So nice to have friends who love to be outdoors, enjoying the autumn colours and crisp air before the cold forces us indoors to mulled wine and chai tea or to the edges of fire buckets – which we all love equally as much.
I have foraging friends who enjoy finding food in the most unexpected of places. This time, Chestnuts, which were slim pickings this year due to Summer’s merciless heatwaves.
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.
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.
When we were last in Canberra we went twice to the National Arboretum, which is fast becoming one of Canberra’s star attractions. It was conceived of and established during Jon Stanhope’s time at Canberra’s helm following the 2003 Bushfires. Arguably, it was his governments greatest achievement. Policy comes and goes and changes, but trees tend to hang around for a bit longer. Generally. We hope.
Apart from the many tree plots within the park which showcase a variety of trees from around the globe, there is an outstanding visitors building. I love this building because it is full of elegantly curving wood and is spacious and airy.
I love wood.
I love wood when it’s in a living tree.
So I love the Arboretum. Or, I love what it is growing into.
Pod Playground. That is the new kids area next to the visitors centre. It is, hands down, the best playground I’ve been to or at least taken my kids to. It is not completely adult friendly – which is what makes it totally amazing for kids. It takes the kids up into the sky, away from the adults below, through kid-sized tunnels and acorn rooms and down a couple of steep slides.
The Banksia seed pod rooms house dingy-dongy things for kids to bang on. It again is kid friendly rather than adult friendly with doors only so high. Perfect.
After getting exhausted with the kids we went and had a coffee at the overpriced cafe. I guess you are paying for the view and it is worth it, I think. The Visitors centre has got the mix between rock, timber, concrete, steel and space just right and even though it can absolutely fill with people voices float up into the ceiling and we didn’t find ourselves raising voices at all.
While I was in Canberra, stuck for two weeks with only a weekends worth of clothes to work with, I went out to a friends for breakfast and decided to make myself a necklace.
The previous day, when strolling around the idyllic Canberran suburb of Curtin, I spotted these gloriously rubied leaves and picked them thinking to whip them into some kind of necklace. I thought they would in fact probably turn out to be picked and left with all good intentions not realised. But, no. The morning of said breakfast date I whipped a long thread through the tip of each leaf, strung them all together and tied them around my neck. I was that slap-stick. And you can probably tell!
The intention here is not to show you how clever I am. Because, really, anyone could make something far superior to this. The idea is to show, almost in protest, that a decorative object does not have to be made somewhere overseas, bought in a shop, worn as a trend and then only to be discarded when the trend or the mood passes. When I picked these leaves I was celebrating Autumn, when I wore them I wore them as a celebration of Autumn. The leaves were put back onto the earth where they decayed and formed part of the soil to go back into the cycle of life.
When things are bought from a shop they usually follow a linear pattern along the lines of: mined, made, shipped, purchased, used, discarded. If things are to follow a cyclical route, which is the route which has allowed our earth to survive as long as it has, things must return from where they came, or for these various metals which we value so much must return into circulation rather than into a dump.
These circular patterns, though, are so large that no one can see the whole picture and so, in my mind, it is better to involve oneself in the lifecycles closer to home. Shop locally, work locally, play locally, grow your own food, put your food scraps into the compost heap to degrade back into soil to grow more food (and so they don’t turn into methane in the anaerobic conditions of the rubbish tip), and even…make your own jewellery!
And make things out of things that will not just end up as yet another piece of junk.
Organic jewellery. Next up: edible jewellery!
Chinamans Dam in Young, NSW is a quietly glowing sapphire on the Southern outskirts of the town. It is very close to where we are living at the moment.
As hubby is back in Canberra for the weekend the kids and I took a lazy Saturday morning picnic at the dam, fed the ducks, took some photos and paddled in the water.
This lion bears scars wrought by young Henry. That lower tooth is a falsie. I’m not sure how but somehow young Henry destroyed the original…! 
Over the bridge into the heart of the garden is where the real magic happens. Bridges, waterfalls, boulders, they even managed a Japanesey type balancing rock structure in the middle of their little pond.
Winding paths lead to many intricate surprises. The garden is compact, but cleverly laid out, some leading to the tops of small waterfalls, others right to the waters edge, there are stone seats all along the way, and Miss Imp and Master Dashing were constantly delighted.
I really appreciated the layering of a variety of textures of leaf, bark, berries. Garden design is very similar to interior design (though, not so trendy), colour, texture, layout, it all plays a part.
Here’s a picture of a man with a mo to keep you happy.
And the girl with imp eyes.
xo
I really liked this quote from here.
