7.8.2009
Heavy showers, high winds and the return of mud. Not a recipe for easy living. Mike has still not put stones on our new drive, so we continue to wade across the mud flats every time we want to get to the cars, our animals or the toilet. Edd has replaced some of the fencing round the chooks and vegetable garden but it has been too wet to get gear up to the boundary fence on the hill and complete the work there. Today we stayed indoors and worked on the endless paper work that is needed for trying to reclaim as much as possible.
Yesterday was more interesting. The Governor of Victoria came to visit the community centre where I go to do art one afternoon a week. We provided rather better food than we usually do for afternoon tea and various community members joined us to do the greeting bit. As far as I could make out it all went without a hitch. We did not get much art done, but the stitchers who joined us got me up to date with all their family news. We have past connections with most long-term residents here because our children all went to school together once upon a time. I always feel embarrassed because there are so many names that I should remember but never can.
The general dreariness of the season was relieved last weekend when all the locals at our end of the valley were invited to Erin and JB’s donga for a party. Their house and vineyards were totally destroyed by the fires so friends and neighbours joined them that day for a working B on the remaining vines. In the evening tables and chairs were set up in the donga and fabulous food appeared along with wine and even candles. Everyone chipped in to make a great community party. It reminded us long-term residents how years ago we all lived in sheds and make shift places, all getting together and laughing.
We are so lucky that all these younger people have been able to move into the valley, and that they want to stay here despite the horrors of last year. There is now a new house being built by the Steel’s Creek road on the way into Yarra Glen. Someone told me about two thirds of the houses were lost in the fire so it is good to see that someone has started to replace them. It is a worry that it is going to be a wood frame house on stumps , but perhaps they will add fire proofing features later.
A third lamb has been born. A tiny ewe for the Finn sheep. We now have three lambs, Lance, Alberto and Paris! I am rather hoping that the last two ewes are not pregnant. They are a little young to have lambs but we had no chance to separate them from the rams after the fires. The sheep are still in the paddock with the big dam. It is pretty well grazed but at least they have room to move around and seek sheltered corners when the weather is bad.
The swales Mike made across the paddock channel excess run off into the big dam which has started to fill up a bit. The idea is that light rainwater stays in the channels and slowly soaks into the land. This does seem to have started to happen but it is too soon to assess the results yet.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
25.7.2009
Al’s birthday today so we are off to his place this afternoon. We caught up with Al at the talks given by Michael Reynolds (the garbage warrior). This guy has arrived from America on a crusade to promote the building of “Earthships”. These are totally sustainable living structures that produce their own energy, deal with waste productively and harvest water and food. A man after my own heart. He can build these things using mostly recycled products just about anywhere.
He even wants someone to put one up in Australia so we people can visit and check it out. This offcourse was exactly what we intended to do anyway Suddenly I am feeling very blessed. I have land, money from my insurance, and an established tourist business. My eldest son, Al, is an architect who specialises in sustainable buildings and we have already got the skills to grow and process our own food.
Our old house had many alternate systems. Our toilets could be flushed with dam water down a gravity feed line. The farm buildings collected plenty of water that was stored in tanks at various heights to make as best use possible of gravity and we had solar / wood water heating. But, the house was built 30 years ago and many things have moved on. We now feel that it is more or less essential to be at least partly underground because of fires as well as temperature considerations.
My mind is now spinning with possibilities.
I enjoyed having a car for a day but then I gave it up to Josh who’s car is will not be repaired until next week. He and I did two days getting up early and driving to Lilydale station so he could get to Dandenong on the train but one day he was late for work and people are getting the sack for that sort of offence at his place. Also the Townsville friend actually did come. I had thought that any suitably self preserving young lady would have avoided staying in a mud surrounded Donga in sub zero temperatures that lacked both a shower and toilet. I was wrong. This lady turned up and has stuck it out for three days already! I am rather glad I bothered with the flowers.
