bobo creek

2012-01-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

We had a bit longer at Bobo Creek this time. Necessary to recover from our first fritter festival (alliterative, I know) at Peats Ridge. We've been cooking our famous corn fritters at local markets for about 9 months now and felt it was time to try a larger crowd. We spent the weeks leading up to the festival making huge batches of our Chilli Jam and Roast Capsicum Relish and ordering eggs and yoghurt and corn and all the ingredients for our gluten-free flour mix....

Well, large it was and work we did and sleep we did not. But, apart from a steep learning curve which will hopefully form a useful trajectory, we had a great time. And our fritters were really popular. We made paletas too (basically delicious fruity and creamy popsicles) and they were such a hit. In fact we couldn't keep up with the demand.

So, Pete and I needed to chill out at the property for a day or two before we got stuck into some real work.

Here are the two dogs exploring by the creek:

We insulated and lined the ceiling of the 3m deck with heavy duty metal-backed insulation foam and really nice dark recycled timber panels. A little bodgy as the joists were a bit curved, but it looks great.

Then we used dacron-filled cargo blankets to insulated the ceiling. It sounded easy - staple gun the fabric to the trusses and hold it all in place with strips of wood. But...Pete had really sore arms at the end and I blunted so many blades trying to cut through the dacron.

You can see our new solar light set hanging in place. Excellent thing with a little cell and battery that will charge mobile phones and Kindles.
The next day found time to cut up more of the heavy-duty insulation and line each recess of the stud walls at either end (East and West facing). It meant measuring every panel and cutting accordingly with Pete wielding the gun and me the knife (typical isn't it) .

some painting from our trips to bobo creek recently

2011-11-12T03:06:00.001-08:00

I struggle with watercolour - but at least I persist with it. Wish for more time and courage with the medium!
Here is a little study of the view from our deck to the East:

And down by the creek. Beautiful grey-black smooth rocks in the shade:

A quick sketch looking West from the deck:

Trees down by the creek:

sporadic work on the property

2011-10-10T04:59:00.000-07:00

problem being we only get up there every five or six weeks! and only between markets on the weekends. but better than not at all...
this time was school holidays and springtime - although it felt more like winter. again, the area has received much rainfall and it was even muddier than before. we were glad we'd dug little gutters across the road and pathways to divert a bit of the water.

the good news was two-fold: the newly installed watertank next to the cottage was more than half full, and that's with only one gutter installed. second, was that the citrus orchard area we trialled with a dozen or so plants on the slope below to the east of the cottage seems to be a good spot. the trees have really come on well, with blossoms on the limes and lemons.

bad and good news was that somehow cattle are on the property again and trampling all over stuff and compacting the soft earth with their wretched hoofs! BUT they do massive and luscious poohs everywhere. so i gathered heaps and worked them into the garden around the watertank.

the pooh came in handy for planting the 20 grevillea and callistemon plants we took up. they (the plants that it) are on the hillside above the cottage.

With help from josh we managed to drain the shed tank down in the bottom paddock, tip the tank over and rebuild the sagging tank stand. the whole thing was looking so precarious and we were worried it might collapse. so now it is really strong and will last for years.

and our neighbour keith came over with his chainsaw, expertise, entertaining stories and an esky of beer to cut the tree down that was directly in front of the cottage. we were sad to see it come down, but knew it was inevitable. keith first got pete up the tree to loop a sturdy rope about the upper trunk. this was attached to our tractor. pete idled the tractor and i waited for keith's signal.

a diagonal cut first and then a straight cut below it to form a wedge, and then from the other side a horizontal cut in. pete moved the tractor to gently pull the tree in the right direction and it gracefully toppled. the wedge itself formed a hinge. it didn't take long at all and now the view from the deck is even better.

so that was about it. not much music. no painting. a bit of reading. the usual amount of eating.

and here are a few random pics:
moss on a rock

more rocks

creepers on a tree by the creek

the bottom paddock

the raging creek

watertank and a new orchard

2011-08-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

pete and i had a productive few days midweek. we managed to install the watertank next to the cottage, planted a new orchard and did a major re-organisation of our recycled building materials.

the area has had a fair bit of rain lately so the creek was pretty full:

the road across the lower paddock was wet too and we worked to cut channels to direct water away from the road itself.

eventually the roads will be reworked to provide useful catchment and transporting of water around the property. everything needs to work together to manage water on a rural property. we can't waste a drop!

we've wasted a bit in not being able to fully install the tank last time we were up. this time we carefully landscaped around it and pete built a good retaining wall to help avoid water washing across the pad and undermining the tank.

herbs planted around the tank as well as some lomandra grass and a pair of passionfruit plants to train over the tank itself.

we started a new orchard area, that pete keyline plowed last year. it's sheltered and north-facing so should go well. we put in a variety of citrus that i've had in pots at home as well as a trio of mulberries grown form cuttings, a mango and a couple of guava trees.

here, behind the guava tree you can see the keyline cut from last year.the whole area holds more water now than before the plowing

finally we shifted huge loads of timber that has been stored in front of the cottage. it was all looking a bit of a mess, so now is sorted and stacked on metal frames to keep it off the ground and away from hungry insects.

another winter-time visit

2011-07-10T20:48:00.000-07:00

we managed another five days mid-week - between markets in sydney!

we were anxious to know how the recent deluge and subsequent flooding had effected the place, especially the cabin which is well and truly within the flood zone.

pete and i drove up on monday morning with the two dogs and were joined by more teenagers and our friend suzanne (an adult, thank god!)

well, the cabin did go under, although it was saved by the swinging walls that allowed the water to flow through.

there were eddies of driftwood and leaves around the legs of furniture and we lost a few buckets that must have floated away. the broom was about a hundred metres from the cabin in the bush. it all felt pretty clean though and kindling for the fire was in neat piles. the grass and bush around the creek has a distinctly brushed look to it, and the remnants of "bob dwyer" are festooned with leaved and little twigs.

the dam was a bit damaged by 6inches of rain in 24 hours, and as it is such a crappy dam it didn't do so well. we cut a channel to allow for overflow and our excellent neighbour keith "simmo" came over with his amazing envy-inspiring 4wd tractor and did some repairs for us:

pete unloaded the last of the concrete blocks.

we had music and good food (natch!)

over the few days we managed to finish the pad for the watertank and moved the tank (thanks to suzanne, jesse and gabe) down from where it had been moored to a tree for a year. next time pete will complete the plumbing from the roof to the tank and it can start to fill up. you can see the watertank in this photo, along with mookhi and manny-rose sitting on the deck:

suzanne and i staked all the trees in the three orchard areas. the avocados we planted last time are looking good. the papayas don't look very happy, but are hardy things. suzanne remarked they look like they want someone to stand there and hold their trunks for a few months.

i had time for a brief walk and relax by the banks of the creek with the dogs...

we got to the property last week

2011-05-31T16:18:00.000-07:00

so glad we went last week and not now as it's been pouring rain and there's flash flood warnings on the mid-north coast.

so pete and i took a car-full of plants again, guitars, paints, books, food, beer, piano accordion and no dogs or children to bobo creek for five days.

pete took the flu too so spent a day or so lying in the sun on the deck of the cottage and felt better after that.

i planted avocados, figs, lilly-pillys, papayas and many other trees in our various orchard areas and flattened more of the pad for the water tank next to the cottage. pete managed to get the wiring in the cottage done, so now we can insulate and line the cottage walls. we slept up there as the cabin by the creek in the heavy shade is so so cold. perfect in summer but not now!

here are some shots from inside the cottage, and our various bits and pieces:

late autumn at bobo creek

2011-04-23T00:40:00.000-07:00

late afternoon light

another brief time at bobo creek, but four nights is better than none. the weather was perfect; warm autumn days and chilly nights.
olympia came along with both dogs, and some friends joined us.
pete got some of the guttering in place and rat-proofed the cottage (yay!) and i started to dig the site out for the water tank that will go next to the cottage. hard yukka actually as the soil was soft but clay-ey and each clod glued itself to the shovel and the mattock.
the rest of the time?
swimming (but not dallying) in the creek
cooking and eating
sitting around on the deck by the creek
enjoying good company
walks to take in the views
music making
and did i mention eating?

here are a few pics so you will get the idea...
the afternoons are beautiful in autumn

scout brought her tennis ball

olympia walking with the dogs

olympia found a tiny green frog in the long grass

this is the view from our bed

and this is where we have our morning cuppa

i finished scout's winter jacket

connie and suzan and manny-rose and jesse came to stay

a brief autumn weekend

2011-03-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

we left late thursday afternoon when i'd finished teaching. our car was full of plants and wood for the property:

roof rack and trailer-load too.

the creek looks good and was great for a brief and cold swim after gardening.

i brought a lot of bulbs that i'd found for 50c a packet and planted them around the cabin and the cottage.

we didn't get much done apart from planting and organising the piles of timber, but enjoyed the autumn weather and our magnificent views.

we checked on the plants we'd put in before summer to see how they'd fare. on the whole pretty good. the soil in the keylined areas was moist and obviously holding water well.

on the way home we stopped at nabiac show. these variegated roses seemed popular in the produce pavillion. and overpowering in their scent.

and enormous pumpkins,

pics from pete's phone camera

2011-02-21T20:21:00.001-08:00

these photos are mostly similar to mine, but from a higher altitude.
some of the views are new and show more angles of the completed exterior.

beef ragout en pleine air

2011-01-12T23:32:00.000-08:00

i love cooking outside. we have an excellent petrol stove thanks to my sister and her husband, chris. it is so efficient and cheap to run, and of course, cooking outside means you can wash up outside too. and drop stuff on the deck and no-one minds.
so here is an easy stew that i made on our last night of our stay at bobo creek this time. it easily serves four people:

1kg cheap beef (like chuck steak) chopped in big cubes
2 or 3 onions chopped
bacon
garlic, bayleaves, herbs etc
tomato passata (about 1 litre)
red wine
mushrooms
flour, salt and pepper
olive oil and butter

begin by heating the oil with the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, and fry the onions until soft, add the diced bacon and bay leaves and herbs, and brown well. toss the meat in a good handful of flour with salt and pepper and then fry, again until browned. add the chopped or sliced mushrooms and the garlic. it should all be getting pretty rich and sticky on the bottom of the pan. resist de-glazing the pan until you worry that the whole thing is getting too brown! then pour in a good cup or so of the wine. once the bottom is loosened up add the tomato passata. turn heat down low and cover, stirring every now and then, for a few hours until the meat is soft enough for your liking.
serve with bread or pasta and some greens - a salad or wilted spinach. we put some parmigiana on top and some more fresh herbs.
delicious and easy.

