Ozearth Blog

On Monday and Tuesday we did a two day Mental Health First Aid course. It was quite fascinating, and pretty confronting.

Today we fired up the genny, charged all the computers and the internet dongle, ran the engine in, and (most importantly) cranked up the power toolage!

A grinder liberated a window from its far too large frame; a jigsaw cut one thing up and then fell to bits (ho-hum, back to drawing board there); a driver drill, once we’d got John from down the Hill to unlock the chuck key (very impressive wielding of a shifter, handygrips and ManStrength was involved. We are jealous of ManStrength and wish we could buy it in tablet form), did more driving than drilling, but even that was a big help.

We (well, mostly Chloe) have now installed a window and a door in the front of the container. The draughts have thereby been reduced by about 80%, which boggles the mind since there are still significant gaps in the structure. THe most exciting bits are that getting in and out is no longer a huge hassle, and that the window will admit morning light :D

Tomorrow’s plan: get the solar panels for our lovely wee solar lights mounted permanently on the roof so that we can charge the lights from within the container, from first till last light (today we forgot to start them charging until about 2pm, so they all gave out within about three hours. C has made a virtue of necessity and lit a whole lot of candles instead; the effect is gorgeous, particularly reflected in the new window!). The other Big Rock is to tackle the Stupidest Sliding Door in the Universe issue. Can’t wait!

We’ve been contacting people about last minute Heritage Apples (the bare root stock is almost all away and should by rights have been planted weeks ago), and research is in progress into old breed chooks - and we note that some locals in Gardner’s Bay (very close to us) have a Permaculture site incorporating MINI-PIGS!!! Neighbour Matt dropped in today, as ever full of tips for cheap trees (25 bucks for a chestnut tree - cheers, don’t mind if we do!) and other good stuff. Having scrounged around for all the deadfall we could gather, we’ve decided that, as a one-off, we’re going to buy some wood from Matt, just to tide us over until our chainsaw course next month. After we’ve done that, we really will never want for firewood again.

On Friday we are going to see an Exhibition Opening - Michelle (Susan’s daughter) and Eirlysa her partner are both having (absolutely gorgeous) work shown, so we’re off to mortify them by being overly enthusiastic.

Then, on Saturday, we are training at Bonarong Wildlife Sanctuary to be rescuers of wee hoppity animals. In our Copious Free Time, you understand.

We are thinking about christening this place “Starfire Farm”, partly because the night sky is so breathtaking here, but also because of the powerful female energy in the historical symbolism of Starfire - much as we are envious of ManStrength, we are rather fond of strong female energy around here!

There have been various calls for photos from our dear readers. One evening when our batteries will go the distance, C promises to upload all the photos we’ve been accumulating since getting here!

Lots of love to all
xox H

The genny is in; we had a brief bad moment upon being told that only really tiny stupid little stick welders would work with as few Amp hours as our genny outputs, but actually it looks like a different brand of welder will do the thing just fine.

On our travels we also acquired a big metal drum for free (and the guy says we can go back as often as we like) which will be a perfect big rocket mass heater; and a whole lot of tyres from the bottom servo, which we will certainly use for building, but also, in the shorter term, for potato towers. Warwick, your man at the bottom servo, also lent us his ramps for unloading the genny, and let us leave various dead batteries with him.

We took a uteload of some of the more scary superannuated flammable poisonous stuff from the shed and around the place down the Hill to the tip today. There’s still quite some dubious stuff lying around - what are we to do, for example, with a dozen 10 litre containers full of carpet shampoo of unknown composition and vintage?? (Not a rhetorical question, that, by the way - suggestions are welcome.)

On the way back we stopped to refresh the wood supply, which was becoming a bit impoverished. It meant I got to see a bit more of the land (good grief, but there is indeed rather a lot of it!). I reckon we’ve more or less picked up what there is to pick up along the stretch of road we covered - bring on that chainsaw course (next month!) so that we can actually tackle some of the larger logs that are lying around!

The Folk Club on Friday evenings continues to be lovely - I actually went sort of prepared last night, and jammed through some traditional Irish stuff and a smattering of Steeleye Span. Next week is Open Mike, and I have a couple of ideas about what I’m going to do.

