Richard Palmers new spoon/paipo , with his flexible keels pictured below
‘ tried that new board off Georges mold last Sunday in not so good surf---goes great as bodyboard with the long flex keels. Probably too small for me as kneeboard .Hope to split the top mold sometime in near future & widen by 1.5 inches.’ RGP
‘the board is narrow but that's how the mould is-about 19.5 inches and all George G.I've since taken a top mould of this board-split it down the middle/reglassed & sanded it plus added the missing width & length.Next board off that new mould should solve all the potential problems & be rideable as a kneeboard for old kegs like yours truly.’
RGP
I finally got a chance to catch up with Richard last week and check out his new mini spoon / paipo and get it in the water for a test run. The surf was rather weak and the water tasted like crap ( that's Wollongong) and with a not so friendly crowd of surfers in the water, it was not the ideal place for a true test run , but in saying this it reminded me of my little plastic Belly Bogger that I rode back in the late 70’s , nice and small, easy to spin around for waves and duck dive, but bugger all floatation.
richard from adam williams on Vimeo.
No surf craft is too small or too narrow , with a small collection below of what I ride depending on the surf and wind conditions , its all about keeping a open mind !
Surf Mat
Belly Bogger
Hand Plane
Paipo
Edge Spoon
Bonzer Kneeboard
Test Pilots
Rad Stick
Quack
Just love my Duck Feet Flippers!
A Window into Wildfire
Paul Gleeson works for the National Parks and Wildlife in Nowra and has been working as a volunteer with the Rural Fire Service in the Shoalhaven district of NSW for thirty years. He’s now a group captain.
In the summer months Paul works with the Forest Corporation as a fire spotter – it’s his job to sit watching out over the landscape for renegade summer fires.
Paul’s patch extends through Jerrawangala National Park and includes a vista from Jerrawangala Lookout. From there he’s got a really good view of the countryside towards the escarpment and the coast.
“We can’t do anything with wildfires other than monitor them, see what they’re doing and what weather is coming through,” Paul said. “We can see if it will contain itself, or we can try and deal with it.”
“When people see smoke in the air, some of them will say it’s a bush fire. When it’s not a hot day they’ll say, 'oh they’re back-burning' and essentially we probably are doing hazard reduction but we are not going to attempt to put fire in the ground when the weather conditions are conducive to the fire doing it’s own thing. It’s all got to be managed.”
The management program for hazard reduction burning requires co-operative planning between State Forests, the Royal Fire Service and NSW Parks and Wildlife. All agencies have structured plans in place.
“As a brigade person I would know that if there is a heap of smoke coming up on a really hot day with lots of wind, making it ‘bad fire weather’, I would more than likely think, 'well that’s got to be a wildfire' because we wouldn’t, in our judgment, light up any sort of country on this sort of a day.” Paul said.
“If it was a cooler day, where the weather was fairly benign, the temperature was fairly low, the wind wasn’t so bad, and there was smoke; you might then tend to believe it was somebody doing some fire management burning."
"But then again it’s not printed in stone. We can have fire on those days, but on those lesser days it’s not going to develop into a running wildfire. It’ll be a fire that can be managed.”
However, Paul goes on to say ”On the other side of the coin, when the weather's out there with high temperatures, high winds and low humidity, any fire can develop further because it has all the ingredients to make it develop further. There is more fuel available, the fuel is dryer, you’ve got stronger winds blowing more oxygen into the fire – so all those ingredients that make the fire expand are there.”
A Window into Wildfire from ABC Open Sth Coast & Tablelands on Vimeo.
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