Carnarvon Pistol Association - severely affected by floods

I have sent this email out to as many shooting contacts as i can think of but feel free to forward it on as you wish.  Every little bit helps!
Any emails can be directed to cpa@westnet.com.au

Hello fellow shooters and shooting supporters!

 

For those of you that aren't aware, Carnarvon (a small country town ten hours drive north of Perth, the capital of Western Australia) was hit by severe flooding on the 19th of December 2010. Luckily the floods did not affect the majority of the town site but the waters flowed right through some of the outlying areas, including our pistol club.

 

As you can see by the attached photos, our club is all but ruined.  We are a strong local club with 60 active members and we compete every Saturday for eleven months of the year.  However it is unlikley we will be able to compete now for some time.  We had eight ranges, now none are safe to use.  We had a great clubhouse with kitchen and seating area for up to 50 people, now this has been covered in water (initially flowing, but later just stagnant) up to mid-thigh.

 

A range that normally is large enough to run three seperate competitions, almost 2m deep in water.  We have a train that runs along tracks down an incline to serve as one of our shooting props, you can just make out the top of the green train.

 

 

 The safety area of one range, the dividing range wall and shaded area for spectators

 

 

The road to Carnarvon Pistol Association - the gate is next to the large tree you can see in the middle of the photo

 

 

Drums filled with sand to form the dividing wall of our 100m range

 

 

A member wading out to survey the damage, note the sign welcoming you to Carnarvon Pistol Association

 

 

One of our storage containers - it has floated to a new position and targets and range construction materials inside are ruined.

 

Not only did the water come through quickly and with force, it also pooled in our ranges like it has never done before and is still there presently.  The water as it receeds leaves behind a thick coating of mud and debris.  Carnarvon is a horticultural town and some of its main industry is growing fruit and vegetables and also raising livestock on the outlying areas.  As the river was so large and unexpected it swept through many homes, sheds and paddocks in outer areas resulting in the water becoming contaminated with chemicals, petrols and dead animlas.

 

It is going to take many hands on deck, machinery and funding to move forward with the massive, unpleasant cleanup opperation, reconstruction of ranges, stripping of the clubhouse, regrading of the road and reconstruction of shade and safety areas.

 

The recovery part of this opperation must now begin!

 

Part of this is getting the message out there to all of you, please feel free to distribute this message as you see fit.

 

If you can provide us any assitance, (and any and all is welcome!) - please contact us either using this email or by phoning club president Justin Smith on 0409087986

 

Kind regards,

 

Jessie Marett

CPA Secretary

cpa@westnet.com.au

Reading list

Recently I encountered something I haven't had to deal with in quite some time.   It's called FREE TIME.  As in not having to work, not having to travel, not having to be somewhere and I love it.  Justin's work roster has changed so that he is working four days on/four days off and so inevitably some of those days he is working will be days that I have off.  A work colleague asked me today how I was finding it and I had to admit that I have a guilty pleasure in being able wedge myself into the couch and read for hours at a time.  Don't get me wrong, of course I love Justin being there more than being alone (if I didn't then we would have a problem here) but the thought of hours stretching out in front of me and a good book (and quite possibly multiple cups of tea) is quite a solitary but favourite pastime of mine.
The book I have just finished: A Fortunate Life - A.B. Facey.  A fantastic book (and a third time read for me) about a young man growing up in Australia in the early 1900s.  This book talks about places I know and is a very good example of the Aussie battler spirit. 
The book I am halfway through: Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden.  Another book I have already read once before but rediscovered it on my bookshelf and thought it was so good it deserved another round.  I am not disappointed.  Fabulous story telling and use of language.
The book I will read next: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson - because my cousin Lily reminded me how cool this book is. A classic.  I can't believe this book was written in the seventies, it could have been a new release, it just doesn't seem to date.
And while I am on my soapbox I would like to make it know that i am vehemently against books being turned into movies and am yet to find one that comes even close to living up to the print version!

Unrelated but seeing as I haven't added a photo of us to this blog recently - here is one of us taken at the wedding we recently went to... the height difference between us isn't really that great! He was standing on a higher step! :-)

Happy noooo yeaaarrrr!

(insert noise and image of one of those whistle/horn thingies with the paper tube that flicks out when you blow it.....)
Its 5pm New Years day.  I'm still in my pyjamas.  It's been a good day :)

Thinking about my family in far-away places.... New York in the chaos, Fairbanks in the snow and Queensland in the flood.  Love and miss you all.

