“Which way shall we go?” my brother asked.

“Somewhere new. How about Lindum way?” I suggested.

Bill nodded.

“You lead and I’ll follow,” I said enthusiastically.

I love cycling with Bill. He always finds exciting places, off the beaten track, for us to discover. Yesterday was no exception. We turned off the main Wynnum road onto Fleming Road and before long we were in new territory to me; this time it was definitely horse country. It’s funny how things look so different when you’re cycling, especially at a leisurely pace; you have the chance to notice and appreciate everything.

We found a nice cycle path that looked promising but ended abruptly near properties with acreages and horses; however, there was a dirt track with tyre marks, that meandered around to the left of the creek and into the bush. Just as we reached the point where we wanted to turn back, a Ute pulling a trailer that carried two quad bikes appeared from the bush. I waved at the men in the truck as they passed by and was surprised a few minutes later when one of the men was stood holding a gate, waiting for us to come through so he could lock up.

“You must be brave,” said the man.

“Why? Are there croc’s?” I joked.

“Far worse than crocodiles,” he laughed, “swarms of mosquitoes! We’ve just been in there spraying them now.”

“So you are the men we have to be grateful to,” Bill said.

“I bet it’s horrible in there,” I added, to let the man know that we appreciated the difficult conditions of his work.

“Awful!” he twanged, “the mozzies swarm around our helmets in a black cloud – you can hardly see!”

I thought of the old film, “African Queen”, in particular the scene where Katharine Hepburn has the flying horrors from a swarm of black insects, and I got the picture.

“It must be a terrible job for you,” I sympathised.

“You must be kidding,” he broke into a broad grin and waved his hand in the direction of the quad bikes, “How many people get to drive around in those all day long?”

Just some shots of the countryside around Cabbage Tree Point, where we went fishing at the weekend. I love the old house (now used as a storage shed) on the hilltop.

It is just Bill, William and me here holding the fort  at the moment while the rest of the family are away. As you probably know from my previous blog posts, Bill is my eldest brother, with whom I am staying for some of the time whilst I am in Australia; and William is Bill’s eldest son. We are looking after Lita’s chooks and we’re trying to remember to feed Lily the cat (not to be confused with Lily the Pink, the Pink, the Pink – if you can remember that odd song); we are also being very helpful to one another because, now that we are all alone, we realise how much work there is to do.

Yesterday Bill and I had, independently, the same brainwave to do some shopping for dinner; however, we did not discuss our intentions so it was a surprise to each of us when we arrived home, within minutes of each other, laden with our purchases.

“I bought beef-mince,” said Bill putting the mince on the kitchen worktop.

“And I bought rump steak,” I said, pulling out the steak.

“Do you like mince?” Bill asked.

“Not much,” I answered truthfully, “Do you want mince for dinner?”

“I don’t mind at all – have whatever you like,” he answered.

My brother went outside to his shed, probably to sand down a chest of drawers, and I got to thinking that maybe he fancied a shepherd’s pie for dinner. The steak could wait for another day. If Bill fancied shepherd’s pie I would make one for him, minus any tomato (because my nephew hates tomatoes), and I would have just a small portion for myself (because the smell of mince cooking usually turns me off and makes me want to go vegetarian).

The huge pie was on the table. William came in from work and said he wasn’t very hungry and I took a serving no bigger than a dessert-spoonful. Funnily enough, we all went back for seconds (it didn’t taste so meaty with the browned potato and melted cheese on top!).

“That was nice,” Bill said.

“I thought you must have bought the mince because you fancied a shepherd’s pie,” I responded.

“To tell you the truth, Sally,” Bill smiled, “I thought I would give you a break from cooking for a change and I was going to cook the dinner tonight. I knew I could cook mince and I knew I could cook potatoes, so that is why I bought mince.”

It tickled me to think of my macho older brother planning to cook for me and William. I was so glad that used his mince. In fact it wasn’t a bad pie at all. We enjoyed the other half just as much tonight, especially as nobody had to cook.

“The chooks aren’t laying as many as they used to,” said Bill ominously as he brought in three eggs yesterday morning.

What did he mean? Well, I understood the words but I wondered what the penalty would be if the chooks continued to produce short rations. Now my brother is a kind man, surely he would keep the hens on in old age? Surely he wouldn’t have the heart to do away with them when they outlive their usefulness. No, Bill wouldn’t – but one of his friends might!

