A few odds'n'ends

Tam using the heritage pitch-fork (an excellent gift from Stuart & Gabrielle) to load rotting hay (created after whipper-snipping the overgrown garden) into the wheelbarrow to be transported to no-dig bed for lower layer of mulch.

Tony & Lesley's fantastic chicken tractor made with polypipe, chicken wire and shade cloth - we plan to copy this for our soon to be delivered chooks - birthday prezzies for Tam from Karen & Ken

Jenny thoroughly enjoys smashing the breeze-block fireplace surround














Tam works on removing the 2nd ugly, useless, can't wait to get rid of it breeze block thing.....















Tam unloading the gravel & sand mix for the concrete to level the floor in the living room after removing the breeze block blocks.












Tam mixing the concrete....










Nearly all done - fire place and blocks removed, beams and walls painted white by Jenny, Tam in process of concreting remaining corners. Now its just a matter of plastering the walls and a new floor....









Tam tries out her shiny new 16" chainsaw on a very little dead tree....












And now for something a bit bigger - this somewhat larger dead tree was felled and cross-cut expertly by Tam and provided lots of lovely firewood on her recent 40th birthday party held on Winter Solstice









Jenny, very brave, pushing through her fears, up on the roof sweeping up the leaves which would otherwise block the gutters...














Lovely, lovely bromeliad flowers













Jenny pruning the last of the very over-grown kumquat branches. We made 8 kilos of divine marmalade - and it set much to our surprise! A kumquat orchard is now planned in the paddock....

Milly Really is in Aus!

Minutes after picking Mills up from quarantine in Sydney a month after leaving her at Heathrow. Tam's driving Clare & Shanes extremely cool and ancient white Ford Falcon panel van, with a bench seat in the front - just right for Jen, Milly and Tam to sit together in the front. Many tears and hugs before setting off on the 600 mile journey back to Blue Knob & Milly's new home.

After settling in, we discover Milly is fascinated by the tiny lizards in all the undergrowth at the end of the patio - a favourite sunny spot, she can spend hours studying the strange little critters and enjoying the warmth.












Milly takes a stroll across the lawn, past the fire pit and off into the gully for a romp chasing birds.













Past the newly created no-dig salad bed - hopefully we'll soon have salad leaves galore....and we'll probably find out about Aussie snails and slugs!




Here's Milly, up the drive....check out the bromeliads in the tree...


















...in the paddock with views of the mountain 'Blue Knob'

Back home ....

And a snuggle with Tam

And then the daily tick check - Milly loves to run wild in the undergrowth and bushes around the garden, BUT she always picks up ticks and so its a daily ritual to check her and remove any.....and as for the risks she takes with her only remaining eye....

Milly would love to hear from you - please post a comment or two!

No car, no central heating, no dig....

Yes the car is still in the garage - but the less said about the gas-guzzling carbon spewing vehicle upon which I rely too heavily, the better.....

To truly appreciate the photo on the left (showing the giant inflatable spliff held aloft by Nimbin residents at Mardi Grass 2008) one must attend the annual May Mardi Grass and perhaps look into the history of the town and its original Aquarius festival way back in the 70's. Of course we viewed the parade and loved all the human powered floats and particularly the voluptuous, various-aged and vital Ganga Faeries dancing at the head of the parade. This is all ancient history now, way back in early May.

Following Tam's previous post about demolishing the fireplace - I cannot let this pass without sharing with you the moment when Tam got stuck with the wheel barrow, having chosen a particularly inventive way of transporting this extremely heavy bit of block & metal up the step. Suffice to say she was stuck long enough for me to get the camera and take this photo. I have film of this too - I may publish in next post......

Please note that Tam is wearing a singlet (aka 'vest' in UK) - this may give the impression that we are basking in glorious sunshine and heat - wrong, wrong, wrong. It is winter here and we live up a mountain (the hilariously named Blue Knob) and so we have our own weather system, so different from warm Nimbin just 9km down the road.

Our house is South facing, chilly and damp, particularly after the wettest summer and autumn on record. And remember, South in the Southern hemisphere is the equivalent of north in the Northern Hemisphere. This has brought home the necessity to fit a wood burner with back boiler for hot water as soon as possible, or at the very least before next winter. The solar water heating just can't cope at this time of year - but with 5 acres, at least half of which is tree covered, stocking up with carbon-neutral firewood won't be too much of a problem, especially now Tam has her shiny new 16" Stihl. Watch this space....