ticked off with chemical repellents for paralysis ticks

2011-01-11T00:39:00.000-08:00

despite spraying scout and jessie with the most expensive of tick repellents and daily checking, scout came back from bobo creek with a huge female paralysis tick under her eye. luckily izzy found it on sunday afternoon and with some difficulty we managed to get it off. unfortunately i squeezed it with the tweezers as i removed it. i gave her a big dose of ground up vitamin c mixed with honey.

monday morning saw a listless scout with her back legs starting to seize up. so i gave her more vitamin c every couple of hours. she would rally and then get a little tired and sick and then pick up again at each dose, but there was definite improvement by the evening and by this afternoon she is back to normal. pete and i are great fans of the efficacy of vitamin c to ward off and cure colds, but you must take really big doses. i was giving scout 6000mg at a time. she had a bit of diarrhea, but that was all.

there is no toxic dose of vitamin c. i have researched it a lot and am convinced that it cured scout this time. a dog is a liability on the mid-north coast of nsw, and we must be very careful with them.

the cottage is progressing

2011-01-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

we drove up to bobo creek on new year's day and stayed for just over a week. we had izzy and mookhi there for most of the time, and rosie came up for a few days. my parents visited - the first time my mama has seen the property, and we had pete's sister and family and mother call in on their way back to soggy brisbane. they brought pete's neice and nephew - leah and josh who stayed for three nights. so it was busy and fun and very kid-oriented for a while, but they are all good workers and we got a lot done.
rosie

adrienne, laurice and pete

david and joan

despite the deluge that has hit most of new south wales and a lot of queensland, the mid-north coast has had significantly less-than-average rainfall. it's still looking pretty green and in good condition, although the creek was very low, and not so nice to swim in with a lot of leaf-litter. but, swim we did! the extra "damming" of the creeek to slow the erosion by obstructing the rush of water during heavy storms means that the water downstream (that is to the west) is cleaner than at the eastern end. the debris must be filtering the water a bit.

the effects of pete's keyline plowing is still very evident especially on long gentle slopes where the benefits appear below the plowed area as well.

well, our intention was to try and get the rest of the cottage clad in the remaining cedar weatherboard strips and buy whatever extra we might need, and to oil all the external timber. to do the eastern wall we needed some scaffolding and over a beer or two with our neighbour "simmo" discovered that he was very happy to lend us his. so, for a few jars of jam we were able to set up his scaffolding and leave it up as long as we need it.
the process is pretty simple and the cedar cuts like balsa wood. pete measured, josh and i sawed the strips and then held them in up while pete gunned them into place. we did it without the generator and circular saw as it is so much more peaceful without it's roar. while we did that rosie oiled all the cedar and the window frames (huge effort!). izzy and leah oiled the front door.

i had mixed up our own oil for the posts and bearers and joists and did it again for the cedar. i used gum turpentine, linseed oi, beeswax, sunflower oil and some essential oils. it smelled great and looks even better.

we were short by about five planks so we drove into taree to get some more. the smell of the freshly cut cedar filled the car. five planks was over $150. we are constantly reminded of our amazing good fortune in buying the whole cottege on ebay for $900!

you can see the colour difference between the old and new cedar.

there is a rainbow here, ending at the tent down by the creek.

we had a variety of weather from really hot on arrival to torrential downpours, especially at night. rosie spent her spare time (before the rain came) with her guitar on a little hill, or down by the creek. she wrote a lovely song that got lodged in our heads called "mr mosquito". pete finished a song too. catchy as... i painted a few little watercolours. we spent a bit of time lying in the hammocks snoozing and reading. we did eat rather well as always. i'll post a recipe or two.

a king parrot paid us a visit and enjoyed our sunflower seeds.

once the cladding was done pete got up on the roof to screw in place the metal capping that covers the edges. i'm sure it has a fancy name.

i finished the decking and we had just enough timber to do this. by this stage the rain had started and the work was done between showers. we didn't mind sitting on the deck watching the rain and the view.

it was a great opportunity to show the property off to those close to us who hadn't seen it before. now i think they understand our passion for what we are doing there.

izzy at lunch

josh

leah

mookhi

grubby scout

i took these pictures for olympia (mookhi), as i know she would appreciate the dramatic lighting.

but a lot more work to do...

so long since we visited!

2010-11-20T22:39:00.000-08:00

panorama at dusk

at last, pete and i got back up to bobo creek for a two night weekend visit. we've had so much stuff on recently, including the big move from one suburb of sydney to another, that we have had no time.

anyway, the weather was perfect, a little drizzle the first day clearing to warm but not hot on sunday. pete repaired the tractor. we put the back exterior cladding on the cottage, planted half a dozen olive trees and some lilly-pillies. we had a long walk on friday late afternoon before relaxing on the deck with guitar and blues harp and a cider or two, and steak and mushrooms for dinner.

the olives we planted

the high-light of our weekend was a visit from a guy i have met via flickr. he's a keen rainforest species collector, collator and identifier. he also loves apple jelly, and had begged me to make some. well, i made a big batch recently and invited him to pay a visit and pick some up, as they live on the coast a little further north of us. so, terry, his wife, barb and terry's parents june and max arrived on time with teacake and rainforest plants in pots. we had a cup of tea with pikelets and jam too, and learned so much about the area. max wright is the great grandson of the founder of tuncurry and he and june have lived in the area for a long time, as prolific producers of honey among other things. terry and barb have 6.5 acres of restored rainforest at diamond beach.

we took terry on a rambling walk around the property to show him where we have keylined - which is all looking fantastic and noticeably more moist and green than the areas that haven't been ploughed yet. we showed him our favourite parts of the creek and were able to ask him to identify many plants and vines that we hadn't managed to name yet. it was so exciting and affirming to us to hear terry and max's approval and praise for the beauty, the aspect (all north-facing slopes) and the potential for our property. max suggested passionfruit, and terry suggested davidson plum in the far-east flats, and told us how to extend the riparian zone and link the rainforest the the paperbark groves. he gave a us a good list of species to look out for and places to buy seeds. we said goodbye feeling like we had made four new really good friends and allies!

one of the plants brought by terry

pete and i finished the cladding on the wall of the cottage and then relaxed until sunday morning and the big pack up. i managed to rid the creek area of a few camphor laurel trees and a lot of lantana. we don't mind lantana in certain areas of the property as we feel it has a transitional role to play, but we are going to try and keep it out of the rainforest and plant other more appropriate species.

pete hard at work. i did work too but there are no photos of that!

here's the view from the back of the cottage in the late afternoon
another view

here is one of the grevilleas i planted in march with my sister and her husband and the twins helping

a spring weekend

2010-09-14T02:15:00.000-07:00

the view from the deck in a westerly direction

how nice are windows without walls?

you can see the crayon marks that are helping us put the cottage back together. and we have decided to put another deck on the back of the house too.

pete slashed the bottom paddock and almost got it done but a thick branch hit the oil filter and it stopped. poor old peggy-sue (that's name olympia has given our old massey-ferguson).

cottage update

2010-08-20T00:20:00.000-07:00

pete and dom have been up at the farm for nearly two weeks now and going great with the building. all building is frustratingly slow because it involves so much. all that measuring and checking and squaring up and checking again and all those nails and screws and bolts. not to mention the wind there over the last few days. but here are some pics...

winter working bee

2010-08-15T20:56:00.000-07:00

it's cold at bobo creek at night. we needed an open fire both evening and morning until the sun reached us down by the creek. there was ice on the walls of the tents!

pete and his brother dom (out from germany to help with the cottage build) spent the week working on the cottage. they got a lot done despite some rain and wind. a whole lot of us joined them for the weekend and even more was achieved. as well as some music, lots of food and fun with scout and the children. pete's other brother, paul, was there and our good friend aidan. all competent builders. then the brothers' school mate joe drove down from brisbane for the night with his wife, darlene. that's an 8 hour drive one way. good friends! we needed extra tents:

the frames are in place and the roof trusses. windows and doors too.

i made sure i hadn't missed any of the keyline-ploughed area for vetch seed. the little seeds are about 4cm tall now.and i broadcast more vetch seed over the entire bottom paddock. when pete has a moment he'll slash over that area.
as well i put in some more lomandra grass. as you can see, the far side of the creek is in worse shape than our side due to damage from cattle which won't happen again as the neighbours' have fence all their paddocks. i've been trying to plant along the other side and lomandra grass is excellent for securing creek banks.

keyline ploughing

2010-08-03T03:51:00.001-07:00

pete spent four days at bobo creek up on the tractor dragging a two-tine keyline plow (for some reason the american version is correct). first he had to use the laser level to mark out the contours and then follow along with the tractor. it is slow laborious work, made worse by the number of rocks and stones he encountered. some of the slope is too steep to do and a lot of it is really scary. when i arrived on the friday i was amazed to see how much he had a achieved and overnight rain was gathering in the narrow slits. i followed each furrow and made sure any overturned clods were put back - the rocks tend to drag the furrow wider than it should be, and i trickled some vetch seed in. the vetch is a lucerne-like green winter crop that is nitrogen fixing. it has a pretty purple flower.

i include part of an article by darren doherty and abe collins describing the wholistic keyline approach:

• Rapid development of biologically active, fertile soil within a systematically designed landscape. During an average three-year conversion phase, four to six inches of new topsoil are typically formed each year. This new topsoil stores large quantities of water in the landscape.
• Design for the harvest, storage and distribution of water on the landscape forms the foundation of the Keyline Plan.
• Run-off water is stored in dams. This water is later released for rapid, gravity-powered flood-irrigation.
• Roads, forests buildings and fencing follow primary water layout and fit together within the lay of the land.
• The Keyline landscape is a permanent landscape in which every infrastructure component helps ensure the maintenance and renewal of the topsoil within it.