Cheers!

Plum Pudding (Christmas)

Page 123 on my (becoming rapidly tattered and splattered) 52nd edition CWA Cookery Book and Household hints. This book, amongst other useful snippets of information such as how to cure scaly legs in poultry, quantities for making pea soup for 120 people and a recipe for brain patties has THE ULTIMATE recipe for Christmas pudding. This is a traditionally English dessert for Christmas day but is whole heartedly adopted by Australians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pudding
I start to make this in November.  You need to get all of the fruit together in a big, air-tight jar and pour over a bottle of brandy.  The one we use is Chantelle Napoleon from France - not because it is particularly expensive or wonderful but as it is what I can buy here! So every so often when one of us thought about it we would grab out the jar filled with the fruit and brandy and shake it around.  By the beginning of December there is no brandy to be seen as it has all been sucked up into the fruit.
I like to make the puddings in the first week of December so that the flavours, once made have time to develop.
The rest is fairly adhesive to the recipe - however:

• Carbonate of soda is bi-carb soda
• I put the beef suet through our mincer when it is slightly frozen to get it all tiny
• Cream of tartar serves absolutely no other purpose in my kitchen other than in this recipe and sits in the back of the cupboard feeling lonely and being picked on by all the other bottles.
• I have noticed that my book does not stipulate when to add the mixed spice (which is a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice) and so the first year I made this I left it out completely, remembered four hours into the steaming process and was mortified.  Convinced I had ruined Christmas, I anxiously took a bite on Christmas day to find it wasn't all that bad.  30g seems like a lot of spice but this is a ginormous recipe and it certainly isn't over spiced. I just chuck it in with the dry ingredients (and have marked my book so I remember in future makings!)
• I don't use lemon essence.  Because I had none the first time I made this recipe and it tasted so good I couldn't justify ever adding it since.
• I make two big molds (probably about 8 cup capacity) and 4 little one cup molds.  The little ones make cool gifts.  I have always used bowl shaped, stainless steel molds greased liberally with butter (hey there's half a kilo of cow fat in here, why try to get healthy now??) and have never had them not cook through or stick.
• To remove them from the mold I have a cool circle of bendable, thin metal that's intended use is to be curled into the neck of a wine bottle to allow the wine to come out in a nice stream and less glugs.  However as I don't really care if my wine comes out in glugs I use this device for sticking in around the rims to loosen the puddings.  Sometimes teamwork (one person holding the mold, the other bashing on its base) is required.
• I put the puddings in my biggest lidded pots with about an inch of water in the bottom but raised up so the base of the pots aren't touching the water.  This year we found using some of Justin's reloading dies convenient for this!
• I covered the puddings tightly with two layers of aluminium foil which usually ends up touching the top of the pudding as it does raise slightly but never seems to affect taste or appearance.  I fill the molds to about a quarter inch below the top.
• Then the waiting begins... Eight hours of listening to the lids of the pot go RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE as they slowly simmer.  I usually need to top them up with more water about four times.  I take the little one cup ones out after about three hours.
• The hard sauce recipe I make comes from another Australian classic cook book - 'The Margaret Fulton Cookbook'.  Mom had a copy of this and I can remember flipping through the pages as a child and looking at all the pictures and reading the things mom had written around each recipe she tried, a habit which she has passed down to me.
• I never resteam them to serve, partly through laziness (a character trait not to be concealed over the holiday season I believe) and partly because normally on Christmas day it would be far too hot to get all that steam going in the kitchen! Each piece only needs under a minute to be beautiful, warm and soft.
• Some of us (not the author) are not as passionate about hard sauce and prefer to have the pudding smothered in custard.  I understand that Australian/English interpretation of custard differs in solidity to the American one, the consistency we are going for here is if you mixed equal parts of sour cream and milk together. 

My camera and memory card are currently out with Justin - so I will put up a photo for drooling purposes later.

And yes I did eat a huge piece of pudding while composing this entry. :)

A very merry Christmas!