White is great when it’s a color amongst other colors, but when it’s meant only to contain, suppress, and keep other colors at bay, you may want to resist its temptation. Our lives aren’t “pure” and “perfect,” and our homes don’t have to be either.
I’m not huge on interior decorating, my homes just ending up a collection of the things I have and find, rather than a purposeful project. I do appreciate beautiful homes and I have definite ideas about our future home (which, in my mind, features mostly natural materials, feeling unable to improve on nature).
But this quote summarizes a lot of what a feel about life. Our lives are not perfect and we shouldn’t try to pretend they are.
I’m sure I will talk about this in future, as one thing coming up in my uni course is the emergence of ‘the working poor’, those who accept and get into mahoosive amounts of debt in order to have large and perfect (and unsustainable) homes. Apparently Australians have always been like this as witnessed and commented on by Charles Darwin in his 1836 visit:
“…the whole population, poor and rich, are bent on acquiring wealth…the number of large houses and other buildings just finished is truly surprising; nevertheless everyone complains of the high rent and the difficulty of acquiring a home.”
From “Sydney/Purgatorio,” by Craig San Roque in Psyche and the City, Edited by Thomas Singer, as quoted in Linley Luttons Viva la Revolution (2010)
So, this phenomenon has been around for a long time and I wonder if the tide can be turned simply by consumers refusing to endorse these exorbitant amounts of debt and build smaller houses more within their limits.
Really, there is much more to life than living in perfect, large houses.
P.S. It’s good to be back on this blog. We have been very busy and tired from packing up our home. We have basically managed to fit all of our worldly possessions on the back of a truck (a very small truck – basically a glorified ute!), and Henry still thinks we could get rid of more. Hopefully life will settle into a rhythm once more. We are moving to Young, NSW in two days and will settle there for 6-8 weeks while we build our bus – talking about small homes!
I have been thinking a lot about options and limits lately. It has been my studies that has brought this on, I will concede. That, I guess, is what uni studies are supposed to do – draw your thinking out into areas previously left unexplored.
LIMITS. We feel pretty unlimited, don’t we? We have umpteen career choices, cheap enough travel options, the pick of places to live. If we don’t like something we change it fairly easily. New bedspread. New couch. New TV.
We could spend our lives getting new things. Upgrading. Forever upgrading. Upgrade suburbs. Upgrade house (in fact upgrading houses seems to be the major drive for many of us westerners. (Rental > buy small house > buy larger house > buy/build dream house > die > live in coffin.)
Seems a bit petty looked at like that, doesn’t it.
We feel free, but we, like everyone else, are constrained by limits.
We can choose between this, this and this dress. This one made in China, this one made in China and this super duper expensive one made in Australia…so either ten cheap dresses or one pricey one? Well, what’s your choice?
We can wear these, these or these shoes.
They haven’t made this shoe yet, so it’s not an option.
We can choose to live in this house on the beach, this one in the city centre, this house in the country, but oh, we can’t live in that one because there’s no work there and to get a house you have to go into debt and there’s no work where that house is. Options.
If we’re a bit game we could think outside the box a little. We are going to live in a converted Bedford bus. Another person lives in a smallish sail boat and goes around the world for the next three years (yes, there are people who do this – even some with kids). Another person chooses to be homeless (yes, there are people like this too). Sometimes these choices come with unfavourable consequences. Homelessness really limits your social life, you can never really have anyone over for dinner. You can’t really have anyone over for dinner when you are in the middle of the Pacific either, you will have to put your career on hold if you are sailing, too. Sailing a boat takes up a bit of time.
Travel! We are unlimited when it comes to travel, aren’t we? I could travel to Greenland, Africa, Britain, South America. What fun. Me the tourist. Footloose, fancy free. Never mind the appalling polluting force that airplane travel is. The world can worry about that, not me.
Well, yes. See this graph.-VVV- The consequences of my polluting force will affect people other than me. My choices will limit other peoples options. As long as my options remain unfettered what have I to care about?
That there is typical Western nonchalance. But….I find…that I can’t be like that, much apologies.
We think we have options, but we are sold our choices. We can choose between three thousand and thirty three toys, but you can’t have no toys, not in our culture. We can drive a car, catch a bus (I can’t, not where I live), catch a train (again, not I), walk (20ks to the shops for me), ride a bike, but try living locally – you just can’t – not in most places! We are expected to use our cars, especially in Australia.
Further afield. I would love to travel. I would gladly go by ship. But why? Ships are so s l o w, and one couldn’t be slow, could one. Faster is better, isn’t it? Well, is it? Flying would greatly grate on my principles, and ships don’t go everywhere these days. So I am limited.
