When I first arrived on the coast with my family nearly ten years ago, I was always intrigued why the southern end of the coast was greener and more naturally beautiful then many of the more northern suburbs. How come the beautiful Currumbin estuary hadn’t been snapped up many years ago and developed out with large aging resorts? Then one day while sitting at the Thrower bridge traffic lights I realized the answer. Sitting amongst the trees next to the creek was a beautiful heritage building called Gecko House. A small sign in the window said that it was the home of the Gold Coast and Hinterland Environment Council and there were regular meetings. Halleluiah!! Not only were there people that cared about the environment here, but they were active! And boy are they active !!!

The hardworking and passionate defenders of the environment that started Gecko more than 20 years ago have passed on to the lucky inhabitants an area, even on global terms, of outstanding natural beauty. The fact that Currumbin is such a much loved and frequented place is in no short measure due to the hard won battles and

sacrifices of a few amazing people and I am honoured to be a part of such an important legacy.

So, it is with heartfelt thanks and appreciation that I accept the “Beaded Gecko” award for my small part in the history of Gecko during 2012.

Jane Power January 2013

Jane Power receiving her award with Lealer Woodgate, another fellow recipient and volunteer at the Gecko office.

by Kathleen Green

The invasion of the coal seam gas (CSG) mining industry is now coming closer to the Gold Coast, with exploration in Canungra, in Beechmont, in the Tweed and Byron Shire. Over 80% of the state of Queensland is under permit for mining or exploration for mining. This month’s guest speaker at Gecko House was Michael McNamara from the Lock the Tweed group. He is also on the Board of Lock the Gate Alliance, a national advocacy group opposing coal seam gas mining, particularly on agricultural land. Michael spoke about the coal seam gas industry and the Lock the Gate campaign, including a nine week blockade at Glenugie in the Clarence Valley, New South Wales and a blockade near Kyogle next to the Eden Creek State Forest.

Michael’s informative talk covered the differences between shale gas, tight sand gas and coal seam gas mining, which he described as a risky and dirty business. Coal seam gas is called unconventional due to the extraction process which involves fracking coal seams with water and chemicals to release the gas, not conventional gas, of which, there is an infinite supply in Bass Strait. Most CSG is exported with no benefit to you and I, and it is sold for less than what we pay for gas or any energy here. Australia has so many resources yet we pay premium price. And we have so many resources of clean, renewable energy that we can convert to renewables within 10 years in Australia, providing  jobs and money. Coal seam gas mining, and coal mining have become the biggest environmental issues Australia and the world has ever faced. The damage caused to people and the environment is already evident and well documented. The burning of these fossil fuels in Australia and overseas is adding to global warming and climate change.

Not only rural areas are affected, now CSG is moving into Sydney and will be fracked under Campbelltown and Camden. Meanwhile gas is bubbling in the Sydney Nepean River from a nearby coal mine. The Blue Mountains has also been targeted. Nowhere is exempt from the CSG invasion. Tweed Shire and Byron Shire are areas where exploration permits have been issued. There is gas there, so expect it to be fracked, and it is next door to the Gold Coast, as is Canungra. The mining industry have been given free range of our best farmland and water, plus  governments give large subsidies to the mining industry and in return, when those poll-u-ticians retire,  many  are given  high paying positions on  the Boards of mining companies.

The CSG industry also impacts on local land values, house prices, finance availability, insurance coverage, rental availability, cost of living, and the local workforce and existing local industries. Fly–in Fly-out (FIFO)  workers do not spend in the local areas as work sites provide most of their needs and  they are of no benefit to towns near the gas work sites. There are now domestic, social and alcohol issues at work sites.

There is great risk from CSG to Australia’s aquifiers under the Surat, Bowen and Galilee Basins, and the Fitzroy River, Dawson River, Gladstone Harbour, the Great Barrier Reef and Ipswich. Check out photos of the Fitzroy River at the Lock the Gate website. http://www.flickr.com/photos/lockthegatealliance/8353896678/in/set-72157632452707698

