The Millionaire Castaway by Dave Glasheen

Author:Dave Glasheen [Glasheen, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Affirm Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Quassi loved his new rubber bone, but the chickens were his favourite pastime. They mesmerised him. He could sit and watch them for hours, seemingly protecting them from any danger. Even when the roosters Bruce and Sheila had an almighty fight in which Sheila, usually the subservient one, won to rule the roost, Quassi impassively looked on. Goodness knows what was going through his head. The only clue came one afternoon when I was enjoying a well-earned cup of tea outside the house. The chickens were doing their thing, laying eggs in the most unlikely of places. Only that morning, one had hopped out from underneath Miranda’s dress and, neatly between her legs, was a big, white egg. If I hadn’t seen the chicken leave the scene, it would have freaked me right out.

Suddenly there was an almighty squawk.

I looked up to see Quassi trying to hump one of the hens. It was not a good biological match and the poor girl looked distinctly offended – and uncomfortable. ‘Quassi, get off!’ I shouted as I ran across the paddock. ‘That’s not appropriate.’ It was all over in a flash, but his grip on the chook’s back must have ripped out some feathers, because Quassi had tasted blood. Two quick shakes of the neck and the chicken was no longer a potential dinner date, she was dinner. After a few gulps all that was left were a few feathers floating to the ground. Quassi looked like he had been taking lipstick tips from Miranda. I could see him think: ‘That was tasty, on to the next,’ but I grabbed him by the neck.

It was D-day for my chicken experiment and the rest were soon condemned to the pot, which created a shortfall of natural fertiliser. Keeping on top of the garden was hard enough, even with the pigs and chickens creating a constant supply of nutrients for the soil. The main problem was water. In the dry season, we could go for months on end without seeing a drop. We relied on full tanks to see us through and the main concrete tank high up on the hill, which held about 120,000 litres, had seen better days. The water was fed through a washing machine drum, to filter out solids, before flowing down the newly laid underground pipes to the house. That tank was old and could have crumbled at any minute, and then I would have been in serious trouble. So over a period of a couple of years, I invested in four new tanks – two 5000-litre and two 10,000-litre tanks – which I retrieved from the mothership and floated them over to the island behind my boat, taking great care not to tilt the opening into the water because they would have sunk like lead. From there, with the help of wwoofers or visitors, we used our tried and tested roller system to push them into position.

The annual rainfall here is about two metres, only a quarter of some parts of tropical Far North Queensland.

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