Lamblog – A Blog About Lamb Island

There is a tide in the affairs of bloggers...

2019-04-06T15:48:00.000+10:00

After more than twenty years of idyllic living here (and nearly as many years of corny post titles), we’ve very reluctantly sold our home, aka ‘Lamblog Central’, and moved away. So this is the last-ever post here, but we’ve left the blog up for anyone wanting to get an idea of what living on Lamb Island offers.

Time out.

2018-04-22T06:30:00.000+10:00

Because of a whole lot of other stuff going on, we’ve had to put this blog on hold, with no new posts for a while. But if you’re curious about Lamb Island, you’ll probably find plenty of interest here anyway.

Where Lamb Island dogs can have a ball. Eventually.

2018-03-12T12:58:00.000+10:00

This is a corner of Lamb Island’s ‘recreation precinct’ that features a children’s playground, a public tennis court, a sports field, and most important of all, an area for dogs to run loose when the dopey human stops fiddling with his camera and gets around to throwing the damn ball.

Aloha, sailor.

2018-02-21T07:18:00.000+10:00

I don’t know if this old boat, beside an appropriately old jetty on Lamb Island, is what sailors call a ‘lugger’, but that’s how I think of it. And I’ve been thinking too that when its owner gets it restored, I’ll be the first to sign-on as a crew member for its trip to some little South Pacific island. Except then I remember that, technically, I’m already on a little South Pacific island.

For some reason I thought of an aunt I once had.

2018-02-05T06:58:00.001+10:00

Maybe you’ve gotta be a certain age to remember the clichéd Three Ducks Flying Up The Wall in suburban living rooms (including that of my Aunt Daphne) back in the whenever, but these yachts passing by out from our house reminded me of them, especially given the progression in sizes.

Home-delivered.

2018-01-29T07:30:00.000+10:00

This is Darren, our Woolworths man, waiting for his barge after dropping off everyone’s goodies. He comes on Thursdays, delivering our on-line orders, and it’s a great option for Lamb Islanders.

High tide, as predicted.

2018-01-04T12:59:00.000+10:00

I recycled a post about Lamb Island’s old heritage-listed jetty and shed back in November, but what makes the above shot worth posting is the height of today’s king tide, more or less exactly at the level that the original builders determined the jetty would have to sit above.

Here comes a new year.

2018-01-01T11:07:00.000+10:00

As a reward for living out here on the Southern Moreton Bay Islands, we see stuff like the above New Year dawn (if we get up early enough), shot this very morning by local photographer Dave Evans.

The frangipani opens up to kiss the salty air.

2017-12-31T16:49:00.000+10:00

Actually, the above post title isn’t my own work. It’s a line from Doug Ashdown’s exquisitely wistful song ‘Leave Love Enough Alone’ aka ‘Winter In America’ from back in the 1970s. But it works kinda nicely for this shot over the top of a frangipani tree just below our deck.

Another perfect day in paradise.

2017-12-05T08:47:00.000+10:00

As in literally another day. Today, and for the last few days, the Southern Moreton Bay Islands, like the rest of South-East Queensland, have been copping a fair amount of rain. The above shot is from Lamb Island towards Macleay Island, and reflects the kind of weather we prefer.

So near, and yet (according to bureaucracy) so far.

2017-11-17T17:16:00.000+10:00

As of last week, some bureaucrats somewhere have officially classified our four Southern Moreton Bay Islands (Lamb, Macleay, Russell, Karragarra) as ‘remote’. Of course, many of us choose to live here because the bay waters give us a certain desirable remoteness from what passes as the oxymoron ‘Australian civilisation’ these days, but I wouldn’t have thought being only six kilometres from mainland Australia and less than forty kilometres from Brisbane’s GPO seriously qualified as actually ‘remote’ (see below for the real perspective rather than the confected silliness above).

Mind you, some islanders think this classification is great news, because it means that our local council and other organisations can now grovel for government grants of between twenty grand and ten million bucks from something called the ‘Building Better Regions Fund’ to support ‘projects which involve the construction of new infrastructure, or the upgrade or extension of existing infrastructure that provide [sic] economic and social benefits’. The catch is that the fund only provides some of a project’s cost.

