a miracle of packing

30.8.2010

The dangerous machinery is in action again and I discovered a sudden need for paper work time. Edd and Craig are trying to up root the old water tower and lie it down away from the shed so that the solar panel men can have improved access on Friday. The other option was to dismantle it piece by piece but the bolts have had 30 years to rust into place and burning it did not help. This idea might work.
They have already moved the pine tree by the small donga. It was slowly leaning farther and farther over until today I noticed that about half the roots had pulled out of the sodden ground. All hope of its survival was over, and the most important thing was to make the area safe. I think the high winds together with the unusual ground conditions are the problem No water shortages now. We have not had a year like this for over a decade. The grey skies are getting depressing.

Last night the first goat kids arrived. They are so large that they represent a miracle of packing skills. It is impossible to imagine how they fitted inside mum. Two lovely healthy girls make a good start to kidding season. Edd has almost finished welding up a new milking bail , which we will be needing extremely soon! Lots of udders look alarmingly large!

Things may be moving with our rebuilding plans. Doug has done most of the engineering and Al has almost done his plans. The present hold up is getting the plans past the energy assessor. Houses must reach a five star standard decided by a computer program that is not designed to cope with under ground homes. We are told that someone with the most adaptable of the three programs who know how to cheat the system should be able to get it through! No one person failed, though.

Next we need a building permit , building insurance and then some workers. At least something has happened and the wheel has started to turn. It is now or never if Edd wants a holiday. He can’t relax if he has to look out at all the jobs that need fixing here so is desperate for time out. I cannot leave kidding goats but then I have had more than thirty years practice at living with all the work here.

Edd has booked a holiday doing something so we both benefit. He is going back to Yuendumu to pick up a brindle puppy for me. He can get together with all our friends again and hopefully come back refreshed and ready to launch with gusto into the building project. At least, that’s the idea. So far the hardest part has been getting tickets on line. We seem to waste more time dealing with stroppy, inflexible computer systems than anything else.

storms and mulled wine

18.8.2010
How do I cope with this? The wind is howling around the donga and it shakes like a leaf with each buffeting blast. It is as un-nerving as being on a jet when you pass through turbulence. More annoying it also blows right through the donga so there is nowhere to escape. It is blowing through the sheds too, so our tools and stuff are getting wet and the animals are miserable.

We have three sheep in the shed, two with twin lambs and one with triplets. I suppose however bad it is in there, it is better than being outside in the paddock. I have bedded the animals down with fresh straw and loaded up their hay racks to make them as comfortable as possible. For the first time ever Edd and I are wearing coats and scarves indoors. At lunch time the plumber had still not arrived so we evacuated and spent most of the afternoon in Bo’s restaurant. She stoked up the fire and after two glasses of stout and a pie we began to feel slightly more human.

Tonight Edd has gone off to choir and I have mulled some wine and am taking regular doses as a survival tactic. Nothing seems to have progressed with the house plans , but why? Is Al not bothered about us, have he and Doug conflicting ideas about the engineering? Is his rating engineer incompetent? The annoying thing about not being in control is that I do not have the information needed to find out and I will have to be very assertive to get it. I could just employ new “experts “ in hopes they would come up with the needed stuff but that would mean paying everything double and yet more waiting.

It would be a good time just to draw up anchor and depart for warmer climes but the sheep are lambing and the goats are due any moment so that idea is out. What is this about Mars too? Is it really going to appear the same size as the moon by the end of August? Mars , the God of war! I kind of have the “oh sh**” feeling.

The mulled wine is starting to take affect and the stinging in my unthawing fingers has gone. Tonight’s plan consists of having a warm shower and retreating into bed , I don’t think I will bother with a meal.

good things happen

14.8.2010
Ha. There are times when life is great. How good does it feel to go roller blading with ones six- year old grandson and his friends and find that suddenly armed with the right footgear you can move faster and freer than the youngsters! How good does it feel on coming home to find that you have been given an amazing work of art?

Edd tells me that Don turned up here, totally unexpected, and presented him with this book he had made from his photographs taken on our wilderness property near Cooma. They are incredible. Not just photos but works of art using photography as a base. We are overwhelmed. I am really enjoying doing my own art too. Each Thursday we have an afternoon at a studio in Yarra Glen and just work in peace. My efforts are improving but I have a long way to go. It is coming back but unfortunately not as fast as skating!