Chris came yesterday and tackled some of the dead and dangerous trees. He has moved the ones likely to fall across the power line and trimmed the thick dead branches from the garden gum tree. It is sad to see its new, reduced form. A ray of hope is that it has new buds forming off the main trunk so there is still a possibility it could return to its former glory. The other gums had self seeded and have driven me mad for years by acting as ladders for possums intent on committing suicide by shorting out our power supply. We had two such episodes in one week once. Of course they short out the whole valley, as well as us, so I don’t think they will be greatly missed.
It looks terribly bare at present but I see it as a blank canvas. My paint consists of all the lovely trees and plants I have waiting in pots. We are going to have a garden to die for once we get sorted.
22.7.2009
I now have a car! Not quite as up market as my poor x-trail who perished in the fires, but still what I hope will be a perfectly adequate way of getting myself around. My new chariot is a small, old, white hatch back of the Toyota family. It was very clean when I picked it up today. How on earth do detailers get cars that clean? For that matter how do most Australians keep their eskies so clean? It is not that I don’t try for similar results. I do, and I fail.
My first stop was at Chirnside to buy bedding for youngest son, Josh. He has a friend from Uni days who might visit this week and suddenly decided that a total make over of his donga was required. Ha! I have been hoping he would become a bit more aware of the need to make an effort on the domestic front. Actually, he has been working such long hours and under such stress that I have been ignoring the growing chaos in his donga.
The free shop set up by the community for fire victims is still open in Yarra Glen and I was lucky enough to find a double and single bed and a futon in there together with two nice blankets and two very flash bed spreads. All totally free. This shop has been fantastic. You can get just about anything there from wheelbarrows to socks. You just look around and walk out with anything you need. The good bit is that it means you can choose things in colours you like or things that remind you of lost possessions. No one makes you feel as if you are a charity case who should be happy with anything they choose to give you.
The people who work there also give out information, often better than our caseworkers, and they listen if you want a good whinge. I may be a migrant with a grubby esky but Yarra Glen people make me feel really proud to be Australian.
Back to the Josh clean up. Last night when he asked me to buy him bedding his only request was that it would be flower free. Why do most cheap doona covers have flowers on? Or things that a suspicious mind could interpret as flower like? Getting a single doona cover and double doona cover to match presented another degree of challenge.
I hate shopping but I can be very persistent, so I hope he will like what I have chosen. No flowers any way, and everything from bed spreads to blankets co-ordinates satisfyingly. His floor is washed and I have installed real flowers and a nicely scented plant to do something about the unwashed sock smell. When all this work was completed I shut the donga door with more than my usual enthusiasm, and horror of horrors it actually shut properly and stuck! Normally it rests in a half shut position so this was quite alarming. It would be awful if after all my efforts Josh, (and possible friend), were shut out for the night! Once again I decided not to be defeated did battle with a crow bar until the wretched door gave in and opened.
Meanwhile, back at the farm Mick and mate are still shuffling vast amounts of soil round in circles. Our new loop road starts at the old brewery entrance gate, goes past the donga complex, through the middle of the land excavated for sheds and curves under the big blue gum to end at the ménage gate. The idea is that it will pass through the ménage and then loop back to meet up with its self just before crossing the swale that steers water along the top of the sheds and heads it towards the dam. Mick has put a large pipe under the road for the run off to travel in. However he did not have time to put the rock we had delivered on the road so with tonight’s rain we are back surrounded by the sea of mud.
20.7.2009
Wow ! It is so windy. With no leafy trees to moderate things we are regularly attacked by quite worrying winds. I have decided to have a blitz on dead and dangerous trees around the area where we are living as a precaution against accidents.
Actually things are gradually looking much better. Today Mick and his machinery are back. (At least the wind has dried out the land rapidly), and all the old fence posts have been pulled out and carefully put aside for reuse. It does look better with them gone and less clutter around.
The other big improvement is in the vegetable garden. Heather, Andrew, Graeme, Bo, Edd and I all put in a mornings work and achieved miracles. Bo and I had started to evict the weeds but with the extra help and the fact that Graeme brought the better half of a vegetable garden in pots ready to put in things progressed fast. The celery has survived and Heather even found a bit of parsley. This pleased me enormously because we have grown that parsley from its own seed for about 15 years now. Finding it was like discovering that an old friend we thought was dead had actually survived!
