last nights tea

Pork Belly, Cauliflower, broccoli and peas.

Want me to pm you when they announce an opening day?

Looks like a lot will be happening, if you're  on Facebook, I'm not, it shows up on the Sidestand Cafe page.

Might oil the chain on the Sporty, take it for an 80 kms run on dirt then enter it in their show and shine.

Mostly into Indians, but had a well done Harley in the shop the other day if you're into big wheel baggers. 

A lot of bicyclists off the Brisbane Valley rail trail are stopping in there for a caffeine fix too.

do you have many sushi eaters up your way ?

They would have been looking for a food that can be made elsewhere and just sold at the cafe as the building doesn't have a commercial kitchen.

A few days later the district was hit by a magnitude 5.6 earthquake. Our place is up on 6 foot concrete stumps and has really minimal framing, it was swaying and groaning very impressively for what seemed a surprisingly long time.

I checked for damage later, the bearers hadn't moved on the stumps, and everything else seems flexible enough to bend rather than break.

Went back on duty with the brigade and the fire calls started coming, first a critical  one in a group of 5 acre blocks near Blackbutt that burned through 4 of them. Now people buy those sort of blocks for privacy, tend to plant lots of trees, don't think to put a connecting gate into their neighbours, and if they divide it into paddocks put pissy little gates in that might be OK for a mower or a buggy but make it hard to manoeuvre a 7.5 tonne fire truck through. Yes, I dinged in one of the back doors on the truck on a star picket gate post. No one seemed to have any fire fighting gear, not even backpack sprays, a couple of women were trying to fight a fast moving grass fire on a windy day with buckets of water. Think it might have been an educational experience for a few of them.

A few days later we had both trucks out helping a land owner with a controlled burn on a day with gusty swinging winds, when it jumped the break and headed off towards the Dag highway in 2m high grass with 5m high flames. That sure got the traffic's attention.

A couple of nights later a firecall came in at 3:45 am, small fire beside the Dag highway, well small fires can grow so off we went with a crew of 3. Got there and laughed, there was about a square foot of insulation foam burning in the concrete gutter. That took about a minute to put out, but looking around there was more piles of the stuff spread around over the Armco and off into the bush, with part rolls of aircell foam and what looked like in the dark an overturned trailer. I went over the Armco to see if there was a crashed car down in the gully. Turned out it was just a big tin box. I thought about opening it but didn't, gave it a kick to see if it was empty, then pissed off back to the fireshed grumbling about responding to a fire you could put out by pissing on it.

A couple of days later we hear that the coppers have a crime scene investigation set up at that place, so the boss contacts them. Turns out that it was connected to a Sunshine Coast torture and murder case. No, the tin box wasn't full of body parts, but had been used in the crime.

Sure glad I didn't open it.

what do you do in your spare time ?

Fire season and preparing for it can be a busy time. A couple of blokes are out now helping control a cockies escaped burn.

The blokes saying don't look up were mistaken, sometimes it's best to look up.

When I did I was face to face with this bloke.

Last saw him back in May.

this is on Instagram, shows how to take it away...https://www.instagram.com/thereptilezoo/reel/DN6XeSckpV_/  

p.s. don't call me. I don't like snakes.