Tam loves the Duchess!

To see how Tam is handling the Duchess, please go to:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=pT9i7LJQpH8

(love the sound-track - Tam's choice!)

Just to show you that we're alive and well in our snake, tick, leech and lizard infested jungle, here we are on the veranda, just before going out to the annual Nimbin Womens Dinner, a fund-raiser for the local Domestic Abuse Project. Oooh how that red dress and those pink strides clash!

It was a great night, with a fabulous cabaret, lovely food and about 150 women relaxing and enjoying the wide ranging talents of the local female population. High light of the night was the recently formed grass-skirt clad Ukelele band singing the utterly hilarious Boob-titty Boob-titty! You had to be there....




Tam on a recent bush walk at Nimbin Rocks co-op, amongst a forest of grass trees (in a pre-PC world these were known as black boys!).










View from the northern border of Nimbin Rocks Co-op looking towards the Border Ranges and the Nightcap National Park. We live at the foot of Blue Knob, the humpy looking mountain on the right.

We'd love to know you've read this, so please take a moment to comment below, or email us at tamyeld@aapt.net.au and jenmartin@aapt.net.au.

Latest chicken-house action!

Electric Storms & Random Reptiles

The TV addicts amongst you watching I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in wintry England may have noticed that its been raining a lot here. We live just down the road from the show's location. The recent storms were extremely dramatic, heart-pounding on occasion. Fortunately we've emerged unscathed, just the loss of power for one night. No trees falling on the house, no roofs or cars destroyed by mega-hail. Meanwhile Brisbane (200km north) has suffered apocalyptically - cyclones, floods, cricket ball sized hailstones. Happily, the weather has changed and we now have a cool front drawing air up from Antarctica. After the apparently relentless rain of last week, we are enjoying crystal clear blue skies and a cool breeze.

The chickens continue to supply us with an abundance of delicious eggs. One hen has gone decidedly broody, giving Tam some hen-management challenges - Mrs Broody has taken up permanent residence in the nest box and has stopped laying.

The nest box, at one end of their run, was designed for two hens (see photo above) to find privacy and lay their wonderful eggs. However, after returning home at dusk yesterday, Tam discovered all four hens crammed into the nest box. This is very unusual and quite impressive, given the nest box only measures 37cm x 44cm x 25cm. Tam's immediate reaction was 'oh my god, they've ALL gone broody!'

What to do? Perhaps they've been put off their roost, at the other end of the run, by the big sheet of paper placed beneath to catch chicken poo for the compost? So Tam clambers in - the chicken house is only about 4 foot tall - to examine their sleeping quarters. She notices a shadowy shape on their roost inches away from her face and quickly retreats to find a torch.

'There's something in the chook-house', I hear her exclaim and there, curled sleepily and contentedly on the chooks perch, is a medium sized beautiful carpet python. Another WOW moment and understanding dawns - not four broody hens, four very scared hens.


Here's the python some time later down on the floor of the chook house, rethinking its accommodation strategy, given all the flashing lights and excitable human activity. We stomp heavily nearby and slowly and with reptillian grace, all 2 metres slithers off into the starlit buzzing night.

The chooks remained tucked up tightly in the nest box, emerging fluffed up and happy this morning, unscathed and ready for another day free-ranging. We're yet to see if their laying has been affected by the snake-scare.

Tam and I, with the benefit of this experience, have added another rule to our ongoing management strategy - never crawl into the chicken house at dusk without checking with a torch first. Whilst carpet pythons are harmless to humans, many other snakes are equally likely to try out this bed & breakfast opportunity. For example the potentially lethal Red Bellied Black, the Australian brown and the appropriately named Death Adder all reside locally, if rarely seen. We don't ever walk out of the house in bare feet for this reason.

Visitors, visitors: Nephew Charlie arrived in Aus about a month ago. Here he is assisting Tam with some felling:


Ollie (friends with Jake since the age of 9) and girlfriend Kate dropped by for a couple of days respite from life in a van in the relentless rain. Here's Ollie calmly enjoying some of our local wildlife:


So another day dawns - sunny and clear - and we wonder what wild adventures might await us and our humble hens today?

Please take a moment to let us know that you've read this - you can comment below or email us at: jenmartin@aapt.net.au or tamyeld@aapt.net.au.

All Chooks Alive!

STOP PRESS: The little chook survived and revived - just one very small perfectly round egg laid 6 days after the paralysis tick episode! (see above). More soon....

