The last two times we have been up the mountain it has been cold and wintery – perfect weather for a nice big fire. Growth has slowed down significantly and the insects are hibernating. It is beautiful. 
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Dad's old house, which he built of stone, mud bricks and glass bottles.
We had a very productive weekend on our property over Easter; it’s amazing what a bit of machinery can do! Steve Hart, a local farmer, came up with his tractor and did some slashing, clearing and road repairs for us. In just five hours Steve widened our driveway and built some drainage humps, and then cleared the whole area between the bamboo and Dad’s old house, pushing out the old garden. I felt quite sad thinking about all of the work dad had put into the garden, rock walls and paths hidden below 18 years of growth that we have now pushed over the edge. The site looks like a big open wound right now but I hope we can create something beautiful that Dad would be proud of. Continue reading…
It was quite deflating to see new shoots of nasty weeds sprouting where we have been working relentlessly to clear. I was reminded of Michael Pollan’s brilliant book “The Botany of Desire” in which he discusses the Greek mythological gods Apollo and Dionysus—Apollo symbolizes the desire for order and control, while Dionysus embodies madness and mayhem. I think the Mountain is likely to always lean toward madness, no matter how hard we try to bend it to Apollo’s rule.
We are slowly learning the names of some of these nasties, often with groans of “oh no, you have that” from the locals. Madeira Vine, introduced from South America, grows aerial rhizomes (which look like cat turds) from its vine and drops them to sprout new growth. Unfortunately we didn’t know about this reproductive capability and pulled a ton of this vine down from the trees. After seeing how rapidly new growth spread from the dropped tubers, in the future we will instead cut and poison the vines from the ground up. To combat the already dropped rhizomes we raked up an entire top layer of mulch and burned it in a bonfire. Continue reading…
Over the last couple of months Mark and I have ventured down south to work on clearing Dad’s property. It was an emotional first visit back in December when we couldn’t even see the road, but slowly we are beating back the lantana and other weeds to reclaim the land. Continue reading…
This Australia day weekend we were busy working on our property up the mountain. Since our last visit Steve Hart (the local farmer) had been up and slashed the road for us. He said it only took him 15 minutes and would cost $15 – the best 15 bucks we’ve ever spent! We could actually walk up the road this time rather than crawling on our hands and knees. It was a rainy, misty weekend and we both had a great time getting in and doing some hard physical labour. It feels like another world up there. We even participated in the annual McKellar Range work day and had a BBQ with all the old-timers.