Bo did comment that Graeme, s lettuces looked ready to eat now but she settled for taking home potatoes and silverbeat.
One odd thing is that the potatoes and one tomato plant are still alive. Most years the frosts have killed them off by this stage.
The first sheep has lambed. One of the moorit ewes, called Pellaton, has given birth to a little white son, who is now called Lance. We do not usually give sheep names but with so few left it is almost unavoidable. I tended to keep the ones I had bottle reared and they had names so we had better name the rest to make things fair. The sheep are now in the paddock with the big dam but I would prefer them to be on fresher ground. We let them in to the land around the big polyhouse on dry days so they can eat the fresher grass there.
Al and family were over on Sunday and we have begun to talk seriously about the new domestic buildings. We are definitely going for an earth covered building by the big dam and are looking at some fairly radical designs. I can see no point in putting back buildings unless we are happy that defending them in fire events is possible.
Al’s birthday today so we are off to his place this afternoon. We caught up with Al at the talks given by Michael Reynolds (the garbage warrior). This guy has arrived from America on a crusade to promote the building of “Earthships”. These are totally sustainable living structures that produce their own energy, deal with waste productively and harvest water and food. A man after my own heart. He can build these things using mostly recycled products just about anywhere.
He even wants someone to put one up in Australia so we people can visit and check it out. This offcourse was exactly what we intended to do anyway Suddenly I am feeling very blessed. I have land, money from my insurance, and an established tourist business. My eldest son, Al, is an architect who specialises in sustainable buildings and we have already got the skills to grow and process our own food.
Our old house had many alternate systems. Our toilets could be flushed with dam water down a gravity feed line. The farm buildings collected plenty of water that was stored in tanks at various heights to make as best use possible of gravity and we had solar / wood water heating. But, the house was built 30 years ago and many things have moved on. We now feel that it is more or less essential to be at least partly underground because of fires as well as temperature considerations.
My mind is now spinning with possibilities.
I enjoyed having a car for a day but then I gave it up to Josh who’s car is will not be repaired until next week. He and I did two days getting up early and driving to Lilydale station so he could get to Dandenong on the train but one day he was late for work and people are getting the sack for that sort of offence at his place. Also the Townsville friend actually did come. I had thought that any suitably self preserving young lady would have avoided staying in a mud surrounded Donga in sub zero temperatures that lacked both a shower and toilet. I was wrong. This lady turned up and has stuck it out for three days already! I am rather glad I bothered with the flowers.
Chris came yesterday and tackled some of the dead and dangerous trees. He has moved the ones likely to fall across the power line and trimmed the thick dead branches from the garden gum tree. It is sad to see its new, reduced form. A ray of hope is that it has new buds forming off the main trunk so there is still a possibility it could return to its former glory. The other gums had self seeded and have driven me mad for years by acting as ladders for possums intent on committing suicide by shorting out our power supply. We had two such episodes in one week once. Of course they short out the whole valley, as well as us, so I don’t think they will be greatly missed.
It looks terribly bare at present but I see it as a blank canvas. My paint consists of all the lovely trees and plants I have waiting in pots. We are going to have a garden to die for once we get sorted.
22.7.2009
I now have a car! Not quite as up market as my poor x-trail who perished in the fires, but still what I hope will be a perfectly adequate way of getting myself around. My new chariot is a small, old, white hatch back of the Toyota family. It was very clean when I picked it up today. How on earth do detailers get cars that clean? For that matter how do most Australians keep their eskies so clean? It is not that I don’t try for similar results. I do, and I fail.
My first stop was at Chirnside to buy bedding for youngest son, Josh. He has a friend from Uni days who might visit this week and suddenly decided that a total make over of his donga was required. Ha! I have been hoping he would become a bit more aware of the need to make an effort on the domestic front. Actually, he has been working such long hours and under such stress that I have been ignoring the growing chaos in his donga.
The free shop set up by the community for fire victims is still open in Yarra Glen and I was lucky enough to find a double and single bed and a futon in there together with two nice blankets and two very flash bed spreads. All totally free. This shop has been fantastic. You can get just about anything there from wheelbarrows to socks. You just look around and walk out with anything you need. The good bit is that it means you can choose things in colours you like or things that remind you of lost possessions. No one makes you feel as if you are a charity case who should be happy with anything they choose to give you.