I’ve definitely got a spot in the Cygnet festival, next January. It was kind of them to let me be involved, given that I really missed the submissions deadline. Watch this space for details - it may be that, as well as performing, I do some kind of workshop(!)

Susan of Cobweb Designs and her family continue to be incredibly generous and lovely, our go-to people for information and in any time of strife (as in the case of some recent bank hassles, hopefully soon to be resolved).

We have discovered another fantastic source of local plants, both food plants and a large range of natives, at really good prices, and run by the delightful Mireille (who is originally from French Switzerland) and her partner whose name I am ashamed to say I have forgotten.

Chloe’s building a drystone wall out of the pale golden Permian Mudstone that’s lying around up here, to give the orchard a bit of wind protection. It is rather attractive! She’s also busily planting and possumproofing all manner of new plants - primarily grapes and soft fruit, but we’ve also got ourselves a fig and a couple of herbs (Vietnamese Mint and Horseradish, among others).

The trees we planted earlier are all getting ready to leaf up - we may even get blossoms! This is very exciting for us. It will feel like a major triumph to have the orchard up and running - the first in a series of steps that will transform this place into a garden paradise

Tomorrow - after visiting a special double-sized Cygnet Market - we christen the genny. We’re going to tackle the container, installing a front window and a non-sliding side door out to the caravan shed, to make it a bit lighter and a bit less draughty.

After that, a dog run and various other bits and pieces!

Greetings from the Hill, where wireless mobile broadband is now connected, hoorah! It’s not cheap, but it works - and, courtesy of an antenna, it even works inside!

C and I have both been struck down by the lurgy (me a few days ago - am slowly recovering - and C early this morning), so it’s nice that we have the internet up and running so we can be doing something constructive with the enforced rest time.

We are making lots of lovely friends, particularly through the folk club. Last night we were invited to a going-away party for two of the stalwarts, who are off for a holiday in England (at this time of year!! Are they mad?). It was a jolly evening full of good company, good food, a fair whack of ribald humour (Gerard and John, two expat Irishmen - one from the North, the other from the South - excellent musicmakers both, and Chloe got together and lowered the tone admirably!) and plenty of musicmaking.

Unfortunately we got home to find that all was not well. We had given Teesy dinner and left her up the Hill, trusting that she would sniff around, perhaps destroy a couple of things, and then settle down in front of the fire. Once again, we underestimated her residual separation anxiety after quarantine…

She was not in the container. Hard not to panic in this sort of case - missing deaf dog, dead of night, middle of the bush - not a good look.

It was clear that her attempted escape route had started with pushing open the sliding door to the next shed. In the next shed is the usual random crap, including a decrepit old caravan where we’ve been putting her at night and keeping our clothes and bedding (when the container is set up in its day mode).

After five minutes (it felt longer) of searching and wondering if she’d actually managed to find a way out of the shed and into the wilderness, we found her. For reasons known only to herself, she’d decided to crawl under the caravan, where it’s dark, cold, cramped and full of tangling hazards - which Teesy found out, getting thoroughly wound up in electrical wires. We have no idea how long she’d been there - long enough to give up on howling for help, at any rate, which almost certainly means hours. Happily we were able to extract her with no greater harm done than a fair dose of filth and distress to all concerned.

Poor wee dog, dragged from pillar to post for months on end. She’s currently sunning herself in the container door, and seems fine - but we’ll be finding ways to secure that sliding door as soon as may be, and the bloody caravan’s days are numbered, too.

Speaking of dog antics, I drove to Hobart the other day to get the car window replaced, only to find that the telephone operator at the insurance company had ordered the wrong window in. Given that getting to Hobart costs about half an eyewateringly expensive tank of petrol, we were Not Amused. The correct window should be coming in today, so we’ll go and get that done later in the week when we need to be in Hobart again anyway. I did my best to improve the shining hour by buying various basics while I was in the Big Smoke (groceries, washing baskets, a tub for the sink), but those who know me will understand that this didn’t really compensate for the epic boomeranginess of the errand.

