On the Importance of good Gumboots

Wow the storm last weekend smashed the farm, dumped over 60mm of rain, the tracks turned to thick sticky mud, the shed was damaged and required several hours of repairs in the middle of the torrential storm, several garden items took a beating (plastic tables are not suited to farm life), but the silverbeet took it all in stride, and it was discovered that a good pair of Gumboots will get you through all but the worst of such crises. Autumn moves into Winter very quickly it seems at this altitude, and it never got above 9 degrees the whole weekend. Perfect weather for track cutting and tree planting.

Updates from the last 2 months include Laurie smiling like a pig in muck with his delivery of 100 mtrs and more of roughback stone.

Our friendly bulldozer driver Pete, terracing a few trial areas for future Truffle-Oak, and/or Walnut plantings. Would make a nice windbreak too.



Cleaning up 6 months of collected hard rubbish.



Being given a huge amount of timber, loads of pink batts and a lovely plastic tub, thanks Steve and Simon!



Seeing the Balook road area a few Km away is now regrowing.


We have now had almost 1000 hits on the blog since Sept 08, thanks everyone!

Autumn

Autumn now, rains have started, but warm starry nights are amazing. Orchard tree planting experiments begin, with our rows hopefully ready for peas, onions and garlic. Snakes are in the grass!, and berries are bountiful.

Leunig

Strzelecki Koala

More wild weather forecast, but last weekend was beautiful. More so because this endangered Strzelecki Koala was spotted right by our shed, didnt have a camera so a crappy phone picture is all the evidence there is.

The Strzelecki Ranges are home to the only relic population of
Koala in Victoria and South Australia. All other koala populations in Victoria are the result of translocations from four South Gippsland Koalas sent to French Island in the late nineteenth century.

Translocated koala communites suffer from inbreeding through weakened genetic inheritance. Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus Regnans) is a known food tree for the Strzelecki Koala.

On the food front the garden beds for onion and garlic are now being prepared as we obtain compost, goji berry, artichokes, and spinach were planted and seeds of rainforest herbs golden seal and black cohosh were put into stratification along with the ginseng seeds.

With fire survival now in the forefront of our minds, given our isolated location and lack of safe escape routes, buried steel Bunkers and non-burnable shed construction plans are being considered. As much as an earthship might be great the tyres would probably burn in a firestorm.

A tale of contrasts

After the fires this could have been us, but the Source has spared us for another day. The worst apocalyptic areas are the pine forests, the native forest often still stands and has the ability to regenerate.

In the last 6 weeks the vege/culinary herb garden has gone ballistic, sunflowers, chicory and amaranth already 2 feet high, strawberries fruiting up, cherry tomatoes yummy, miles of silverbeet, lots of basil, and I am the proud father of my first ginseng berries!

Whilst touring round beautiful Tasmania over the last few weeks, it is patently obvious that most of the old growth trees have disappeared, every where I stepped were the scars of 200 years of unmitigated logging. Today for the benefit of our unnecessary photocopiers, log trucks still roll by in the hundreds per day with Eucalypt tree's of 6 foot or more in diameter out of Tassies forests.


The Mt Field National Park near Hobart holds remnants of Tasmania's remaining Eucalyptus regnans, the giant swamp gum. Standing under these giants is awe inspiring, these are the largest flowering tree's in the world, second only to the Californian redwood pines in height overall. In a prime example of short sighted policy, in 1950 the then government took back 1500 acres of these trees in the National Park by an Act of Parliament to allow them to be logged for paper pulp, such are the riches of these giant trees to industry. Today only 13000 hectares, of an estimated original 100000 hectares of these giant swamp gum eucalypts' remain in the world.

In the beautiful Mt Field national park is written this passage that spoke prophetically to my sense of our present day world:

Over 200 years ago, when French explorer Bruni D'Entrecasteaux first saw this island (Tasmania) in 1792 it was the forests which impressed him. He wrote of...

"..trees of an immense height and proportionate diameter, their branchless trunks covered with evergreen foliage, some looking as old as the world;

"closely interlacing in an almost impenetrable forest, they served to support others which, crumbling with age, fertilised the soil with their debris;

"nature in all her vigour, and yet in a state of decay, seems to offer to the imagination something more picturesque and more imposing than the sight of this same nature bedecked by the hand of 'civilised' man.

"Wishing only to preserve her beauties we destroy her charm, we rob her of that power which is hers alone, the secret of preserving in eternal age eternal youth."


As trees (that no longer exist) provided the water evaporation and carbon sinks for the planet its no surprise that the world is in drought...self sufficiency for food production may be a better way....

For those interested this is an excellent and sobering account of a states ecological short sightedness.

Tasmania's Wilderness Battles
A history - Greg Buckman
http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781741754643

Others are taking nice pics of the Strzelecki's too, go here and search under strzelecki http://en.wordpress.com/tag/strzelecki/

Blessed amongst the bushfires

Thanks for all the messages of concern, we are so fortunate that none of our property was burnt in the Strzelecki fires, although it reached right to our northern boundary, probably stopping due to the river.

So many people are not so lucky, so please support them in anyway you can. Something like >200 killed, and 2000 homes destroyed to date, with several areas still burning, although mainly in the Yarra ranges.

The picture is from the 8th of Feb 2009 showing the smoke drift.

Paul is in Tasmania so pictures of the surrounding areas wont be up for a couple of weeks, but it wont be pretty.

Dam it!

Our not so good dams were carved up and made right by the CAT driver in about 6 hours. Laurie and I were pretty impressed by the CAT.

Windows to the forest and the Garden begun

A rainy Xmas which luckily made gardening alot easier, and several days construction slog putting up windows, but we now have 1/2 a living shed and a vege patch taking shape. The grader has finished clearing for the water tanks and garage and this weekend comes the earth-mover for dam repairs.

Congrat's to Quinten and Jane: a new baby girl!

Eventually we hope to evolve into something like this: Earthships:

Plums!

Loy Yang mine

Mt Baw Baw in the distance beyond Loy Yang

Wildlife spotted recently, in addition to the giant wild sheep!, include the southern brown tree frog, whole families of kookaburra's, huge dragonfly's and stick insects and giant earthworms, and wedge tailed eagles regularly soaring in the afternoon updrafts above the hills.

Due to complaints re the rat's accidental deaths, I have been asked to retract my statements re their worth. Ok: In fact native rats are cool. They feed owls and other higher predators, and so they help keep the forest order intact. It was a complete accident their drownings mind you.