Poor Little Chook

Having celebrated our lovely chickens' adaptability in my last post, less than 24 hours ago, this morning we find one of our little hens is unable to walk. Gentle examination reveals, eventually, a huge paralysis tick that has burrowed into her neck just beneath her beak. It has obviously been there for some days now - it's size at start of feeding would have been around 2-3mm.

As shown in the photo, the horrid little beasty had grown to nearly 1cm across, engorged on our poor chook's blood. Tam quickly and in one fell swoop removed the tick with her bare hands (I was impressed!). We have administered a homeopathic remedy "Ixodes", which was developed some years ago by our very own Nimbin apothecary particularly for paralysis ticks, given how rife they are in this region. However we now have to wait and see if the hen will recover. She's sitting quietly in the chicken house, having got cosy in the nest box, which is the best thing for her - movement and excitement will encourage the paralysis 'venom' to travel around her body and have more effect (usually on legs and lungs). We have no idea whether she will survive.

Here's the engorged tick photographed beside an unfed paralysis tick. I found this crawling through my hair today. The extent to which they expand while feeding is remarkable.

We'll keep you posted on our poor hen's progress. In the meantime, Tam says please send universal loving, healing energy to our littl'Un.

Eight Months since leaving Blighty!

Pondering the changes: I'm sitting here listening to Massive Attack (some things never change), Tam and my nephew Charlie (recently arrived from Eire) are in the kitchen chatting and preparing dinner and I'm enjoying my screen time!

We have no TV, no DVD player and no broadband, which is great! I very occassionally and momentarily miss being able to veg out in front of the tv. I more often wish I could surf U-Tube and check out the recommendations sent by friends (which simply take too long to download on dial up), but mostly I wonder when I ever had the time to watch tv in that previous life. I asked a local friend recently if there were any excellent films to be highly recommended that I may have missed in the last eight months and he couldn't think of a single one....however, please if you have any recommendations, let me know.

Listening to music and the fantastic ABC National Radio are mainstays. ABC radio is even better than Radio 4 - yes really - not least because I'm learning so much about this country - the history, the social documentary, the politics, the personalities, the different world view....

We have local Nim FM community radio which can lurch from fantastic to abysmal in terms of quality dj-ing, but is always entertaining one way or another! And perhaps I'll re-live my pirate radio days and get a regular show one day. I find I listen to a greater range of music, hungry for new sounds (hint hint). I'm glad to have let go of tv. It feels good.

I definitely suffered culture shock for the first few months - hard to describe the actual feelings, all I know is that I now feel settled and am no longer in the throws of it - whatever it was. Without doubt part of the shock was very, very personal - the change in my personal culture, rather than general culture. In retrospect, leaving Jake was deeply traumatic for me and I can now, with the cushion of time, allow myself to see that. I was numb. I put one emotional foot in front of the other. To an extent I'm still doing that, but the process has become normalised. And thankfully we have the luxury of cheap international phone-calls.

Life is simpler on some levels, more complicated on others - the complications however are the one's I want - how to develop the garden, how to build a workshop/guest room, how to make a living in a rural environment, making sure we get all the shopping we need when we're in town. The simplicity is welcome, oh so welcome. The elemental side of life is more immediate at a daily/hourly level - water, heat, growth, decay, light, dark, rain, wind, moonlight and sunshine. All are more significant here, away from the street lighting and convenience of town life - and I love it.

And having the chickens is a very fundamental experience - producing our own eggs, our own first class protein from living beings we're responsible for. And we harvested broccholi for the first time ever today and a very small aubergine! Tam has finished the deluxe chicken house (see above) and the four hens have settled in very well, not missing a beat in egg production with the move to their new home. If only I could be so adaptable!

We'd love to know that you've read this so either leave a comment, email us at above address (top of page) or write to PO Box 45, Nimbin, NSW 2480, Australia. Any CD compilations of your current favourite sounds are very welcome!

Peak Egg Production

We are so proud of our lovely hens - we've had at least 1 egg every day since they arrived just under two weeks ago. This morning they eggcelled themselves, producing 4 eggs between them- that's an egg each, peak production!

Here they are (see above) getting down and dirty, dust bathing at the end of the patio during their afternoon free-range. Chicken House Mark 2 is coming along slowly, mainly because there's so much else to do, and we keep redesigning it! Such is life.

If only we could let the hens free-range in the house - not an option, obviously too messy! Rather large arachnids regularly appear and we've observed that the chooks quite like to nibble on a spider - they've been known to fight furiously over them. But then the spiders catch the flies, so the spiders do a good job - if only we could stand having spiders around!