So, just to update you on where we ended last time: we bought a chipper. It’s a bit of a toy one, but it’ll do us for a start, we think. We got refunds on all the kit that we’d bought in error, and got a replacement wheel for the barrow. Almost all the fruit trees are now in - about thirty in total. We now both have Tassie driver’s licences and the car’s rego has been transferred, too (it was quite an adventure, racing against the clock to get the rusted-on VIC plates removed in time to surrender them to the Huon Valley Council before they shut their doors for the day! Big thanks to the Beaurepaires Huonville lads, who not only helped us with that, but also provided replacement bolts with which to install the new plates). We’ve also now both got Telstra mobile SIM cards (only sort that works up here); I managed to keep my really spiffy number, which makes me nerdily happy, and we’ve also both radically downgraded to basic handsets that are designed to get signal in remote areas. We are sad about our iPhones, but after a couple of weeks of struggling with flat batteries and dropped calls, we’ve had to resign ourselves to the fact that they’re designed for a much more urban life than the one we have up here. Irritatingly, the new handsets still don’t work inside the container, but they do have relatively long standby, which is pretty essential when you don’t have electricity. Looks like paper diaries, to-do lists and maps for both of us: I have oddly mixed feelings about this. I adored having everything in one cloud-connected package, readily searchable, every stray thought or to-do item logged as it came up, complete with alarm if it was time sensitive, yada yada yada.

On the other hand, the haptic aspect of PAPER and STATIONERY is rather attractive. I have been amusing myself with daydreams of Filofaxes (or actually, far cheaper knockoffs thereof), and bespoke holepunches so that I can stick in gregorian chant staves and handmade paper. The thought of actual, handwritten Morning Pages is beguiling, especially since the dawn up here seems to make me want to write music. So hey, swings and roundabouts.

The big news is that we’ve ordered a really serious generator, one which has the capacity to run a welder - we have so much scrap metal here, it counts as one of our major Permy resources, so we’re keen to make use of it. The genny in question also has an eco-throttle function, which means it only runs as high as is needed to deal with the demand of the appliance it’s running. This is great from all sorts of perspectives - noise, pollution, fuel consumption. Once the genny is in, we should be able to start doing some serious work around the place - installing a window at the front and a door at the side of the container (for passive solar gain and to kill the extraordinary draughts), building a crate and run for the dog so that she’s actually safe and able to stretch her legs / get out a bit while we’re not in; starting to construct rocket stoves for various purposes; getting the awfully cute solar panel-lets that connect to our wee nightlights up onto the roof where they can stay (and provide charge for the lights from dawn til dusk), rather than our present rather inefficient system of taking lights, panels and all out as we rise each day (NOT at dawn). I might, in a few months, even get my act together to build a guerrilla vertical axis wind turbine out of a fischer and paykel smartdrive washing machine motor and an oil drum. Just to see how well it works up here.

Other than running power tools, we hope only to be using genny power as a backup.

Research into low-end DIY solar arrays and backhoes / excavators continues apace, with some actual progress being made. Watch this space!

… two last things: there has been a rainbow every single day we’ve been here so far (that’s 17 days running, folks!) and a bird just flew into the container, and straight back out again!

Much to report!

The past few days feel like a weird whirl of meeting people, gathering information, and trying desperately to get various things sorted. It’s also been characterised by a really large amount of driving, which is still making us feel guilty as anything.

One of the highlights of the Sorting Outings was meeting Cheryl of LiNC Huonville. What a powerhouse that woman is. She hooked us up with a chainsaw course (when about half a dozen other leads we’d pursued independently had come to nothing), doggedly staying on the phone for the better part of an hour until she got an answer she liked. And then she invited us to attend a mental health first aid course being run for free in Cygnet later this month - which we will be very interested to participate in!

We’ve spent a lot of lovely time with Susan Fullmoon-Rising, the owner of Cobweb Designs and Gallery in Cygnet. She has rather taken us under her wing, offering us a civilised bed and a hot shower whenever we need it. We all stayed on Wednesday, Chloe stayed on Thursday while I went up the Hill with Teesy, and I stayed on Friday, leaving C on the Hill. Susan is busily gathering in all manner of people who she thinks we’d like to know about and who’d like to know about us - including John from halfway down the hill (excellent guitarist, and among other things expert miller of his own timber using a Lucas Mill), David (a Northern Irishman!), all the folk club people, and Todd, whom I have yet to meet but who is into sound therapy and interesting building projects.

