Tag Archives: drought

The hellscape of 2019

by . Posted on
07 May

After the drought and the fires we knew that this would be a year of healing.  When the rain fell on Christmas Day, we all felt a glimmer of hope.  Never before have I been so glad to slam the door on a year as I was at the end of 2019.  We were broken people.  Brittle and hard, dusty and withered by the heat, the dry, the exhaustion of trying to save our cattle.  

And then there were the fires.  Three months of fear as they circled us, finally blazing through the bush and rainforest we take such pride and joy in.  Helicopters scurried to and fro overhead day after endless day, making long journeys to the Hastings River for fire fighting water.  They tried to collect from one of the rapidly dwindling pools in the river below us, but it was too dangerous.  We were grateful not to have that stress as well.  

The river stopped flowing in October.  The baking sun evaporated inches every day and rather than the cool depths we are used to refreshing ourselves in after hot days of farmwork, there were just a few muddy warm puddles for us to flounder in.  The same water which served our stock and the house, that we wash our bodies and our clothes in.  The home of our precious platypus population.  Never before, in living memory, has the Ellenborough River stopped flowing.  

Our once verdant pastures were desiccated dust bowls.  Our beautiful Jerseys dropped to their knees and we battled to save them.  We stressed about money as we paid for tonne bags of pellets and small mountains of luxurious lucerne.  We nursed and nurtured the fallen as we begged them to get up and get well.  We sold others rather than lose them too.  Every day seemed to be a weighing of the scales with death.  The Grim Reaper wielded his scythe mercilessly.  We have seen horror before but this was different.  Millie, Milka, Henrietta, Damson, Clara were all hand fed and much loved pets as much as quiet and peaceful matriarchs in the herd.

Big Red was a huge cow with monster horns.  She went down and we kept sitting her up but Ged went away for work and I couldn’t do it alone.  But by buggery I wasn’t going to let her die so I used every ounce of my ingenuity and strength during that week – erecting shade over her, hoisting her up onto her knees so she could eat and drink and try and regain her strenght.  She died anyway.

Damson had been abandoned by her mum the day she was born so was hand reared by us.  She and Petal were inseparable.  I was worried about her birthing for the first time so checked on her daily.  She went down and I tried to help but she ran from me and slipped into the river.  That was a long day of literally trying to keep her head above water until we could lift her out.  Once dry and safe we fed her up, to no avail.

I lost all my favourites last year.  All my four legged friends.  It was brutal.

We had the joy of Goldie and her puppies.  8 little parcels of love.  And then Goldie went off for a wander with Mudji and never came home.  We hunted high and low.  With no body to bury and her babies to raise, there was no time for the deep grief of her loss.

Even the neighbours in their 80’s who have farmed this land their whole lives said beasts were dropping like flies.  None of us knew that the drought would go on so long and that it would be as bad as it was.  We were relying on spring rains.  They never came.  We all started feeding too late.

Added to the heat, dust and fire stress then was the sweet stench of our friends’ rotting flesh as we weren’t allowed to burn them.

I’ve never been in a war zone.  My experience can’t compare but that’s what it felt like – heat, smell and smoke.  Choppers whirring overhead.  A constant feel of threat and dread.  By December Ged and I were ready to walk off the land.  It was too much.  We were too scarred, so tired, broken.

We promised ourselves ‘no rash decisions’ as I restlessly googled farms for sale in New Zealand.  We knew 2020 would be a year of healing, of finishing projects, of letting time and space separate us from our grief.  Little could we know what this year had in store . . .

And yet.  Covid has forced us home and stopped the rush and scurry of our lives, leaving the farm to take Ben to school etc.  We have had more rain in the first few months of 2020 than in the past few years in total.  The grass has hurled itself out of the ground.  Mother Nature is recovering.  And so are we.  Time to be.  Time to be here.  To let the sounds seep into our souls.  To sleep, at last.  To watch the meandering river and its quiet life.  To listen to its burbling over rocks.  To watch eagles soaring, the cormorant drying his wings, the platypus paddling on the surface before duck diving once more.

And in these quiet pleasures comes peace.  A deep stillness settling in my soul  as Nature heals the deep heart she has wrought.  As we rest easy in her abundant embrace after wrestling with her and The Grim Reaper last year.

I guess I’m a farmer now.  I guess I learnt just why they can be dour and taciturn.  I learned about the pain lodged like a stone in their hearts.  And I have become quieter as a result. 