To combat the invasion of CSG, Lock the Gate Alliance formed and there are now approximately 170 small groups under the banner around Australia, rallying their communities to halt CSG in their area. Communities are furious at the bully tactics of mining companies to force their way on to land. The mining industry is now pushing against community groups every time they move into another area. This is not a good business model, it is an invasion, but communities are willing to stand their ground against the corporations. Out of this dirty business, has emerged stories of mateship on the blockade front line, stories of heroes locking themselves onto equipment, and stories of resolve to do this in a peaceful, non-violent manner. The non-violent tactics are unlike the Sydney riot squad that was sent to Glenugie to protect the Metgasco’s work site The riot police were not gentle in their arrests of protestors. After arresting protestors and taking them out of sight of their friends, the police beat a number of protestors before taking them to the police station. After this, all protestors had a buddy, to watch over each other, especially if one person was arrested. Their buddy would then follow the arresting police with their buddy and take photos and make sure the police know they were being photographed. There are now a number of protestors with photographic evidence of police brutality and they are laying charges against the police.

At this blockade there were people from many backgrounds and parts of Australia, ranging in age from 10 to 80, including groups that call themselves “Knitting Nannas against Gas” and “Chooks Against Gas”.  Humour is an important ingredient in this fight against bully tactics. 24 people were arrested at the Glenugie blockade as of Friday 25^th January. The site has been drilled ready for a  gas well, and the workers are packing up ready to move the drill rig to Metgasco’s next gas well work site near Kyogle,  in the Eden Creek State Forest, (also known as Doubtful Creek), where farmers, town folk, city folk,  and environmentalist  stand shoulder to shoulder to block their entry. The average age of blockaders is 50.

I spent four days camping at the blockade camp near Kyogle. The landscape is lush and green, the air is clean, the silent night a welcome relief from the city noise and the birds woke us with their morning song. We saw the sunrise every morning, the sunset every night and we slept under the night sky dazzling with stars. The Kyogle community know that 28 families are now sick at Tara in Queensland, with bleeding from the ears and nose, constant headaches and rashes, seizures and then there is contaminated land and flammable bore water. Imagine if that was you sick, imagine if it was your children sick, imagine if you had to pack up and leave your home because it is making your family sick……well, we will all be sick, if we don’t stop coal seam gas mining…..its stop CSG or our farmland and water will become poisoned and unusable. You can register with the gagkyogle [at] gmail [dot] com for updates of upcoming action at the Kyogle blockade.

The CSG industry covers many issues that affect us all. It may be out of sight for city folk but their water and food security are at high risk. Frack all the farmland and no food can be grown. Frack the underground water catchment areas, and we no longer have drinking water. Gas wells leak. This is why there has been a groundswell of people joining the Lock the Gate movement, people who have never protested before in their life. People who have never broken the law in their life are compelled to join the movement against CSG, and they are also calling for clean, renewable energy and the dropping of subsidies for the mining energies. What a joke, giving subsidies to an industry that now produces the highest output of dirty emissions.

A GetUp map of Australia shows the extent of coal seam gas deposits around Australia.

http://csg.getup.org.au/

Go to the website for information and join http://www.lockthegate.org.au/join

Follow the Faceook site for information: https://www.facebook.com/groups/195834647104687/

While writing this article on the CSG invasion, on Australia Day, I was thinking of my father, and the many other men and women who fought in World War II to defend Australia from foreign invasion. My father was a POW in Changi gaol and on the Burma railway for near four years. It is Incredible that he and others survived. He came home to Australia, married and had six children. He worked tirelessly for his family and his country. When he passed away he was still on 11 community committees. He served as President of the Longford RSL sub-branch for 30 years, which he founded. He was awarded an OAM two years before he passed away. He loved Australia and the mateship of Aussies.

If he were alive today, he would be horrified that the Australian government is allowing the invasion by the coal seam gas industry into Australia, mostly foreign companies exporting our resources. He would want me and all other Aussies to stand up against this invasion by CSG, to keep our land as it is, and not allow it to be turned into a landscape of mines and gas fields that will poison the land, water, air and people.

Communities are now rallying together as if in a state of war, Gas Wars, and they will never give up because they know the consequences of this dirty business. The skills, research and time people are putting out to combat the mining industry spin is commendable. Community groups with little or no funding are up against companies that have unlimited funding for media spin. Spin that is in mainstream media, watched by people who believe everything they see and hear. So communities have to work harder to find ways to get the truth out to people about CSG. People who have never protested in their life have joined Lock the Gate. The Country Womens’ Association marched in a rally in Sydney for the first time in their history.