After about a week of heartache and insomnia ever since jailbreaking the Puppeh, we seem to have solved the problem of Getting Sleep. We’re still woken by the wind here (which is nontrivial) but by putting Teesy in the caravan adjacent to the container, we have eliminated a major source of being woken several times a night. Oddly enough, Teesy (having got over the initial separation anxiety) actually seems more comfortable in there - she has a big bed all to herself and a lovely doona to curl up under, and her red coat is proving invaluable.

I was a bit sad to be without C down in Cygnet on Friday, because Friday nights at the Top Pub are when the Folk Club meets. Last Friday was the In The Round session, where everybody sits in a circle and people take turns. It was a smallish gathering (apparently it is mostly a bit larger), but a huge variety of styles and sounds and a fair whack of really serious talent. I sang some Chant, which seems to have gone down well - half the people we’ve met since have said “oh yes, have heard about you!” which is gratifying.

Last Saturday was a HUGE day. We rushed off to Nicholls Rivulet to attend a last chance bare root fruit tree sale, and made off with a number of apple, plum, apricot, cherry and citrus plants, and even a blueberry! Having (as ever) jumped in with both feet before we had any infrastructure in place for actually PLANTING said trees, we then madly rushed around gathering some minimal tools and, vitally, doing a compost run. We started, upon the advice of Bluey, our fruit tree guy, by picking up a possum who was one of the previous evening’s many furry road accident victims (this is a thing about living in Tassie - lots of little roadside corpses ). We slung the possum into the back of the ute for later burial at the base of one of our fruit trees. It will be fascinating to see what effect it has on the growth of the tree we put it under!

Huonville waste transfer station sells vegetable-based compost for 20 bucks a scoop - and actually, our guy just filled the tray of the ute, which was closer to 2 scoops. He also went against the stated rule against scavenging, and upon C’s request picked up a HUGE clump of a rather nice ornamental grass on the loader. He then tried plonking it on the ute - and it promptly scooted off the other side and fell back on the ground. He and C eventually wrangled it onto the ute by hand, and off we went.

It became quickly apparent that we were going to need to tie the grass down and cover the compost if we were to stand any chance of getting it all home intact and without either causing trouble to fellow motorists, or getting a stern talking to by the Fuzz, or both. So we made a quick stop for bird netting and rope, and off we went (again!). We were a bit nervous about getting the ute, with a tonne or two of compost, up the Hill, but Maud (the ute) did it in style.

Finally, in the evening, we went to a party in a nearby town to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of Helen and Andrew Wadsley. It was a huge event with dozens of guests, so we decided that it would be best to leave Teesy in the car…

Teesy had other ideas. Despite various care packages and visits from C during the evening, at a certain point, enough was enough. We don’t actually know what happened for sure, but she suddenly appeared at the back door, and was let in by one of the hosts, whereupon she promptly disgraced herself by stealing lots of food and being mean to the resident Collie :-/.

We had no idea how she’d managed to escape the car… until we went out and discovered the rear window on the passenger side of our brand new car was smashed! We think it almost certain that Teesy is herself responsible, but at this point we’re not telling our car insurance folk that (so if you, dear reader, could keep that to yourself and all, we’d be much obliged.)

Yesterday (Sunday), in passing, we mentioned these exciting events to someone at the Cygnet market, a twice monthly event at the Town Hall featuring really excellent live folk music, and beautiful handmade things of every sort - including the excellent “witchy-poo” hand-made all natural shampoo bar which we bought from a lovely clever woman who makes a gorgeous range of such things. Today, it seems, everyone in town knows about the dog’s escapades! Village life is quite the thing.

The rest of Sunday was spent in preparation for planting and in planting our very first tree. Advice from Bluey was to protect the tree with a tree guard (we have used over 60 pieces of mesh - ex shopping display shelves - and a dozen makeshift pickets, fished out from the resident piles of metal (SUS!) to fabricate these. The results are very sturdy and about half a cubic meter in size. Trev and Lindy would be proud!) John of the Lewis Mill, however, reckons that Possums can and will climb mesh - and even horizontally placed corrugated iron! - up to 1.4m tall, for Pete’s sake!! So today, when we (well, mainly C actually) planted a whole lot more trees, C made sure that the treeguards actually have tops - or in one case, are boobytrapped with precariously balanced bits of pipe and so forth) . We will watch with interest how things develop - the possums haven’t quite discovered this place yet, but from what we hear around the traps, it’s only a matter of time.

