Tag Archives: Ged

Dressed to impress

by . Posted on
03 Sep

Well, even the best laid plans . . .

I don’t know quite what happened with Ged’s week off. I know one day I spent being Trinny and Tranny in Port Macquarie, upgrading and updating his wardrobe (which has improved his sartorial elegance but has done sweet FA for the house!) And we ordered lots of things to help the house on its way and I know that the new washing machine is now installed in the laundry and today the taps have been relocated by the plumber and the gorgeous tallowood work surfaces have been ‘dressed’ (Trinny and Tranny all round!) And . . . the falling down awning to the side of the garage has been removed (finally!) and George has been behind the shed with the tractor and made a lovely space for my one day chook run. And the orange tree has had a very dramatic haircut so Tinkerbell and Baby have been having a feast . . . but there’s no one thing finished in the house for me to tick the box and say ‘done’.

Either someone up there is trying to teach me patience, or sorely trying my patience!!

George pushed all the pebbles back up to the bridge on Sunday so I was at last free to leave. When I did finally go off the property it was a strange experience – liberating, exhilarating and kind of scary! Fascinating to see the havoc the water had wrought with all the crossings and bridges and see just how many people, like me, were river or creek bound for the duration. The best thing is that the solar system held up through all that drear, grey week of rain with not even a murmur which was brilliant, even if the sun wasn’t!

Having escaped the truly horrible (and sometimes fatal) flu that had been doing the rounds and that Ged was bed-bound for a week with, I was headachey and nauseous all week but I put it down to sunstroke, PMT or dehydration and soldiered on until mid-week when I spent the night wedded to the WC as my father so eloquently puts it ‘s****ing through the eye of a needle!’ I had a raging temperature and spent the whole of the following day (which was boiling hot) shivering under the doona while all sorts of workmen hammered and tractored and sawed outside. Or maybe that was just what it felt like in my head . . . .

Actually I was dragged out of bed by George early in the day to go over to his place and meet the Fire Brigade to get my Fire Permit now that the ban has been brought in early. I can’t say I was looking my best for such an occasion, and luckily while I looked like death, they were no pin-up boys either, so I didn’t miss a perfect opportunity there . . .

I was all better by the next day and had to go forth and forage for food in the shops to fill the void and found some gorgeous local natural yoghurt – there are some really amazing locally grown and made natural products up here which inspire me to cook for my workers. I have also just discovered Kipfler (??) little sort of long potato things – divine. Highly recommend my sweet potato curry . . . .!

On Saturday we headed down to the Central Coast to go to my old hairdresser’s 40th which was a big Yugoslav family affair in truly the naffest house you could even begin to imagine – huge mock tudor baronial/aussie macmansion. It was ‘gangsters and molls’ so I wore a great beaded dress which Mel sent over (and will unlikely be getting back!) and slicked my hair back with kiss curls on my cheeks. It was all a mad rush, especially since I was determined to trim the horse’s feet before we left. So we raced into Port to get shoes for my outfit, socks for Ged’s, present for the birthday boy etc., and then I was sewing buttons and headbands in the car on the way! But it was fun to see them and some people I hadn’t seen for ten years and to have a good boogie. On Sunday we went to meet some of his oldest friends and had a look at where he had grown up – lovely acreage at Terrigal where his big family roamed the countryside on horseback and listened to the bell birds in the bush. It was nice to get out on the water in the speed boat but I wasn’t game to ski – too bloody cold for me!!

Then home and the warm glow of a good day’s burning – George has been a busy boy and done a great job. and he tells me that his daughter gave him a huge amount of home cooked food when she saw him at Church on Saturday – so she was obviously guilt ridden into action after he told her I was cooking for him – great! I can rest in peace then . . .


THE MAGICAL ANGLE CREEK

Slash and Burn

by . Posted on
06 Aug

Well, I fired the builder.  Had to be done, really!  The previous week his children had been sick and then he had caught the bug so I didn’t see hide nor hair of him.  Monday he turned up looking for a cheque and on Tuesday he presented some very flimsy invoices to support his request for ‘more’.  I gave him a cheque but when he hadn’t turned up by lunchtime the following day with no call to explain why, I cancelled it.  And reconciled myself to the fact that he would have to go.

