Cinderella goes to the (gypsy) ball

Once upon a time, in a far away land there was a girl who was (temporarily) living out of a bag on a very beautiful but remote farm. One day, she heard that a ball was to take place to celebrate Earth Hour. It was to be a grand gypsy affair with music and dancing, food and alcohol. She longed to go but, of course, had neglected to pack her gypsy dresses when she left the green land. So she resigned herself to spending the night listening to the crickets and the bullfrogs instead.

Suddenly, a fairy godmother appeared and asked her would she like to go to the ball and sample the food and the alcohol, the music and the dancing... Of course she wanted to go! But what could she wear? And how would she get there, and home again? So she decided to use her expert negotiation skills to strike a deal...

And so it came to pass that I spent a fantastic Saturday afternoon transforming the local Arts Hall into a gypsy themed fantasy land.

In return my fairy godmother helped me out with some gypsy clobber and a place  to stay.

 The Band of Gypsies were superb and had cart-fulls of passion and talent. These five stunning musicians played acoustically by candlelight until Earth Hour had passed then they whisked the audience away on a rip-roaring tour of European Gypsy/folk music with some classics thrown in for good measure. By the way they will be playing in London in July.

Right at the end they appeared to channel Leonard Cohen into this tiny hall in New South Wales, and as they lifted the roof off the place I felt a gap in my universe close. 

When midnight came, the band stopped playing (they wouldn't have been allowed to leave the stage in Ireland until they had played at least 3 encores) and the hall mysteriously emptied in a matter of minutes.

Only the gypsy-for-a-night girl, her fairy godmother and a few others were left to reluctantly wipe away any trace of gypsy magic. By 1am we were sober and the hall was looking very sombre again. 

 

By 2am, I was whisked off by my fairy godmother in my pumpkin carriage, which looked suspiciously like a VW campervan. I stayed in a 'shack' in the bush that night but felt like a gypsy princess under my mosquito net.

That's not a fern, this is a fern!

I'm noticing a recurring pattern here, reminiscent of that infamous 'knife' scene in the Crocodile Dundee movie (where a street punk tries to mug Dundee and says “I have a knife!”. Dundee calmly responds with “That's not a knife, this is a knife” as he pulls a large machete type blade from his belt.) The landscape here is immense and nature abhorring any vacuum, fills every inch that my humble European eye can see with gloriously over-sized flora, fauna, foliage and fruit. So when Jean suggested we do some planting outside I should have known this wasn't going to planting on a scale that I was used to.

There are pockets of rainforest (or remnant rainforest) on the property and Jean and I spent the morning clearing away big swathes of fern bracken (think of our fern only ten times bigger) to create space for some rainforest plants such as hook pine. In contrast to how I'm used to 'gardening' this kind of planting is not undertaken for aesthetics reasons. Most of the little plants we planted today aren't even visible from the house or the driveway, in fact, at least half of them are planted on a slope under a canopy of trees that we had to hack our way into! The motivation for planting these seems to be the long-term development of these pockets of rainforest.

Jean's knowledge of botany, and in particular her local environment, is astounding. Everything has a place, a purpose and a reason and she uses the knowledge she has gathered over the years to piece it all together. 

Makes me wonder how the knowledge I have gathered over the years could possibly contribute to a worthwhile purpose. Answers on a postcard please.

Steady as she goes

I was beginning to wonder if the rainwater here was actually a secret fountain of youth, but I suspect the youthfulness of the Pappinbarra and Wauchope inhabitants has more to do with the low-stress lifestyle and the pace that life rolls on at here. Maybe the weather acts as a universal pace-maker with everyone falling into a metronomic rythm radiated by the  sun. 

I learned the importance of pacing oneself while shovelling gravel in 34 degrees. A slow, steady pace until it gets too hot, then full stop until it cools down. I'm wondering if I had learned this lesson years ago would I stopped before satisfaction was pipped at the post by exhaustion or excess on so many occasions.

Maybe I should pin this photo to the wall as a reminder for the future.

Mindfulness and the art of Tractor Maintenance

Mindfulness is the practice of being in the now, or paying attention to what is going on right now and not gazing into the distance or the future.

Maybe I should have been practising more mindfulness while using the tractor and mower in the paddock recently.

If I had worried less about following the straight line in front of me and creating a straight behind me, I might have looked down more and noticed the damn grass getting wrapped up around the drive-shaft of the tractor right under nose!

In turn, that might have avoided the high-stress situation that involved three people armed with Stanley blades and pliers trying desperately to remove the offending grass before the grass, the tractor and the shed caught fire (which we did!).

So in future as I ride off into the sunset on my 50 horses, I will be keeping one eye on where I'm going, one eye on where I've come from and both eyes on where I am right now.

You look familiar...

One of my first jobs on the farm was to create a new home for three little guinea hens who had been housed in a sort of rabbit-hutch which they were fast outgrowing. The job involved clearing a 10ft X 16ft fenced area of 6ft weeds and creating little areas for them to forage and find shelter in.    Obviously, the poor critters thought their respective numbers were up when they were bundled into a recycled potato sack for a less than graceful commute to their new pad. The fact that we accidentally almost decapitated one while getting it into the sack might have increased their sense of alarm and contributed to the whole 'running around like headless chickens' scene when they were released, probably in sheer delight that they were still in posession of their heads.

Previously, there had been one other solitary guinea hen hanging out with the 'chooks'. Within seconds of the somewhat noisy arrival of the new birds into the chook-yard, natural instinct took over and the older guinea hen abandoned its chook-mates and flapped in frustration at being stuck in no-birds land until we felt it was safe to let them mix. Since being moved the three little ones have come on leaps and bounds and are picking up their essential survival techniques from the older one. Classic case of 'I look like you do, I sound like you do so I'll do what you do'...

The seagull has landed

Actually, this particular seagull landed three weeks ago in Sydney to a welcome cup of coffee and shower in the Sydney Rowing Club courtesy of the very friendly members hanging out there at 9.30am as Jean I waited for her relatives to arrive for a family gathering.

8 hours later I arrived in Pappinbarra, where I would be working as a 'wwoofer' at George and Jean Hegarty's remote, but beautiful farm; Slieve Mor. This marks the first stop on my own personal yellow brick road.