So, as you can see from the next photo - our roof needs cleaning - free accommodation, wine and food for anyone willing and able to do this job and not break local health & safety laws! This photo is taken from our paddock, for which we have many plans - definitely plots of potatoes, sweet potatoes and sweet corn. Fencing an area and having some sheep or perhaps a horse for a manure-generating transport facility, is also an option, but we need to do some more research, particularly regarding the quality of the drainage in the paddock as hooved animals cannot endure damp.


Next photo, there's Tam, happy as a 40 year old re-distributing cow-shit! This was collected from Nimbin Rocks Co-op down the road. The photo shows the first of three little no-dig beds positioned just out the back for easy harvesting of all our lovely salad veggies & greens. Seedlings c/o sister Felicity, Peter & Connor - a wonderfully imaginative and generous gift to Tam on her recent 40th birthday - a whole tray of seedlings - french beans, sugar snaps, chinese salad leaves, aubergine, rainbow chard, brocholi & cauliflower (the last two are particularly challenging as we've not grown them before AND they don't like manure......

So, general impressions of life so far in Aus, up a mountain with no central heating or car. It is at times a very daunting challenge, in ways that I could never have imagined. Our relationship, Tam & mine, has been dramatically challenged - I've discovered that without the usual comforts of 'home', I can at times become a surprisingly unnecessary brat. I have questioned our choice to move here on many occassions and am still unsure. I have considered the value of the house and the presently beneficial exchange rate from Aus$ to the UK£. I have also discovered, or perhaps I should say rediscovered, that people, particularly family, can be extremely kind and generous and are always willing to help if they can.

And this morning as Tam and I sat supping our morning cup of tea, planning our next veg bed and the design of the forthcoming chook house, a delightful and yet to be identified red, green & blue parrot landed in a nearby native tobacco tree and moments later a satin bower bird chased it off. The garden is graced with fluffy iris (shown left), divine bromeliads and magnificent magnolia, whilst hippeastrum are threatening to erupt all over the place. White cockatoos flew by at dusk, screeching madly and flapping as usual, and later the centre of the Milky Way, including the Emu constellation, revealed itself between silhouetted bangalow palms and swamp mahogony . No flying foxes feeding tonight, but a definite crunch, crunch, crunch of a wallaby making its way through our woods.

Permadykes

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Nice idea, but it has to go..

Our friend Stuart from Britanny (arch blogger at http://www.permacultureinbrittany, on visiting us in Lewes, made the remark that once we are underway in our new life down under, we could call our blog "PermaDykes at Blue Knob". There was much guffawing all round, until we realised this would probably result in an excess amount of spam, and other such ingredients from strange gentlemen in long brown overcoats. However, I like the name so much, it would be a shame not to coin it, and am risking all to publish this chapter under heading of the same name.

Since our (ad)venture has begun, I am constantly amazed to find myself taking on the, shall we say, more testosterone driven tasks. For instance, one of our latest tasks is in the living room. We gleefully demolished two hideous breeze block (Southern Hemisphere read Besser Block) units by the fireplace (see pic) and our fantastic weekend workers, Tis and Peter, demolished the fireplace surround itself.

Tis & Peter, Jen & Milly by the dis-mantelpiece fireplace.

The units were used not only by humans as table tops but also runways by mice, and served little more than heat barriers from the much needed fire. When the temperature gets down to 4deg C, these monstrosities of bad design/taste had to go! Now there are 2 rectangles of missing floor that require being raised to floor level. Much as we are loving the 70’s dark brown sunburst floor tiles that make up the living room area, nicely blending into 70’s light brown sunburst floor tiles that make up the kitchen area, we have opted not to use these for the infill (funnily enough) but are opting for a quick fix of concreting these rectangles in requiring sand, gravel and cement (yes we could do mud bricks, or “sawment” or any manner of eco-alternatives, but we’re entertaining at the weekend and need a solution NOW! )

There is usually an unspoken agreement between my wife and I, about tasks needing to be fulfilled. So, it was natural that I should be the one to get the trailer (borrowed from our co-op down the road), get the premixed sand and gravel, with 40kg bag of cement, from the Mill (our local farm suppliers), bring the trailer load back home, learn the art of trailer reversing, and dump the load at the allotted spot. Naturally, I would be the one to actually mix and lay the concrete. I mention this all in such detail, because Jenny was the one to go to college to study Forestry, including the art of trailer reversing, chainsaw use and maintenance and brushcutting. In our first week here “we” bought me a brushcutter just to enable us to walk to our front door without fear and last week, not only did I get to tow a trailer, “we” also bought me a chainsaw so I can go about the estate knocking trees off for firewood. Hmm...