On the home front at present I seem to be winning the power war. I am now connected back to TRU energy, who are also our local supplier and suddenly E-mails are answered and we are being helped! I am still trying to get connected with a grid interactive solar system, as I was before the fires. The only remaining issue is the type of panel. All I read seems to suggest that mono crystalline panels are superior to the poly ones except that they are dearer and have more embodied energy. If only there were only one type.

Better still, Josh has actually sounded happy the last few times we have been on the phone to him. He sounds as if he is putting together some sort of life for himself despite the isolation from family and friends. He has done his intensive and is now doing practical work in clinics and in theory all the assignments. I am just praying that things go a bit more smoothly for him now.

Al had the opening for his new school building at Mansfield last week. It is the one I went with him to see. The opening went well even though it was on Friday 13, which was hardly auspicious. Bo is attracting larger and larger crowds to her restaurant. Edd and I go to foodie’s night on Mondays and this week we were joined by Beni. She is struggling to pull her winery through the bad turn in the market and is also trying to write an historical novel based on her husband’s family. My goodness. What a creative group of friends and family we have.

Realism will hit soon as the goats are due to kid in September. Edd has worked hard on the dairy. He has all the cupboards and stainless steel tops up in the milk room and is now working on some devilishly creative pipe work to link all the tanks, pumps and buildings! We have ordered a plumber for next week and at last I might have a washing machine here. We need to have the plumbing all done so that we can wash out the milking machine. Otherwise it will be hours of hand milking which we are all keen to avoid!

High winds are rocking the donga and the constant rain has resulted in mud but I am just grateful we have not started to build yet. We have just about achieved a holding pattern and it is now possible to relax and let things take their time.

cattle droving

28.7.2010
Last weekend was wintery but we all met at the Bohdi Tree in Healesville to celebrate Bo and Al’s birthdays. I missed Josh who is still at Uni in Perth, and Simon, who was working, but everyone else was present. Wayne says he may soon relocate back to Queensland where he thinks there is more work. I am sad that he has split up with Delisa. I liked her a lot and would have loved to have her as a family member. I will also miss Wayne a lot if he moves inter state. He has been such a competent and solid bloke for me to lean on since the fires.

We had another family gathering the previous Sunday for the big cattle droving endeavour. Edd had arranged to sell the heifers and the steer to Kenny who lives up Steels Creek road towards Yarra Glen. We have still not replaced our yards so taking cattle anywhere was a problem. Once we found somewhere to sell them that they could walk the logistics became possible.

Lots of family members and various neighbours joined us and we managed to steer the cattle all the way without too much drama. The hard bit where were fences were still not replaced and they had a chance to escape into big paddocks. Edd had alerted everyone who he could find, so we had help from the people in the homes we passed who defended their own borders. Wayne did a lot of the running and Kenny loaded kids into the back of his ute and ferried them to up to new positions once the cattle had passed them. It was probably all fairly illegal but it was also fun and the only solution we could think of.

There was a slight glitch when Ollie manage to tip over a four-wheel motorbike himself and the adult in supervision into a ditch. Luckily no one was hurt and Ollie probably had his first lesson in the dangers involved with driving as well as droving.

17.7.2010
I was the one with a burst of energy this week. On Monday I got a 4 cubic metre skip delivered and over the next two days I loaded it up with the rubbish left by the builders when the sheds were put up. The skip was well and truly full so Edd brought down the large trailer and I loaded all the wood scraps into that and then balanced the old corrugated iron on the top. The huge pile of rubbish was really irritating me so I am thrilled now it has gone. The skip has been taken right off the property but we will have to unload and burn the wood bits at a later date.

This activity was partly spurred by the thought that Rob and Moira were coming to film us again on Wednesday. It is to document the effects of the fires but we have got very fond of them over the months and I wanted to make it look as if we had achieved something since their last visit. We have, of course done a lot but at this time of year it does not look like it!

