Author: Tulitha

Mittagong

On my last visit to Canberra I took a day out to drive to Mittagong to visit my Grandma. She lives in a very spick and span house on the outskirts of the town. The great boon of the day was driving with my sister the two hours to get there, it was so nice to just be able to chat with her for a couple of hours.

It was also awesome to pop into the Sturt Gallery where my friend, Haeli, has a residency where she is sculpting some giant beasties. I love her artwork. This woman! Somehow she manages to undertake huge artworks whilst having the most chilled out of babies as her constant companion. I am in awe. That was a skill I was never quite able to muster, being perhaps more highly strung…? I don’t know. It is hard to examine oneself. All I know is that this mum does it well and all I can do is admire it from afar.

October 31, 2013
Drawing Together

Being a sick mummy, with sick kiddies I got out of mum’s house for a lie down on the oval.

A fruit picnic, organised by Sophia,

Was followed by some drawing.

Here is moi, complete with 10 finger and 10 toes…and a belly button. She made sure to get my ‘straight’ hair right, and there are rain drops over my head.

Here is Gunny with his characteristically wild hair.

And an accidental selfie which I am including because not many photos of me make it onto the blog – that’s called being a mum for you.

October 10, 2013
Tidbinbilla

For a very long time I’ve been wanting to make the easy and stunning drive down to Tidbinbilla in Australia’s Capital Territory. Not just Tidbinbilla, but the entire surrounding landscape is one of my favourites. Nearby Corin Forest is the stomping ground of the new-ish festival of Corinbank, and when it is not hosting said festival it is a popular family picnicking spot with a cafe, flying fox, toboggan ride and water slide with kangaroos and the odd bit of wildlife moseying about.

Namadgi is a hop, skip and a jump away as well. The harsh beauty of Namadgi guts me every time and I can barely speak when I see it. It is a striking contrast to the groomed and tame city of Canberra. All I can do is absorb. There is a haunting loneliness to Namadgi. The ancestors of the original Australians seem to hang here, at least I feel it and it’s not very scientific or logical, is it, but who can really judge?

As my dad says in all his wisdom: ‘we know nothing.’

Anyway. Tidbinbilla: Finally we jumped into the car and had an all too short visit to this great ‘animal park’ as we were calling it. After a bit of traipsing around we were rewarded with many an animal sighting. After the Emus and Kangaroos at the park, the elegant Brolgas were our first find, stalking about on their long, crane like legs – in fact they are Cranes, Australia’s only one. After reading Olga the Brolga by Rod Clement I am a fan of this bird. Next up were many birds: Magpie Geese, Australian White Ibis, Water Hens, two very large Pelicans who were sunning themselves on rocks in the middle of the lake, a Red-Belly Black Snake, many lizards and a water dragon and most exciting were two – two! sightings of the shy and very elusive Platypus (whose name has no confirmed plural), the very first real live platypus I have every seen.

October 8, 2013
Bus Update

It’s been some time since I’ve shown a bus update. Yes, we are still plugging away at it. The thing is that every day I look around and wonder, ‘What’s changed?’ obviously some things have changed, but it doesn’t translate that well into a photo.

We are out here every day doing something. For months it’s been all work and very little sense of progress.

The last few days though, that’s all changed. It feels like, huzzah, it is actually coming together! We have a couple of frames (or partial frames up), we have our ceiling in and Henry has been sanding…actually sculpting…the three walls of our room into a perfectly smooth shell. It’s starting to look quite schmick and Henry’s vision is becoming a reality.

This little space, above, is where our cupboard is going. Building the framing for this is soon to be done.

Here’s the bed, we have actually taken the bed base off for the moment. It needed a slight adjustment and the work which we are currently doing is made way easier without this thing hanging around.

The pic above was taken a few weeks ago. Below are photos I took yesterday, and you can see that a couple of the walls are in and the entire roof here has been replaced.

Some framing below indicating where one of the bathroom walls will go. We are using 25mm aluminium held together by Qubelock and a whole stack of glue. Mostly Sika Flex as Henry likes to use the best of everything.