 

Drought, Fire & Flooding Rains . . .

by . Posted on
17 Feb

I guess I couldn’t really understand what it was to be a farmer in this country without experiencing Drought. I console myself with that idea. The climate denialists will quote Dorothea McKellar’s beautiful ode to Australia as rationale for their beliefs, and it is true that Mother Nature operates in cycles, but we are in extremis now.

https://www.dorotheamackellar.com.au/archive/mycountry.htm

When we first came here, the farmers around us who had lived and farmed this land all their long lives told us that the Ellenborough River had never stopped flowing. It stopped in September 2019. We felt confident in our oasis with its creeks, springs and river. But we watched our stagnant pools dropping by inches a day in the vicious heat of spring and summer. We feared for ourselves, our stock, our platypus population – the river and rainfall are what sustains us all.

We scrambled frantically on the phones to find feed and then for funds to pay for it. We had to put our hand up for charity when we just couldn’t take any more. We watched beloved cows drop to their knees and despite our best efforts never get up again. We spent days digging a downer out of a bog, feeding and watering her and hand feeding her calf. We got intimate with maggots in an array of injuries. We learned just how useful hip lifters are. We hauled on heavy cows to turn and lift them. We tried and we tried and we tried . . . and we failed. We lost too many to count. We lost friends, four leggeds that we raised by hand and loved beyond measure: Isis, Damson, Millie, Milka, Henrietta, Big Red, JB and more. And then there were all the cows and steers we had to sell for a pittance because we feared they too would lie down and die.

And then there was Goldie. Our golden girl. Our beautiful bitch. Ben’s dog. There is something so incredibly beautiful about a boy and his dog. Listening to his peals of laughter as she scrambled all over him as she has done since a pup. He loved her so much. We all did. And her puppies were a miracle (unplanned though her pregnancy was, I am so grateful for it now). I stayed up all night and at one point woke Ben to come and see a baby being born. It was a sacred time. And despite her exhaustion and overwhelm (8 babies!!) Goldie was an amazing Mum. She hid under the house for a while that first day (& who can blame her?) and then she would disappear for a little while very day for a rest. Slowly traversing further afield as the weeks passed – down to the river for a swim and explore. Never too far, always back in an hour for the next feed. Until the day she disappeared with Mudji and didn’t come home. As night fell we were frantic and started feeding the babies (luckily I had bought some powdered puppy milk as a supplement for Goldie at the pet shop’s advice). Mudji turned up at the neighbour’s the next day as usual but no Goldie. It was Ben’s birthday weekend and we were out looking high & low, calling for her. No sign. No trace. No sound. Nothing. No body to bury. No real closure. No time to grieve.

We raised her pups, Ben instantly claiming the little lemon beauty as Goldie’s replacement and I held the little black boy close to my heart and refused to let him go despite Ged’s disapproval. And then we had to let them go too. God, that was hard. Every goodbye felt like another part of Goldie leaving us. And they were all so beautiful, just like her. But the fact that they are so loved by the families they have gone to, and that her light lives on in this world, is a source of great joy.

I don’t like who we became last year. Brutal, brittle, broken people. We talked very seriously about walking off the farm. We just couldn’t take it any more. We were in shock, I see now that it was like a war zone mentality – we became immured to death somehow, closed off from it, sealed from its shockingness in order to protect our own hearts.

And then came the fires. Moving slowly, but inexorably our way from Mt Seaview and Yarras. That added another level of stress. I went away to a long planned yoga retreat, hoping for healing. Instead I got a text from Ged with a dramatic photo of the fire now in the neighbour’s place and barrelling down on us. So I learned to live in the moment – going deep into meditation and breathing and then coming out to get on the phone and issue rapid fire instructions what to pack, what to leave, where essentials were, how to protect our assets. I stayed and focussed while fear built in me and then drove home via Bunnings on the Monday, filling a trolley with hoses and sprinklers. Ben was evacuated and we had two days to prepare ourselves and our property for the onslaught.

George, our 85 year old neighbour came by. He was scared. He doesn’t scare easy. He was worried about crown fires and fireballs and the lack of water, how dry it was, how little hope we could escape annihilation. But we did. Although the fires continued around us for months. ‘Watch & Act’ sounds so benign. But it is a state of hypervigilance, of nerves in tatters, of fear that I never want to experience again. And the helicopters overhead hour after hour, day after day, the thick smoke we breathed for months, and the sweet stench of death from my rotting friends gave me a feeling of Vietnam or some other vile warzone.

