Tag Archives: river

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.

Close Encounter of the Platypus kind!

by . Posted on
25 Feb

I had an eyeball to eyeball encounter with a platypus last night – went down to the river on my run on the other side to look at the receding flood waters and the new waterfall gushing into the river, and as I approached the shore I saw a weed wobbling in the water and thought ‘what’s that’.  Got to the very edge and looked down and one second later Mr Platypus surfaced right at my feet, staring up at me (he must have been nibbling on the weed stem.  We looked at each other in complete astonishment for a long few second and then he duck dived – but he kept feeding right along the shoreline so I got up close and personal – wonderful!  They are not very big and a lot of it is tail and they seem to have very white eyes with a black pupil.

White Ant invasion

by . Posted on
09 May

We have been scrubbing the Comboyne office (and there are those of you who know how much it needed it!!)  We have given away the fridge, toaster and microwave and packed up all the paraphernalia belonging to Ged’s brother and his business and are almost free and unfettered . . . we have exchanged on the sale of Ged’s 400 acre block and are now just awaiting settlement so it’s a good feeling for us both to be clearing out the detritus of his bachelor life and more fully embracing the life we have chosen together.  Needless to say, I won’t let him keep much!!

Meanwhile, down on the farm, we have discovered where the white ants went after we ejected them from my side of the shed where they were gnawing on the wooden mattress supports for one of my beds.  No, they haven’t gone up into the bush where there are thousands of felled trees they could nibble on to their little hearts’ content, they migrated instead to Ged’s shed and set up camp in the beautiful Tasmanian Oak flooring we had set aside for the office . . . they were obviously pretty bloody hungry, because there isn’t much left!
So Ged has been burning the equivalent of money as he sorts through the mess and I have been on the internet searching out sure-fire death to these pestilent perpetrators of wholesale wood massacre.  They’ve got 400 acres of wood out there – what’s so bloody tasty about my furniture???!!
Poor Shirley and Marcel have recently discovered White Ant in their Guest Annexe so both Marcel and I have been investigating options.  He is Sherlock Holmes, I am Watson.  He has gone down the pest man route, to the detriment of his bank balance.  We are still looking for solutions which go back to the nest and kill the queen, because we need an on-going long-term solution.
We are avidly watching the second series of The West Wing on DVD (which Neil and Jane lent us) and I am simultaneously reading ‘A Woman In Charge’ – Carl Bernstein’s balanced portrayal of Hillary Clinton.  Since The West Wing is based on the Clinton era I found factual events and actions on which the plots were based as I read on.  I found the book absolutely fascinating.  Highly recommended to anyone who lived through, and wondered about, the Clinton history, marriage, Whitewater and all those women . . . I’m not sure whether to be sad or relieved that she’s been sidelined by Obama.  The feminist in me wants a woman in the White House very badly.  But Hillary – I’m not so sure.
I am loving being at home more, revelling in the beauty of this idyllic spot, and most definitely nesting . . .
Return of the platypus . . .

Two scared horses come home at last

by . Posted on
26 Nov

Baby has been a quaking, shaking wreck for a week!  I brought her home on Tuesday morning once my foot had returned to approximately normal size and I had spent several hours trying to find them on ‘the other side’.  I brought them back to the house side and as soon as Ged’s horses saw my two they started cantering up towards them, so I thought I’d just let them run together and let my two go.  Big mistake!  They were last seen by George heading up the old ‘road’ up into the hilly ridge and then they were gone all day.  Ged came home to help me look for them and after much driving around, we found them looking sheepish and heading back down the self same road they had last been seen haring up with the hounds of hell apparently at their heels.  By  this time I had locked Ged’s horses in the yards after counselling from my Horse Herbalist.  And I brought my two home, washed them down, soothed them with words and ‘Settle Petal herbal remedy, fed them their favourite tasty morsels and then, once they seemed normal and calm, let them go again.  Big, big mistake!

Baby galloped up a vertical hill and just kept going.  I didn’t see where.  They were AWOL for two days and nights despite us both putting in countless miles on foot and in the car trying to track them down.  George tried ‘thinking like a horse’ and poking round in the dust looking for tracks – ‘don’t be surprised if I turn black’ he said but to no avail.  You can imagine how stressed I was!  Finally George dragged me out of bed at 7am after their second night out in the wilderness and insisted on going out looking for them with me in the car because he was determined we would find them out feeding in the cool of the day.  Sure enough, we crested a ridge and George said ‘turn around, that’s it, you can stop looking now’.  ‘Where?’ I said, peering left and right.  ‘Straight ahead’ and there they were.  Naughty children!  I got out and caught them and sent George home driving the Pajero (hilarious!)  and both Ged and George could finally relax again because I had a smile on my face.  Ged had taken his horses over to the other side so I shut my two in the yards to feed them, de-tick them and so they could see for themselves that the scary ghosts were all gone.  More ‘Settle Petal’, more sweet words of wisdom and love and more tasty titbits and I left them there for an hour or so to calm down and re-establish their territory.  Then I let them go.  BIG MISTAKE!  Off they galloped.  At least this time I knew where they were going so I tracked them and watched their meandering but determined trail up into the far corner of the property so they could hide behind the trees and keep a sharp eye on about 50 acres all at once.  Crazy horses!  They stayed away all day and night again so I got up with the birds again to catch them and bring them home again.  This time Ged came with me and we closed some gates behind us so they were confined to the long skinny river paddock (which they love) and then we had to go down to Newcastle for the day.
We had a four hour drive and just managed to fit in a wee and some sort of salad roll before my 12 noon meeting with the Bridal Consultant at David Jones.  Ged had to deliver his dirt bike and accessories to one brother (meanie Sophie made him sell it!)  and acres of camping gear to the other brother as well as a number of other chores to complete on the Central Coast so I was left to my own devices.  Not such a great plan as it turned out!  I didn’t realise that making a wedding list was not a simple matter of waltzing around the store with a mincing minion behind me, pointing out delectable items of homeware and saying ‘I’ll have one of those, two of those . . . ‘ etc.  No, no, no.  Five and a half hours trapped in an airless, fluorescent, two floor store, examining every item for sale, picking the ones I liked and then having to write down each one’s barcode, serial number, department number, price etc ., etc.,  I was on the phone saying ‘Honey, where are you?’ before the second hour was up . . . .!!
But once my pulse had returned to normal, my eyes had adjusted once again to daylight, and I had been picked up by the errant husband to be, I was able to report that I had chosen some really lovely things to make our house a home.  And as you all know how impossible I am to buy for, I am sure you will be glad I have taken the stress out of second guessing me in the matter of gift giving!  Ged was happy because I also spotted a beautiful handbag I fancied for Christmas so I’ve done his Christmas shopping too!
When we got off the highway and onto the dirt roads heading home we realised that while I had been in my artificial environment, and Ged clocking up the miles in the sun, it had obviously been pouring at home.  So we thought we’d better not use our normal through the river short cut, but go over the bridge.  I don’t think so!  We had only been gone for just over 12 hours and the river was up 4 foot!  So we flew home!  In the dark, no torch, and in our city finery on the flying fox over the raging river.  Phee was waiting on the verandah like the good boy that he is, somewhat surprised to see us suddenly appear in the yard with no prior warning!  (His nose is fully recovered, thank you, but he is currently waging war on all flying insects – he has got a bee in his bonnet about being stung again!)


George and I dropped a match in the big gully by the house . . . (is that the dragon Baby is so scared of??!!)

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