An example of the mining companies’ deceitful behaviour occurred in two mining advertisements, which were pulled from TV because the man speaking was not a farmer as he claimed to be, and not on his land as he claimed to be, and not living in a community.  He claimed was happy to have CSG in their area.  The real farmer was taking a much needed break from work, put up his feet to watch TV and in the advertisement saw that it was his land and his neighbour’s land and a man he had never seen before was claiming it to be his land. The

mining company really thought that the advertisement would not be noticed as false. Their arrogance and blatant lies is an insult to the Australian people.

An article from New Independent Australia environment correspondent Sandi Keane, takes us through the dangerous and sometimes toxic world of coal seam gas and fracking. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/environment/coal-seam-gas-is-it-too-late-to-lock-the-gate/

There is no need to continue with dirty fossil fuels. According to Australian Conservation Foundation publication Habitat,.”last year alone, the world saw about $260 billion in investment in renewable energy, eclipsing for the first time investment in fossil fuels.”

On Saturday night, a farmer rang me, who lives near the blockade at Eden Creek State Forest (near Kyogle, NSW). He updated me with details of how they have built more infrastructure at the site for the protestors and to keep out Metgasco’s drill rig. Due to the heavy rain, Metgasco is not expected to move their drill rig from Glenugie to Kyogle until the end of this week.

The farmer told me how this experience of blockading against CSG has changed his life. He has met such a diverse range of people from age 10 to 80 and the community is rallying together like he has never seen before. It bought him to tears, at the joy of knowing people will stand up and defend his part of the world – farmland which is very fertile, lush and green, pristine water and clean air. He describes it as an invasion by mining companies and we need an army to stop them. He said that even though the community is rallying, many more people are needed and he has asked me, begged me to rally Gold Coast people, to form an army, and get down to the blockade when called, to stop the invasion. When we stop them at this blockade, it is hoped that the mining industry will finally be deterred from continuing further.

On this Australia Day weekend, we are reminded of the courage, mateship and a sense of a fair go, that describes Australians. Peter, the farmer, is relying on that mateship to come to his and many other farmers’ rescue, who are being invaded by the coal seam gas industry. Please tell your family and friends to prepare to go to Kyogle, to stand up and defend Australia.

And, lastly, here is a 30 minute documentary from AlJazeera TV on the coal seam gas industry in Australia. http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2013/01/20131771222674145.html Some of the world’s largest energy giants are moving into eastern Australia and investing billions of dollars to exploit coal seam gas reserves so vast they could rewrite the world’s energy map.

Despite the mining companies’ spin that they are generating massive amounts of revenue and creating thousands of new jobs, they are being met by a groundswell of public protest and a rising chorus of concern about the long-term impacts of coal seam gas extraction on the nation’s health, environment and land. Join the groundswell at www.lockthegatge.org.au

Kathleen Green (if you would like to be on my email list for updates on CSG and upcoming action, please email me on kathleenhempening [at] gmail [dot] com

http://www.mydailynews.com.au/news/csg-warning-to-gold-coast/1723076/

This is not a joke and they do sell for $600.00.  They won’t be able to make them fast enough–good just to run around town. Here’s a car that will get you back and forth to work on

the cheap… $600 for the car. 258 miles per gallon…

Only a one seater however – Talk about cheap transportation…
Volkswagen’s $600 car gets 258 mpg–

It looks like Ford, Chrysler and GM missed the boat again!

China launches $600 car that will get 258mpg

This $600 car is no toy and is ready to be released in China next year.

The single seater aero car totes VW (Volkswagen) branding.

Volkswagen did a lot of very highly protected testing of this car in Germany,
But it was not announced until now where the car would make its first appearance.

The car was introduced at the VW stockholders meeting as the most economical car in the world.

The initial objective of the prototype was to prove that 1 litre of fuel could deliver 100 kilos of travel.

The aero design proved essential to getting the desired result.

The body is 3.47 meters long and just 1.25 meters wide, and a little over a meter high.

The prototype was made completely of carbon fibre and is not painted to save weight.

The power plant is a one cylinder diesel, positioned ahead of the rear axle and combined with
an automatic shift controlled by a knob in the interior.

Safety was not compromised as the impact and roll-over protection is comparable to the GT racing cars.