One growing frustration we’ve been having is with light after dark up here. It may seem trivial, but the inability to read or knit after dinner is driving us a bit potty. We thought we’d hit on the solution with the windy-up torches, but I think we may already have mentioned that they DO NOT do what it says on the tin. So we then weighed up other options: a kero lamp? Very smelly. A gas lamp? Okay, so we tried it. It’s no good. It produces prodigious, warm light, but that’s where the good news stops. It also gets bakingly hot, which is pretty inconvenient; it makes a STUPENDOUS racket, which rather defeats the purpose of being up here in the quiet; and worst of all, it’s got some very dire warnings written on it about Carbon Monoxide poisioning - and after all, how are we going to know? CO is odourless.

So that experiment was a failure! However, all is not lost - it appears that the very thing we’ve been looking for is available at Woollies. It is a small, magnetic-backed, solar-powered rechargeable LED lantern. It charges during the day and you can read by it during the night. And the magnetic back means that, in the container, it can be stuck up more or less anywhere - problem solved, thanks to the brains trust of John of the Lewis Mill!

Yesterday afternoon as we returned home from the Cygnet market, we came across a beautiful little red robin sitting in the middle of the road up to the Hill. It didn’t move as we passed; when we pulled the car over and went back to see what was up, it made no attempt to get away. It was pretty clear that it had been dealt a glancing blow by a car; we took the poor beautiful tiny thing up the Hill to see if we could help it survive.

We probably scared it half to death bumping it up the road and bringing it into a space that smelt of dog, but we kept it warm and dark overnight and it was still alive this morning. I rushed off into town to buy fat balls, birdseed etc, while C made a fantastically ingenious little cage (without the benefit of anything resembling a decent tool) for it to be safe and yet out of our vicinity, to give it a chance to heal. Sadly, while we were busy with all this stuff, the poor tiny creature finally succumbed to its injuries. We feed ridiculously sad and guilty, but at least the amazing cage will be good for all sorts of other things: protecting such various items as berries and baby chickens.

The other major event last night also wildlife-related. I woke up to fluttering sounds and the occasional sort of crashing noise, and thought the wee bird had escaped, but no: it was a BAT, about 15cm in wingspan, flying around in a panic!! So we opened the door and eventually it flew out, to our relief. It’s certainly the bush out here!

What else? We saw the “failed” bread from the Schoolhouse cafe (”our bread ingredients: Flour. Water. Yeast. Malt. Salt. The rest is technique”) going out in a bucket to feed the Gourmet Farmer’s pigs. We bought one of those wheelbarrows with two wheels at the front at what we reckon to be eyewatering expense, only to discover upon getting it home that one of the wheels is (as the very helpful servo attendant put it this morning after watching me haplessly trying to get the bugger to inflate) “cactus”.

Tomorrow we are away in search of a chipper, a genny, the continuing quest for Internet And Decent Signal on the Hill at a Reasonable Price, and an end to various paper trails (Australian driver’s licences and a Tasmanian rego for our car). We shall see how far we get…

Hope you all are well - drop us a comment and tell us what you’re doing!

Super woosed-out of our first volunteering, at the Stephanie Alexander Garden in Cygnet. Why? Well, really, it’s because we are still complete townies and are uber cautious about the wet slippery road, with sheer falls on either side! A storm kept us up all night, as did useless panicking about any one of the twelve huge eucalypts surrounding the shed about to topple. So, after freaking out, and the torrential rain all night, the plot was oozing mud, as was Toby’s Hill road. We bottled out, not feeling hearty enough to dig the ute out of foot deep clay. Silly sausages – the ute breezed it down. A tad of mud aqua-planing for parts of a kilometer, but all easy as pie.