On Thursday the first lambs of the year were born. The moorit ewe, Peloton, had twins. The male is now called Cadell, as he was born during Le tour de France like his mother. Another sign of winters end can be seen all over Steels Creek. The wattle and the daffodils are in bloom again and the yellow season has arrived. Lots of wattle trees were killed in the fire so it is good to see that some have recovered and new ones have been planted. Yellow was not such a feature last year.

Edd needed to buy drills so this morning we drove over the hills to St Andrews Market. It was heaving with humanity all rugged up in multi coloured warm wear and looking suitably hippy for the occasion. Edd got his tools and we brought mugs to replace the ones we keep breaking and then we wandered across the road to the hotel. Nothing changes there. The bikies with magnificent gleaming chrome on arm stretching handlebars roared up to parking spots by the outdoor tables and the rest of us crammed ourselves inside for drinks and food around the musicians and large fireplace.

It was cold even indoors so the woollies remained on. The men with the guitars were good and a toddler began to dance. The toddler was joined by a slender girl who shed boots, and then socks, as she got into her stride. Some how she used her hands and body to manipulate the space around her so it seemed as structured as water and began to flow in patterns. We have been coming here for over thirty years now and the continuity is reassuring.

chooks and winds

10.7.2010
More people have been robbed. For the last twenty years we never bothered to lock a door but things have changed dramatically since the fires. Properties in our area are raided every week, probably because there are fewer people around. Even big things like tractors and trailers are pinched and the B@B half way down steels creek lost all their cottage contents. We are all afraid to go off and leave the place unguarded.

Edd began the break from teaching with a burst of energy. He quickly rounded up the straying cattle and isolated them behind a new electric fence. He may even have found someone locally who wants to buy the heifers. Then he borrowed a neighbour’s posthole rammer and began work on the fencing system around the sheds.

Having given up on gardening I focussed on chickens. 10 commercial laying pullets were collected from Wagners, our closest egg factory, and we drove further afield to buy rare breed layers from specialist breeders. I brought new feeding bowls and a bamboo ladder the exact width of the chook shed so Edd could fix it up for perches. The new pullets are now living with the gentle faverolle rooster in the new chook shed and the older chooks are with the aracaner cross rooster in the upper shed.

Things began to look brighter. The sun shone, it was warm and we visited a new type of building that Barry (who works with Al) told us about. It is a system where walls are erected of interlocking recycled, plastic, web, panels. Steel reinforcing rods are put into grooves at intervals and then all the plumbing and wiring can be put in. When all is in place a mixture of fine concrete is piped into the walls and towelled off where it seeps out to form smooth wall surfaces.

This is pretty much instant house and in theory would really suit our semi underground structure perfectly because the rear walls at the back the back have no windows and only two doors. I got really excited and felt that it might be possible to get a house to live in before the summer heat. Doug, our engineer friend and Edd watched one pour and decided that there are a lot of issues such as the strength of the mix that need to be looked at and I began to feel all that ray of hope slipping away. Al is still on holiday so we are all waiting for him before things can move anywhere.

The veil of misery descended further as the frost and high winds returned. We did not get much sleep on Friday night when the donga was moving around in the wind like a small ship lost during a storm in the ocean. Stuff banged outside like a whole troop of robbers and the cold seeped through every crack. We woke to a heavy frost but the next night was worse. The winds returned, only worse and the power cut out just before dark. I had some candles but there was no running water, hot or cold, no heating and the candle flames blew in the wind too much to be effective. We are totally sick of living like this.

raiders

24.6.2010
It is heart breaking. The garden that I have spent a year trying to revive is under heavy attack. Last week our cows got loose and raided everything and then the neighbours bulls made their way over. Worse though are the night raiders. Everyday a new plant has been sabotaged. Yesterday my beautiful new orange trees were decimated and today my coloured grasses are all eaten down. I have put new high tree guards round the surviving trees but it is not possible to protect the smaller plants.

In some ways we are lucky. Human type raiders have been at work in Dixon’s Creek and stolen all sorts of machinery and other goods from fire-affected properties. These can be daylight raids too. Several times I have seen vehicles parked outside our property looking in that drive off extremely fast when I emerge from the donga to see if I can help them!
We had better experiences at the weekend when old friends from the NT came to visit us. We are very lucky to have such amazing friends. Sunday was particularly cold and miserable, Bo came to visit with her three young kids and then Eva and Craig dropped in with new baby Kiki. This just about packed us wall to wall but we managed to keep the kids entertained and have some conversations. Not much else to do on that sort of a day.