We went away but Ged had to come back to fight fire, to fix broken water pipes, to take delivery of more unaffordable hay. We couldn’t relax. We were constantly on edge, cranky, snappy.

The first rain came on Christmas Day – the ultimate Christmas gift. In January a slow moving wall of clear rainwater saw the river flowing again. Now we have cleansing floods, trees tossed and bobbing on fast moving muddy flood water as the riverscape is purified once more.

And now the healing can begin. I have begun what I call ‘crying yoga’ the nights on my mat sobbing for my lost friends. And walking the landscape, remembering their faces, their soft pelts, their wet noses.
We are scarred by 2019. We will never forget. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know this – the global human population has exploded over the past 150 years as has our consumption, manufacturing, coal burning and carbon creation as we evolve from horse and cart to steam power, electricity, petrol & diesel driven cars, planes and more. We cannot possibly believe that our deforestation and coal burning has not irrevocably altered the planet and its atmosphere. We have to stop. We have to change. We have to backpedal. We all have to do our bit.

A tinder dry tale of a late winter fire

by . Posted on
Comboyne View
09 Aug

Last Monday I was in town (which isn’t usual) and happened to hear on The Country Hour that the RFS was bringing in the fire permit season a month earlier than they have for the past few years. It used to be 1st October. For the past couple of years it has been 1st September. Now they were saying 1st August.

That meant we had 3 days to do a month’s burning! Farmers generally burn off in August – after the frosts have killed the grass and the air temps have increased. So bringing forward the deadline was a foolhardy decision by the RFS. It would have been better to have told us all in June or July that if there was no rain, they would be bringing in the permit season earlier.

I had been for a big walk, high into the bush the previous day, looking for the star picket post remover which seems to have vanished into thin air! I hadn’t been up there for maybe 6 months and I was amazed by the depth of the leaf litter and the branches and other debris littering the bushscape.  After 7 lush wet years and then the high, drying, winds we have experienced lately, I was walking on 6 inches of crackly, slippery, dryness and navigating fallen tree limbs very few feet.

We hadn’t burnt up there for about 4 years and clearly, if we wanted to be safe in the event of a catastrophic fire summer, we needed to light it up.

We don’t like to burn, unlike many farmers who use it as an intrinsic part of their overstocked cattle feeding regime. But occasionally we use it as a tool to clean up an area or lighten the fuel load to protect us against a hot summer fire.

With the forecast el nino spring and summer, and as we back onto State Forest, we feel compelled to protect ourselves. Our lovely neighbour has been asking us to light up behind part of our property and into hers for years. So we lit into the bush behind us, Ged stayed home and we had our English wwoofers, Ben & Naomi on hand in case of escapee blazes (we have all had one ‘get away on us’! and burn a paddock we didn’t intend to!)

All went well for a couple of days but on Friday when little Ben and I began our descent off Comboyne mountain after preschool we saw a haze of thick smoke in the valley and were worried! As we drove along the final stretch of Tilbaroo and looked over to our land, we saw a spreading grass fire where we definitely had no intention of burning!

Through the gate, through the river, up the bank, hooting and shouting to Ged ‘the farm is on fire!’  He leapt in his car with the fire beaters and we stopped long enough at The Tree House to hoot and yell the same dire message to the wwoofers and then we all raced over to ‘the other side’ as if we were competing for the world rally racing championships!

Little Ben and I checked the bees while the boys raced into fire fighting mode. The bees had fled and Ben and I were devastated. Not again! (I was responsible for the last getaway blaze & have been banned from playing with matches for life!) We met up with the boys and sent Naomi & little Ben home (I need to do a poo, Mummy!)

It didn’t take long to get it all under control. The bees came home and are busy, busy. But the bush is still burning. The neighbours say it hasn’t been burnt for 20 years or more. Better a cool winter burn than a raging summer furnace travelling at 30kms an hour – with the tops of oily eucalypts alight, fireballs and radiant heat.  Unfortunately State Forests and National Parks are little managed, so we are giving them a long overdue clean out and in this valley we can all feel a lot safer and more prepared for whatever Mother Nature may throw at us in terms of drought . . .