Last night I was reading about solar systems and bush property fire-safety, in one of Toby & Mel’s old ‘Soft Technology’ magazines. An article at a time, between frenzied torch-winding. At the moment we are about as fire safe as a stick of dynamite set near an oil-lamp. It has been about 30 or 40 years since a fire burnt out the property, according to who you talk to. During my previous visit, Lindy and I did note many burnt out ancient old trees, with hollow blackened insides and green leafy tops!

Today, we are taking respite in the Internet Center, with Teesy (who is lying in a pool of sunlight, as I write). Nice e-mails and Facebook messages, making us feel connected. Staying with Susan, Michelle & her partner tomorrow night (Dinner! Wine! Bed! Showers! People!).

Some lessons, so far, from the Hill… Tiny wind-up torches – don’t bother! Cuddles fix almost anything. Power-tools are a girl’s best friend. Cake is important. Sherry is equally important. Dog on floor means unwanted dog in bed all night: clumsy paws in groin, or face. A chainsaw is not a luxury item. Kevlar will also be a girl’s best friend. We feel a whole lot less butch than we imagined. Electricity is wonderful. Internet loss is like the loss of an arm; resulting in an alarming shrinking of the brain! Sun makes everything better. The Milky Way is utterly awesome and the silence is amazing. We are building character…!

Tomorrow, Hobart to do the vehicle stuff. Maybe finally catch up with Helen, Andrew, Frances etc in Neika.

Love from three spoiled city sorts!!!

P.S. Tim, we got your lovely Cornish card – thanks!!! It will be pinned to the container wall, with Lindy’s parrots! Bring your winter woolies when you come!

P.P.S Amazing spoiling from Val for our two year wedding anniversary. For lunch, we had a steak pie and Lammington to kick off the spoiling sessions. Thanks Val!!!

Sunday, day three!  This morning was a significant calendar event in Cygnet, the massive Scout garage sale, starting at 10 am.  After meeting more lovely Toby’s Hill neighbours, Paulette (English) and John (American) on the mountainside, we finally got down to the Scout Hall at 10.59, just in time for the 11am start to the National Kitchen Garden tour of Cygnet. Thereby missing  our chance to hoik through the myriad tonnes of random stuff (’SUS’ to Lindy!) laid out on offer.

As we toured, following Kate (who runs an organic foods outlet ‘The Garden Shed & Pantry’), we met heaps of delightful, like-minded people, mingling amid 63 locals and 3 dogs.  Even traipsing around inelegantly, Teesy is a total marvel, functioning as an irresistible attention-magnet, attracting comments, admiration, pats and the usual jokes about cows and horses. Her size, odd colouring and odd eyes are super conversation starters; after an hour or so, nearly everybody knew her sad-story-now-come-to-good and how well travelled she is. Of course, everybody therefore also knew about us too!  It is obvious Teesy will quickly become a local mascot: she kicked off her charm campaign looking particularly fetching in a new red doggy raincoat coat with a thick fleecy lining, as she staggered about on half cylinders. Poor thing has not yet recovered from a shocking lack of exercise in quarantine, which has made her terribly wobbly in her hind quarters.  All the girls from the Lotus Eaters Café came out to scrump her, offer cuddles and a handful of beautiful cured ham. Yum. The ham was scoffed at shoulder-level, as Teesy had been conked-out on an apple-box picnic table when the girls emerged from the kitchen.

Hoorah for dinner/hanging-out invites! We scored two today – from the super-welcoming Teresa and from Brian & his wife. Brian fell in love with the food-thieving Teese-McSqueeze.  So far, everybody is charming and incredibly generous with advice and contacts. Between conversations, we visited the child-care pre-school, then the public primary, then the Catholic school’s garden projects. After seeing these heartening gardens, we finished at the community garden – dubbed as the ‘only licensed, heritage community tidal garden’ in Australia (the land is on loan from the bottom pub, which is listed and floods up to knee level at neap tides).

To get stuck in and meet people, we have volunteered with Teresa (who runs www.inalife.com.au) at the Catholic school garden project tomorrow morning: this is a Stephanie Alexander kitchen garden and they won 50K of government grant to set it up. The beds are being built as we speak and tomorrow we will be helping the kids fill the raised beds with earth or making a fence. Teesy is also invited! Photos to follow.