The people who work there also give out information, often better than our caseworkers, and they listen if you want a good whinge. I may be a migrant with a grubby esky but Yarra Glen people make me feel really proud to be Australian.
Back to the Josh clean up. Last night when he asked me to buy him bedding his only request was that it would be flower free. Why do most cheap doona covers have flowers on? Or things that a suspicious mind could interpret as flower like? Getting a single doona cover and double doona cover to match presented another degree of challenge.
I hate shopping but I can be very persistent, so I hope he will like what I have chosen. No flowers any way, and everything from bed spreads to blankets co-ordinates satisfyingly. His floor is washed and I have installed real flowers and a nicely scented plant to do something about the unwashed sock smell. When all this work was completed I shut the donga door with more than my usual enthusiasm, and horror of horrors it actually shut properly and stuck! Normally it rests in a half shut position so this was quite alarming. It would be awful if after all my efforts Josh, (and possible friend), were shut out for the night! Once again I decided not to be defeated did battle with a crow bar until the wretched door gave in and opened.
Meanwhile, back at the farm Mick and mate are still shuffling vast amounts of soil round in circles. Our new loop road starts at the old brewery entrance gate, goes past the donga complex, through the middle of the land excavated for sheds and curves under the big blue gum to end at the ménage gate. The idea is that it will pass through the ménage and then loop back to meet up with its self just before crossing the swale that steers water along the top of the sheds and heads it towards the dam. Mick has put a large pipe under the road for the run off to travel in. However he did not have time to put the rock we had delivered on the road so with tonight’s rain we are back surrounded by the sea of mud.
20.7.2009
Wow ! It is so windy. With no leafy trees to moderate things we are regularly attacked by quite worrying winds. I have decided to have a blitz on dead and dangerous trees around the area where we are living as a precaution against accidents.
Actually things are gradually looking much better. Today Mick and his machinery are back. (At least the wind has dried out the land rapidly), and all the old fence posts have been pulled out and carefully put aside for reuse. It does look better with them gone and less clutter around.
The other big improvement is in the vegetable garden. Heather, Andrew, Graeme, Bo, Edd and I all put in a mornings work and achieved miracles. Bo and I had started to evict the weeds but with the extra help and the fact that Graeme brought the better half of a vegetable garden in pots ready to put in things progressed fast. The celery has survived and Heather even found a bit of parsley. This pleased me enormously because we have grown that parsley from its own seed for about 15 years now. Finding it was like discovering that an old friend we thought was dead had actually survived!
Bo did comment that Graeme, s lettuces looked ready to eat now but she settled for taking home potatoes and silverbeat.
One odd thing is that the potatoes and one tomato plant are still alive. Most years the frosts have killed them off by this stage.
The first sheep has lambed. One of the moorit ewes, called Pellaton, has given birth to a little white son, who is now called Lance. We do not usually give sheep names but with so few left it is almost unavoidable. I tended to keep the ones I had bottle reared and they had names so we had better name the rest to make things fair. The sheep are now in the paddock with the big dam but I would prefer them to be on fresher ground. We let them in to the land around the big polyhouse on dry days so they can eat the fresher grass there.
Al and family were over on Sunday and we have begun to talk seriously about the new domestic buildings. We are definitely going for an earth covered building by the big dam and are looking at some fairly radical designs. I can see no point in putting back buildings unless we are happy that defending them in fire events is possible.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Winter sun shines over the sea of mud
7.7.2009
At last the sun is shining again. We have just endured a week of cold wet misery that has resulted in us being surrounded on all sides by vast seas of yellow clay mud. Thank goodness for all the volunteers who cleaned bricks and helped us lay paths between our dongas. I wish I had a path all the way to the toilet. A trip to the loo now involves gumboots and a good sense of balance!