Tam and I are both getting a bit braver at dealing with the medium sized spiders (like these Huntsmen). We'll catch them and redistribute them to the far reaches of the garden, because we simply can't cope with them wondering around the house and appearing here, there and everywhere.

However, it's the really big spiders that freak us out - that's when we get Tam's industrial vacuum cleaner out and hope they don't run too fast.

Ho hum, life and death
in the Aussie bush.

Care for a tincture at the local hostelry?

We've been Clived!
To Clive (vb): to render helpless with laughter and good humour. Clive arrived some weeks ago and stayed for some time! And oh how we laughed, from the moment he arrived - we laughed with him, at him, about him, at ourselves - I haven't laughed so much in a LONG time. Clive is hilarious, especially when he goes all Lesley Phillips on you.

And in return, Clive has been Nimbin Rocked - rendered helpless with relaxation upon various Nimbin verandahs (see sketch of view from the Community House verandah above by Clive). He arrived at our place after dark, having been driven up winding mountain roads, and was quite blown away with the night sky, the surrounding forest and the possibility of ticks and leeches!

Photos show Clive, Grant & Tam on a walk up at Mt Nardi, surrounded by tree ferns, palms, epiphytes (ask Piers!) and the occassional carpet python! Clive and I nearly trod on one python curled sleepily in a patch of warm sunlight lying in the middle of the path, before Grant spotted it. Carpet pythons are not generally dangerous to humans, as they are constrictors and their bite is not deadly. However, I wouldn't want one wrapped around my arm!

Further along the track - what is it about the male species that requires the average bloke to go to the very edge of any impossibly high precipice and scare ME to death? Please explain in less than a hundred words!

Clive got on really well with the Martin clan. Len and he typically and fondly describe each other as 'utterly insufferable'; Kay took him walking through the Nimbin Rocks forest to the waterfall, spotting a goanna and a possum with a baby hanging on; and Grant and Clive shared some relaxing times on the CH verandah, chatting and soaking up the view.

After a week or so he cheerfully headed South to Sydney and Melbourne, saying, 'its been great, I've had a wonderful time. I'll be back. How am I going to explain this to people back home?' Life in the Rainbow Region!

And the final picture, well, that was late one night at our place, Pink Martini blaring out and much dancing, drinking and, of course, laughter....

Wild Wooli & Eggsellent Developments

Karen & Ken invited us to join them for a couple of days at their rented beach house in Wooli last month. This was an absolute delight. Old-style Aussie architecture (clap-board and verandahs everywhere) and literally seconds from the beach. Wooli is about 2-3 hours drive South from our place and is surrounded by National Park. And the big bonus - dogs are allowed on the beach, which is great for Milly (seen above galloping at full pelt, ears everywhere, to Tam). Here's the extensive walk all the way from the house to the beach!

And here's the view at the end of the footpath, showing Ken & Karen indulging in a favourite pastime. We thought the beach was a bit crowded, but we coped.

We had a fabulous time, especially Milly, particularly as beaches are tick free zones. We didn't dip more than a foot into the Pacific as it was extremely windy and the sea was rough. We walked the length and breadth of Wooli - which isn't difficult as Wooli is a long thin strip precariously perched between the sea and a wide river, about 150 metres wide and crammed with ramshackle beach hideaways.

We searched the surf for whales that may have been returning South with their new born young. We were rewarded, not with whales but dolphins bobbing in the waves just off shore. We saw sea eagles and brahminy kites, thousands of tiny crabs marching across the sand, fantastic rock formations, beautiful driftwood, wide horizons and big skies - a refreshing escape from our forest hide-away. We've booked for a week in March to share with Gina and Georgie when they visit next year and may extend to two weeks.

Wednesday 8th October was a big day in the Martin-Yeld household. Our beautiful girls arrived, Un, Deux, Trois and Little F - four lovely white hens - gifts for Tam from Ken & Karen on her 40th birthday. We are in the process of designing and making a chicken house/tractor. Unfortunately, Chicken House Mark 1 failed miserably. We were attempting a polytunnel style run covered in predator excluding fencing - it all went horribly wrong and we are now going for a more traditional A-frame based design. Watch this space.

As the more observant among you will know Tam's birthday is in June - some time has passed since being presented with 4 delightful chicks, which have been growing steadily and residing with Ken & Karen's flock. After 3 months waiting for us to get our chicken-housing act together, Ken & Karen threw us in at the deep end, offering to lend us a temporary run (shown above), and delivered the chickens that very day!