Okay, so I can’t speak for the other three islands, but Lamb Island definitely doesn’t need, say, a freeway, or any other major infrastructure. Although maybe spending a few government bucks on a map for the bureaucrats could be a good investment, because it seems like they haven’t really got the remotest idea of where we are or what we’re about.

An isolated jetty. Literally.

2017-11-08T08:40:00.000+10:00

This is a decades-old jetty on Lamb Island. Quaint, huh? Um, except that natural erosion has meant that the shore it was originally directly connected to is now a couple of metres back from it. So even though that may not matter at low tide (as below), at high tide you now have to get your feet wet before you can get onto the jetty. Which, to my mind, defeats the purpose.

Lamb Island’s original jetty, abridged.

2017-11-05T07:00:00.000+10:00

This is what’s left of Lamb Island’s original jetty, which once extended four of five times further into the bay. The trolley on display originally had four wheels, and ran the length of the jetty on rails for loading farm produce for transport to mainland markets. The shed’s main purpose was for storing bananas awaiting shipment, but it was also used by the then relatively few locals as a meeting hall and for postal deliveries to mailboxes inside. This now-heritage-listed jetty was still in use in the late 1990s, when it was truncated and superseded by the current one (shown below) which, while more practical, could be said to lack a certain jetty sais quoi in comparison.

After the deluge.

2017-10-27T09:03:00.002+10:00

This morning-after-the-storm shot was posted this week on a Macleay Island facebook page.
It’s the kind of outlook we Bay Islanders just have to put up with every now and then.

Not getting any at the moment.

2017-10-21T07:16:00.000+10:00

This is an Eastern Great Egret. And the post title refers not to the fact that it’s just standing motionless in the shallows below our house waiting for something to catch, but to its yellow bill. According to here, the colour of the bill indicates that it’s not currently in breeding mode. When it gets interested in getting lucky, the bill will darken to black – something of a giveaway in egret dating circles, I’d have thought, but elegantly simpler (and arguably a whole lot classier) than most of the availability indicators that humans adopt.

No through road.

2017-10-14T06:59:00.000+10:00

No, this isn’t a gravel road, it’s the view looking back towards Lamb Island proper from a maybe 150-metres-long spit at the end of Clarke’s Point, which is the bit poking up at the very top right of the island as seen in the aerial shot at the head of this blog. The spit is flanked on both sides by avenues of mangroves, and shown here at low tide. At high tide, it’s all well under water.

Thanks for the use of the hall.

2017-10-12T07:18:00.000+10:00

This is Lamb Island's heritage-listed ‘Pioneer Hall’, once a farmhouse and now something of an all-purpose community centre. Local volunteers run a small library here, occasionally it hosts public meetings, but mainly it’s the place where we gather every few years to cast our votes for whichever politicians we dislike least. The hall is located in what could be described as Lamb Island’s ‘community and recreational’ precinct, which comprises the local club, a first-aid facility, public tennis court, swimming enclosure and park area with children’s playgrounds.

Living on the edge.

2017-10-08T09:19:00.000+10:00

This is the view from the deck of our house on Lamb Island, looking out across the bay towards Russell Island and North Stradbroke Island beyond it. And when you get right down to it (or in this case, way up above it) every day’s perfect when you start it with the right outlook.

Big crowd, little island.

2017-10-05T09:39:00.000+10:00

Last Sunday, despite threatening weather, a big crowd of local islanders (as well as people from the mainland too) made the most of Karragarra Island’s annual Sea Market. Fun was had.

One view from out here.

