Tam loves the Duchess!

To see how Tam is handling the Duchess, please go to:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=pT9i7LJQpH8

(love the sound-track - Tam's choice!)

Just to show you that we're alive and well in our snake, tick, leech and lizard infested jungle, here we are on the veranda, just before going out to the annual Nimbin Womens Dinner, a fund-raiser for the local Domestic Abuse Project. Oooh how that red dress and those pink strides clash!

It was a great night, with a fabulous cabaret, lovely food and about 150 women relaxing and enjoying the wide ranging talents of the local female population. High light of the night was the recently formed grass-skirt clad Ukelele band singing the utterly hilarious Boob-titty Boob-titty! You had to be there....




Tam on a recent bush walk at Nimbin Rocks co-op, amongst a forest of grass trees (in a pre-PC world these were known as black boys!).










View from the northern border of Nimbin Rocks Co-op looking towards the Border Ranges and the Nightcap National Park. We live at the foot of Blue Knob, the humpy looking mountain on the right.

We'd love to know you've read this, so please take a moment to comment below, or email us at tamyeld@aapt.net.au and jenmartin@aapt.net.au.

Latest chicken-house action!

Electric Storms & Random Reptiles

The TV addicts amongst you watching I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in wintry England may have noticed that its been raining a lot here. We live just down the road from the show's location. The recent storms were extremely dramatic, heart-pounding on occasion. Fortunately we've emerged unscathed, just the loss of power for one night. No trees falling on the house, no roofs or cars destroyed by mega-hail. Meanwhile Brisbane (200km north) has suffered apocalyptically - cyclones, floods, cricket ball sized hailstones. Happily, the weather has changed and we now have a cool front drawing air up from Antarctica. After the apparently relentless rain of last week, we are enjoying crystal clear blue skies and a cool breeze.

The chickens continue to supply us with an abundance of delicious eggs. One hen has gone decidedly broody, giving Tam some hen-management challenges - Mrs Broody has taken up permanent residence in the nest box and has stopped laying.

The nest box, at one end of their run, was designed for two hens (see photo above) to find privacy and lay their wonderful eggs. However, after returning home at dusk yesterday, Tam discovered all four hens crammed into the nest box. This is very unusual and quite impressive, given the nest box only measures 37cm x 44cm x 25cm. Tam's immediate reaction was 'oh my god, they've ALL gone broody!'

What to do? Perhaps they've been put off their roost, at the other end of the run, by the big sheet of paper placed beneath to catch chicken poo for the compost? So Tam clambers in - the chicken house is only about 4 foot tall - to examine their sleeping quarters. She notices a shadowy shape on their roost inches away from her face and quickly retreats to find a torch.

'There's something in the chook-house', I hear her exclaim and there, curled sleepily and contentedly on the chooks perch, is a medium sized beautiful carpet python. Another WOW moment and understanding dawns - not four broody hens, four very scared hens.


Here's the python some time later down on the floor of the chook house, rethinking its accommodation strategy, given all the flashing lights and excitable human activity. We stomp heavily nearby and slowly and with reptillian grace, all 2 metres slithers off into the starlit buzzing night.

The chooks remained tucked up tightly in the nest box, emerging fluffed up and happy this morning, unscathed and ready for another day free-ranging. We're yet to see if their laying has been affected by the snake-scare.

Tam and I, with the benefit of this experience, have added another rule to our ongoing management strategy - never crawl into the chicken house at dusk without checking with a torch first. Whilst carpet pythons are harmless to humans, many other snakes are equally likely to try out this bed & breakfast opportunity. For example the potentially lethal Red Bellied Black, the Australian brown and the appropriately named Death Adder all reside locally, if rarely seen. We don't ever walk out of the house in bare feet for this reason.

Visitors, visitors: Nephew Charlie arrived in Aus about a month ago. Here he is assisting Tam with some felling:


Ollie (friends with Jake since the age of 9) and girlfriend Kate dropped by for a couple of days respite from life in a van in the relentless rain. Here's Ollie calmly enjoying some of our local wildlife:


So another day dawns - sunny and clear - and we wonder what wild adventures might await us and our humble hens today?

Please take a moment to let us know that you've read this - you can comment below or email us at: jenmartin@aapt.net.au or tamyeld@aapt.net.au.

All Chooks Alive!

STOP PRESS: The little chook survived and revived - just one very small perfectly round egg laid 6 days after the paralysis tick episode! (see above). More soon....

Poor Little Chook

Having celebrated our lovely chickens' adaptability in my last post, less than 24 hours ago, this morning we find one of our little hens is unable to walk. Gentle examination reveals, eventually, a huge paralysis tick that has burrowed into her neck just beneath her beak. It has obviously been there for some days now - it's size at start of feeding would have been around 2-3mm.

