What is a Trug?

 

                          What is a Trug?                     10/6/2021

This could even go under the category of things you learn while reading Children’s Books. Was over in Adelaide recently visiting the family there and was asked by Miss 3, to read her a story before bed; and she picked a Paddington Bear Book for me to read; and  it had him buying a trug from a garden supply store. Not being English I had not heard of the word or object before but from the picture in the book worked out it was some king of basket.

 Not totally satisfied with that, I decided to look it up on the Web using my old friend Wikipedia. From it I gleaned the following information: A Sussex trug is a wooden basket. It is made from a handle and rim of coppiced sweet chestnut wood which is hand-cleft then shaved using a drawknife. The body of the trug is made of five or seven thin boards of white willow, also hand-shaved with a drawknife. They may have originated in Sussex because of the abundance of chestnut coppice and willows found on the marshes. Nails or pins used are usually copper, to avoid rust.

Shapes and sizes became standardised, the most well-known shape being the "common or garden" trug ranging in volume from one pint to a bushel. However, there is a diverse range of traditional trugs from garden and oval trugs to the more specialised "large log" and "walking stick" trugs.^”

  Another site on the web, added this information: “The word Trug is a derivation of the word Trough and was originally used for measuring grain and seed volume, hence the variation of sizes. As mechanical scales eventually replaced the trug as a tool of measurement, the trugs were then utilised as a basket for carrying garden produce and hand tools. In a recent nationwide survey by a popular gardening magazine, the Sussex trug was voted the fifth most essential gardening accessory.”

 

 And just in case you think there may be some connection between a trug and the Melbourne outer suburb of Truganina, there isn’t.  Again according to friend Wikipedia, “The suburb is believed to be named after Truganini, who is generally accepted as the last full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, as she had visited the area for a short time.”

  So there you are! Today, you get two for the price of one; Learning what a trug is, and also learning where Truganina derived its name. That is if unlike me, you didn’t already know!

 

 

Mallee Gates

My recent musing on Mallee roots also led to me thinking of another now forgotten but then common place object, the Mallee gate. Again although a long way from the Mallee we had a few Mallee gates especially in the early pre 1962 Bush Fire days, but not exclusively before that date. Most of these Mallee Gates were little more the a few strands of Wire attached to the fence post at one end and a pole at the other end that was put into a loop of wire at the bottom of the other post and Pulled up as tight as you could before looping another loop of Wire over it at the top, to make it tight and effective as a gate. I remember one particular gate Dad made for the cow yard which was basically a wooden framework like a metal gate and covered with wire netting. Very effective as a gate but also very heavy for us kids to open and close. Not that the wire loop ones were that much easier though.

In response to the above my brother replied, “We found an 8 foot mallee gate in the Gulf of Carpentaria in a dog fence. Anne tried to shut it by herself, but the barb wire got tangled and it took 3 of us shut it”.

Obviously another like me who is glad Mallee gates are not that common these days.  What about you? What fond or forgettable experience have you had with mallee gates? Either recently or in the long distant past?

Mallee Roots

 A little while back there was a big windstorm in our area which brought down a few trees in the area. In nearbye Cheong Park, one dead Gum came out roots and all near the Hall. A week or so later I noticed that it had been cut up into 2 foot lengths; and a few days later I noticed that all but the stump had been taken. I also noticed on the stump one root that had it have been nicked off would have made a great Mallee root for someone’s fire.

 The moment I thought that, I thought, “My Goodness. How long is it since I have heard that word?” Once upon a time, like back in my childhood, words like Mallee root and Mallee gate were very common, but as indicated above, rarely used these days.

Way back after World War 1 areas of rural Australia were set apart and allocated to ex-soldiers to farm, including parts of Gippsland and also the Mallee region. Now in the Mallee there is a specific Eucalyptus tree called surprisingly, the Mallee Gum. It only grows around 30 feet but can regrow and have a good root system.  As part of the Solder settlement scheme the recipients had to clear and farm the land. For the Mallee area this meant clearing the Mallee Gums. A side benefit of this clearing process was that the fire wood from the trees was also a good money earner back in the days of wood Fires. The Mallee roots were not so easy to sell but being cheaper turned out to be much desired for open fires for their long burning abilities, as well as at a cheaper cost. Thus while originally reserved for the roots of Mallee Gums, it soon became the generic term of all tree roots; whether from the Mallee, or from Watson’s Creek, of from anywhere for that matter.

 Thus although nowhere near the Mallee we had more than our share of Mallee roots , especially from a hill that Dad cleared that was originally called Sapling Hill because of the large number of small Gum tree saplings on it at the beginning of the process. Although Dad sold a fair bit of Firewood himself, I don’t think he ever sold any of the roots. Instead we used them ourselves in the lounge room open fire. All that is almost long forgotten now with open fires in most places, a thing of the past now.

Coincidently upon reading the above, our son in Adelaide replied, “Interestingly enough we bought some mallee root for the fire last year from the garden place down the road.” 

So obviously Mallee Roots are not completely in the past after all? What about you? When was the last time you used mallee roots to burn?

Ferreting out memories.