good even and narrow cuts

but lots of rocks

water in the cuts the following day

pete and jessie

vetch seed in my improvised pouch

ticks and puppy

2010-07-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

this is sleepy scout, probably feeling the effects of seven ticks
this is scout on the way home, after her ordeal
all that romping around in long grass at bobo creek nearly proved fatal to little scout. despite it being winter and supposedly not tick season she picked up seven tiny ticks that produced symptoms a few days later. she spent four days at the vet on a glucose drip and needed repeated dosages of tick serum. poor darling. and she was shaved! she looks even smaller next to jessie, but she is full of beans and ravenous.
with warmer winters and unseasonal rain there is no longer a clearly defined tick season. especially on the mid-north coast. so take care.

joists are up

2010-07-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

we can now say we know the difference between bearers and joists. we got a lot done on the weekend, thanks to aidan and catherine and three girls and two dogs. the dogs were most appreciated at night inside sleeping bags as it was pretty cold.
we feasted on butter chicken and chappattis rolled with a gas cylinder by sophie - in the absence of a proper rolling pin. we sat around the fire at night and olympia and izzy got to play five-hundred with our guests. the weather was better than the bureau predicted so we had sunny days and clear nights ablazoned with stars.
here are pics from the delivery of the timber to the joists up on the bearers:

sophie and scout
and the creek is still beautiful

building this weekend

2010-07-07T22:58:00.000-07:00

we are rallying the troops and spending a mid-winter weekend at bobo creek. by "troops" i mean three of four daughters and two female dogs. and me, and pete. we are meeting our builder friend, aidan with his partner, catherine. aidan and pete and various troops will start the build. we hope to get posts and some amount of bearers and joists in place. in a few weeks pete's brother, dom, comes from germany to work on the rest of the cottage.
i'll post some pics when we get back next week.

june long weekend

2010-06-15T04:31:00.000-07:00

a sunny weekend at bobo creek on the warmer edge of winter had us actually using mathematics in real life to site the outside loo and laundry that will be just up the hill from the cottage. being on a slope we used good old pythagoras' theorem to figure out just where to put the holes for the footings underneath. we got to use our excellent laser level too and the following day our kind neighbour, colin, brought his post-hole digger attachment on his gorgeous tractor and whizzed out four holes for the loo and another four holes for the cottage. then we had to dig out the rest of the soil and drill into the rock and glue big bits of reo in before the cement truck came out to pour the footings. in the meantime we had tim minty, our wonderful geotech guy come out to check them for safety and for the sake of council regulations... (this is called dotting our i's and crossing our t's.) but tim is a wealth of information on all things geological and agricultural, so we learned a lot.
using a block and tackle we got the slasher off the trailer and onto the ground. a couple of missing pins meant we couldn't get any slashing started, but will get into that next time.
i got time to paint briefly and we had some good walks and ate well of course.

slasher

2010-05-31T04:32:00.001-07:00

ebay is a wonderful thing. knowing we were driving from perth to sydney in our new (second) pajero, we could look for a slasher coming up on ebay en route. we found a little beauty outside ballarat in victoria, and collected it on our way through victoria. it is still sitting on the trailer, attached to the new car, but will go up to the property soon and start slashing in order to provide some much-needed mulch.
here is pete helping the seller load the slasher onto our trailer:

DA through!

2010-04-28T02:56:00.000-07:00

we think... that it is all sorted. we don't have the construction certificate in our hands yet, but are assured that it is coming. council and dept of lands have decided that we have the option to buy the two bits of roads that have been so hotly debated. we received signatures (so kindly) from both neighbours along whose property the roads passes, to say they don't object to us owning the roads. it's actually great as we will need only one gate (instead of the three that i always seem to be the one who opens) and will have a nice amount of land along which to plant trees - as one of the roads is 20 x 800m!
so pete and izzy and jessie and i spent a long weekend at the property and drove around on the tractor (such fun) and talked over the shed location and dams and stuff and the urgent need for a mulcher and a slasher and a post-hole digger...
but it was all so beautiful and the creek although low is a magic place and i saw wallabies in the morning near the dam and everything is growing...
izzy and i did some painting by the creek and pete and i played music by the fire at night..

some sketches at bobo creek

2010-04-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

i love the work of shay docking. this is influenced by her
and a very quick sketch

bows and arrows and water tanks

2010-04-03T03:37:00.000-07:00

still no news on the road but we are hoping we may get the opportunity to buy it. then, no more hassle. we can fence it and then will only need one gate instead of three (why is it that cows always poop right near a gate? and why is pete always driving and i'm always the gate opener?)
pete is up at bobo creek this weekend driving our new tractor home. he called me from atop the tractor on the top slope of the property. i think the tractor is called 'big red'.
we went up last weekend to take another trailer-load of stuff (meaning skylights, old doors, gates, wood - and more - all recycled, side-of-the-road). early autumn is beautiful there.
pete bought two bows and a whole lot of arrows and bits and pieces for archery including a beautiful leather quiver. so we felt like narnian kings and queens and shot at trees, and i shot a lot of arrows into the grass. pete lodged an arrow so hard into a distant three that the arrow head is still in the bark.
the cabin looks more rustic with the bows hanging on the wall.
and we took possession of two new water tanks. one is 25,000l and the other 10,000. right now they are tethered to trees in the area we are building the cottage and a new shed.

our DA is approved, BUT...

2010-03-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

we heard yesterday that our DA has been approved by council. this is excellent news for us as we are installing a worm farm for the complete waste management system and we knew our council could be a bit resistant to this kind of approach...

however, we can't use the approval until the access road i sorted. it has descended into a dispute between the local council and the department of lands as to who has responsibility. naturally neither want it... currently our neighbours across whose property it passes pay a nominal rent on the road as it is considered crown land. we may actually have to buy it. no idea how much that would be.

here is the map from the Land and Property Management Authority. our property is pink, and the road is lime green. how pretty.
we think they are debating it today. stay tuned!

gps

2010-03-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

we recently bought a gps hand-held unit for taking coordinates around the property. these will be vital for all sorts of things from swales and keyline ploughing coutours to dams and then positions of fruit trees and buildings etc. I took over 1000 readings last time i was at the property and we watched astonished as pete loaded the data into the gps visualiser that then laid the points over the google satellite map. amazing. here's a screen shot:

a productive visit

2010-03-17T20:04:00.000-07:00

we had a great time with my sister and her family at bobo creek last week. using a compost tea of molasses, em (effective micro-organisms), soil and creek water (i actually drank it too as i felt a cold coming on and it prevented it!), we softened the hard soil enough to be able to dig good holes to plant some grevilleas and calistemons. we want to try and attract more birds. the lilies and reeds (phragmites) in the dam are doing well. we planted more lemon grass and some vetiver grass near the dam and on the edges of the creek near the cabin.

off to bobo creek tomorrow

2010-03-05T03:58:00.000-08:00

i'm taking olympia and izzy up to the property tomorrow in the rain. pete can't come, but we're meeting my sister and her family up there for a few days of fun. we're taking jessie of course and loading the roof-pod of the pajero with grevilleas and calistemons and assorted herbs to plant. not to mention vetiver grass for the erosion on the dam edge.
these are not seed balls or unusual scatological samples, but gingernut cookies which i made for my brother-in-law chris, who loves them. you can try the recipe on my other blog..

keyline design and a new (old) tractor

2010-02-24T01:21:00.000-08:00

how cute is she?
well we've finally bought a tractor. as it happened (as it always does...) the guy next door upgraded his tractor and sold us the old faithful - a massey-ferguson, made in the 1970s. red and rather gorgeous. it will certainly do the job. now we need a slasher and we can get stuck into the parramatta grass.

pete did the keyline design course with the international expert darren doherty and then the following week attended a morning's demonstration of the plough in action with the local landcare group. slightly different approaches which i should get pete to describe in more detail. but he feels now her gets it, and immediately bought a handheld gps device so we can accurately plot out our land. we can use it to mark where we plant our trees and load all the data onto a map. so that with our laser level and our new tractor and the fact that we can hire a keyline plough for $10 per day(!) from our local landcare group means we just need the time at the property and we can achieve the things that we consider vital to the initial set up.

as well we are assembling more building materials. pete found two skylights on the side of the road and we were given a huge load or wonderful hardwood roof beams and struts which will be gorgeous cleaned up and oiled.

willows

2010-01-23T23:26:00.000-08:00

peter andrews and his system of 'natural sequence farming' extols the virtues of the willow - apart from its great service to the world of cricket - as a tree that is ideal (and traditionally used) for riparian restoration. australia faces a crisis due to the combination of global warming and gross mismanagement of our land, in particular our natural waterways. we only have to look at the murray-darling basin to see how dire it is:

the habitat along and around a creek or river is crucial for a healthy ecosystem. trees that grow in these areas form a necessary transition zone between land and water. these trees help to filter runoff and groundwater, removing pollutants from the waterway. because so much native vegetation has been cleared along creeks and rivers the natural cycle of floods and lulls have scoured deeper into the landscape. water that was usually slowed and controlled by the dense reeds and trees lining flows ever faster, causing more erosion. rain water flowing down from higher ground rushes unimpeded into the creeks and rivers, carrying precious topsoil which is easily washed away. so the cycle continues. willows, because of their tenacity and fast growth can halt this. their presence along a water way catches organic matter that is washing downstream. the raft of roots that grow form an environment that is ideal for platypus and fish, and the shade provided slows evaporation and further water-loss.

so they are important as a fast measure to halt some of the damage. of course there are native trees well-suited to the job, but they are slower growing and more susceptible to damage from fast-flowing or flooding creeks and rivers.
willows grow so easily as i found out when pete and i found one not far from here and took some cuttings. within two weeks they had grown masses of roots and were shooting with new growth.

we will have to be careful where and how we plant them and make sure they are not the 'restricted' species. but i love the idea of using them to grow a living arbour or fence...look at these.

used as a living erosion control retainer:

and this delighful post on the permaculture in brittany blog.

our DA is ready to submit

2010-01-21T20:33:00.000-08:00

i will never again assume that a development application is a straightforward affair. i shouldn't say that because we haven't even submitted it yet, but the assembling of all the bits was pretty daunting. thanks to the amazingly helpful woman at Taree Council who assured me that i wasn't stupid and that it was hard for everyone. we needed: 6 copies of floorplans, elevations and sections (drawn up by yours truly), 6 copies of site plan including vegetation, neighbour notifications, statement of environmental effects, bushfire plan, septic (which will be a worm farm), geo-tech report, basix certificate etc... anyway it is all done and the fees calculated by the council are reasonable because we are not building a mansion!