As shown in the photo, the horrid little beasty had grown to nearly 1cm across, engorged on our poor chook's blood. Tam quickly and in one fell swoop removed the tick with her bare hands (I was impressed!). We have administered a homeopathic remedy "Ixodes", which was developed some years ago by our very own Nimbin apothecary particularly for paralysis ticks, given how rife they are in this region. However we now have to wait and see if the hen will recover. She's sitting quietly in the chicken house, having got cosy in the nest box, which is the best thing for her - movement and excitement will encourage the paralysis 'venom' to travel around her body and have more effect (usually on legs and lungs). We have no idea whether she will survive.

Here's the engorged tick photographed beside an unfed paralysis tick. I found this crawling through my hair today. The extent to which they expand while feeding is remarkable.

We'll keep you posted on our poor hen's progress. In the meantime, Tam says please send universal loving, healing energy to our littl'Un.

Eight Months since leaving Blighty!

Pondering the changes: I'm sitting here listening to Massive Attack (some things never change), Tam and my nephew Charlie (recently arrived from Eire) are in the kitchen chatting and preparing dinner and I'm enjoying my screen time!

We have no TV, no DVD player and no broadband, which is great! I very occassionally and momentarily miss being able to veg out in front of the tv. I more often wish I could surf U-Tube and check out the recommendations sent by friends (which simply take too long to download on dial up), but mostly I wonder when I ever had the time to watch tv in that previous life. I asked a local friend recently if there were any excellent films to be highly recommended that I may have missed in the last eight months and he couldn't think of a single one....however, please if you have any recommendations, let me know.

Listening to music and the fantastic ABC National Radio are mainstays. ABC radio is even better than Radio 4 - yes really - not least because I'm learning so much about this country - the history, the social documentary, the politics, the personalities, the different world view....

We have local Nim FM community radio which can lurch from fantastic to abysmal in terms of quality dj-ing, but is always entertaining one way or another! And perhaps I'll re-live my pirate radio days and get a regular show one day. I find I listen to a greater range of music, hungry for new sounds (hint hint). I'm glad to have let go of tv. It feels good.

I definitely suffered culture shock for the first few months - hard to describe the actual feelings, all I know is that I now feel settled and am no longer in the throws of it - whatever it was. Without doubt part of the shock was very, very personal - the change in my personal culture, rather than general culture. In retrospect, leaving Jake was deeply traumatic for me and I can now, with the cushion of time, allow myself to see that. I was numb. I put one emotional foot in front of the other. To an extent I'm still doing that, but the process has become normalised. And thankfully we have the luxury of cheap international phone-calls.

Life is simpler on some levels, more complicated on others - the complications however are the one's I want - how to develop the garden, how to build a workshop/guest room, how to make a living in a rural environment, making sure we get all the shopping we need when we're in town. The simplicity is welcome, oh so welcome. The elemental side of life is more immediate at a daily/hourly level - water, heat, growth, decay, light, dark, rain, wind, moonlight and sunshine. All are more significant here, away from the street lighting and convenience of town life - and I love it.

And having the chickens is a very fundamental experience - producing our own eggs, our own first class protein from living beings we're responsible for. And we harvested broccholi for the first time ever today and a very small aubergine! Tam has finished the deluxe chicken house (see above) and the four hens have settled in very well, not missing a beat in egg production with the move to their new home. If only I could be so adaptable!

We'd love to know that you've read this so either leave a comment, email us at above address (top of page) or write to PO Box 45, Nimbin, NSW 2480, Australia. Any CD compilations of your current favourite sounds are very welcome!

Peak Egg Production

We are so proud of our lovely hens - we've had at least 1 egg every day since they arrived just under two weeks ago. This morning they eggcelled themselves, producing 4 eggs between them- that's an egg each, peak production!

Here they are (see above) getting down and dirty, dust bathing at the end of the patio during their afternoon free-range. Chicken House Mark 2 is coming along slowly, mainly because there's so much else to do, and we keep redesigning it! Such is life.

If only we could let the hens free-range in the house - not an option, obviously too messy! Rather large arachnids regularly appear and we've observed that the chooks quite like to nibble on a spider - they've been known to fight furiously over them. But then the spiders catch the flies, so the spiders do a good job - if only we could stand having spiders around!

Tam and I are both getting a bit braver at dealing with the medium sized spiders (like these Huntsmen). We'll catch them and redistribute them to the far reaches of the garden, because we simply can't cope with them wondering around the house and appearing here, there and everywhere.

However, it's the really big spiders that freak us out - that's when we get Tam's industrial vacuum cleaner out and hope they don't run too fast.

Ho hum, life and death
in the Aussie bush.

Care for a tincture at the local hostelry?