He was very sweet, and reasonable eye candy but I can watch Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise for my jollies, and at least I KNOW he’s not going to renovate my house!!    Oh well, my intuition was way out on that one!  Or maybe I was right, and he would have done it, but it would have been like Waiting for Godot and we all know that I haven’t a patient bone in my body . . . .

Ged to the rescue again!  He used to be a builder so he is going to put his hands to good use and last weekend we got more done in two days than the builder had done in a month so things could be looking up!  OK it might only happen at weekends but at least I know that it will happen.

My life is beginning to feel like one of those commercials ‘it may not happen overnight, but it will happen’!

George is my saving grace!  He has burnt a break across the other side of the property so ‘on the next good hot day ‘ he can ‘set a match to it and get rid of all the bladey grass’.  Australian farmers make sense of the phrase ‘slash and burn’.  But George doesn’t know that my Natural Farming book says that burning destroys more nutrients than it puts back so while I agree that the years of neglect need to be burnt off, this may be the last year he gets to indulge his pyromania!

He has also been up on the ridge cutting down the wattles and lantana – silhouetted against a pristine sky – an Australian icon.  I am so privileged to have him to learn from and also to witness that rugged pioneering spirit.  His father was a pom so when we agree we have anything in common he says it’s the pom in us!  He is a master of bush craft and I am a willing disciple.  He makes me laugh but his story is a sad one.  His gorgeous wife who is a real looker with the kindest deep blue eyes, has Alzheimers and he will not give her up to care.  His work is his sanity and she is his one true love so it’s a hard row he hoes and he often needs just a little sympathetic hearing from an unconditional heart.

Now we are calling in George’s younger brother to do my post and rail fencing – just a bit at a time when I’m feeling flush!  I have been the painting queen all weekend, coat after coat over the vile lime green walls inside and pressure washing the outside and making a start on that.  I cleaned out the cattle yards, pulling up all the fireweed and mowing seven years of weeds.  George got me in the river to put a couple of wires across to stop the cattle – the river was the same temperature as the sea at West Wittering on Christmas Day in the UK.  I did two walks across (belly button high) and strung two wires and plunged straight into a boiling hot bath!  Freezing!  George and Marcia thought it was hilarious!  And now my water wading skills have been requested again for early Thursday morning for a repeat performance at the other end of the property.  I think I’ll go buy a boat!

Happy Horse Homecoming

by . Posted on
30 Jul
The horses came home!  Very sleek and slim and still in the head.  As if they’ve been off on a yoga and detox retreat for six weeks!  They couldn’t believe there was grass at the end of their stint of starvation so they were snatching every tuft as I walked them in from the Angle so as not to risk them or the truck on the rough road on the property.

My rushed endeavours to fence a paddock for them had backfired.  I had hired someone I didn’t like or trust to do a day’s fencing for me and he had done the most appalling job.  A blind, cack handed city slicker could have created something with more finesse.  So I tried diplomacy but he was an aggro little bush pig so in the end I had to give him the straight talking he could understand!  And I learned a good country lesson.  it’s better to wait for the experts however long it takes than to rush in and create a mess that has to be fixed later.

The horses didn’t like that paddock anyway so they have migrated up onto the House Ground and despite the complete lack of fences and the cattle wandering on, off and round, have made no attempt to stray further.

As I was walking the horses in and showing them their new home another truck with the roof insulation was trying to find us so I had to wade through the river and walk up the hill to try and track him down as I had left the car up on the ridge where I had met the horse truck.  Despite the driver’s insistence that he didn’t want to risk getting bogged on the property I thought I knew better . . . and sure enough he got stuck with no way forward and no way back on the damp red dirt on the other side of Hoppy’s Bridge (as we all call the cement causeway that John & Sally Hopkins put in ten years or so ago).  We were going nowhere fast until I remembered all the carpet we had ripped out of the house and drove round and retrieved it piece by piece (Lord, I really need a ute for the farm!).  Still, it took almost three hours to get him free, unload the insulation into the trailer and deliver it down to the house and into the garage and get him off again. Another big lesson – can’t bring a six wheeler with a lazy axle onto Avalon again!
Whoever thought that living in the country meant a quiet life??

The end to that extraordinary day was when I literally ran out of petrol halfway down the long thin river paddock!  Thank God for Ged (Mr Solar and a neighbour) who brought me fuel and is determined to be a knight in shining armour to this damsel in stress!