Mt MEE NEWS Feb 2010

The rains have come after a very tough spring and early summer – and what a phenomenal flush of grass has followed!

The lawnmowers are groaning and the gardens have run wild with weeds, while the livestock are having difficulty getting used to their rank watery feed after the diet of dirt and roots.
The weather has suited the pestilent buffalo fly too.
There is some surprising news of wild dogs.  As I write, the team of shooter Rod Thomas and our own Lenny Marosky has accounted for an amazing 21 dogs since just before Christmas.  At one point they had despatched eleven dogs in under three weeks!  And this is a part time leisure pursuit!
All but four of these dogs came from western Mt Mee  –  Hausmann Rd, where very heavy calf losses (of the order of 20%) have been experienced amongst some groups of late calving cows, and from Settlement Rd.  The others came from adjacent country near Delaneys Creek.  Curiously, there was evidence that the latter dogs had been eating mangoes!  Oh that they would all confine their diet to surplus fruit!
The local Mt Mee Dog Fund, which was funded by public subscription, ran out of money well before this burst of activity.  It has disbursed over $2500 to Rod over a couple of years.  At the rate of $50 per dog and $25 per pup – that is a lot of dogs!.
Add to this the unknown but certainly large numbers accounted for in the baiting programs and the dogs successfully trapped by Council –  and the magnitude of  the wild dog population that we are living amongst begins to become evident.
And the hell of it is that the combined control measures don’t seem to be even keeping pace with growth.
There has been a changing of the guard over the Christmas hols at the Mt Mee School.  The wonderful Chris Shulz chose to retire at the end of 2009.  In the ten years or so that the energetic Chris was with us she became an important and widely respected figure in our greater community.  The packed room at her retirement function at ‘birches’ was proof of this, as was the surreptitious wiping of a tear or two during the speeches.
Mrs Christine Shulz with some of her charges" – The three children in the pic (l-r) are Hayley Chapman, Phoebe Draper and Tim Worthington.

By the time you read this our new head, Trevor Buchanan, will be well and truly embedded in the role.  Trevor has taken the transfer from Bowen.  He is reported to be in his vigorous early thirties and we understand that he plans to purchase a property on the Mountain.
Hall Committee has just successfully negotiated a March concert with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra.  The date will be the afternoon of Sunday 14th March.
The orchestra promises a light and very enjoyable program – more of this later!
I am happy to report that the Anzac Day Memorial Committee has approved a grant to supplement our funding for the modest memorial at the Look-Out for our Anzac day services.
The steering committee for this project extends its heartfelt thanks to all of the Mt Mee people who generously supported the necessary fundraising.
The new plaques have already been delivered and paid for and the two WW2 plaques (Brockhurst and Dawes) rediscovered at the School have been sent away for restoration.
We hope to start work on site in the next week or two.
Funding was also granted for the RSL memorial at Woodford, and for the memorial planned for the Mt Mee cemetery.
It was a testing holiday period for some of the Mountain’s more mature residents, with heart trouble, stroke, a runaway tractor and pneumonia all striking – apparently at random.
Happily, everyone is out of hospital and seems to be on the mend.  Unhappily, rumour has it that more staff changes are in the wind at the Woodford medical rooms.
Whatever has happened to the old fashioned family GP?

The make-believe Japanese mini-subarine.

Finally, some may remember a facetious story in this column on or about the first of April a year or two ago.  It recounted the saga of a heretofore unrecorded Jap mini submarine which was sent during WW2 to destroy a convoy of American ships hiding in the Caboolture River.  These ships were loaded with essential war supplies for McArthur’s troops – mostly nylon stockings and condoms.  The sub got lost in a wild storm and was swept miles inshore and into a grove of peach trees on the Commissioners Flats.
Since the story appeared, the landowner has pulled the sub into the open and flagged it for all travelling between Woodford and Peachester to see!