And so our hens arrived and our life with chickens commenced - and we love them. Protection from egg snatchers and predators is essential - snakes, goannas, wild dogs, foxes, rats are all likely to be in the locality and seeking a good meal. Much to our delight, and impressivly only 48 hours after their arrival, Little F (identified by the feathers on her legs) presented us with a Little Oeuf (see photo). To have been rewarded so soon after their arrival is a blessing. Humble yet cherished beginnings.

Once Chicken House Mark 2 is complete we will free range them every afternoon, limiting the opportunity for predators and maximising the likelihood that they'll lay in their nest box, as they apparently most often lay in the morning. We are SO very proud of our hens and will keep you posted on their productivity, housing status, welfare and, hopefully, survival....

I'm off to make a very small omlette!

And now for something completely different...

A short film taken of Tam, Felicity and Connor today...



We've just got back from a weekend with sister Felicity in Brisbane, helping her and partner Peter to clear out beneath their house - which is on stilts and the underneath has become a regular dumping ground for at least a decade's worth of this and that, including an entire Corvette in bits. As usual Peter cooked divine food and we enjoyed a bountiful supply of Aussie red wine. Hopefully we managed to assist in their de-junking exercise. We have, of course, acquired a few items along the way - inflatable dingy, boogie board, directors chair, heritage cast iron pot, dvd player, scaffolding, wardrobe, table....hmmmm? Didn't we just get rid of loads of stuff in England???

We returned from the big smoke via hectic highways and curling mountain roads to our modest and tranquil homestead. Happily the veggies have survived a couple of days of Aussie spring sunshine without watering and the vocal bird-life is as abundant as ever. As Tam and I sat at dusk sipping on Tooheys New and listening to the cicada opera, we were delighted to see two fire-flies flashing rhythmically as they hovered past. Apparently they are moths. Whatever they are, it was a WOW moment for us. Of course, the fire-flies' arrival is due to the warmer spring weather, which has also brought forth the mosquitos - ho hum, the advantages of winter are over and the insect repellent is now my best friend!

Tomorrow we're off to the beach - about two hours drive south to Woolli and a house just behind the beach, guests of friends Karen and Ken for a couple of nights. So a dip in the Pacific Ocean and hopefully not too many mozzies.

Blue Knob Pit Stop

My big brother Piers, being the jet setter he is, popped in to see us for 48 hours last weekend. I have to say, it’s probably the first time since I was a little girl that I have spent this much time with him - even then it’s doubtful that it would have been as long as two whole days. Being 14 years older than me, my memories of him are infused by the smell of homebrew, hanging out in his hazy attic boudoir, where he got up to all sorts of things that I wasn’t allowed to know about. Coming home at weekends in his mustard coloured MG Midget he always had time to rip the mickey mercilessly out of his three little sisters, and to give me a helicopter ride whether I wanted one or not.

Piers's visit to Oz was sandwiched between Hong Kong and Singapore via Melbourne, and so we picked him up from Brisbane airport in our ever-reliable Subie. It never rains in August apparently, so of course the moment his plane landed the heavens opened and he had the full tropical downpour experience. Heading home via Murwillumbah, we stopped to get a few provisions. Piers returned triumphant from the bottle shop with a mere 6 bottles of vino, a carton of Tooheys New and another of Coopers Red. We’re not quite sure if he really had intended to buy 48 bottles of beer, or indeed if he knew that in Australia a carton of beer is a large box containing 24 x 375ml bottles. We would, however, like to extend our thanks - they’ve been keeping us going ever since. And yes, there will always be a cold beer in the fridge for you Piers.

Having total control over Piers for the weekend, we decided to have a full yet relaxed itinerary scheduled for him. We lunched at nearby Sphinx Rock Café on the other side of the Nightcap Range ridge en route home. Welcoming him to our "estate", we gave him the guided tour, teaching words such as “epiphyte”, whilst catching up, mulling over ideas and supping on divine lamb tagine courtesy of Jen. As self-elected designated driver, Jen delivered him for a nights rest to nearby Calurla, self contained chalets (shown below) run by friends Andrea and Bob (www.calurla.com.au).

The following morning, glad to see he could boil an egg and was bearing up under the strain, I brought him back to ours for more walks around Milly’s own private park and to show him where we source our water from - a nearby mountain spring.

We were slightly worried about him attracting ticks or leeches, whilst halfway through a business trip, and possibly contracting some infection or worse. Being the innovative thinker that he is, he devised his own, very fetching, critter repellent...