For supper, we ate our second evening of stewp, heated-up on the woodstove alone!  Multiple-outputs. By candlelight, we bless Lindy’s name, as we sip on our evening thimble of sherry, which we are ekeing-out with a reverence that borders on religious observance. Last piece of choccy cake each tonight too – these small things take on a massive importance when you are in a holey half-container, wondering what the hell to tackle first…  It is unbelievably quiet up here – the wind, an owl, occasional snuffling outside and the fire crackling are the only things we can hear.

We are praying that none of the newly-dubbed Twelve Apostles (huge, ancient eucalypts) come crashing down on the flimsy container that is now our home: you can see hundreds of tonnes of dead branches up there, like the one that narrowly missed squishing the derelict Toyota truck that Matt has his eye on. Getting these trees felled is a matter of urgency and peace of mind. The wind is wild tonight and I catch myself muttering a thread of constant prayers…

10am start to our volunteering tomorrow! Melbourne is like a dream already, France a mirage and the Netherlands like a separate lifetime ago. We miss everyone madly.

Day 2 - sorting

It was a cold, cold night, and of course the bedding we brought with us wasn’t up to the job - worst of all, the poor dog was absolutely freezing and crept into bed with one or other of us - more or less with our permission - throughout the night. Trouble is, she’s a terrible one for hogging the bedclothes and in my case, stepping on hair!

So today we got a pretty slow, creaky start. the porridge I soaked the previous night was gratifyingly softened, requiring only a five minute heat-through to make it ready for eating. so we munched on porridge, washed ourselves, organised a few small things, and headed into town.

Having made a shopping list (tin foil, doonas, windy-up torches, pegs, jarmy bottoms, coffee, firelighters - yes, we cheat. We’ll stop once we’ve learned how to lay a fire properly. - candles, matches, loopaper) We wended our way through Cygnet, failed to find the scout’s garage sale (largely because it’s happening tomorrow), failed to go to the Cradoc abbatoir (because it only opens twice a week - interestingly, it does open on Sunday, so maybe we’ll make it there tomorrow), failed to find most of what we needed in Huonville - although some provender and some of the other items on the shopping list were duly purchased at Woollies, including, somewhat surprisingly, the desired windy-up torches. The best thing we achieved in Huonville was off-script - we found a really good warm coat for Teesy, with a 40% discount on it (which brought its price down to something we could remotely come at). We also discovered that there are three op-shops in Huonville. The two more promising looking ones were closed at weekends, but it’s still nice to know they’re there for future reference.

Not having managed to find the critical thing on the list (DOONAS and PJ BOTTOMS) we cracked on to Kingston, and hit the jackpot in the op-shops there - a pair of trackydacks and two awful but hopefully warm comforters were duly purchased.

Then the drive home, and my first experience of navigating Toby’s Hill Road. Slightly hair-raising in a few somewhat boggy spots, but largely surprisingly okay. What an excellent thing a 4wd is.

There is much to look forward to tomorrow - the Scout sale (maybe some plants and / or cuttings and / or seeds!), Cradoc Hill being open, and International Kitchen Garden day, incorporating a walk through four Cygnetsiders’ kitchen gardens, followed by a barbecue. Reckon it’ll be a fab day!

We arrived home shortly before dusk, and set about the evening’s tasks - getting the fire on, preparing dinner, etc. All went swimmingly until about an hour after dinner, when the shelf containing all our food and quite a lot of other important stuff collapsed somewhat dramatically off the wall.

Near-miraculously, the only breakages were one plate, one burst spice packet, and (sadly) two freecycled Vacola jars carefully procured for us by Aunt L. The sherry and all the eggs survived, and I’m glad to say that the heirloom glasses and decanter were being kept elsewhere. It’s amazing that it wasn’t much worse; we cleaned up, rearranged some things so that the small hoppity animals wouldn’t get them, and all was well.

When I went out for the last time tonight, the astonishing spectacle of the Milky way was being accompanied by the hooting of an owl.

So, there was a flurry of entries about how screwed up the world was, and what we’d decided to do in order to help remedy that. And then there were a couple of updates, and a couple of fairly random things…

And then all was silence. So, what happened to OzEarth?