We are still getting lots of booking requests . This is heartening, but sad, as we have not even got the plans for rebuilding started yet. We are still trying to organise sheds. We need the roofs to catch water. All this latest rain has annoyingly avoided the dam and run off in the already eroded gullies. The dam is still very low. This is a huge problem because not having enough water to keep things green around the house was one of the factors that has increased our vunerability to bush fire .
The first few years of drought were OK because on threatening days everything could be hosed down as an early precaution. As the drought continued and the stored water decreased this was not a sustainable practice. The new policies for dams make it very difficult to get permission to dam anywhere that could possibly catch water efficiently so we are stuck with a big problem. What it really means is we have to design a house that is defensible with out much water because the drought could well continue.
Another plan is to reorganise our land a bit so that run off lines channel water away from the house , sheds and gully towards the dam. Looking at the old house site this would be difficult but as we have not started replanting yet it would be still a possibility. I would need to make an artificial creel bed across the old visitors garden and break down the wall of the sump pond at the base of the water fall so the water could reverse it’s course.
The news we are hearing from The Royal commission about the fires is not reassuring. What we would like is to be told that in future years the warning systems would be reliable. Radio warnings on the ABC would be good enough. In past years they used a siron to alert people if there might be any danger in their region and this worked fine. With satellites, fire towers and modern communications this would obviously be possible.
25.6.2009 It is still so mild, and dry. Our case worker has just informed me that the bush fire season officially starts again in just a few weeks. Well, we are now going passed the low point of the light. The sun has officially been through it’s three day death and it is now starting to rise again , setting a tiny bit later each day and moving west as it does so. It is not noticeable yet but the jonquils are flowering again with their wonderful scent. I wonder what will happen to the wattle. I know the next season as yellow time because it is dominated by wattle and daffodils. The wattles on our property were killed by the fires and although young seedlings are shooting up they will not be old enough to flower this year.
A very sad event happened today. A young ewe died. It is the first death we have had of an animal since the fires. We have found new homes for most of our stock but have kept a few sheep and goats to breed from. Edd has worked really hard and completed the fencing of two paddocks and we were able to move stock out of the pens yesterday . It was just too late for this girl who was pregnant and had stopped eating. We thought she was getting better because she could stand up and had started to nibble straw but she died suddenly when Edd went to treat her this morning. Living under these conditions with out grazing has been very stressful to all the animals.
I have tried to place as many as possible away from here in new homes but sometimes they do worse away than they do here. We have some happy stories from goats that have settled well and are loved by their new owners and this in turn makes us happy.
At last the sun is shining again. We have just endured a week of cold wet misery that has resulted in us being surrounded on all sides by vast seas of yellow clay mud. Thank goodness for all the volunteers who cleaned bricks and helped us lay paths between our dongas. I wish I had a path all the way to the toilet. A trip to the loo now involves gumboots and a good sense of balance!
We are still getting lots of booking requests . This is heartening, but sad, as we have not even got the plans for rebuilding started yet. We are still trying to organise sheds. We need the roofs to catch water. All this latest rain has annoyingly avoided the dam and run off in the already eroded gullies. The dam is still very low. This is a huge problem because not having enough water to keep things green around the house was one of the factors that has increased our vunerability to bush fire .
The first few years of drought were OK because on threatening days everything could be hosed down as an early precaution. As the drought continued and the stored water decreased this was not a sustainable practice. The new policies for dams make it very difficult to get permission to dam anywhere that could possibly catch water efficiently so we are stuck with a big problem. What it really means is we have to design a house that is defensible with out much water because the drought could well continue.
Another plan is to reorganise our land a bit so that run off lines channel water away from the house , sheds and gully towards the dam. Looking at the old house site this would be difficult but as we have not started replanting yet it would be still a possibility. I would need to make an artificial creel bed across the old visitors garden and break down the wall of the sump pond at the base of the water fall so the water could reverse it’s course.
The news we are hearing from The Royal commission about the fires is not reassuring. What we would like is to be told that in future years the warning systems would be reliable. Radio warnings on the ABC would be good enough. In past years they used a siron to alert people if there might be any danger in their region and this worked fine. With satellites, fire towers and modern communications this would obviously be possible.