The Most Economic Car in the World will be on sale next year:

Better than Electric Car – 258 miles/gallon: IPO 2010 in Shanghai
This is a single-seat car
From conception to production: 3 years and the company is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany…
Will be selling for 4000 Yuan, equivalent to US $600…
Gas tank capacity = 1.7 gallons
Speed = 62 – 74.6 Miles/hour
Fuel efficiency = 258 miles/gallon
Travel distance with a full tank = 404 miles

Written by Rob Dietz, Dan O’Neill

The numbers are telling us something:

• 7 billion people on earth, with 2.7 billion scraping by on viagra online less than $2 per day.
• 394 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, threatening to destabilize the global climate.
• $15 trillion of public debt in the United States, an unfathomable sum of money to be paid back by the next generation.
• 2 percent of adults owning more than half of all household wealth in the world.
• 400 ocean zones devoid of life, with the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico estimated to cover almost as much area as the U.S. state of New Jersey.

Hidden in these numbers are stories of real people and real places in real trouble. And perhaps the most important number of all is one—one single blue-green planet with finite resources that we all must share.

Our pursuit of never-ending economic growth has become dysfunctional. With each passing day, we are witnessing more and more uneconomic growth—growth that costs more than it is worth. An economy that chases perpetually increasing production and consumption, always in search of more, stands no chance of achieving a lasting prosperity. Most of us are overlooking the underlying cause of our problems: our economy has grown too large.

That’s a strong indictment against economic growth, but this indictment is backed up by scientific studies of environmental and social systems. The evidence shows that the pursuit of a bigger economy is undermining the life-support systems of the planet and failing to make us better off—a grave situation, to be sure.

This model of more is failing both environmentally and socially, yet practically everyone is still cheering it on . . . it almost makes you want to climb to the top of the highest building and shout, “Enough!”

Crying out in such a way expresses intense frustration at the seemingly intractable environmental and social problems we face, but it also carries the basic solution to these problems. By stopping at enough when it comes to production and consumption in the economy, instead of constantly chasing more, we can restore environmental health and achieve widespread well-being. That’s an incredibly hopeful message, but it opens up all sorts of questions. What would this economy look like? What new institutions would we need? How would we secure jobs?

Before diving into the science that clarifies why enough is preferable to more, it’s worth thinking about it from a common-sense perspective. More is certainly a good thing when you don’t have enough. For instance, if you can’t find enough to eat, then more food is better. But what about times when you do have enough? Eating more food leads to obesity. More, then, may be either helpful or harmful, depending on the situation, but enough is the amount that’s just right.

Once we put aside our obsession with growth, we can focus on the task of building a better economy: a steady-state economy. In order to generate ideas for moving past the culture of consumerism, we need to be starting a public dialogue about the downsides of growth and the upsides of a steady-state economy, and expanding cooperation among nations. All this discussion leads up to the presentation of an economic blueprint that summarizes the components and steps needed to build a steady-state economy.

This blueprint offers hope at a time when we need it most. It provides a viable way of responding to the profound environmental and social problems of our era. In a steady-state economy, we can:

• Limit the use of materials and energy to sustainable levels.
• Stabilize population through compassionate and non-coercive means.
• Achieve a fair distribution of income and wealth.
• Reform monetary and financial systems for stability.
• Change the way we measure progress.
• Secure meaningful jobs and full employment.
• Reconfigure the way businesses create value.

Taken together, the policies described form an agenda for transforming the economic goal from more to enough. But these policies will sit on the shelf unless we can gain extensive support for, and concerted action toward, achieving an economy of enough.

The time has come to figure out what we can do. We don’t have to play by the old rules anymore. We can meet our needs and care for the planet at the same time.

Let’s get to it. Enough is enough.

Based on the book Enough is Enough – Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources, Copyright © 2013 by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill. Reprinted with permission of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA.

Read more: (posted January 14, 2013 http://www.care2.com/causes/enough-is-enough-building-a-sustainable-economy-in-a-world-of-finite-resources.html#ixzz2ICjya1NY accessed 17-1-2012)

Dereka Ogden© 15-11-2012

Stacy is still inside her egg, she feels herself being carried along, and after a while she is put down.  She hears a whispering kind of talking.

The picture is of Stick insect eggs with the capitulum on the end that ants like for food for their babies

(http://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_hoppers/Children.htm accessed 15-11-2012)

“This will make good food for our baby ants,” she hears someone say.