Oh yes, here’s my handy organiser. I got sick of our bus turning into a junk heap – it slows down the work flow considerably – and so I made an organiser which Henry laughed at, but it has been incredibly useful and worth the scrap of time I spent to literally whip this together. It is not pretty, it is functional.

The dust from all the sanding Henry has been doing over the last few days is insidious.

Okay, so here’s a frame which I actually made, figured it all out and made it fit all by myself (Henry helped polish it up a bit). An example of Henry’s quest for quality is that, instead of allowing the wall to cut the window in half, he came on the idea of making a smaller window. Part of what he loves about this bus are all the lovely curves, and why not capitalise on them?!

Bog. Bog is what is making this bus beautiful. In fact our bus is going to be all Bog, Glue, Aluminium and Alucobond. Not your everyday building materials.

We are intent on not having a window sill here. At first we thought about the ‘framing’ (I am not a big fan of framing), but I love the way the light can just flow in without a window sill here. We found a way to make the sill without a window frame. It involves a multi-layer of ply, built up to the wall and a trimmer router to get that edge just perfect (keeping those wonderful curves) and then of course a bit of bog in any holes. And a few more sands and bogs. It looks so great in the flesh and I can’t wait to paint this room white and see it shine!

This square metre section (900×1600) is our entire bathroom! You didn’t think you could fit an entire bathroom into that space, did you? Well, Henry is a genius and he has done it. When that floor is completed in copper (yes) it will look…interesting.

So, that’s the tour so far. There’s not too much of interest to see so far, but hopefully we will keep the ball rolling and there’ll be a few more updates in the coming weeks.

xo

September 19, 2013
Secret Spot

It could be cruel to do this, show you somewhere so beautiful and not disclose the location.

There is a reason though, and it is because so many beautiful and pristine spots have been ruined by tourism. There are many places which encourage tourism, places which are set up for it and where the road leads right to the door.

This place is off the beaten track, actually it is over a rather undulating, rough-as-guts track and then quite a walk from the car kind of track. The kind of track that requires scrambling over boulders and hitching up ones skirts.

But the setting is tranquil and the air is clean and the sounds are bush sounds and that’s as it should remain.

I bet, if you went searching you could find places like this in your own back yard. Some places should belong to the locals. Living locally means knowing your own place inside out.

This place is local to me now and here it is.

We needed this day, to break from the bus which is often a frustrating project, and to soak in the sun like lizards and to enjoy life together as a family. It was beautiful in many ways and we plan to go back.

And here’s a bonus shot of …the sky… In our old ages we plan to become a bird-watcher and astronomer respectively, when we have bussed around Australia we will sail around the world and Henry will have the night shift so that he can watch the stars and I will have the day shift so that I can watch the birds…if there are any.

Hm, anyway.

September 6, 2013
Pulla

I made Pulla.

Sadly, I never make Pulla. Being gluten intolerant has its drawbacks and I do miss baking…though, on the bright side it keeps the waistline trim!

Well, I made some and I broke my increasingly strict gluten-free diet to eat some.

Pulla absolutely must be eaten fresh-baked with coffee in order to get the full pulla experience. After that it is still tasty, just not as.

Pulla:

250ml milk

75g sugar

Warm this until the sugar has dissolved.

Add in:

1 egg

And whisk! Set aside.

In a large bowl place:

1 tsp ground cardamom

1/2 tsp salt

450g plain flour

3 tsp dry yeast

Gradually add the wet ingredients and knead lightly with your hands. (Some people like to knead and knead and knead, but I don’t like to do this too much, I feel as though the dough can get ‘tough’ if this is done too much so I like to knead lightly for just a few minutes, until slightly stretchy.)

Add in:

100g melted butter (This helps to keep it moist. Pulla can dry out a bit I find.) Knead this in until it has disappeared into the dough.

Leave it to rise for about an hour in a floured bowl with a wet cloth over the top.

Now. Punch the air out. Knead a little til it forms a ball. Break it in half.

Roll each ball into a thin rectangle.

Spread with:

Butter

Sprinkle on a light coating of:

Sugar

Cinnamon

Then roll the rectangle up, lengthways, as if you were making a scroll cake.

Cut the roll into about 5cm pieces and place, upright into a pan, with a little room between each piece to grow!