In contrast today it is sunny and warm. I have planted a chestnut tree. I have more trees to plant but it takes a long time to rig up their guards afterwards. It is also a good thing that deciduous trees do not look very edible at this time of year. I believe wombats, rabbits and deer are my main enemies but with the sort of damage done maybe we have feral giraffes!

The wicking bed is proving useful as its height deters some low life. We have started to eat the lettuces and I am replacing them with baby spinach. I need to build more wicking beds but with all the distress my garden is causing me I have decided to change tack and concentrate on restoring our egg production system. Over the next week I will buy point of lay chooks and I have already brought heavy earthenware pots for their food and water plus another roll away egg box. The latter are essential to stop the wild birds grabbing all the eggs.

Josh has started his new semester’s work and says he has been told he needs to learn the international phonetic spelling system. We googled it last night and goggled at it. I have tried to send Josh a message using it but to make it work one needs perfect pronunciation. It is based on English but there are a million ways of pronouncing that. Helpfully it goes through mouth shapes, may be if we new it we could learn lip-reading as well. As Josh is still floundering with the present spelling system why not confuse the situation a bit more. He has nothing to loose.

More to the point, tomorrow is Edd’s last day teaching for a while. How I wish we had the plans done and could start building our house. Al is off over the school holidays with his family to build bark huts or something in an Aboriginal community so I have little hope of any help from that direction. Edd is getting very cranky about things.

winter woes

9.6.2010

This is the school class that moved the sheep for us last week

I think what I really want to do is hibernate. It would suit me to get into a comfy warm bed and sleep until winter is over. The thing that really mystifies me is how on earth I survived last winter. We are so much better off this year. We have the goats in a better place where we can milk them without slopping around in mud, we have a toilet close by, even if it is still bucket flushed and we have the shed roof over the cars so that one can drive out of here without sinking ankle deep in mud trying to get into the car.

Perhaps the relative lack daily survival struggles are responsible for the hibernation desire. Last month Josh was struggling to complete his assignments and worked long hours in the donga. It was all very cramped with three of us living and working in such a small space. Luckily, Josh is now back in Perth because this week Edd has had to dominate the space to get his reports finished for school. It would be awful if they had both had to compete for working space.

Actually, I am really worried about Josh. He is doing exams this week and I do not think he is getting any allowance for being dyslexic, which can be a recipe for failure. If he gets through enough to go on with his course it will be a miracle. I just hope he will be OK. He has worked so hard and is actually pretty good at understanding the concepts. Seems so crazy to me. Australia is short of audiologists and instead of setting up a really good training system and supporting people to get qualified they seem to be making it into some sort of academic competition. Of course, the same thing is happening with doctors. They train lots of brilliant academics but end up with no country doctors at all!

There is not much I can do about this, or anything else at present. I have organised everything I can for the new house but we have to wait for engineering comps and then get it through planning. We have been stuck at this stage for ages but Al says that this week some work has been started. The next problem is that with the weather this bad it is not an ideal time to start building. However, the shortest day is only a couple of weeks away and then things will work there way round to better times.

The leaves are finally starting to fall off the deciduous trees. A mangy wombat is systematically destroying my vegetable garden and the goats are finally drying up as their pregnancies move on. The chooks continue to trickle enough eggs in for us to have all we need and the wonderful high school kids moved the sheep into the new area we fenced off ready for lambing. I take them a bucket of feed each morning so I can check them. I thought I might have to retrain them to come up for food but on their first morning in the new paddock they were all up at the gate waiting for me. Bright sheep, with good memories?

David H is still helping me recover the garden. As well as working like a Trojan he keeps me sane. We had a good day yesterday digging out weeds and humping mulch in the area by the cellar. I have replaced the lost macadamia nut tree and plan to add two orange trees on the lower slopes. The wicking bed has grown reasonable sized lettuces and is above wombat height. I have added more seedlings to use the space as we consume the lettuces.