25.6.2009 It is still so mild, and dry. Our case worker has just informed me that the bush fire season officially starts again in just a few weeks. Well, we are now going passed the low point of the light. The sun has officially been through it’s three day death and it is now starting to rise again , setting a tiny bit later each day and moving west as it does so. It is not noticeable yet but the jonquils are flowering again with their wonderful scent. I wonder what will happen to the wattle. I know the next season as yellow time because it is dominated by wattle and daffodils. The wattles on our property were killed by the fires and although young seedlings are shooting up they will not be old enough to flower this year.
A very sad event happened today. A young ewe died. It is the first death we have had of an animal since the fires. We have found new homes for most of our stock but have kept a few sheep and goats to breed from. Edd has worked really hard and completed the fencing of two paddocks and we were able to move stock out of the pens yesterday . It was just too late for this girl who was pregnant and had stopped eating. We thought she was getting better because she could stand up and had started to nibble straw but she died suddenly when Edd went to treat her this morning. Living under these conditions with out grazing has been very stressful to all the animals.
I have tried to place as many as possible away from here in new homes but sometimes they do worse away than they do here. We have some happy stories from goats that have settled well and are loved by their new owners and this in turn makes us happy.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
out of the safety zone
In all probability I had already changed into an old woman before the fires but I was too busy to notice it happening. I feel as if age snuck up on me when I was distracted by all the drama. Just at the minute it does not make any difference. Some how I have to deal with each days problems and see the funny side as often as possible.
Last week we had enormous help from all directions. Sharron brought out a whole team of able bodied and enthusiastic workers from her work and Rod brought out a busload of equally willing people from Luther collage. Edd’s good friend, Trevor and his mate Chas even stayed two nights and with all this help miracles have been achieved.
It became clear that I was going to have "spare time", that long lost commodity I have not seen for years. Not to worry. I have always wanted to do more art and had already brought suitable materials from the two-dollar shop. However there was one big snag. I could think of absolutely nothing I wanted to paint or draw.
It was tempting to do a dot painting, as a way to start, but borrowing someone else’s voice seemed to be missing the point. In the end I just got a canvas and painted it black. At least I had made a start, and as my friend Merv used to tell us, the muse can only reach you if you are in the studio waiting for her call.
I looked hopefully at the black canvas but still no inspiration emerged. My youngest son Josh once wrote for a school exercise that for him, “ black represents the peaceful tranquillity of a non threatening void”. Maybe I am stuck in the black. My past all wiped out by the fire and my future unformed. May be it is peaceful and non-threatening at this point. Perhaps I will have to work at dragging myself back into life.
I set myself socialisation targets. On Wednesday we had a Permaculture meeting at Nola’s house. I think I stuffed that one up. Luckily Nola has the most intelligence in people skills of anyone I have ever dealt with. On Thursday I dragged my black canvas and paints off to the Steels creek art club. There were only three people there because someone had died this week. This was bad but good for me as there were less people to react with. I actually enjoyed several hours trying to interact with the black canvas and I don’t think I really irritated anyone.
My art has always been too controlled, too left-brain and safe, so I am forcing myself out of my comfort zone in art as well as life. I want to use our loss as a catalyst for personal growth. This all sounds very brave on paper but putting it into practice will be more of a challenge.
Luckily Edd is being far more practical and has almost completed enough fencing to allow us to release all the animals from their pens. My socialisation has given it's first results in that I now have flu. It may or may not be swine flu, which has already reached our valley, but it is not too bad.
Last week we had enormous help from all directions. Sharron brought out a whole team of able bodied and enthusiastic workers from her work and Rod brought out a busload of equally willing people from Luther collage. Edd’s good friend, Trevor and his mate Chas even stayed two nights and with all this help miracles have been achieved.
It became clear that I was going to have "spare time", that long lost commodity I have not seen for years. Not to worry. I have always wanted to do more art and had already brought suitable materials from the two-dollar shop. However there was one big snag. I could think of absolutely nothing I wanted to paint or draw.
It was tempting to do a dot painting, as a way to start, but borrowing someone else’s voice seemed to be missing the point. In the end I just got a canvas and painted it black. At least I had made a start, and as my friend Merv used to tell us, the muse can only reach you if you are in the studio waiting for her call.