Not to be outdone, Jenny has a mower given to us by our friend Ian in Brisbane, who never wants to f**king mow another lawn ever! It being winter, she luckily has only had to mow once. I have just heard of a friend in Brighton who had to be admitted to hospital after mowing his albeit rather overgrown lawn, with an acute attack of predictive text gone wrong resulting in an accute attack of 'Gayfever'... Talking the gay talk, I notice that Los Angeles has finally allowed gay marriages, and an 87 and 83 year old couple of gals have finally got hitched, although they had difficulty seeing where to put the ring ...

Wow...What a chic warehouse kind'a look...kind'a...

Del Martin (left) places a ring on her partner Phyllis Lyon during their wedding ceremony, officiated by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (center) at City Hall in San Francisco on Monday.

Arrived and living in Blue Knob

Red hot pokers in the paddock







Finally, yesterday, we got our connection to the internet sorted out - only dial up, but after having to travel at least 9km to the nearest internet cafe, it is a luxury to sit at home, with a mug of hot tea and browse, check emails, do a bit of internet banking, and hear from loved one's far away, if a little slowly!




And so finally we get to update our blog. We've been here 2 1/2 months, after a couple of extremely relaxing weeks in Malaysia & Thailand (see hut in photo - Tam reckons its the same one she stayed in 20 years ago - needless to say very cheap and carbon neutral air-con!)

Since arriving at our humble bush house, we've managed to do lots of mowing, pruning and weeding, whilst gleefully spotting black and white cockatoos, regent bower birds, crimson rosellas, and many other subtropical birds. We're getting to know more of the native trees and various dreaded exotic weeds to be removed at the first opportunity. Admiring the centre of the Milky Way as it stretches gloriously across the Southern night sky, and occasionally glimpsing a flying fox feasting on the flowering Bangalow palms or spotting a possum in a nearby tree are some of the delights. Finding another tick buried into my skin, or another blood sucking leach crawling up my leg, or coming across the biggest spider I've ever seen upstairs (now named Matilda, we're not sure why?) are some of the less delightful aspects of living here.

Unfortunatly we've also wasted a lot of time looking for a car, only to waste a lot of money on a Heap of S**t car that lies beleaguered with broken head gasket at the local garage. I'm wondering whether doing a mechanics course might be the next best move, given our relatively remote location and the horror's of buying 2nd hand vehicles! Buying a donkey and trap is a serious consideration - said donkey can mow our paddock for us, produce lovely manure for the veg garden and we get to quote Shrek on a regular basis! Watch this space! Although I might just buy a moped, possibly less moody than a donkey (if our recent donkey-sitting experience is anything to go by) and less fencing involved!

Sadly, I need a car to get to work - but I need work to earn money for a car now we've blown our car budget on what turns out to be a wreck (I'm feeling permanantly nauseous about this fact at the moment). So, after much tearful wailing, flailing of arms and general victimness, I'm finally calming down and beginning to consider the positives. The first being that it wasn't raining when we hitched into town today. The second being that we did get a lift and were not murdered and left in a ditch. We happily returned (c/o a pre-arranged lift with my father) having enjoyed a Soya Chai in town, posted letters, done a bit of shopping and discussed the next best move regarding the Heap of S**t car with our very friendly mechanic Dave.

I've painted a couple of beams in our living room this afternoon and Tam (seen brushcutting to the right) has cleared hay from the previously jungle-like lawn, relocating the hay on the bottom layer of our embryonic raised veg beds. Tam has also stacked firewood from a recently felled Sally Wattle.

Tomorrow my brother Grant is taking us to the local town, Lismore (40km south) and we are going to buy a BRAND NEW chainsaw. I am trained in chainsaw use and Tam has chainsaw experience from another lifetime working with a tree surgeon in Brighton. So we'll be able to get serious about stocking our wood pile for next winter.