Leave to rise, covered, for another hour.

Make an eggwash out of:

1 egg

2 Tbs milk

Whisked together.

Brush this over the top of the Pulla just before baking.

Place into a 180C oven for about 25mins or until lightly browned.

Eat warm!

It really is delicious! One of my very favourite things which I miss eating all of the time!

September 4, 2013
Canberra Red Brick

In Yarralumla there is an old brickworks. This brickworks enjoyed its heyday somewhere between 1913 and 1976. Today it is closed for business, though the recycled timber merchant, Thors Hammer, operates out of the ramshackle old building.

When I was a wee lass most of the houses around Yarralumla were that trademark red of the bricks from ye olde brickworks down the way. As I grew into my teens they began to drop like flies and they are still dropping. My Nonna’s place is one of the last. She is the embodiment of the neighbourhood that once was; industrious Europeans living in their 3 bedroom houses with their 3 -4 kids, growing bountiful kitchen gardens and enveloping their blocks with friendly hedges.

There once used to be no T.V. Do you remember this time? It was not so long ago. My Nonna was reliving those days in my company recently. Apparently the whole street (or a good portion) would exit their homes and gather at one of these tiny houses for evenings of frivolous fellowship and good strong coffee (those good Europeans brought their coffee and their wine drinking to our sunburnt land), apparently the art of talking about the weather was refined back then and nothing dull about it, I guess it would be if you couldn’t just google it. Maybe they used to take bets.

I hope, hope, hope at least a few of these iconic houses last into future centuries. If they cannot carry their culture with them – that culture of neighbourhood conviviality and togetherness – then they can serve as a relic of Canberra’s heritage.

My Nonna’s house is past its prime. My Nonno was the gardener and had avenues of grapevines wherever he could fit them. Two impossibly, tall and inconveniently placed Sequoias stood in the front yard and many more fruit trees were growing and thriving and producing bountifully. I remember it being a little bit more of a jungle, though everything had its place, this could well be that I was much smaller back in the day. He kept three beehives, several hens, several more free ranging pigeons (of which nothing was done to or about, they were simply transitory guests, fed and housed) and had a large food producing garden and several more berry bushes.

It really was a suburban oasis.

With time comes age and the shed is drooping, the cubby house is boarded shut (and I daren’t enter), the chimneys represent fireplaces, but these are no longer in use.

But it still stands and there is still beauty all around, an unsculpted, natural beauty which I think those tiny over-landscaped gardens often lack.

There is one thing (among other things) that remain and that is those warblers, the Australian magpie. I vividly remember waking up in my mum’s former bedroom on a sleepover one day to the sound of that beautiful native cockerel crow, I thought it was an exquisite way to wake up. My Nonna is forever feeding the birds and they still come in their dozens and they still warble outside the windows waiting to be fed.

The garden, it still grows.

(The Cellar, where my Nonna made his own wine.)

And the house, it still stands. But some of these rickety structure are slowly returning to the soil with the grace of old age and still with the handprint of their maker all over them.

The former vege garden, returned to grass.

Monolithic, modern structures dwarf their predecessor, having crushed its neighbours.

August 25, 2013
Building Our Bed: Part 1

Finally an end to the destruction is in sight and construction is beginning!

Well, as I write this there has been (and continues to be) an ongoing struggle with our drawers, involving a bunch of unforgiving, push-to-open, drawer runners.

But…we have installed our bed.

This involved a 12mm piece of ply for the bedhead, an insert into the window, glued and screwed into place. We built a frame for the top of this piece to hold it all straight and carpeted the inside to keep things nice and soft. The ply will be veneered with rosewood and a rosewood shelf installed on top.

I am trying to convince Henry to paint the insides of the drawers in bright turquoise, fuschia, blue and yellow – don’t you think that will look amazing!? He is not sold. Yet.

It seems very appropriate that we made this first. It is our bedhead, but it is also Henry’s guitar cabinet. Music is important to Henry and therefore it is important to me and therefore it is important to our family. So, guitar cabinet, item one: check.