I looked hopefully at the black canvas but still no inspiration emerged. My youngest son Josh once wrote for a school exercise that for him, “ black represents the peaceful tranquillity of a non threatening void”. Maybe I am stuck in the black. My past all wiped out by the fire and my future unformed. May be it is peaceful and non-threatening at this point. Perhaps I will have to work at dragging myself back into life.
I set myself socialisation targets. On Wednesday we had a Permaculture meeting at Nola’s house. I think I stuffed that one up. Luckily Nola has the most intelligence in people skills of anyone I have ever dealt with. On Thursday I dragged my black canvas and paints off to the Steels creek art club. There were only three people there because someone had died this week. This was bad but good for me as there were less people to react with. I actually enjoyed several hours trying to interact with the black canvas and I don’t think I really irritated anyone.
My art has always been too controlled, too left-brain and safe, so I am forcing myself out of my comfort zone in art as well as life. I want to use our loss as a catalyst for personal growth. This all sounds very brave on paper but putting it into practice will be more of a challenge.
Luckily Edd is being far more practical and has almost completed enough fencing to allow us to release all the animals from their pens. My socialisation has given it's first results in that I now have flu. It may or may not be swine flu, which has already reached our valley, but it is not too bad.
Friday, June 12, 2009
A difficult journey
Yesterday I rashly agreed to collect a wood stove that Al is having repaired in Seymour. I had ulterior motives. Seymour has a craft shop that sells baby wool in lots of exciting colours and also I could find out if there was any chance that I could salvage my old Aga. I was hoping Edd would be able to come and that we could have a day out but this was not to be. Edd was needed to work with Mike on the shed excavations and do fencing.
No worries, I would go on my own. The men must have been better informed than I was because the drive was horrific. All the way to Yea pipe-laying trucks had taken over the road. It was drizzling too, so the road was a wash with greasy mud that the numerous trucks threw all over the windscreen. That, plus all the waits at traffic lights whilst large loads were manoeuvred out of small holes made driving hell.
It was not even possible to enjoy the scenery. Burnt trees and muddy excavations are depressing viewing. Also there is the big question about how sensible it is to be building this North-south pipeline. My personal thoughts were not much better. I felt as if someone had stolen my identity. Last year I was a businesswoman with my own business. I had a great little X-trail to drive and really “me” clothes that I had carefully collected over years.
Now I have no job, I am wearing hand-me-down clothes and here I was sat in a Ute that smelt of dog and had the front side all melted. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, my friends seem to have changed too. People I shared with a lot are off doing other things and of course I am not meeting all the people associated with my work either. I am not upset about all this, but I am also not sure who I will become next. This is a sort of limbo period between the past and a still vague future.
Logic tells me that although we have the house insurance, the sheds, fences and farm equipment were not insured so somewhere along the line we will have to do with out something we had before. The charity we are receiving helps a lot here, but it will not be enough to breach the gap. So… what can we not have? A worse problem is that my job was going to be our only income when Edd retired. Now it has gone and Edd does not feel capable of going back to teaching. He was about to retire before but I had it all planned. How am I to sort this out now?
There is no immediate crisis because I have invested the insurance money and it will provide an income in the short term. The snag is that as we replace houses and sheds it will obviously diminish. There is just so much to rethink and so little time. Also just what has happened to the climate? Was this one exceptional year never to be repeated or is it the start of a dramatic climate shift? How can I plan for such uncertainty?
On the bright side there is no shortage of old Agas. I have a bag of bright coloured baby wool offering limitless opportunities and Al’s stove was unloaded with out drama. My eldest Grand daughter, India, had cooked us all an evening meal and sat around the table with my family my identity re-established itself quickly.
No worries, I would go on my own. The men must have been better informed than I was because the drive was horrific. All the way to Yea pipe-laying trucks had taken over the road. It was drizzling too, so the road was a wash with greasy mud that the numerous trucks threw all over the windscreen. That, plus all the waits at traffic lights whilst large loads were manoeuvred out of small holes made driving hell.