Off to Mt Nardi, top of the nearby Nightcap Range, for a pre-lunch appetiser - a brief walk and a taster of the incredible Australian rainforest. Then back to colourful Nimbin for lunch on the verandah at the pub bistro. We spent the afternoon at Nimbin Rocks Co-Op on Len and Kay’s sunny verandah for coffee and delectable nibbles, with Grant (Jen’s bro) and Karen (Co-op member) joining us.

Piers got the low down from Len regarding living off the grid – solar power, rainwater collection, composting toilet, and a tour of Len’s fabulous grevillea collection. The sun went down behind the cliffs, the temperature dropped and we quickly showed Piers the community house, basic accommodation where non-members can stay for $5 a night.

So Piers’s fleeting visit to the rainbow region sadly came to an end, hopefully not too exhausting for him, in terms of information overload. My only regrets were that it was too chilly to sit on our verandah and listen to the Whip birds, or watch the Eastern Spine Bill honeyeaters bathing in the pond. We did see a pademelon boinging out of our way one night, but as for the wallabies – there’s always next time. Come back soon Piers.

Scaling New Heights

Comment has been made that our blog shows endless photos of Tam busy and active whilst very few show me doing much at all - which of course is FAR from the truth. In an attempt to redress the photographic imbalance, Tam has been taking a few shots recently. And I hope the photo above reassures you that Tam has not forgotten how to relax.

Jenny somewhat nervously crossing an old logging bridge spanning the gushing mountain creek below on a recent walk up in the mountains.

Vertigo?

What vertigo!









Up on the Roof, scrubbing away nearly 30 years of accumulated black mould and dust to reveal the pale green colour-bond roof. It took us about 3 days - having said that Tam gave up after the first day! It was a horrible job and yet immensely satisfying to finish. I discovered muscles I didn't know I had as I balanced at the top of the ladder, bucket in one hand whilst scrubbing away obsessively with the other....



The contrast half way through the job (photo taken from the paddock).

Hopefully the house will be a bit cooler in the summer as a result.




Its been cold and the nights have been long, so its taken a while for the veggies in our no-dig beds to get going. Spring is just around the corner and everything is finally beginning to grow. We've started harvesting salad leaves while the snow-peas, ruby chard and french beans are beginning to take off.

The aubergines and peppers are very slowly progressing and we've had to improve the fencing since a few plants have been nibbled by mystery mid-night visitors - perhaps possums, perhaps wallabies, perhaps bandicoots... We're yet to plant tomatos, lettuce, coriander, potatoes, sweet potatoes.....

Get off my land! This photo was taken at the beginning of a recent walk along an little known local right of way. The landowners would prefer people to 'KEEP OUT', although they have no right to demand this as it is a public right of way. There is a danger that the route will be lost if this pathway is not used and hence this group of local walkers and horseriders actively seek to keep these paths open and I have joined their cause. Ultimately we are campaigning for a network of 'unmotorised' and sustainable routes between communities to be created (or rather recreated) along these old tracks. A bit of afternoon radical strolling - right up my street. In fact we have one of these old routes passing by our garden.

A Bush-Rat in the cooker and no trap - so we created our own. The one design fault, I was required to sit on Mouse-Watch waiting - and yes it was cold. Thankfully, it didn't take long - the chubby little fellow couldn't resist the toasted sunflower seeds and with a quick flick of the foot we had him. The next day he was redistributed to an even more rural location!


And here's Tam relaxing in the garden - again - and enjoying a fresh cup of coffee, the view to Nimbin Rocks, the palm trees and the deep blue of the late winter sky.

I'm just taking the photo....

Bromeliad Delight

We have thousands of bromeliads in our garden and a lot of the time, I have to admit, I simply do not like them. They gather copious fallen leaves and can be painful and bloody to weed as their skin-tearing serrated leaves often cause injury. Many have pools of water at their centre which will no doubt provide mosquitoes with perfect breeding sites come summer. And finally, given that all our bromeliads are entirely unproductive - beyond their aesthetics - I resent the time required to weed them and am planning a Dig Your Own Bromeliad sale to lessen their numbers and bring in some $$$.

However, when bromeliads come into flower, it is a different story - they can be absolutely delightful. And there is huge variation amongst the flowers. Here's a sequence of one particular Billbergia coming into flower. These photos don't do it justice of course, but you get the idea.

