in the vicinity of little dip
Some action out here with Adam on the excavator–levelling around the house read for the shellgrit base (on two sides) and the pavers. He also made a level pad down the slope for the cars. Took a while–would have taken quite a while with a shovel and wheelbarrow–maybe a year. . .
Also had a truckload of shellgrit delivered for the base–that I will be shovelling, but should be fine. . .
It’s Anzac Day–always a challenging day in Australia. Here is a piece I wrote for our family, about Dad/Poppy, and Mum/Nanny–something of a record for younger generations and a little bit of speaking truth to power, perhaps.
Out and about. The Casuarinas are in full pollination, rivers of gold. And the boundary path (with Joey)–you can see the Melaleucas in the background, still flowering.
Here are a few scenes from recent walks on country–not ours, the Boandik people’s, which we are holding in stewardship for the time being.
This first group is from a grove (what is the Australian equivalent–mob?–probably) of Casuarinas, or Sheoaks–old trees whose lineage goes back to the early evolutionary times. They are diecious–which means that there are male trees and female trees, with wind-blown pollen–it seems very inefficient but it must have worked because they have been on the planet a lot longer than a great many other plants.
At this time of year the male trees are pollinating hopefully, which accounts for the yellow tinge you can see here. The dark green trees are the female trees, hanging around waiting for something to happen. Today it’s calm so probably nothing exciting on at the moment.
The kangaroos like the seedlings so it’s quite hard to get them to grow–you have to protect them–but here in the wild the young trees are doing very well together. Maybe clustering together like this gives them some kind of protection.
If you click on a photo and run the slide show the details will show up better.
A couple of days a front came through, with the rain drifting across. Dylan Thomas wrote somewhere (I think “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”) of the rain “shawling down”, a lovely and evocative phrase, and just right here.
One doesn’t really want to be anywhere else.
The tractor needs a proper baseline service, and it happens that Gary’s son Sam fixes up and services old tractors as a hobby. So he and Gary kindly came out on Sunday morning and began that task. The first stage was to take the hood off and clean it all with an air compressor and pressure hose. Amazing what was underneath!–all sorts of numbers for parts and so on, and a welded double air and oil-bath filter–very cool! The second stage will be to change the filters (which Sam is sourcing online–also the manual), drain oil and fluids and get it all back up–it should fly now! I’ve been telling Sam he has a business here–plenty of old tractors need knowledgeable care. .
A propos of nothing at all, here are a few photos of life in the new house.
Here is Joey hard at work alongside me as I was writing on the couch during the day–he’s happy just to be around:
Here is a a sea-fog moving across Roland and Angie’s hill–these are the summer fogs, which come towards the end of summer when a high pressure system sits over us and keeps the morning cool and damp:
And here is a full moon rising behind Roland and Angie’s hill:
This evening a swamp wallaby turned up grazing the slashed grass along the drive–he was gone before I could get a photo but this is a copied image of what they look like:
See, I said it was a propos of nothing much–just the new kind of living out here.
Well, it got done! Here we are in the new house, and very relieved and happy to be here. The entry day was thoroughly chaotic and down to the wire, and a hot day as well, but it all went well in the end. Since then we’ve been sorting through the pile of stuff and throwing a lot of it out, which is always liberating, I find.
There are various house functions still being bedded down–inevitable with a construction out in the country, where everything has to be put in place–water, power, etc. The week before we moved two pumps broke down, bees moved into the chimney box and were removed, and so on. I thought I knew all about pumps, but now I know more! On the other hand we had good luck with some important bigger things, so we came out in front. And we’ve had more luck since we’ve been in–including resolving an intractable matter with the phone company which had been going on for a year–achieved with one call.
Here are a few pics to give you the flavour of it.
This is moving day: it was interesting bringing the furniture in through the east gate up the hill and maneuvering it through the door! I can see we are going to get very fit. Nanks distinguished himself by throwing the sofas on his back one at a time and marching up there, before I could intervene. That trailer might be the best piece of equipment we own, however–rides beautifully, very useful.
And here is the first lunch after the entry–Lesley happy–and all the stuff piled up in the background.
This is the first evening: the lovely lights on in the main room, with Lesley waving. . .
. . .and a new moon and evening star in the west.
Lesley is only wanting pictures of the inside of the house to go up when she feels things are ready to be shown. Here is an authorised picture of her kitchen, from the front door. The painting is by Loise, done at school, representing all the members of the family.
So all is going well. The next main project is to landscape around the house. We are hoping to use lakestone, which is a unique local stone that turns up on the floor of wetlands. The next door neighbour seems to have some, so we’re hoping we can get it there. That will go out a couple of metres from the house, and then the idea is to plant native, water-wise shrubs and ground cover–there are some lovely aromatic native plants with beautiful flowers that we have our eye on.
Thank you all for your support! I’m sure your attention held the project together, through its many ups and downs, and finally ups! More pics to come soon. . .
Here is the latest vehicle purchase–mainly for Lesley to use between the farm and town when I’m away, and around the district. A Toyota Camry, probably early 2000s, I think–200k kilometres, for sale by Dougal who runs the local Mobil, his niece’s car. I took it for a drive and looked under the hood–looks ok, using some oil–will need two new tires soon and probably brakes. . .so if it keeps going reasonably well for say 30,000km it will have done the job. So tractor and car, both needed for the move out there, for $2800 which is ok, I think–I wasn’t sure how we would get them done–fingers crossed!
The floors have now been given a final polish and then sealed. So you can get an idea now of how it’s going to look!–the windows still have to be cleaned, of course. Here’s the lounge room, looking north and east–run the slide show and you’ll see the slightly different views, one with the northern door, one more to the east.
The David Brown tractor is back home! The olive block has been sold and I had a call from them to see if we wanted the tractor. I had been ruminating on what we would do, because we really need something out on the land, but new mowers/tractors are expensive. After some tight negotiating the price was right, and it is, you’d have to say, very timely–so David and I went over today, tested it out, and I bought it, and drove it back to the block. All done! It seems to be running well–touch wood. It also means we can run the other implements we have there, and the trailer, and so on. Now we can think about doing some real farming–muntries, lavender oil, ti tree oil. . .