2017-03-28T09:54:00.001+10:00

When our Southern Moreton Bay Islands – Macleay, Karragarra, Russell and Lamb – were first subdivided for residential living, many of the people who came to live here were to some extent ‘pioneering’ – and consequently doing it kinda tough in terms of infrastructure and services. Up to four decades later, some people on the nearby mainland (who’ve probably never actually been out here) still think of the islands as some kind of underprivileged third-world place to live. Recent negative comments by one such uninformed mainlander precipitated an online response elsewhere from one islander, writing not just about Macleay Island where she lives, but encompassing features of all four islands:

“Speak to islanders who know from experience of living here. I’ve been here for twenty-five years and adore the island and its residents. Everyone that I’ve experienced is friendly, caring and helpful. In our community we all wave to each other and call each other on first name basis. We have educated, caring, hardworking, honest, house-proud residents here. There is so much to do. We have blue care, a men’s shed, over 70s social group, bloomers social group, karate, gym, fitness club, walking groups, dancing, golf, lawn bowls, karaoke, boat club, canoe racing, dragon boat racing, kayak hire, swimming, a belly dancing group, table tennis, art group, craft group, gardening groups. We also have licensed clubs and a pub (all with great entertainment), coffee shops, restaurant, pizza delivery services, Chinese restaurant, fish ’n’ chip eatery, Japanese cuisine, two bakeries, three supermarkets, bank branches, chemists, gift shop, hairdressers, massage therapists, doctors, dentist, vet, wildlife carers, denture specialists, pathology, podiatry, physiotherapy, acupuncture, naturopaths, domestic violence support, meditation, yoga, tai chi, bridge, bingo, darts, ukulele group, choir, library, markets, Lions club, SES, resident police, paramedics complete with 24-hour ambulance boat and emergency chopper access, taxi services, child care, preschool, primary schools, church groups, drama groups, amazing artists and talented musicians, conservation groups, youth groups, community services, an op shop, real estate agents, post offices, hardware, tool hire service, organic farm, garden nursery, weekend market, and much more. A trip to the mainland takes as little as twenty minutes, so we are far from isolated. Our elderly have community transport to take them to mainland medical appointments, and we have co-ordinated bus services at the mainland marina. Our island services are improving all the time.”

The above is only part of her rather extensive response, and I’ve taken the liberty of editing it slightly to post here, but I think it presents a fairly comprehensive list of what our islands now have to offer.

Oarsome.

2017-03-26T08:51:00.000+10:00

Another drone’s-eye-view, this time someone rowing past some Lamb Island mangroves at high tide.

A guide to shopping on Lamb Island.

2017-03-05T08:13:00.000+10:00

Here at Lamblog Central we were once asked, by the teenage daughter of some people who were intending to visit the island, whether our mall would be worth checking out. In a word, no. Above is our entire local ‘retail experience’, the Lamb Island Convenience Store, aka ‘the kiosk’. It’s run by a nice couple, Chris and Eka, and it supplies us Lamb Islanders with basics like milk, bread, groceries, fruit and vegetables, etc. It’s also a popular place for locals to catch up over coffee and snacks. Its premises started out life as a fairly ordinary little dwelling that was adapted as a shop, and although it’s kinda pokey inside, that’s part of its charm. And okay, it’ll never threaten the major supermarkets in terms of price or range, but it works for us. Even without a teen fashions department.

One degree of separation.

2017-03-03T14:03:00.000+10:00

Specifically, the six kilometres of Moreton Bay water between us and the Australian mainland. It’s the perfect degree of separation to give those of us who live here the best of two worlds – a peaceful and quiet lifestyle, but ready access to the mainland when it’s desirable. Above, looking out towards the mainland from Lamb Island, past Karragarra Island on the left and Macleay Island on the right.

A drone’s eye view of Lamb Island.

2017-02-25T05:55:00.001+10:00

This is Lamb Island from a slightly different angle/elevation to the aerial image that heads up this blog, and shot on a wider lens, from a drone. It was taken by a guy named Travis Place, and in return for my using it here, I’ll give him a bit of a plug: Travis lives on Russell Island, where he runs a web-hosting, computer-servicing, photograph-taking, etc-and-more business you can check out here.

Light and shade, green and blue.

2017-02-18T08:08:00.000+10:00

Just a quickie to keep the blog ticking over. Around six yesterday evening, sunlight lit just one side of this Ironbark trunk (about half-a-metre diameter). With, like much of Lamb Island, a bay background.