“Oh no!” thinks Stacy.  “They are going to eat me, and there’s nothing I can do.”

She holds her breath and waits shaking inside her eggshell, for something to start chewing on her egg,. She feels her egg being rocked around and thinks that any minute she will be eaten, but then she hears,

“Yes, that fatty stuff on this seed will make them big and strong,” says another voice, and Stacy feels something being taken off the outside of her eggshell, then all is quiet.

“I wonder if the danger has gone,” Stacy wonders.

The days go by though, and nothing else touches her egg and Stacy grows inside the egg until one day she feels like stretching, so she stretches and stretches and suddenly she finds the shell cracking and out she crawls.

“I wonder who all these strange creatures are?” she asks herself out loud.

They look a bit like her, but quite not the same.  All around her are eggs and creatures carrying food to store near the eggs.

(myrmecos.net accessed 15-11-2012)

“Don’t you know we are ants?” remarks one of the creatures who had heard her.

“And who are you?  You don’t belong in our nest,” asks another.

Poor Stacy!  She looks around and sees nothing but ants and ants’ eggs, and she decides that she needs to get out of there.  She scuttles along many passages inside the dark ants’ nest until at last she sees a hole with light coming from it.

(terrain.net.nz accessed 15-11-2012)

Out she goes and she’s in the big wide world.  Everything looks enormous and scary, so she hurries to the nearest tree and scrambles up it until she finds the leaves.

She is quite hungry and decides those leaves are very tasty.  She’s munching away when she notices another creature like herself.

(http://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_hoppers/Children.htm accessed 15-11-2012)

“Hello,” she says.  “You look like me.  What kind of creatures are we?”

,

http://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_hoppers/Children.htm accessed 15-11-2012)

The other animal, who is long and thin, laughs at her.

“Don’t you know? You are a baby stick insect, or more correctly a nymph stick insect.  You are not as beautiful as I am!  See levitra online pharmacy the lovely colours on my wings.  You might grow up to look like me if you are lucky,” he says and off he goes, spreading his wings so he can fly to another tree.

“Well, he wasn’t very friendly,” says Stacy.

Day by day she eats gum leaves or wattle leaves and grows and grows.  Several times she sheds her skin so she can grow bigger.  As she grows bigger she finds she does not like the light of daytime, it hurts her eyes, so she starts to sleep in the day and eat at night.

One night she sees a large creature a bit like herself but his front legs are bent so that he looks as if he is praying.   He is swaying to and fro like Stacy does.  Stacy moves closer and asks him if he is a stick insect too.

The creature turns his head almost right around to look at her.

“No I’m a praying mantid,” he says.  “Come closer and perhaps we can be friends.”

Stacy starts to move a little closer thinking it would be nice to have a friend, but suddenly she sees the creature flash out his front legs and catch a moth, which he eats straight away.

hierodula-sp-1 (www.qm.qld.gov.au accessed 13-10-2012)

Stacy keeps very still trying to look like part of the tree.  She doesn’t want to be caught and eaten like the moth.  If she keeps still for long enough, the praying mantid might think she is dead.

It seems as if the moth filled the mantid’s tummy, because he just stayed still and then off he flew showing his beautiful coloured wings.

Poor Stacy sat where she was trying to be completely still, which was very hard as she was shaky after being so frightened.  She would be more careful in future.  At least she knew what a praying mantid was now and she would look out for them because she knew they ate insects like herself, while she only ate leaves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropidoderus_childrenii accessed 13-10-2012)

She lived a long and happy life for a stick insect having a few more close calls, but never being caught.  She laid many eggs and they all grew into female stick insects like herself.

by TreeHugger

Written by Stephen Messenger

Like all well-mannered children, Josiah Utsch and Ridgely Kelly know that respecting one’s elders is an important virtue, even for adults. That may be why the two friends, both aged 12, have made it their mission to protect one of the planet’s oldest species, half-a-billion years their senior, from becoming extinct at the hands of grown-ups.

Last year, Josiah ran across an article in the New York Times detailing the plight of the chambered nautilus, a colorfully-shelled cephalopod Nautilus pompilius, with roots dating so far back, it’s often referred to as a ‘living fossil’. After learning that the neat-looking nautilus was in danger of being wiped-out completely due to overfishing, the youngster from Cape Elizabeth, Maine knew something had to be done to stop it. It wasn’t long before Josiah invited his friend Ridgely to join the cause — not stopping for a moment to consider themselves too young to make a difference.