We've been Clived!
To Clive (vb): to render helpless with laughter and good humour. Clive arrived some weeks ago and stayed for some time! And oh how we laughed, from the moment he arrived - we laughed with him, at him, about him, at ourselves - I haven't laughed so much in a LONG time. Clive is hilarious, especially when he goes all Lesley Phillips on you.

And in return, Clive has been Nimbin Rocked - rendered helpless with relaxation upon various Nimbin verandahs (see sketch of view from the Community House verandah above by Clive). He arrived at our place after dark, having been driven up winding mountain roads, and was quite blown away with the night sky, the surrounding forest and the possibility of ticks and leeches!

Photos show Clive, Grant & Tam on a walk up at Mt Nardi, surrounded by tree ferns, palms, epiphytes (ask Piers!) and the occassional carpet python! Clive and I nearly trod on one python curled sleepily in a patch of warm sunlight lying in the middle of the path, before Grant spotted it. Carpet pythons are not generally dangerous to humans, as they are constrictors and their bite is not deadly. However, I wouldn't want one wrapped around my arm!

Further along the track - what is it about the male species that requires the average bloke to go to the very edge of any impossibly high precipice and scare ME to death? Please explain in less than a hundred words!

Clive got on really well with the Martin clan. Len and he typically and fondly describe each other as 'utterly insufferable'; Kay took him walking through the Nimbin Rocks forest to the waterfall, spotting a goanna and a possum with a baby hanging on; and Grant and Clive shared some relaxing times on the CH verandah, chatting and soaking up the view.

After a week or so he cheerfully headed South to Sydney and Melbourne, saying, 'its been great, I've had a wonderful time. I'll be back. How am I going to explain this to people back home?' Life in the Rainbow Region!

And the final picture, well, that was late one night at our place, Pink Martini blaring out and much dancing, drinking and, of course, laughter....

Wild Wooli & Eggsellent Developments

Karen & Ken invited us to join them for a couple of days at their rented beach house in Wooli last month. This was an absolute delight. Old-style Aussie architecture (clap-board and verandahs everywhere) and literally seconds from the beach. Wooli is about 2-3 hours drive South from our place and is surrounded by National Park. And the big bonus - dogs are allowed on the beach, which is great for Milly (seen above galloping at full pelt, ears everywhere, to Tam). Here's the extensive walk all the way from the house to the beach!

And here's the view at the end of the footpath, showing Ken & Karen indulging in a favourite pastime. We thought the beach was a bit crowded, but we coped.

We had a fabulous time, especially Milly, particularly as beaches are tick free zones. We didn't dip more than a foot into the Pacific as it was extremely windy and the sea was rough. We walked the length and breadth of Wooli - which isn't difficult as Wooli is a long thin strip precariously perched between the sea and a wide river, about 150 metres wide and crammed with ramshackle beach hideaways.

We searched the surf for whales that may have been returning South with their new born young. We were rewarded, not with whales but dolphins bobbing in the waves just off shore. We saw sea eagles and brahminy kites, thousands of tiny crabs marching across the sand, fantastic rock formations, beautiful driftwood, wide horizons and big skies - a refreshing escape from our forest hide-away. We've booked for a week in March to share with Gina and Georgie when they visit next year and may extend to two weeks.

Wednesday 8th October was a big day in the Martin-Yeld household. Our beautiful girls arrived, Un, Deux, Trois and Little F - four lovely white hens - gifts for Tam from Ken & Karen on her 40th birthday. We are in the process of designing and making a chicken house/tractor. Unfortunately, Chicken House Mark 1 failed miserably. We were attempting a polytunnel style run covered in predator excluding fencing - it all went horribly wrong and we are now going for a more traditional A-frame based design. Watch this space.

As the more observant among you will know Tam's birthday is in June - some time has passed since being presented with 4 delightful chicks, which have been growing steadily and residing with Ken & Karen's flock. After 3 months waiting for us to get our chicken-housing act together, Ken & Karen threw us in at the deep end, offering to lend us a temporary run (shown above), and delivered the chickens that very day!

And so our hens arrived and our life with chickens commenced - and we love them. Protection from egg snatchers and predators is essential - snakes, goannas, wild dogs, foxes, rats are all likely to be in the locality and seeking a good meal. Much to our delight, and impressivly only 48 hours after their arrival, Little F (identified by the feathers on her legs) presented us with a Little Oeuf (see photo). To have been rewarded so soon after their arrival is a blessing. Humble yet cherished beginnings.

Once Chicken House Mark 2 is complete we will free range them every afternoon, limiting the opportunity for predators and maximising the likelihood that they'll lay in their nest box, as they apparently most often lay in the morning. We are SO very proud of our hens and will keep you posted on their productivity, housing status, welfare and, hopefully, survival....

I'm off to make a very small omlette!