contouring

2010-01-18T17:09:00.000-08:00

we had 11 days at bobo creek amidst rain, heat, sun and fog. the creek is in good form and was quite high. we get to use our laser level and plot some contour lines using little orange flags that we made with thick wire hoops and orange tape. the contouring is quite easy, using the amazing laser level we bought on ebay for $70! as the top spins it emits a laser beam that in turn is picked up by a receptor that we mounted on an upright spirit level. as it lines up perfectly it lets out a beeping noise and we hammer a little flag into the grass...
the next step is to get a tractor and keyline plough to follow these contour lines. or not. pete has just completed a 3 day workshop with the expert of the keyline - darren doherty and has described ripping slightly off contour to encourage water away from the gullies and to spread it over a slope. all very technical and we have some major decisions to make regarding the purchase of a tractor. the plough we can hire for a few days from the manning valley landcare branch.

and we're concerned with the erosion on the banks of the creek and the fact the the roots of the massive casurinas that line the creek are increasingly exposed by the force of the water during flood. so, following the advice of peter andrews we assisted in the accumulation of logs and branches at places along the length of the creek. in many places there are already heavy trees and logs that have created natural water holes. we are hoping that adding to these places will trap some of the mass of organic matter that gets washed down and that in turn will provide an anchor place for more plants that will further strengthen the banks and slow the flow of the water. ultimately raising the overall water level is a desirable thing according to peter andrews.

away for a few days

2009-12-30T00:06:00.000-08:00

pete and i (and jessie of course) are going to bobo creek for more than a week. we can't wait and are taking some more lomandra plants for the dam. i plan to mix up a good batch of compost tea with 'em' and manure and molasses and wee and stuff to put on the dam wall.

there's been a fair bit of rain so we are hoping the cabin is not flooded, and hope even more fervently it doesn't flood while we are sleeping in it.

the car is mostly full of food though, as we take that pretty seriously (!). and i made some eggnog for the evenings, to maintain the festive spirit so to speak.

more importantly we are taking a whole lot of our compost worms to put down the toilet there. the previous paragraph will give them something to live for...

watch this and learn how to save the planet

2009-12-28T16:27:00.000-08:00

this is a coool clip, narrated by stephen fry...the message: plant more trees. we say: let more weeds grow too.

failure in copenhagen

2009-12-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

we do not have the fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement that millions around the world hoped the world leaders gathered in copenhagen would deliver.

from tck tck tck: "This weekend in Copenhagen, our world leaders failed us. But millions of people around the world have woken to the climate crisis, know that the science is clear and have come together to create a civil society movement the likes of which the world has never seen.

We speak with one voice in response to this climate shame with a mass "home page take-over" of dozens of major websites around the world. Our message is clear: World leaders are not done yet. Neither are we."

george monbiot laments the same old way of treaty-making that failed us yet again. we need a 21st century way of negotiation...george wasn't allowed in to the main forum and spent his time at the alternative one - klimaforum where the emphasis was on stewrdhsip rather than ownership. alas though for the failure of our so-called leaders. george writes:
"Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest; it was nice knowing you, not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns."

now individual and grassroot action will have to be ramped-up.

new trees and the bad rabbit

2009-12-17T18:01:00.000-08:00

reading peter andrews books made me impatient for willow trees on our property. they are very hard to find now, having been ripped out by zealous farmers and councils all over the place. they are a vital species for erosion control and for the general fertility of an area, and do not suck creeks dry as was thought, and do prepare the way (as pioneer species) for things like casurinas... so i found the last in stock from daleys in lismore. it arrived in great condition and i put it outside with some water. an hour later i realised the rabbit had eaten it and left a little stump! aaarrgh. i was so cross. it might recover...

there is no planet B

2009-12-14T17:25:00.001-08:00

seed collecting etc

2009-12-10T01:34:00.000-08:00

we are concerned with the erosion on the property, both on the road and the hillside as well as the banks of the creek. rapid water rises during floods have stripped a lot of soil from the roots of the trees along the creek. there are beautiful patches of thick green lomandra grass. which do a great job of holding the banks firm. last time we transplanted a clump onto the wall of the dam to see how it takes. marrickville council loves lomandra and it's all in flower. i've picked several fronds and they are laden with the seeds which resemble grains of rice with a black dot on each.
the other plant is tagasaste or tree lucerne, a fast growing fodder and nitrogen-fixing plant that hase many uses:
Animal fodder; the crude protein content of leaves is 20-24%, which compares favourably with high quality temperate pasture, all grazing animals, pigs and poultry readily consume the leaves, and there are no reports of toxic compounds.
Bee forage; one of the first trees to flower in spring and it is an excellent nectar source.
Timber and fuelwood; it produces a fairly dense wood, useful for woodturning, and has excellent potential as a firewood crop as it coppices readily.
Windbreaks; when mature as a close-planted 25-50 cm hedge it provides shelter from cold winds and summer heat. It can be used to underplant pine windbreaks that have developed gaps with age.
Alley Cropping; it has potential as an intercrop in temperate orchards and as a nurse crop for frost sensitive trees.
(that info was from this site.)

the seeds require heat for germination - sometimes repeatedly. the swollen ones are ready to plant.

this is a rather spindly seedling i'm nurturing:

my forest

2009-12-10T01:26:00.001-08:00

i'm building up a good collection of young trees from mango to silky oak, blueberry to japanese maple. i call it my forest and it's tucked down a pathway along the side of our house in sydney.
i've cut discs of hessian from old coffee bean sacks to cover the mulch so as when i hose them the water is diffused.
can't wait to take them up to bobo creek and get planting.

in praise of weeds

2009-12-02T01:45:00.001-08:00

all this talk of noxious weeds has led me to do a lot of reading and research about the subject. i have found a great post from duane norris on the natural sequence farming forum, and will quote it in full:

Etymologically, "weed" derives from the Old English word for "grass" or "herb," but during the Middle Ages the meaning has changed to indicate an undesirable plant that grows where it is not wanted, especially among agricultural plots. This has historically been the primary meaning of the word, although in the nineteenth century, American writers grew increasingly aware that calling a plant a "weed" was an arbitrary human judgment, as there is no natural category of weeds. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a weed "is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered." Today, biologists tend to share that opinion, since many of the plants that are designated as weeds are, in fact, closely related to popular crops. Indeed, "weed" has fallen out of usage among biologists, although those who study agriculture still find the term useful in discussions of weed control and management.

Weedy plants generally share similar adaptations that give them advantages and allow them to proliferate in disturbed environments whose soil or natural vegetative cover has been damaged. Naturally occurring disturbed environments include dunes and other windswept areas with shifting soils, alluvial flood plains, river banks and deltas, and areas that are often burned. Since human agricultural practices often mimic these natural environments where weedy species have evolved, weeds have adapted to grow and proliferate in human-disturbed areas such as agricultural fields, lawns, roadsides, and construction sites.

The weedy nature of these species often gives them an advantage over more desirable crop species because they often grow quickly and reproduce quickly, have seeds that persist in the soil seed bank for many years, or have short lifespans with multiple generations in the same growing season. Perennial weeds often have underground stems that spread out under the soil surface or, like ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), have creeping stems that root and spread out over the ground. A number of weedy species have also developed allelopathy, which is a chemical means to prevent the germination or growth of neighboring plants.

pete and i have been reading peter andrew's books "back from the brink" and "beyond the brink". amazing common sense stuff that challenges the very heart of traditional views of water management and agriculture in australia. i thoroughly recommend them to anyone concerned about climate change...

how to find willow trees to propagate? how to reassure the neighbours that the weeds are all doing a great job? how to fill up the creek with rock and tree trunks and reedbeds to slow down the water flow and halt the erosion? hmmm. tricky issues...

more photos

2009-11-30T19:09:00.001-08:00

somehow my blogging machine will only upload two photos into each post, so here are two more from the weekend.

late spring at bobo creek

2009-11-30T18:55:00.000-08:00

pete and i finally got back up to the property this last weekend. we had two full days there and took izzy who is 13, and of course jessie who is eternally a puppy.
the creek had a lot more water in it this time and we spent a fair bit of time swimming in the deep hole by the cabin. we spent a lot of time eating and drinking cups of tea and generally lazing around. we did slash a lot of thistles and lantana, which will just lay there and break down until we have a better system of composting. we planted some lomandra grass from the creek up onto the dam wall which is in bad shape due to the cattle that had access to the property and to the fact that the top soil was buried by whoever made the dam. speaking of cattle we had to refence a section of the back corner which had mysteriously unravelled (yes, all five strands of barbed wire), enabling our neighbour's cows to get back in. they are a skinny bunch and his place is over-grazed, so it is not surprising that they will take any chance to get in.
the more serious news is another neighbour pointing out some parramatta grass in the bottom pasture area. this is a noxious weed, so we have been researching ways to suppress is. goats are sounding an attractive option as we must avoid toxic sprays.
the area is all lush and green heading into summer.
the cicadas are out and incredibly loud at certain times of the day (actually all day!) pete measured the volume at over 80 decibels.

sour dough and rye and my bokashi soil

2009-11-17T01:41:00.000-08:00

these two images are not related except in that the success of both relies on gorgeous microorganisms. i'm still loving all my bacteria-ridden fermentation stuff that i do. kefir, kombucha, sour-dough and bokashi composting.
the sourdough bread is my latest - it's a blend of marrickville bacteria and wild yeast with a starter i bought that is supposedly from finland, with a bit of simon's french starter thrown in for good luck. i used some organic rye flour and carraway seeds. doesn't it look great. tastes awesome too.
as for the soil this is the end result of my bokashi bin. i blogged a few weeks ago about putting the contents of my bokashi bin in a large tub full of potting mix in the absence of a garden (in sydney). i added some bits from old pots plants, some kombucha mother (as i had too much) and more of the bokashi bran. the result is a rich dark loam albeit with a few chunks that haven't broken down yet - avocado seeds and egg shells and corn cobs. but it's been invaluable for potting up cuttings and seedlings.