Soon, the conservation-minded 6th-graders began a campaign to raise awareness of the threats facing this primitive animal, namely from jewellry makers who can reap a hefty profit from the sale of these as decorative items. The pair even launched a website devoted to their cause, which, in turn, helped raise nearly $10,000 towards funding scientific research to better understand these rapidly dwindling organisms.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Nautilus_pompilius_%28head%29.jpg accessed 7-1-2012)

Along with selling special “Save the Nautilus”

t-shirts (designed by Ridgley) as a way of collecting funds, the boys also donated their own allowance money — and encouraged others to do the same in lieu of gifts for their birthdays. As word spread, donations began pouring in from all over.

For University of Washington biology professor Peter Ward, an expert on nautiluses, the campaign started by Josiah and Ridgely has made a major contribution to conservation efforts, telling the Press-Herald:

“They have very much played a huge part in saving the nautilus.”

Thanks to their efforts, thousands of folks who might otherwise never have heard of nautiluses have been inspired by the pair’s devotion to saving them; so far they’ve been featured on local news stations, newspapers, and even made an appearance in Time Magazine for Kids.

Despite their growing notoriety as some of the world’s youngest eco-activists, Josiah and Ridgely are always sure to turn the public’s attention back to the cause at hand, with a strong sense of clarity of purpose not often found in folks even three or four times their age.

“It would be a tragedy to survive a ton of mass extinctions and have them wiped out by a human caused  mass extinction,” says Josiah.

When considering that two boys, who themselves entered the world just 12 years ago, can realize the importance of creating a better place for coming generations — it’s easy to suspect that the rest of us might have been showing too much respect to old ways of thinking, and not enough to our planet’s oldest inhabitants.

Read more: (http://www.care2.com/causes/tween-boys-help-save-a-500-million-year-old-species.html#ixzz2HEfciic5 accessed 7-1-2012)

Dereka Ogden © 23-12-2012

I met another cheeky butcher bird (Gymnorhina tibicen) the other day.  Do you remember Miss Ticcy who visits Amy?  I was visiting a friend and he said “Look what’s behind you.”  There on the top of the couch the bird was eyeing me as if to say “What are you doing here?”  He hung around for a while, then changed position to the candelabrum on the table.  Excellent perch!  Was that a hint for some food?

When we returned to the unit after dinner, the candelabrum was knocked over.  (The automatic grammar green line made me change from candelabra to candelabrum as it was singular, so keeping me on the straight and narrow.) Luckily it didn’t break because it was a pottery one.  My friend reckoned the bird was mad at him for going out.  The bird is able to come and go at will, as the balcony door stays open all the time.

Each afternoon lately I’ve had to rest having overdone it yet again, and some young Currawongs have been driving me crazy, begging their parents for food.

I was talking to my neighbour about it and he mentioned seeing them on my roof another day, playing around.  They were rolling around with their feet tangled up and

having a great time.  I had been out to see what they were doing, but couldn’t see anything.  My neighbour’s property is higher than mine, so he has a view of my roof.  I did manage to get a photo of the gang later.

Another afternoon we saw the mother and one of the babies, she in front of him.  He would cry out “Mum”, and she would half turn but not so that she could see him, and say “What?”  This went on quite a number of times, and I thought it was so like a human mother and child interaction, the pestering child and mother answering out of frustration, but a bit fed up.

This morning Mr. Turk leaped off my roof closely pursued by a lady turkey.  He looked very Christmassy with his head feathers very red and his yellow tie looking very bright.  Then we had some big excitement.  It was evidence of all Mr. Turk’s and his ladies’ hard work.

In the bathroom was a little chick turkey Master Alec (Alectura lathami), which had got in through the garage door.  He was sitting in a container, and then he flew up on to the curtain railing.

A box was fetched and after throwing a towel over the little bird he was put into the box and then the question was what to do with him.  We decided to release him in the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary behind the fence, where he would have a better chance than just releasing him into the backyard where cats and dogs and other predators could attack and kill him.

Master Alec ran away very quickly as he was put over the fence.  I wish him all the luck in the world.  These turkey babies have to fend for themselves as soon as they hatch.  There must be many losses.  In fact I found a dead one on my path a few years ago.