It was not even possible to enjoy the scenery. Burnt trees and muddy excavations are depressing viewing. Also there is the big question about how sensible it is to be building this North-south pipeline. My personal thoughts were not much better. I felt as if someone had stolen my identity. Last year I was a businesswoman with my own business. I had a great little X-trail to drive and really “me” clothes that I had carefully collected over years.
Now I have no job, I am wearing hand-me-down clothes and here I was sat in a Ute that smelt of dog and had the front side all melted. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, my friends seem to have changed too. People I shared with a lot are off doing other things and of course I am not meeting all the people associated with my work either. I am not upset about all this, but I am also not sure who I will become next. This is a sort of limbo period between the past and a still vague future.
Logic tells me that although we have the house insurance, the sheds, fences and farm equipment were not insured so somewhere along the line we will have to do with out something we had before. The charity we are receiving helps a lot here, but it will not be enough to breach the gap. So… what can we not have? A worse problem is that my job was going to be our only income when Edd retired. Now it has gone and Edd does not feel capable of going back to teaching. He was about to retire before but I had it all planned. How am I to sort this out now?
There is no immediate crisis because I have invested the insurance money and it will provide an income in the short term. The snag is that as we replace houses and sheds it will obviously diminish. There is just so much to rethink and so little time. Also just what has happened to the climate? Was this one exceptional year never to be repeated or is it the start of a dramatic climate shift? How can I plan for such uncertainty?
On the bright side there is no shortage of old Agas. I have a bag of bright coloured baby wool offering limitless opportunities and Al’s stove was unloaded with out drama. My eldest Grand daughter, India, had cooked us all an evening meal and sat around the table with my family my identity re-established itself quickly.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
1.6.2009
The Permaculture people who helped yesterday did a wonderful job at the old house site. I now have neat stacks of cleaned bricks and most of the dead plants are gone. I did love my home. We started life here as shell-shocked migrants, living in pioneering conditions as we tried to make a good life for our family. Our house sheltered us as we built it and gradually moulded its self around us as the kids grew up.
It was a first home for my second Grand kid and a refuge for family members in trouble. All my children returned to live here as adults when their lives hit rough patches. It was a cool haven in the summer heat, and a cosy warm space when winter set in. Twice a year, at Xmas and at Mid-winter we would cook turkeys in the Aga, set up a very long table in front of the Inglenook, and sit down with family and friends for a feast. Each time this happened I took a minute amongst the rush of work to reflect on how lucky I was to have all my children and their children gathered together.
Now, the house is just a ruin, but I want to clean it up and convert it to something beautiful as a show of respect for all the good times past. Perhaps it should be a sort of spiritual space as well as a space for parties. I would like to put up pillars made of the old bricks and some roofs for shade in a square shape leaving a central courtyard open to the sky. I liked the temples at Angkor Watt, and would love to create a mini version.
The old chimney could still be used and the roofs could help collect water. It could well be possible to get the underground water pipes going again so the water could take the old route to the big concrete tank. All ideas. Meanwhile we are struggling to get up some relatively simple sheds. Al suggested that we have the sheds with steeper than average slopes to the roofs so that they are right for solar panels and look more pleasing. This means special construction, but I do agree that if we just put up a huddle of off the peg standard shed it would look pretty soulless.
Mike has almost finished bulldozing a flat area to put the sheds on. We are lucky that it has stayed dry, as an enormous tonnage of soil has had to be shifted. It is lucky too that it is just a little bit damp because if we had tried to do this earlier in the year we would have been over whelmed with dust. We are probably getting things done at the right pace but some days it all feels too chaotic to cope with.
Last week Antonia, the big white goat who allowed all our visitors learnt to milk, has gone to a new home at an animal shelter in Healesville that needs goats milk. She was one of the oldest goats and I was worried about her being too stressed in the conditions here. We are still without fences and the animals are restricted to yards that get in a worse state daily. I cut greens for the goats from the weeds in the vegetable gardens but it is not enough to compensate for the lack of grazing. I just hope the animals we have sent away are better off than they were here. I would like to sell the calves but we have no yards, so no way of loading them into a truck.
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