This morning I thought I would be helpful and feed the chooks for Bill…

So I opened the chicken house door and I can see that the chooks have the heebie-jeebies about something because all five of them want to rush out at once. I prevent them from escaping by shooing them back in with my feet. From the corner of one eye I notice the plastic water receptacle and I think to myself:

“That’s funny! How did an avocado get into the water basin?”

But I don’t dwell on it for long because, from the corner of my other eye, I see five beautiful brown eggs in one of the nesting boxes.

“These chooks are very perspicacious,” I think to myself again, and feel happy for their foreseeable future.

I throw in the scraps (including lots of lovely mango skins – from Bill’s mangoes) and then I go to the other shed to fill the scoop with grain. When I come back in my eyes are drawn to the water basin because something dark, and awfully like an avocado, moves in the water. I bend down to take a better look and I can see his legs kicking away.

My first instinct is very similar to that of the chooks – I want to run out raving (like a headless chicken) – but I have the dear hens to consider. I have to remove him without letting him jump on me (or I might get warts).

“Oh Bill, there’s a cane toad in the chooks’ water,” I say futilely (because Bill is at the other end of the garden, and even if he wasn’t, his hearing isn’t the best).

Luckily, I have with me the old carrier bag which held the scraps so I stretch the bag over the basin, covering everything except one corner that the toad is drawn towards because he fears being asphyxiated, obviously. Little does he know there is an even worse fate awaiting him – well, we Aussies know that the poisonous cane toads are the scourge of Queensland, and now the Northern Territory too.

I carry the chooks’ water basin carefully up the garden, plonk it down in front of Bill, and show him the toad. I don’t mind dispatching baby toads under my thonged feet but a bigger toad, even a small adult, is quite another matter. Bill tests me.

“You can deal with it – can’t you Sally?”

“What do you do?” I ask.

“Hit it on the head with a spade and bury it,” he answers.

“Too big,” I say.

Bill understands and he does it while I watch with interest from a distance. The chooks are safe; that’s the main thing. I feel happy that their futures seem quite secure one way or another.

I’m feeling so pleased for them that later on I go down to check on them to see if they are okay. As soon as I open the door ten inches all the chooks run out like crazy and go charging down to the compost bins. I guess I could have pushed them back with my feet if I had really wanted to… I look over at Bill up by the shed and I call out:

“The chooks got out – is that alright?”

“I let them out sometimes,” Bill says with a nod and a smile.

I had been waiting a long time… I had changed spots several times, stood on rocks and sat on rocks, cast from the left (for good luck) and cast from the right (when the left cast wasn’t good luck). The tide went out and the tide came in. According to my expectations, I used small pieces of bait, medium pieces and even whole squid (albeit tiny ones).

From time to time boats would pass under the bridge and each time the wake would dislodge my lead-weight and hook and send it under a rock so that I had to break the line and re-hook and find another weight. We soon ran out of little weights and the bigger they got, the more likely they were to snag each time a boat passed under the bridge – and they were pretty easy to snarl up in the first place.

The first bite, long awaited, was nevertheless a fairly unexciting event; it felt like a slow motion gulp. In fact it wasn’t a bite at all, just a wandering length of old rope (with a few marine growths on it) that decided to hitch a ride in order to see the light of day in the open air.

Thousands of jellyfish swam like an army on a mission, all going out to sea in their serried ranks, but often the ones closest to the sides of the bridge seemed to sense us and lingered awhile, perhaps in wonder at the strangeness of the people on the rocks.

At last the big (and only) bite came… It was real, a sure thing, a whopper – perhaps the biggest fish I had ever encountered at the end of my line. It might even have been a whale swimming underwater. Unfortunately I shall never know exactly what it was because he took my whole squid, a brand new shark hook and a 100 gramme weight, and he would not budge! I had to break the line again.

“I’ve had enough fishing for today,” said Bill.

My niece, Loretta, and I did not wheedle for an extra cast out – I was already thinking about the spa at home.

“Does this track go anywhere?” I called out to Bill, who was on his green mountain bike ahead of of me.