paintings of bobo creek

2009-10-27T15:13:00.001-07:00

when i took my dad and two of the girls up to the property during the recent school holidays we all trooped down, with our paints and sketch pads, and enjoyed a few peaceful hours by the creek painting. despite the lower water level the creek is still a magic place; heavily shaded by rainforest remnant and ferns and masses of lomandra grass. the bed of the creek is strewn with large and small pebbles.
i sketch roughly with conte crayon then overlay watercolour before finishing it all with opaque black chinese ink applied with a fine brush.

bobo creek wildlife

2009-10-18T18:27:00.001-07:00

i took the younger girls and my dad, david, up to bobo creek for a few days last week. we timed the weather perfectly and enjoyed the recently-rain-refreshed landscape. the girls learned to drive the pajero slowly around the bottom paddock while i dug out thistles and checked over the land. the creek is low and a neighbour suspects that someone upstream is taking more water out than they should be. we'll have to investigate this, although we don't know what we could do. bring on the swales and dams. speaking of that, pete is booked in to do darren doherty's keyline design workshop in january, so we will be better equipped to make a start after that. the keyline method uses a series of linked dams, as we have in our permaculture plan, but also uses the yeoman's plow to allow water to penetrate deep into the soil without disturbing the rich networks of microorganisms.
anyway, i was thrilled to catch sight of two pairs of regent bowerbirds in a quiet grove down by the creek. they are unmistakable with vivid gold and black plumage. the photo is from this site.

we were playing cards one night when a little beetle started flashing bright light on the table. we turned out the gas lamp and watched in amazement as the tiny thing flew off, visible in the dark for a long way through the trees. it must be a male firefly which according to this website: "The males flash light as a signal whilst flying to wingless females on the ground. If the female is receptive she will return a weaker flash and couple will unite and mate."

the last encounter was rather unfortunate. we always take our dear jessie dog with us. she's a ridgeback cross mastiff and a gentle giant. she and the bunny lick each other and run around our sydney backyard together. jessie is familiar with our pet diamond python and also licks that gently. so i was not prepared to see her with a full-grown red-belly black snake between her jaws. i've never seen jessie 'go' for anything, so i guess while sniffing around some rocks she uncovered a snake who reared up at her. she killed it, which is sad, because we don't want to harm anything on the property and want to encourage wildlife. we've heard stories from neighbours about their dogs saving their lives and assumed jessie would certainly not fall into that category. but...now we'll have to be more careful with her, both for her sake and the sake of other poor snakes.
david with the unfortunate snake:

leaves on the creek

bokashi update

2009-09-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

i blogged a while ago about my further forays into the fascinating field of fermentation. how's that for alliteration! anyway, i've got jars of wonderful things fermenting away in the kitchen with weird scobys and bulbous grains swelling and suspended in colourful liquids. that's kefir, kombucha, em (effective micro-organisms), my sourdough starters and my homemade bokashi bin. the bin is not quite as lovely to look at as the kombucha, but it is doing really well. each evening we empty the day's food scraps (including: cooked and uncooked meat, fish, small bones, pastry, bread, dairy products, eggs, plate scrapings, fruit and vegetables, cooked left-overs, tea leaves and coffee grinds and more) into my bokashi bucket, sprinkle it well with the "pickling bran" (see recipe below), press down to keep as much air out as possible and seal the bin well. then, once the bin is full i have been transferring it to a larger sealed container outside. it gets a bit pongy in there as it really needs to be buried, but as we have only a pool and pebblecrete in sydney, it then has to go into a big earth-lined container which is then covered in more soil. i used two bags of potting mix this time. some of the bokashi waste can go directly into the worm farm, but our worms are pretty well fed. there should be a two week wait before the full bin is put into the earth or the earth-lined container. after a few weeks the waste breaks down beautifully to form rich dark soil - albeit with a few egg shells to be seen...

this is the pickled waste before being buried for two or three weeks

bokashi bran recipe
to one cup of warm water add 1 tablespoon of molasses and 1 tablespoon of effective microorganisms (you may have to google. i had it posted from this site). stir well and add to 500gm wheat bran. combine and place in a thick sealable plastic bag or plastic container. leave for two weeks without opening or disturbing. this is important! then use to sprinkle over the kitchen wastes in your bokashi bin.

here's a link to a great blog on bokashi.

nurturing trees

2009-09-17T03:28:00.000-07:00

i've been buying and propagating what i can in the way of fruit trees in order to raise them to a stage they can be planted at bobo creek. small trees are much cheaper than bigger ones. to far we've got lots of citrus, pear, fig, custard apple, feijoa, mango, boysenberry canes, blueberry, japanese maple and elm, white ash, liquid amber, bottlebrush, firewheel, grevilleas, crepe myrtle, dogwood and more that i've forgotten. there will be many more but it feels satisfying to be able to raise something here.

because of our delightful but voracious bunny, i have had to find a safe place or put everything up high. here is a little japanese maple that she savaged just after i'd repotted it. luckily it's started to sprout so should survive.

happy first day of spring

2009-09-01T05:08:00.001-07:00

today pete drove up to bobo creek to take the load of decking and floorboards, windows, doors and railings that we were virtually 'given' by the same guy that sold us the cottage in mosman. it has been a massive amount of work - lifting up up and denailing the floor, carrying really heavy things...but we will be so grateful for it all sometime in the future. and it saved a whole lot of old timber from being trashed.
meanwhile i grabbed some seville oranges at the end of their short season and am making bitter marmalade. beautiful spring weather, although rather too warm for this time of year. many parts of australia have experienced their warmest winters on record...

MHRDC - maximum harvestable right dam capacity

2009-08-30T19:57:00.001-07:00

something we all want to know... how much dam storage can we have on a property? here we are merrily designing dams on our property. but there is a limit to how much one is allowed to store. good news is that we can use water from the creek for washing, cooking(?), stock and kitchen gardens, and that given our rainfall and area we can have a total of 2 megalitres. that's about 2 olympic swimming pools, or 440,000 gallons thank you. of course with permaculture a lot of water is hidden away within the swales. if you want to calculate for your own place and live in nsw, try this department of water and energy calculator.

geo-tech report

2009-08-28T00:38:00.000-07:00

part of our development application and decisions regarding locating both cottage footings and the waste disposal/worm farm require a geologist's report. we were lucky to find a great expert in the area who spent time analysing soil and also giving us his knowledge and experience regarding the placement of a particular dam that we were hopeful about but unsure.. anyway Tim Minty's report gives that dam the thumbs up and he gives recommendations about the construction of the dam: (i quote from his report)

3. DAM CONSTRUCTION:
3.1 The top 200mm of soil should be pushed westwards off the surface of the proposed dam-site and stockpiled for landscaping etc.
3.2 There is only about 400mm of soil over the soft rock (siltstone). This gravelly plastic layer should be stockpiled for seating and also covering the geofabric membrane needed to seal the dam. Batter at 45º on the upper side when excavating.
3.3 Excavation of soft rock to a maximum of 4m below the surface will provide some of the fill needed to form the dam wall.
3.4 The base and sides of the dam wall to be the sandstone.
3.5 When filling the gap in the sandstone outcrop to start the dam wall bring gravel from the small quarry on the property.
3.6 When the gravel has been compacted in 200mm layers to fill the gap and raise the wall to about 2m above the sandstone it will be time to cover the inside face of the wall with a thin layer of clayey gravel.
3.7 This clay layer should then be covered with heavy black impermeable plastic sheeting overlapped at any joins.
3.8 The sealing plastic membrane should then be covered with clayey gravel to keep it in place.
3.9 Finally the overflow for the dam will need to be constructed over the road (which is to be built on the dam wall).
3.10 To prevent erosion the section of the overflow over the road should be weak concrete made by mixing one part of cement to four parts of the local road gravel.

notice tim recommends moving and preserving the top soil. some excavators just bulldoze over the top of it...
i'll try and indicate the location of the dam. it was paula's idea, and we really like it because it sits directly in front of the cottage and eventual house site looking northwards where the view is and visible from the main parts of the cottage and especially the deck. the dam is located on the edge of the escarpment where there is evidence of erosion and paula's suggestion is that the road deviate over the edge of the dam, thus compressing the wall. hard to describe, but think 'scenic'. here is the diagram of this area - 'ducks' is the dam site:
and here are two photos that show the edge of the area...
where the rocks are will be the dam.

our permaculture plan finalised

2009-08-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

i guess the idea of finalising a permaculture plan is an anomaly...it will never be 'finalised' or even finished...but paula and her partner paul came for dinner to enjoy our award-winning kao soy (a delicious thai curry that suriyan's mum taught me). after dinner, while the girls squabbled over the washing-up and the dog laid her head on paul's lap hoping for a crumb from his cake, paula delivered her completed plan and outline for our development of bobo creek.

i'm going to include a few bits from her design notes report, as it is interesting to get an understanding of what we are beginning with...

from the introduction:
"A Permaculture design takes the natural elements of a property into consideration and adds further elements to achieve as close to a sustainable living solution as possible.
This report and accompanying diagram design illustrates the existing infrastructure and terrain, shows the solar access to the property, the predominant winds, existing fencing and waterways and the threat of flood and fire. It uses these elements
as the basis for a design consisting of suggested zones, additional waterways, additional fencing, new plantings, suggested animal and aquaculture systems, wind and fire breaks to compliment the energy flow."

on the soil:
"Regardless of soil type, it is always necessary to increase the level of humus in any soil, to enable the healthy growth of plants. Addition of artificial fertilisers and pesticides takes the natural balance out of a healthy soil, kills good fungus and other essential bacteria and sets up an ongoing reliance on more fertilisers to provide food for plants. Numerous tests of the soil indicate a consistent acidity between 6.0 and 6.5, which is ideal. The consistency is primarily clay-based which will be perfect for dam construction. As would be expected, greater nutrient levels will exist on the flood plains due to alluvial sediment built up over the years, however good worm activity was found throughout. A greater concentration of organic matter will be necessary for fruit, nut and veg, and can be provided through regular composting and mulching. As manures and composts are added over the years it may be necessary to re-test acidity and apply dolomite as needed."

on water harvesting:
paula suggests numerous additional dams, a wetland, swales, water channels as keylines, frog ponds in zone 2 and a spillway on the header dam in the event of bushfire threat.