Well, Chloe went to California and apprenticed with CalEarth, and to England to learn about lime (plastering, rendering and washing, which entails also learning about cob, etc etc), and worked at the botanical garden at intervals in between. Helen stayed in the Netherlands and did various things, trying to steer the ship towards leaving the Netherlands and going to the Hill.

The visa for Chloe came through, after much faff, early this year. The renovation of the Hilversum house finally dragged to more or less a satisfactory close at around the same time, and in March the house went on the market.

In early May, we got an opening offer on the house, and by mid-May we had a deal. It took quite a lot longer for the deal to close in a definitive way, but by the first week of July we were locked and loaded.

There followed a frenzy of paperwork (the dog’s papers in particular were quite the feat of organisation) and packing, and finally, on July 25, we were ready to go.

It’s been a somewhat circuitous journey. I had one last gig in the Perigord region of France (nice work if you can get it) and then we spent three lovely weeks in Melbourne (and in my case also in Canberra), visiting my mum and my aunt Lindy while we waited for Teesy’s release from Quarantine and attempted, as best we could, to get our act sorted for the next step.

We acquired a vehicle, did frantic research, and participated (me as student, C as co-teacher) in an earthbag build held by Permastructures in West Heidelberg. All went swimmingly and somehow both very slowly (particularly, I imagine, for the poor dog) and very fast.

And suddenly, Teesy’s release date was upon us, and we were picking her up and jumping on a ferry to Tasmania, vehicle, baggage, Teesy and all.

We came into Devonport at 6 o-clock this morning, and spent a leisurely day today wending our way down Highway 1 and the A86, visiting Oatlands where there’s a restored wind-powered flourmill, picking up veggies and sausages for dinner, eating, wandering, driving, marvelling at the perfect day Tassie had turned on for our homecoming.

We hit Cygnet at about 3pm. Having had a quick coffee and a very warm welcome with Susan, the proprietor of the Cobweb Galleries, I emptied the PO Box (VERY full, and Mum will be pleased to hear, not at floor level :D), enquired about membership at the internet centre (I’m an addict. There. I said it), and hooned off to get up to the land while we still had some daylight left.

This was the point at which things went somewhat awry. The road we were driving along, which goes up to the land… had a tree across it. A LARGE tree. This does happen from time to time, but we hadn’t really planned for it; as such, we hadn’t actually worked out how to get up to the land using the other road (happily for us there’s more than one option!)

With a somewhat alarming, very cautiously executed nineteen-point turn opposite a rather steep drop, some Zen navigation and a fair bit of help from our neighbours, we actually did manage to make it up to the land, just as dusk was falling.

A bit of extremely hurried organisation, a barbecued meal, a fire, a kettle for hot water bottles, some pretty basic toilet facilities… but here we are. Welcome home, H & C.

First impressions: it’s BEAUTIFUL here. It’s very, very hilly, which automatically makes things pretty if you ask me. The plant life is gorgeous. At one point, the pink fluffy clouds, amethyst sky and silhouetted trees actually brought tears to my eyes. The clearing is dismayingly full of crap, but C and Lindy already made a fairly thorough survey of what might be useful last time. The rest, it’s just a matter of getting back down the mountainside :-/.

It’s certainly basic, but it’ll do, and everything from hereon out is a process of continuous improvement.

And the night sky is absolutely breathtaking.

When we first started following your work, we assumed that you were in this line for the same reasons as everyone else - to build community, raise awareness of the urgency of getting back to locavorism and radical sustainability, to share skills, to lead by example, to show in living colour how joyful and abundant a simple life can be. And I will say this: you were doing it in style. I was inspired.

Until I heard about this trademarking thing.

We would have some sympathy for wanting to keep your concept out of the hands of corporations and greenwashers. If that were what it was really about.

But it’s not, is it? This is an excuse. What you really want is not to be “confused with other projects”. Talk about corporate tactics. Branding is, if you ask me, a disgrace. Branding a purely descriptive term like “urban homesteading” is, quite simply, wrong.

With sorrow, I am unfriending you today. Co-operation beats competition, folks. Scientifically proven. This act is a mistake.

Helen Thomson