A trickle of sweat ran down my cheek and collected on my jawbone until the droplet was too heavy to hang on. The temperature was thirty degrees and it wasn’t even eight in the morning. We had been cycling for half an hour. We had left the metalled roads, pavements and cycle-paths in favour of the bush routes. A little earlier we saw a flock of white cranes take off as we crossed the creek – I wasn’t quick enough to catch them with my mobile camera but I managed to take shots of two black cranes unable to fly off because they were drying their outstretched wings high up on the bough of a gum tree.

My brother did not answer – he’s a bit deaf – and I just followed his lead anyway. It didn’t really matter where the track went. Not knowing made it all the more exciting. All the same, it was a horrible path – very soft sand littered with sharp grey stones; the sand opened up as we rode through it and the wheels of our bikes threatened not to stay upright, whilst the rocks either  jarred us or slipped away with the sand.

The path petered out onto a floodplain with deep spongy grass that was dry now but you could imagine it sodden; as the grass became longer and thicker we gave up and walked our bikes through. At its thickest, the grass enveloped our wheels beyond the axles. The grass gave way to bush and behind the bush was another creek and a bridge.

“This is the creek in one of your paintings, Sally,” said Bill.

“Really?”

“Yes, but from other side,” he continued.

Bill was right. We were nearly back at his place and it was the same creek that I had found so picturesque after the rains several years ago. I remembered when I was painting it, how I wondered where the bush came out – now I know.

Imagine, if you will, a hot sunny afternoon in Tingalpa (Brisbane). It has been boiling all day and my brother, Bill, and I have been looking forward to a nice cool dip in the spa. I go out to the spa first and notice a few magpies grubbing around in the ashes of the fire. I think the magpies are after the bruised piece of pear that I spat out onto the ashes.

“That’s funny,” I think to myself, “I thought magpies were mainly carnivorous.”

I throw the half-eaten core of the pear onto the ashes because I think the magpies might like some more of my juicy pear. They ignore it and I wish I had eaten a little more of it myself – ungrateful birds.

I say hello to Manuela, the girl (in the red and yellow spotty swimming costume) who I painted on the fence last year, and I get into the spa. Bill soon joins me and we spend a few minutes removing leaves. At last the pool is sparkling clear and Bill and I dunk ourselves low in the water (to avoid the mosquitoes) and we kick around and do a number of those little exercises one always does when one is in a spa (because you can’t actually swim, and you have to do something!). So I’m doing a bit of scissor action with my legs and I’m looking in the direction of the table, and I see that one of the magpies has picked something up in his beak – I think it is a red credit card.

“Bill,” I call out, “that magpie has something in his mouth!”(They can be very human-like.) “Is it a credit card?”

“Credit card?” Bill looks. “That’s not a credit card, that’s my cigarettes!” (He has very flat cigarettes on account of them being in his short’s back pocket.)

With that the wily magpie realises there is no time to waste and he flies off the table, straight over the Ute and down to the end of the garden where he thinks we won’t follow because we’re having such a great time in the spa. The magpie does not realise that cigarettes are almost as expensive as gold-dust in Australia these days and even three flat cigarettes are worth leaping out of a spa for. So Bill jumps out, as quick as a flash, and I follow a tad slower (well, they aren’t my cigarettes). I half hope that the cheeky magpie gets clean away over the far fence into the neighbour’s place – it could be a good time to give up! – but he becomes nervous with Bill hollering at him and he drops it under the tree on our side of the fence.

I am back in spa already (no point in two of us searching) and Bill hides the flat cigarettes under my towel before getting back in. I’m still marvelling at how those cigarettes looked like a credit card and Bill, who is keeping vigilant, sees a magpie hooking a cigarette butt from the ashes. “Crikey, he’s desperate for a smoke!” I think to myself. I reckon that Bill wishes he had never started smoking outdoors. Those magpies are very impressionable. I told you they were like humans.

No need to book – all comers welcome!

Down at Cabbage Tree Point yesterday the sailing boats sailed by, the gin palaces glided past, the little boats returned with fish, and then a small house pulled up by the beach. It was a mini houseboat; the owner designed it and built it himself over two years. And all the while a well-fed pelican looked on approvingly from his lofty perch.

The pelicans sure are friendly down at Cabbage Tree Point. I saw one waiting by the water’s edge and he let me photograph him. He soon lost interest in me and he waded into the sea to greet a party arriving in a boat. They came into shore and I spoke to a young girl.

“He seems to prefer you to me. Do you know him?”

“We have a slight advantage,” the girl smiled, “We have fish!”