 I read somewhere a little while back that ferrets were making a comeback as Pets. Which got me to reminiscing of when my parents had ferrets.  My family, and many of our relatives, had Ferrets many, many, many years ago. Not as pets but as working animals. Back in the 19050s and early 60’s before Myxomatosis come on the scene and greatly reduced the rabbit population very quickly, the main way rabbits were contained in our area was by hunting with dogs and Ferrets. Many a Sunday afternoon of my early childhood was spent out with the dogs and ferrets with both family and friends after rabbits. One dog we had, Bluey was very good at telling us if there was a rabbit down a burrow. When we came across a burrow we would get Bluey to sniff it out. If he sniffed and walked away, we would do the same. But if he started to bark and furiously dig away at the burrow we would pull him away and put the ferret to work. Sometimes the dogs would put up a rabbit away from its burrow and if they missed it on the run and it went down a burrow, we would then put nets around all the holes we could find in the immediate area and send the Ferret or ferrets down.  Usually only one Ferret but occasionally you would send a second one down either to help the first or occasionally to enough the first one to come out again.

As hinted above Ferrets were very popular then and many had them or wanted them so my family would not only have ferrets for their own use but would also breed and sell   them too. As at least 3 Uncles also had ferrets, there was a bit of swapping of Breeding Bucks and Does among the families to ensure strong blood lines.

 Every year we would always have a half a dozen or so young ferrets for sale. In the early days Dad had the flat top of a five gallon oil drum with the wording “Ferrets for sale” on it and when he had ferrets for sale would nail it to a phone pole at the end of the drive up on the  main Eltham -Yarra glen road to attract interested prospective buyers. In later years he hardly needed to put the sign up as he had regular people either coming back themselves or recommending him to their friends.

 It was before my memory but when my older brothers were around 3 or 4, dad had quite a few young ferrets and my brothers, babies that they were, used to help my mother to feed them and thus handled them a lot.  Well the story goes that one day someone stopped by to check out the ferrets and when the box was opened, all the baby ferrets swarmed out all over my brothers who were grabbing them by the armfuls without being bitten or scratched, much to the amazement of this Customer. He was amazed at their gentleness and ease of handling, as many ferrets can be nasty even to their handlers.  He was so amazed that not only did he buy a couple there and then but through his word of mouth, all that year’s babies were sold to him and his friends.

 As said above when myxo came in it greatly reduced the need of Ferrets. And in fact even before then, when my brothers went into shotguns and spotlighting, and so the Ferrets went out of favour almost everywhere in the mid to late 60’s including at our place.

 Well that is enough reminiscing from me for now. Do you have any reminisces of Ferrets in your youth to share?

Eating Dog Biscuits?

I usually buy the wider family and casual friends’, boxes or tins of cheap Shortbread biscuits for Christmas. While doing that last year I saw some more expensive genuine Scottish Short bread biscuits in the shape of Scottish Terriers and knowing that a nephew of ours and his partner had a Scottish Terrier, I splashed out and bought them a box of these dog shaped biscuits. Which they though was cool.

Well someone gave me exactly the same dog-shaped biscuits, and so last week when our Grandchildren wanted something to eat but were being precious about what they wanted to eat, I opened the packet of Biscuits and let them try one each. Which they did and liked very much. So much so that when their mother arrived they proudly told her that they had been eating dog biscuits and that they were yummy. Well, our poor daughter! The look on her face was priceless. The horrified look only relaxing when we told her that they were in fact dog-shaped Shortbread biscuits which were indeed very yummy. Just shows what happens when what you think you heard, is not what the person was saying or meaning,  and the importance, for us older folk at least, to be clear ourselves when speaking to everyone; both young and old, and always saying what we mean and meaning what we say. And also the importance and value of asking clarifying questions if we have any doubts at all over what we heard or thought we heard.

It's Dangerous

Our Daughter and her 3 children were holidaying with the other Grandparents last week down at their Holiday/Retirement home near the Beach. The House has two stories and lots of steps and Mr. 22 & ½ months loved to run up and down the stairs - much to his mother’s great concern; and she obviously told him many times, “its’s Dangerous.  I say obviously, because on Monday morning while at our place he came out with the phrase, “It’s dangerous”.  Which did surprise me a little bit but not half as much as I was surprised when I realized that he was using it in context with another situation which was also potentially dangerous. At the end of our block of units is an old concrete path that is wobbly and crumbling and he was on a small piece of it that was wobbly and only held to the rest of the block of concrete by the reinforcing wire. So there he is rocking on this small unstable piece of concrete proudly and loudly telling me “It’s dangerous”. It didn’t stop him from doing what he was doing but at least he realized it was potentially dangerous.

After I got over the shock of him at that tender age actually knowing and acknowledging the fact that what he was doing was dangerous, I was also intrigued that it didn’t actually stop him doing it still. Which kind of reminds me of a lot of adults too, who readily admit what they are doing is dangerous but also have no intention of stopping despite the potential and obvious dangers they see. But what about you now? Yes as we now start to get serious about the New Year ahead of us, what is it that you are doing that you realize and acknowledge “Is dangerous” and that you are now going to stop and change? Over to you now for your reflection- and action.

More Heathmont Bush. 25.9.2017

Went across the Railway track this morning (with the dog) and went through one of the Bush reserves on that side of the tracks. While following a self guided walk (according to the posted sighs) I came across a Garden bench (Much like my cheap ones) with a sight saying “This Birdwatcher’s Bench kindly donated by Therese Starling.”And the only thing I could think of was, I hope there are better birds there to see than Starlings! Dirty, messy little ‘mice with wings’.