on plantings and animals:
paula gives an extensive list of endemic plants to the Taree area including acacias, banksias, casurinas. eucalypts (especially varieties that will attract and feed koalas), hakeas, kennedias and melaleucas.

then advice on windbreaks, and again extensive species lists for zones 5 to 2, from bird-attracting to nitrogen-fixing...
"it is recommended that the owners mix and match their fruit and nut trees to ensure
as much confusion to pests as possible. Stone fruits should be mixed alongside apples
and nuts etc. Don’t plant trees in straight rows but try to follow the line of contours of the land wherever possible. Make sure that enough room is given to orchard trees to allow their full growth without crowding one another. Among the variety of orchard species available, the following are likely to do well in the climate of the Hillville area: Fig, Almond, Apple, Apricot, Avocado, Blackberry, Cape Gooseberry, Chestnut (a very large tree), Chinese Gooseberry, all citrus, Crab Apples, Elderberry, Feijoa, Finger Lime, Grape, Ice Cream Bean, Kaffir Lime, Loquat, Macadamia, Mango, Mulberry, Oak, Olives, Pecan, Persimmon, Pomegranate, Walnut and Watermelon."

there's a great description of banana circles, but i might do a separate post on that as they are really excellent.

lists of grasses and rushes for dams and wetlands and extensive information on micro-organisms, insects, wild animals, and domestic ones. paula suggests that the property can support one cow, a goat and a couple of sheep without the need to supplement their feed. there will also be chickens and ducks and a pig or two. bees will be housed in several locations.

the dams will be alive with edible things. paula has this to say about aquaculture:
"Aquaculture is not just fish and crayfish, but can also be plants such as Chinese water chestnuts, taro, water spinach, water cress, lotus, floating rice, duck potatoes and wild rice. Eels are also worth considering, as there is a large Japanese market for eel in Australia and abroad.

in terms of the plan of action:
1. Cottage
2. Dams and swales
3. Zone 4 & 5 plantings
4. Zone 3 Orchards and banana palms
5. Pioneers in food forest
6. House
7. Fencing
8. Animal systems
9. Zone 2 Vegetable patch
10. Aquaculture
11. Continued layers into food forest

so, you see it is just the beginning. for now our biggest problem is the limited time we have to actually be there, but that will not always be the case. at home i'm germinating and propagating and nurturing dozens of plants and trees that will be moved and planted onto the property in the next few years. we are reading avidly (marrickville library must be wondering why all its books on organic gardening, alternative building and permaculture are permanently absent from the shelves) and enjoying the information so generously shared on people's blogs from all over the world. pete's collecting useful stuff from council chuckouts, recycled building materials supplies etc, and the back deck and beautiful blackbutt floorboards from an old house in mosman.

my potatoes are sprouting

2009-08-23T03:56:00.000-07:00

i've been waiting for my potatoes to sprout and now they have. i set them in hessian sacks with the sides rolled down and now that they've come up i will continue to pile soil around them and unroll the sides of the sacks. this encourages the stems of the shoots to actually perform the function of roots and bear little potatoes.
i'll keep posting pics as they come up.
izzy and i made another vertical garden in an old fabric shoe holder.

geoff lawton in the inner west, blossoming permaculture

2009-08-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

last night was the launch of permaculture sydney south. leichhardt town hall was packed. after some formalities and speeches by vicki ferekos and jill finane describing permaculture achievements in the southern areas of sydney, geoff lawton took to the microphone. he's eloquent and inspiring in a quiet and confident way. it still seems extraordinary that permaculture is both so recent and so under-recognised, given that it contains such immense wisdom and good sense and profound solutions to a myriad of problems besetting us. as geoff said, it seems so ironic that we are dying of civilisation. most uncivilised! geoff described the greening of the dead sea valley in jordan, and his own uncertainties at the beginning of the project faced with massive salinity, very limited rainfall and 50 degree temperatures. he started with the 'mainframe' - water harvesting and compost from surrounding villages and put his faith in the system. sure enough it flourished and within a relatively short space they could reduce the need to irrigate to just 4 months each year.
it seems that with urban and peripheral farming on small-scale plots the total area required to sustain our earth's population is just 2 to 3% of currently used agricultural land!

and marrickville council have planted trees everywhere. these are blossoming around the corner from us...

rainwater tanks

2009-08-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

we've just ordered two tanks made by tankmasta from this place. the good thing about these is they don't require a base - just level ground, which saves mucking about with concrete etc. we have ordered them in 'wattle' which sounds like a nice colour...

we will probably need more in time, although we'll have lots of dams, but are on a tight-to-non-existant budget!

a weekend at bobo creek

2009-08-16T03:20:00.000-07:00

we spent most of this weekend at the property. we had a few jobs to do and we had arranged to meet a geotech guy from the area who is to do a report on the soil, suitability of the site for worm farm waste disposal and that kind of thing.
but first we had to fence off few hundred metres of our boundary. lucky for us there were already the posts (with holes) and the star pickets and all we had to do was thread the wire through and tighten it off. easier said than done! i shall forever regard beautifully fenced pasture with a new admiration for i have an inkling of the sweat (not to mention blood) that has gone into it.
we bought a roll of 'bob dwyer', one of straight fencing wire, some extra pliers and a fencing strainer (called a 'come-along' by the americans). feeding barbed wire through a narrow aperture often full of ants and spiders down a hillside and then pulling the whole lot through the next post hole was pete's job. mine was to control the massive spool of wire on a pole and make sure it didn't tangle or gouge my eyes out. then the strainer! an ingenious device with solid cast jaws that 'walk' along a length of chain, attached to the wire that is being strained, as well as the end post. once it reaches the desired tension (Bflat - ha ha) we then tie the wire around the post and then loosen off the strainer. well that bit was easier said than done. by the end of four strands in three sections we had it pretty much sorted. i'd be happy to rewrite the instructions that came with the device. they did nothing to help us novices! this is a nifty little tool that is much easier to understand than the fence strainer. cheaper too at $2.60 from bunnings.

the geotech expert came out on saturday morning with his offsider. they measured the depth of rock and clay and so on and he also advised on the building of the dams, the prlacement of the wormfarm waste system and the maintenance of the road. it is always amazing to watch an expert in action and Tim is just that. not a young guy, he has been studying the land for a long time. he could look at the hillsides and read the ancient landscape by the direction of the tree growth, the undulations, the presence of certain trees and the way the rocks were scattered. at first concerned by the fine grain of the silty soil, he found good quality clay a little deeper. Tim was impressed by our permaculture plan, thanks to paula, and liked the placement of the dams. he advised us on finding an experienced dam builder and of lining at least one of them with thick black plastic to help seal it.

after two big stints of fencing we were in bed by 8! it was cold too. but so glorious to wake to the symphony of exquisite and varied bird calls.

the permaculture plan

2009-08-07T00:48:00.000-07:00

we had our meeting with paula this morning to view her plans and hear all her suggestions regarding the development of bobo creek. paula showed us a series of overlays on her laptop. overlaid onto an aerial view of the property, they begin with existing infrastructure - in our case a dam, creek, shed, road, quarry and lot of trees, and then layers are added: contours, solar analysis (which shows winter and summer sunlight quadrants), bushfire threats, wind analysis, flood threat, dams and swales and keylines, spillways (a suggestion to allow the sluicing of threatened areas in the event of a bushfire), zones and house location, animals and fencing, and aquaculture. wow! a lot to digest. to come is a detailed planting guide and further information in swale specifications and livestock.

we had a few suggestions and lots of questions, and paula got back on her scooter to make a couple of amendments and will meet again with us soon for the final chapter. and then the hard work really begins...

here is one of the .pdf files of paula's plans. i'll be able to put them on the blog as soon as it's all done.

bokashi composting

2009-08-05T04:26:00.001-07:00

i am really into fermenting things at the moment. into this category falls my sourdough bread, the kefir that i sneak into the girls' healthy breakfast smoothies, the kombucha tea that pete and i enjoy (like a cross between ginger beer and iced tea), and now a solution for my composting dilemma. my problem is thus: despite now having 40 acres of garden, i don't have ready access to it, and we have only pebble-crete and a pool in our backyard. we have a worm farm, but they are already overloaded with just some of the food scraps from 6 of us...and although i can collect compost and take it up every few weeks to bobo creek it would arrive as sludge... i am making a bokashi composting bin.

bokashi is the japanese term for ‘fermented organic matter’. the bokashi is actually the fermented bran-based product sprinkled on food scraps that acts to 'pickle' all food waste. this activates breakdown in an anaerobic setting - a tight lid is important. the active ingredient is known as ‘em’ or effective micro-organisms, a mixture of bacteria and fungi. once the bin is full, and the scraps layered with the bokashi mix, it is left for a further week or so and then the contents are buried in a garden, added to a compost pile or put into deep planter pots. once it is in the soil further breakdown occurs really quickly. it actually takes only three weeks to break down into rich soil.

most of our kitchen waste can be processed, including cooked and uncooked meat, fish, small bones, pastry, bread, dairy products, eggs, plate scrapings, fruit and vegetables, cooked left-overs, tea leaves and coffee grinds.

as you will see the bucket is designed to separate the liquids and these can be drained out through a spigot. this liquor can be diluted and used as a fertiliser, or poured down the sink (it’s rich in beneficial bacteria).

the bin
there are small, cute-looking bins on the market, and expensive packets of the bokashi activator, but i wanted to do it all myself. so I got two buckets from reverse garbage. one had a hole to insert a spigot which was lucky. i cut a disc from the lid of the spare bucket and with a silicone glue used the rim of that lid to form a support towards the base of the bin bucket to support the disc of plastic. I drilled holes for drainage in the disc and then glues it inside the bin bucket. I screwed in the spigot and let it all dry out. that’s the bucket taken care of. I made sure the lid fits securely as an airtight environment is important.

the bokashi i used 3 kg wheat bran (unprocessed), a dollop of organic molasses, a handful of sea salt, another of clay powder, about 30ml of em (these are the effective micro-organisms from here and two litres of hot water. i added a dash of my kombucha for good measure too. i mixed these well and made sure I could clump it together in my hand. then I left the mixture in an airtight bucket for two weeks. at the end it has a nice slightly vinegary smell.

when it's full i put it into a larger container with a thick layer of mulch at the bottom, and then take it to my parent's garden or to bobo creek where the contents is buried.

