing up into its dancing foliage I see huge stag ferns clamped to its trunk and branches. It’s a perfect reading spot even in the rain.

I’ve moved on a bit now from Enid Blyton – although an opportunity to have a squiz at a “Secret Seven” novel bought for a god-child is never passed up. Even for the hardest-hearted cynic this is a magical spot. The world would be a much better place if more people could spend some time in my chair. And I can think of quite a few who could only be improved by a bucket of slop tipped onto their head by the Angry Pixie.  

Congratulations to my dear friend Greg Michaels in Seattle on winning the prestigious Nancy Pearl Book Award for his novel THE SECRETS OF CASANOVA! I have followed this terrific read since inception and wrote this Amazon review of it a while back. 

CASANOVA RISES AGAIN

Casanova has become one of those hackneyed names that generally make me yawn. After watching Heath Ledger do a passable job of bringing the fellow to the screen yet again, I felt I was well and truly over the original Italian playboy. Then I picked up “The Secrets of Casanova” by Greg Michaels, intending to have a flick through. To my amazement I was still reading by page 80. This re-telling of the Jacques Casanova story is in a class of its own. Greg Michaels’ background as a very fine Shakespearean actor – and sword-fighter – has stood him in excellent stead for his first novel. The language is wonderful and unlike many historical novels, very authentic to the ear. But although the dialogue and luscious descriptions of 18th century Europe draw you into the scene in the same way as an old masterpiece the novel has an engagingly modern feel to it. Jacques’ insights into the workings of a woman’s mind – let alone her body – bring a sort of hipness to the story that adds layers to the plot. So may male authors fail miserably at breathing life into their female characters.Michaels has succeeded and soared above the pack. He has also succeeded in writing a very horny tale.