Henry built a base for our mattress, which is designed to lift up on gas struts so that we can access the storage behind the drawers and under the bed. He is contemplating a shelf in that space which raises with the bed allowing us to simply slide things out. I can’t believe I haven’t yet got a photo of the bed, but that will come once the drawers are in – that will definitely demand a celebratory picture – ’till then you’ll have to wait.

We did this work late into a night, when Henry was on a roll and not prepared to stop for sleep, even though it was super cold it was nice to wonder around his dads shed with no kids to worry about. For some reason I just love looking around this shed. I’ve taken photos of it for a past blog and it was one of my more enjoyable photography projects. I love taking photos of interesting objects, object that are usually glossed over and not really seen for the beauty they hold. From the way the grease has collected on a well-worn handle, or the pile of shavings around a vice or the bucket of metal shards and the well ordered sequence of tools and bits and bobs. This stuff fills me with content. There is surety about building things, these big European made machines are made to be of use and it is a privilege to know the person who can use them like an artist. His son also can use them and it is one thing that makes me proud to be that sons wife. This kind of usefulness is somewhat a dying art in the West, it’s presence is a rarity, so I consider myself lucky.

July 24, 2013
Keeping Kids Busy

These last few weeks I’ve felt like a piece of elastic stretched between two incompatible opposites: a child’s world and the world of power tools and sharp, pointy and fragile things.

In between helping build I run to check on children or set them up with some game or something which will keep them busy for a few minutes.

We’ve built a cubby house under a tree where they happily and imaginatively hang out together, set up a playground using things around the yard, encourage lots of sand-pit, collecting and dirt-digging play, but by far the best game we’ve come up with is The Expedition.

Here’s how it goes:

1. Draw a map

2. Make some ‘treasure’. I put two teaspoons into a ‘treasure chest’ which they found in their sandpit then hid two fruit & jelly cups in their cubby house.

3. Hand the map over to the kids

4. Off they go!

July 23, 2013
Large House vs Small House

Most of you following this blog will know that we are making the shift from a small rental house to an un petite bus-house. A bus-house with an uber generous 23 square metres of living space on board.

Australia has one of the largest house sizes in the world with free standing house sizes sitting at about 243m2. With an average of only 2.66 people living in these large houses that leaves a lot of free space.

While the UK has a very small house size (at an average of 76m2). That popular program Grand Designs often raises the hopeless case of their upper-middle-class renovators and self builders in finding those ‘hard to find’ bits of land for their dream houses, these people manage, in increasingly creative ways, to fill vacant blocks with floors and walls and rooves. These vacuous spaces are then relegated to housing just a couple of bodies on a regular basis.

In an increasingly populated world people seem to continue to want their own space.

Australia has a lot of space and I guess that is why our homes are bigger, but to what end?

What is the use of these large expanses of dead space, which are designed to consume things instead of produce things?

I have been resisting normalised compulsive spending urges since knowing we were drastically reducing our house size.

In a home this tiny every little object matters and every square centimetre of storage must be seized upon. The ‘bedrooms’ are only as large as they need to be. Both kids have a private space, their bunks, which equal about 2 square metres each, with room enough only to sit. Every part of the bus is shared, except for the drivers seat, we have only one table with enough room only for us four, and there is one lounge. Our living space however will be huge. It will be the great Australian outdoors. In this bus the outdoors are very close. I was sitting in it yesterday while the rain poured down and it felt very much like I was sitting inside a waterfall. It was beautiful and sensory and I relish that kind of living.

Downsizing does not feel cramped or like a negative lifestyle shift. It is better! It is better than living where we were. With a cut in living space comes a closeness to the outdoors and a reduction in things that we never really needed in the first place. Cutting down on space, and ergo things, should not scare anyone. It is quite liberating.

A big benefit of renovating a very small area is the way in which we can inject quality into it. Rather than a big kitchen, for example, we can have a well designed, well made kitchen with a high standard of materials.

This last point is very important to me in my quest for a sustainable life. Ultimately a sustainable life is not fast or big or full of things or expensive, but it is a life of excellence. That is the strength of sustainable living.

I would be rather interested to see the trend of housing in Australia in the future. I wonder if a nomadic lifestyle, like ours, might become more popular as house prices continue to soar, I hope people will learn to live in smaller spaces, leaving more room to live outside.

July 22, 2013