bobo creek painting

2009-08-01T05:16:00.000-07:00

izzy says i should put some of my creative stuff and less about composting toilets and cooking. so here is a painting in progress that i did last time we were at bobo creek. incidentally pete and simon are going up there tomorrow to lug all the bits of the cottage closer to the building spot. i can't go, alas, as i have to teach on monday. but i did make a thai curry for them, and have some sour dough rising slowly tonight to cook in the morning
meanwhile, izzy and i have been working on a 'vertical garden', but more on that later. more about compost coming up too.

worms and waste

2009-07-28T18:44:00.000-07:00

the best news is that we settled yesterday. meaning that the bank now owns us and we own a property. we will pay it off as quickly as we possibly can and plan to live on dhal and rice for years. (ha ha)

but now we have to get cracking and make some decisions. one of the important ones, and required for our DA is the waste water system. so i have been wading through (information on) worms and composting toilets and grey water systems. the choice is between composting toilets with a separate grey water treatment system for kitchen, laundry and bathroom water, and a worm farm treatment system that handles everything. although i really wanted a composting toilet, when we added up everything the best value and most convenient installation is the worm farm. so here you can have a look if you want. i've read through dozens of posts on the permaculture forum, and although i like these toilets, and this worm system, the best seems to be this one. it handles all organic waste. that means toilet stuff, food scraps, cardboard and paper, cloth, small adults, meat, etc. there is a bin-like chute in the garden above the chamber and everything in the house connects. we are still planning an outside loo and shower, and they'll connect up. from the chamber are 80m of trenching to filter the water which can be then used on orchards, etc.

here are our hardworking worms in our back yard worm farm, just so you get the idea.

permaculture consultant visits bobo creek part 3

2009-07-27T04:00:00.001-07:00

to remind ourselves of how cute the cottage is. i hope pete can remember how to put it back together - it's been a while...
just to remind you of what state the cottage is at the moment, although it is covered in tarpaulins now
so, once paula had left we had another two days before we had to go back to sydney. the weather remained glorious. we were visited by our nice neighbours who run a lot of very healthy cattle on 500 acres. i did a painting, we tidied up - a trailer-load of junk to go to the tip, saw some kangaroos, recorded some exquisite birdcalls early in the morning, and we wrote a song (well almost finished it). it has ended up being a kind of prequel to waltzing matilda (we love the queensland version) and describes the visit to a farmhouse by a traveling swagman, and his philosophy of life. stay tuned and we might finish it, record it and put it on the blog!

anyway, back to permaculture...we walked the ridge and decided we liked the original site for both cottage and then (one day) the house. it conforms to what is described as the keypoint, which, on a slope, is that meeting of the lower usually concave slope with the upper convex one. this is the ideal place for a house. the aspect of the property is north-facing so the house can sit parallel-ish to the driveway/road and the solar cells on the roof will catch all that wonderful, uninterrupted sunlight.
we are hoping to use a worm farm for all the grey water treatment - into a huge worm-filled bin and out through a long series of trenches containing weeds and filters, and out into the orchard or gardens as pure water.

this is the area of the cottage and homesite. it will be zone 1 on our plan and will also have our herbs, leafy veggies, chooks, lemon and lime tree, compost and wormfarm, and lots of vines for izzy who loves vines. anything that requires daily attention or contributes to daily life will be here.
zone 2 is still intensively cultivated and is longer-growing veggies, more fruit trees. chooks would be allowed regularly into this area to forage, control weeds and provide manure.

zone 3 requires less maintenance and may be commercial crops, livestock, nut trees, and often incorporates windbreaks.

zone 4 is your wood harvest zone. wood for firewood, building, mulching and also for pete's precious timbers. this zone can also have complementary grazing animals such as pigs or cattle.

zone 5 is the wilderness, or indigenous conservation zone. this will be all of the creek and the perimeter of the other three sides.

so that's zones in a nutshell so to speak. more of permaculture principles later. but for now paula is busily drawing up our plans, and being bombarded by questions from us.

quotes of the day

2009-07-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

two more great quotes:

'the easy way is hard enough'
i don't know where this originally comes from but i saw it written on a board in someone's workshop.

'permaculture is about "...saving the planet and living to be a hundred, while throwing very impressive dinner parties and organising other creatures to do most of the work." '
this comes from The Permaculture Home Garden
by Linda Woodrow

earthworks first

2009-07-25T03:33:00.001-07:00

click to see the whole picture - it's worth it.this is what we have to look forward to. but it must be stressed that getting the earthworks done - dams, keylines, swales, roads is the first thing to get happening.
the photo is from the museum of victoria.

permaculture consultant visits bobo creek part 2

2009-07-22T01:26:00.000-07:00

the most reassuring thing about the visit to bobo creek by paula granelli of permup was that she confirmed the things we felt were priorities and that our limited grasp of permaculture was pretty good. above all she loved the property and felt we had chosen well based on aspect, climate, and potential!

we awoke to a frost which explained why we were cold in the night, although the dog certainly helped.

when paula arrived we had a cup of tea and she asked us lots of questions regarding our aspirations, intentions, inclinations, aversions..etc. we replied as best we could, considering we didn't really know her yet. then we walked over much of the property with her and let her absorb it. we were careful not to impose our thought at that stage. then we let her get on with her thing.

here is the crappy dam that is on the property. an example of damage by the neighbour's cattle who have access to our place. the topsoil from the dam was buried under the walls and it is not in a good catchment area. the water is milky. but it will come good

paula spent a fair bit of the following day with her charts (she had diligently drawn up charts of the property based on aerial photos and department of lands records), her navman for gps readings, and her shovel and little plastic bags and her gum boots. she examined the creek and the flats and the arable gentle slopes, the stands of melaleuca and paper bark, the soggy bits, the rocky outcrops, the dry eucalyptus stands, and the hidden part down by the eastern end of the creek where there is a great swimming hole. she then included all the data on her chart. later on she visited the neighbours to glean more information about wind and storm direction and fire risks.

we shared lunch and more tea and paula gave us more information and advice. the first consideration is the site of the home, as this gives a hub from which the zones proceed. second is the identification of catchment areas and the position of dams. the dams are then keylined - meaning they are linked with channels. swales are built across areas to slow down the rush of water from rain and the conserve moisture and gradually move it deep into the earth.

we discussed fruit and nut trees and paula suggested we start to cultivate them at home in sydney. i'm already doing this, but will do more!

we expressed interest in a wetland and paula thought it a good idea. down on the flat area in a sheltered section by the creek bend. she suggested aquaculture which we thought a great idea - love the thought of catching a fish or a few yabbies for dinner!

pete expressed his desire to grow wood trees of a more exotic nature as a resource for instrument making. although not necessarily harvested in our lifetime it is a comforting legacy.

paula quizzed us about our willingness to kill what we produce in the way of livestock. hmmm. a tricky business. who is ever happy to kill their animals? we thought we might be able to manage chooks who no longer lay or are roosters, but anything bigger would need a professional butcher kind of person.

and then walked along the road where there are three possible homesite locations. at that stage each seemed of equal attraction - for different reasons. we would have to sleep on it. paula packed up her car and took a big bag of lovely cow manure home with her, and left us to our music and roaring fire, delicious curry for dinner and lots of conversation.

permaculture consultant visits bobo creek part 1

2009-07-21T02:49:00.000-07:00

pete and i drove up early on friday morning with jessie sprawled across the back seat on her bed (lucky dog) to bobo creek. it was a little slower with a heavily-laden trailer, but we figured that the settlement is going through and we can afford to take up the slow combustion wood heater and the industrial stove and all the extra bits we've been collecting. and tools. and the gas outdoor heater we thought we'd be glad of (and we were - it was really cold as soon as the sun went down). it was raining for most of the way but the weather cleared on the property and we had glorious winter sun for the whole weekend.
the rest of friday saw us stacking building materials, collecting firewood, generally walking around and re-discovering the beauty and serenity of the place, and preparing our questions for the consultant arriving the following day.

rainbow as we drove down across the infamous bridge
we will start to get rid of bob dwyer (as olympia calls it) along the creek where it's wrapped around poor casurina trees
jessie loves the creek, but not to swim in
we were glad of pete's raging fires each evening

technorati claim code

2009-07-15T01:51:00.000-07:00

qfpm8cbinz

timeless simplicity

2009-07-13T04:24:00.000-07:00

when we told my family we were buying bobo creek my sister, madeleine, who lives in the uk, suggested very discreetly that we read 'timeless simplicity' by john lane. i think she was wondering how we would possibly relocate our city lifestyle and all our stuff to a small cedar cottage, albeit on a very large property. the grand piano might fit, but nothing else. not even a bed. i did read the book, and very beautiful it is. i'll share the little story that comes before the introduction. i've heard variations on this before, but it's always a timely reminder....