There are thousands of different species of bromeliads; they evolved in South America and have recently been enthusiastically incorporated into Aussie gardens. They produce 'pups' regularly and are therefore relatively easy to propagate, hence we have thousands - the previous owner must have loved them. Many species are epiphytes (can grow on trees) which allows for quite creative gardening.

My favourite bromeliad flower so far is the one on the left below which measures a mere 2 inches with tiny blue flowers. I have no idea which particular species this is, it is no doubt related to the pineapple, another bromeliad flower! We've got 3 of these flowering at the moment.

So whilst we will reduce the numbers of bromeliads in our garden dramatically, we'll keep a small selection to provide different delightful flowers throughout the year. And then there's the pineapple plantation....

Two Weeks in the Life of Dr Len

My dad Len has had an interesting couple of weeks, starting with an unusually dramatic garden club visit a couple of Saturdays ago. There we all were relaxing and chatting on Ozzy's veranda, admiring the stunning view from his garden, looking forward to a talk on orchid propagation and a refreshing cup of afternoon tea. Suddenly there's an ear-splitting crack. I turn to see Len pivoting backwards through the now broken veranda rail and falling down onto the garden bed and rocks below. The drop from veranda floor to ground level is only about 3 feet, but he lands with full force onto his back and his head jerks back onto a rock.

He doesn't move. A number of us rush to his side. There's blood. He manages to raise himself a little, but is completely disorientated and shocked. A towel is brought to soak up blood, and a decision is made to take him immediately to the nearby Nimbin Hospital. Some hours later he is discharged, in typically goon-like good humour having been thoroughly examined by Dr Oscar, and his wound stitched and head bandaged. We're all immensely relieved, especially Kay.

Dad makes a remarkably rapid recovery, bandages off by Tuesday, busy with his usual round of community focussed work by Wednesday and precisely a week after his accident he's off on a 11km bush walk through the Mt Nardi National Park and larking about at the top of a huge waterfall - with a drop of some hundreds of feet. My mum Kay had to walk away not able to stomach his precarious and juvenile antics - afterall, he is 74 and a half! My parents took the walk happily in their stride, whilst Tam and I hobbled the last half kilometre complaining about our knees and spent the next couple of days aching and groaning!

And so another week of meetings, appointments and deadlines for Dad - afterall he is retired - AND preparations for his appearance in the 2008 Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup on Saturday. Its the first round of heats - each performer has eight minutes to wow the judges with their verbal vitality and virtuosity. Sixteen out of 32 will make it through to the semi-final on Sunday. Dad gives a fabulous performance and is through to the semis. He is delighted, we're all delighted.

So, to Sunday and the semi-finals. The draw has Dad performing first at mid-day - what crowd there is has hardly woken up, he's very nervous, he rushes, we all know its not as good as yesterday. Nervously we sit through the other 15 performers and await the judges decision on the final eight.

Its close, very close - so close that the determining factor is timing - anyone who has gone over 8 minutes is penalised and, given Dad is safely within time and much to our further delight, Dad is through - he's in the final that very night. So its home to get the glad rags on.

Most of the poets perform from memory, whilst Dad always reads, and he knows this is not looked favourably upon by the poetic judges. He is also performing next to some well established and top class performing poets. Typically modest about his poetry and glamorously attired in ugg boots and thermals under his shorts, he is relatively relaxed. Thankfully, he's on fifth out of eight, a good position in the running.

The evening is great fun, with Tug Dumbley, last year's winner and one of this year's judges, giving a rip-roaring and hilarious performance of 'The Dog with the Golden Arse!'. All the contestants give it their best and the standard is notably higher than the semi's. There's a break whilst the judges make their decision. There's only one World Cup Winner with the top prize of $2000, whilst all seven runners up come jointly second and leave with $300 a piece. Dad is relaxed and happy all the performing is over and looking forward to congratulating the winner.

The eight finalists are invited onto the stage.

Tub Dumbley takes the stage to announce the winner.

'And the winner is.......Len Martin'

What can I say - Nimbin's own had won, the audience roared, the Martin clan collectively leapt for sheer joy, cheering and whooping with absolute delight, Dad was completely and utterly flabberghasted - a Stunned Mullet as he said! It was one of the best moments of my life - and I'm so chuffed that Tam and I were there to share it with my lovely drama-queen of a father.

His face says it all - Len, in fetching thermals and uggs, with partner of 51 years Kay (aka Mum) in his arms and Poetry World Cup organiser Gail at his side, astonished, overwhelmed and this year's World Cup Winner!