What a great day... despite the roads being closed so we can't get fresh deliveries of fruit and vegetables, despite the mail being unable to get through and some of us being a few presents short, despite the temperature already getting to over 90 by 9am and despite the humidity making it all kinda sticky.... I HAD A GREAT DAY.  I like what Chris said - yes it deserves shouting.
We were at mom's by 7.30am for apricot brandy, coffee, Christmas morning muffins (Nigella Lawson's recipe) and home made mince tarts (made by mom).  We exchanged some presents and then it was onto Justin's dad's place to celebrate with that side of the family. Justin's dad has remarried a wonderful woman named Ann many years ago who has always treated Justin like her own and is a kind hearted, lovely person. Ann's son/Justin's step brother Stephen, his fiancee Sarah and their 2 year old Mathew.  While we were there Justin's brother phoned (he lives in Perth and couldn't get off work to come home for Christmas) to tell us that he proposed and she said yes! It is really nice news, they have been together for three years and the four of us get on like a house on fire, wish we all lived closer.  After a breakfast of BBQ eggs in bread (one of my favourites!), hash browns, bacon, sausages and a few beers (hey its Christmas morning - you're allowed!) we went off to see some good friends of ours who have kids who are 13 and 7 that we always buy presents for (mainly because I am a sucker and love all of the girly things on the market for that age group - sparkly nail polish, lip glosses, etc ,etc)
Then it was home to our place to unwrap more pressies, relax and eat.  A cold glazed ham (Justin's recipe) and warm turkey roll, mom's really delicious rice salad, a potato salad and some bread rolls and some serious aircon!
Much later (about three hours I think!) we moved onto sweets... I can't describe how good this plum pudding is... so much so that I am going to put a step by step post up here next of how to, Leigh I know those directions are a bit vague (mom also says they are written in Australian causing some translation issues :-P) and so much so is my love for this pudding that I think it is necessary to force it upon my loved ones in far flung Northern places.... (Both Northern Qld and Northern AK!)
Then when it FINALLY cooled off enough to venture outside (y'all know its hot when even the Aussies won't go outside) it was beers on the back verandah.. and assessment of damages.... Lets just say that Justin holds a grudge and will recklessly use electrical tape as wrapping paper and the consequences can be brutal!

 The tree at our house, perhaps time to get a larger one - the presents are taking over!

 The tree (or twig?) at mom's house.  Small, but it has my favourite tree topper and very pretty lights.

 A cockroach with solar panels,when charged it jumps around like a real cockroach. 

Everyone needs one really.

 Some Bud-Bling.  Its the end of a 357 magnum shell (the calibre she shoots) with a yellow diamond for the primer and TLO stamp and gold nuggets.  Some of the coolest jewelery I have ever seen!



Present unwrapping carnage!



And then? That quiet moment of Christmas day.... sitting on your couch, a ham and cheese sandwich in one hand, a book in the other and a cat on the lap. BLISS.

I love this time of year.

Dreaming of a wet christmas

You have all heard the crazy things going on in this town (and some of you who read this blog are experiencing them first hand!).  We had 210mm of rain on the 17th from a big monsoonal trough that passed over us, then it went inland from us and dropped a whole lot of rain over our river catchment areas.  It all happened so fast that the town got flooded from the rain on the 18th and then a river came down and caused more flooding on the 19th... and boy did it come down.  It peaked at 7.9m and it is the biggest river we have EVER recorded.  So apart from all that devastation, lost houses, crops, roads what it has done is completely isolate the town.  You can only drive about 10ks in any direction before you hit the sea or a levy bank that's impassable or a ruined flooded road that's impassable.
And so that means no trucks can deliver anything.... mail, fruit, veg, meat, milk, medicine, presents, bread....
Luckily our household is already pretty well stocked in most of these areas, a quick last minute grab of what we could at the shops yesterday and that was it! The cats have food, we have a ham and homemade Christmas pudding, plenty of beer and wine and we are gonna have Christmas! Floods or not!

Rivers, rain and the 'D' word

http://www.bom.gov.au/gms/IDE00005.latest.shtml

See that swirl on the left?? That just about on us!

45 Celsius on Saturday, humid and still yesterday and 60km hour winds forecast for this Saturday night.... Very strange.....

I hope we get a river out of this but this can only happen if lots of ran falls inland.  We haven't had a river (ie - any water flowing on the surface of our upside down river) for well over a year which means all the water underground that the growers use to produce the beautiful Carnarvon fruit and veg is drying up. The scary "D" word is even being used by some plantation owners....... (Shhhhhh - say it quietly! Drought)

As you can see from this http://kumina.water.wa.gov.au/waterinformation/telem/stage.cfm we have big fat nothing yet..... The Gascoyne is our river that flows pretty much right through town and the Lions river feeds into it further inland at Gascoyne Junction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gascoyne_Junction,_Western_Australia I added this link because I like how the population at the Junction is 46.  I think I know all those people!

So here's hoping that big swirl moves inland and we get a festive river flowing!