The industrialist was horrified to find the fisherman lying beside his boat, smoking a pipe.
-Why aren't you fishing? said the industrialist.
-Because I have caught enough fish for the day.
-Why don't you catch some more?
-what would I do with them?
-Earn more money. Then you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. That would bring you money to buy nylon nets, so more fish, more money. Soon you would have enough to buy two boats, even a fleet of boats. Then you could be rich like me.
-What would I do then?
-Then you could sit back and enjoy life.
-What do you think I'm doing now?

this is a painting madeleine did for us...

backyard gardening for now

2009-07-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

this is our garden for now...
this is the little rabbit who provides some excellent and convenient manure

although we will only be able to go up to bobo creek every few weeks i am so keen to get the gardens and orchard started. i have been nurturing some little olive seedlings for a few months in the back garden here. it's actually a pool surrounded by pebblecrete! but it gets lots of sun. i do a bit of tabletop gardening too. polystyrene boxes make great gardens. i grow rocket and herbs and chillies. tabletop to keep out of reach of our dear little rabbit who enjoys rocket as much as i do.

permaculture consultant found

2009-07-08T01:12:00.000-07:00

we have found a delightful consultant who will spend a few days on the property with us and help us with site maps and a plan that we can slowly initiate over the next few years. her company is permup and is located in sydney. she will camp with us, but we won't share jessie with her. this time we thought we'd let jessie sleep with us to keep us warm. it is mid-winter and the cabin by the creek will be freezing!

got the go ahead

2009-07-07T16:56:00.001-07:00

i hold my breath.... it looks like we have the go ahead to exchange contracts on the property!
we'll go up next weekend with the trailer full of stuff to take up - like the wood heater we bought optimistically months ago, and a big drum to make a cosy outdoors fireplace, and hopefully bring back some soil so i can get more plants going in pots here around the pool to eventually begin an orchard at bobo creek!

onwards with ideas and plans

2009-06-21T21:57:00.001-07:00

on friday sophie and i met with ichsani wheeler who is a soil science PhD student at sydney uni. she grew up with permaculture and now investigates carbon in soil (sequestration) and spends time on farms with students measuring carbon levels. she is going to do some advising and consulting on our property (which we still haven't acquired! hurry up you engineers). i took sophie along with me as i thought it might be good inspiration for her to meet ichsani - which it was.
so our task, as we suspected is to compile a topographic model of the property which we can look at to place dams, swales and even plants. we might be able to get the data ourselves with a laser level like surveyors use.
then it's earthworks to put dams and swales in place.
and brewing up some microorganisms to spread over the property. i like this idea.
soil observations by digging lots of holes and photographing the strata.

meanwhile we are both reading up on permaculture and building and general agricultural things.

i like this quote from masanobu fukuoka who wrote 'the one straw revolution' about natural farming:

natural farming is not just for growing crops, it is for the cultivation and perfection of human beings

i think i'll compile some quotes and info and post them here.

still waiting on the bridge

2009-06-12T03:13:00.000-07:00

well, not literally, or we would be pretty cold as we are in the middle of a cold snap. pete and i spent a long weekend at bobo creek. we still don't own it as the structural engineer is awaiting the council's bridge expert's advice regarding contents of his report...aaargh! it's still going.
anyway we had a great few days, pottering round. we played music, wrote a song (nearly finished), i painted, played violin badly, pulled out thistles and lantana and tobacco plants with my lovely new mattock ($16 on ebay). oh, and i forgot to say we cooked and ate and drank copious amounts of tea. i explored the western reaches of the creek - all mossy and resembling a hobit village with smooth tree roots and pebbles. we took jessie who behaved like a dog and barked at cows and tagged along wherever we went.
we dug a trench (not quite a swale) to divert the wter away from the bog at the gate where the truck got stuck. it took us about 25 minutes to dig 20m or so, which is pretty good going. we suspect there is a lot of clay in the soil, especially at the top of the property. more of a loam down lower with nice worms.
it was cold, especially at night, and the cabin is in the trees by the creek. it will be great in summer, but a roaring fire was appreciated, as were hot water bottles (thanks mum!) and many layers.

here is the western end of the creek.
the trench we dug.
our lunch with homemade baked beans and my own sourdough bread!
jessie, our darling
sun through the trees.

the bridge is all good!

2009-05-05T21:53:00.001-07:00

it sounds like the bridge on the road into bobo creek is good. solid and reliable as we had hoped. now (hopefully)all that remains is for us to transfer the deposit to the estate agent and exchange contracts and the beautiful piece of the planet is ours! well, that's a little arrogant isn't it. but we will be custodians for a while.
we've contacted a young and funky PhD student of soil and environmental sciences through the permaculture forum and she is happy to consult. as it turns out she is also a latte-drinking inner-west dwelling person, so we can meet her on our mutual turf and talk about what to do for the bigger picture of bobo creek.

here is the sleeping area of the cabin, with its metal, hinged walls that let the creek rush through in spate. hopefully this doesn't happen while we are sleeping there. the rock had been in the fireplace and was still hot. i was trying to warm up a bit before i went to sleep.

the bridge

2009-05-03T21:04:00.000-07:00

we are not home and hosed yet, so to speak as the council want to look at the bridge on the road in to the property. we have already had a mini-drama with it being a "paper road" that crosses a neighbour's farm. we needed permission from the lands dept as it is classified as crown land. we have that permission. anyway the bridge is a beauty, built by the plumber who is selling us the place. we just hope it passes council's scrutiny.
pete and i had a really fun gig in port macquarie as part of the camden haven music festival. our blues band played to a packed restaurant and enjoyed the audience's enjoyment of our songs and stories.
we had thought to avoid the property till it is all sealed and settled, but we decided to pay the council in taree a visit and then loaded the car with old blankets from the salvation army store, and some local produce and teabags and drove to bobo creek for two nights. it was cold but lovely and we sat on the deck playing through our folk songs for we have another gig coming up next week. we enjoyed lots of walks around the place and found parts we hadn't seen before. i slashed at a lot of the thistles and some lantana which will need serious removal before too long.
we visited the wingham growers market on saturday morning and loved it. real organic food. we bought barrington perch which was excellent pan-fried that night.

looking at hydro

2009-04-21T16:11:00.000-07:00

given that we have a pretty permanent creek we are thinking that we could possibly harness a little of its perpetual motion for the cabin that is close to it. in fact the cabin is so close to the creek that the guy built it with hinged walls to accommodate the deluge that occurs once a year or so...

here are some ideas we are looking at:
1. http://permaculturewest.org.au/ipc6/ch08/shannon/img00002.gif

2. http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Hydro/UnderShot/WaterWheel.htm

3. http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_experiments_waterwheel.html

we stayed at bobo creek

2009-04-13T21:12:00.000-07:00

pete had an eventful trip up to bob creek with a 6 tonne truck carrying the cottage. eventful only when they finally made it through the gate onto the property and the truck bogged. 'she'll be right' were the words of the driver despite pete's concerns that it was pretty soft underfoot. anyway, it wasn't really all right, as they had to hastily unload the contents, dig out the truck wheels, and then reverse painstakingly step by step back along the kilometre or more of driveway, including a narrow bridge. all this under the light of the full moon. the truck drove back to sydney and pete and suriyan found food and bedding and slept by the creek in the cabin.
meanwhile mookhi, isabel and i took the early train to taree. it is over 5 hours but the most spectacular trip and i got lots of knitting done and started to read 'timeless simplicity' (some quotes later). we were glad to see pete and suriyan and even gladder to leave the noise of speedboats on the wide and gracious manning river behind and head to bobo creek.
mookhi spent hours wondering and climbing trees, and measuring the depths of the creek. izzy and i walked up and down the creek imagining our cousins playing in it. pete and i stacked and cover wood and walked over the whole property (some feat, as 40 acres is pretty impressive) and talked about our dreams for the place (some feat too, as our dreams are pretty impressive. suriyan took amazing photos with his new camera.
we ate well and slept well lulled by the constant babble of the creek. we played and sang and the girls squabbled and eventually played nicely.
then all too soon the drive home. a great lime thickshake on the house at the new cafe in nabiac and then on to rebecca's for an amazing easter feast with organic roast pork, masses of veges, miniature berry pavlovas and easter eggs thanks to my parents, rebec and shivaji. our contribution was our unwashed state - although i had swum in the creek...
now we can't wait to get up there again.

the early sun through the treesizzy holding up this huge tree
the cabin by the creek and the girls' tent
this is where we will reconstruct the cottage
more of the creek - deep enough to swim

more views of the deconstruction

2009-04-07T21:12:00.001-07:00

here is more of what went into the dismantling. thanks to jay and simon and especially my dad, david who spent a day lifting and wrenching out recalcitrant nails.

pete and suriyan will take the cottage up to bobo creek tomorrow with a 6 tonne truck and two guys. p and s will stay up there and i'll bring izzy mookhi on the train on friday. yay! we finally get to sleep there. it will be basic but will give us a first taste of it all. more photos when we get back...

google our property

2009-04-05T20:43:00.001-07:00

View Larger Map

View Larger Map

inside the cottage

2009-04-05T18:25:00.000-07:00

the cottage
Originally uploaded by lyrebirdcreate

the cottage was like this when it was standing. now is neatly stacked piles of wood and windows and flooring and all the other bits and pieces waiting for the truck to take it all north where it will sit in the shed until we can get up there to put it all back together.

taking it down

2009-03-31T17:32:00.000-07:00

pete worked until the rain made it impossible. the cottage is almost ready to load onto the truck. a fair sized load of discarded gyprock and tiles will have to got to the tip, but it means we get to line the cottage with recycled timber - we're thinking of old paling fences for a thoroughly rustic look...meanwhile i'm drawing plans for it to submit to council, hence the yellow measurements.

new tools and old tools

2009-03-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

tomorrow pete begins the deconstruction of the cottage. we were short a few tools, but managed to find a great old ladder someone had thrown out.
my sister, madeleine, recommends a book by john lane called 'timeless simplicity'. i think she is politely suggesting we won't fit four children and a grand piano and 8 guitars and a recording studio into a 7x4m cedar cottage. well spotted! i say. anyway i have ordered the book..

and this is what happened today!

2009-03-27T00:51:00.000-07:00

well as of midday today we are the proud owners of a quaint cedar cottage. we found it on ebay and it happens to be located in a nearby sydney suburb. it must be dismantled and removed this week, and we haven't formally settled our hillville acreage....but the price was so low as to be ridiculous (the starting bid was $1.00), so i won't even reveal the winning bid. but how cute is it!

here is bobo creek. what happened first..

2009-03-27T00:47:00.000-07:00

this is what i wrote after we saw the property for the first time..."another day spent in the car. but when it is with someone you love and with music to listen to and dreams to share, as well as beautiful countryside to drive through...then it really becomes a wonderful day. so we drove north (again), into the hinterland between nabiac and the bucketts way. we think we may have found what we are looking for. as our estate agent said, "it pretty much ticks all the boxes". i don't want to write to much in case it doesn't work out, but i will blog it big time if and when it comes true..."

and then this is what happened next...."well, it's looking pretty good. we've had an offer accepted! but it's all in the hands of the gods now as we wait for banks and brokers and conveyancers. pete and i are so excited it's all we can think about - well apart from the children, our jobs, the dog trying to steal yet another of simon's delicious fruitloaves, the car needing a new tyre, our folk album recording, my needing to buy plums and chillies urgently for more jam, the websites for goose studio (pete's studio) and the website for my produce, and the usual multitude of stuff...
we think the first thing to do (after it's finalised, that is) would be to have a permaculture expert come and walk over it with us and help us develop an over-arching ground plan. then there is the question of accommodation - a minor detail. and the first home owner's grant.
oh, and by the way, the creek is called bobo creek. bobo is rosie's nickname."