The valley still has a smoky haze, the helicopters are keeping an eye on the fires on distant hills and we can relax, hoping that this will keep us safe this summer . . . the river is SO low, the creek is almost dry, the dams too.  When we arrived here the drought was ending.  We have had 7 years of flood and fertility.  This is going to be a new experience for us on this land we love.  But we will weather it.  And we will grow and learn.  We have to.  That is the lesson of Mother Nature who tempts, taunts, tries, feeds and clothes us.  Like every woman she has many moods and is sometimes swift to change them.  Like every woman she makes us happy when she is balanced – sun and rain.

Right now we are praying for rain . . .

What makes an Aussie Farmer?

by . Posted on
09 Dec

When I first came here I thought it was the Akubra, the moleskins, the RM boots and the years on the land that made a farmer but now I know different.

It’s the long, hot hours on the tractor.  The stiff neck, hip and back from hours reversing up hills and clearing gullies.  It’s the permanent ‘farmer’s tan’ of face, neck and arms and the leathering of the skin in the hot aussie sun.  It’s the ability to pull a calf out of a straining cow, or pull a cria out of a birthing alpaca.  It’s knowing when to call the vet and when time and patience and a little TLC will heal.

It is knowing and loving and caring for animals.  Being brave enough to decide who goes for slaughter when.   Crying for them when they go, communicating with them beforehand and remembering them always as friends and fellow travellers and family.  It’s the understanding that we all have a purpose and a gift to give and that some of these animals make the ultimate sacrifice, give of themselves, with love and service, so we can eat.  There is no greater gift than that.

It is the watching of the seasons, the listening to the land as she speaks, working with her, nurturing her and feeling her nurture us as we live in her embrace.  It is learning to see and hear her messengers and understand their messages – the scurrying ants, cawing black cockatoos, lying down alpacas and cows saying storm coming and watching the sky turning indigo as it looms.

Seeing the babies being born and the ones that don’t survive – snatched before life has a chance to begin by goannas or snakes or circumstance.  Watching them grow and then mourning if they are taken too soon.  Nature is cruel, life is not guaranteed and ‘where there is live stock, there is dead stock’.

It is watching the eagles wheel and soar and teaching their babies to fly, talking to snakes and not being afraid of them, swimming with platypus, marvelling at the beauty and diversity of Mother Nature and having daily conversations with God and the Angels.  Finally feeling gratitude, humility and awe at this beautiful planet, this wonderful place and life, so precious, so tenuous, so brief.  After a lifetime of dabbling in death defying activities, all of a sudden I don’t want to die, don’t want to leave here, can’t bear the thought of not seeing the trees we are planting bear fruit.

Being a Farmer is all about taking care of the land that takes care of us – that feeds our bodies, nurtures our souls, and allows us and the planet to breathe.  It is hard, hard yakka.  Lifting, carrying, hauling, hurting.  Thankless, endless, relentless and often joyless.  But the rewards are spiritual as we come to see how small we are in the grand scheme of things, how brief our imprint, how enduring and changeable nature is and how we too must learn to bend in the winds of change or be blown over if we stand too proud and strong and rigid.

It is riding out the floods and the droughts and understanding that the feast and famine cycles are natural rhythms of nature.  It is knowing how to make do and paddock and bush fix things and scrape meals together from what is in the veggie patch and the pantry.  Living by the seasons, powered by the sun and becoming ever more sustainable.

It is cuts and scratches and bruises and worn clothes and wrinkles, but it is honest, and pure and worthwhile.  Down here on the farm we piss in the wind, we revel in our nudity, the animals don’t care how old or deshevelled we look, and the dirt is ingrained in hands and fingernails and no amount of scrubbing will get them clean.  And we don’t care.  Because bodies grow old and disintegrate and die and the wild dogs and goannas will feed off them.  Nothing is forever, this too shall pass and we are lucky to have witnessed creation at its most perfect and beautiful and to have immersed ourselves in the natural world.  What will happen after we are gone?  Nature will endure and all our work may well have been for nothing – who knows who will tend Avalon for future gnerations or if it will just be left to run wild and untamed as it was before we came.  And yet still we continue and persevere and keep going – for the love of it, for the deep peace and stillness she brings to our souls.

The Akubra never got worn so I sold it on ebay, I can’t afford moleskins or rm boots but I am a farmer in my wiry arms, in my wide shoulders, in my sun beaten and battered skin, in my tortured hip, in my holey clothes and deep down in my grateful soul . . .