We are surrounded by limits. But we fear them. We must be able to choose between several pairs of shoes, so be offered the option of ‘this pair or nothing’ feels constricting. Why can we not limit our consumption ourselves? If we do not do it now, if we do not choose a life of self-imposed-limitations, surely into the future either someone else will do it for us or the earth will do it for us.
Since 1971 heatwaves in Australia have been getting more frequent and longer. Some people like to ignore the science. Ignorance is bliss. With knowledge comes power and also responsibility (to change). And we do not want to change. We do not want to give up this (illusion of a) limitless life which we have inherited. We feel entitled to all these options – never mind at what or at whose expense.
Eventually our inaction will lead to the earths reaction. And that can not be ignored or changed or simply overcome. There is little you can do about the weather.
Throughout history we have managed to fit our options around the weather. Air conditioned & heated cars. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter fashion. Houses which are inefficient and plug into terribly costly (in every way) external energy sources in order to cater to the comfort of their inhabitants. And I know, some of you enjoy the heat and hate the cold. But a Summer which differentiates between blisteringly hot and just hot? No thanks. And brief winters in which we experience fierce hailstorms, incredible cold snaps, extremely cold night and warm days? Some of us may adapt, some of our precious cars and houses and things may get through, but will our crops and animals? Nature doesn’t adapt quickly and the past century has accelerated pressure on the earth in many ways.
There is lots of fear mongering around this subject. But to me it’s clear.
We are greedy and we are selfish and we are driven by money, fear and power and we ought not to be.
The world has chosen a path, it has chosen between its options. We are on a path. The path doesn’t fit. Our tower of babel ambitions do not fit with the limitations of this world. We are gods on this earth and we are making our presence known. The less powerful are suffering under our weight but still we go on. We are gods and we must continue to be gods. If we are not the gods who will be? We fear. We fear life. We fear death. We are only safe in our consumerism. When we consume we know we are powerful, we know we are limitless, we know we have options. When we consume we can define ourselves by design. We applaud our growth economy, we see it as a way out of the limitations of nature, of localism, we do not (well, I do) see it as a hungry, greedy creature out to consume more and more of the worlds resources.
I love this beautiful world. We have created nothing better than the natural wonders of this planet. This planet should form our limitations, not our own greed. We can be humble about it. We can humbly accept natural limitations, not fearfully strive to overcome them.
There are other options out there, not just the ones we create and sell.
My birthday is just around the corner and I’m looking to invest in some shoes. I need some flats as the $20 flats I bought about 8 months ago have fallen to bits. I have a few new priorities when it comes to investing in a pair of shoes.
1) I don’t mind the price so long as the style is classic and durable.
2) I expect these new shoes to last me at least 5 years, preferably 10 – I don’t think this is unrealistic, my wedding flats, which are of a pretty flimsy design, though the build quality is excellent, have lasted me 5 1/2 years, I feel shoe builds could be way better than they are and easily last this long.
3) They must not be produced by a multi-national corporation and definitely must not be made in a sweat shop.
4) Would prefer if they were made in Australia.
So into Google goes: ‘fair trade shoes’ and a few companies pop up. Some of them are not right style wise, but then I find soleRebels.
I am very impressed with the 101 page which describes why a small business model is much better than charities for pulling Individuals up onto their feet and investing in their local economy.
I am impressed with the way all their supplies are sourced locally, including using recycled car tyres as their soles.
I am so glad I’ve found a company I can support. I don’t want to follow the trends. Trends demand constant consumerism, which to me is a waste of time and, indirectly, an exploitation of people. I don’t want to be thinking about my clothes all the time. I don’t want to put more thought into my next fashion item rather than the people who are slaving away to produce that fashion item.
You might say: ‘it’s just the system’ if so I reply: ‘the system is bollocks’, the system, while creating wealth for the west is creating poverty for almost everywhere else. I really don’t want the dollars that come my way to go back into creating poverty. Although this company is a way away and I will have to fly my fair trade shoes to my feet I think Ethiopia deserves some of the Western Dollars that have callously contributed to poverty and environmental destruction.
If they shipped their shoes I would be happier.
If a totally locally supplied footwear producer and retailer opened next door I would also be happy.
And perhaps (and I will) I will make my own!
‘What does chocolate taste like?’
This question was asked by the son of a cocoa grower in Africa of a journalist tracking the sources of his food and ‘stuff’. (Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce)
When the time came for the abolition of slavery I wonder if people ever said: ‘It is unsustainable to get rid of slaves. If I don’t have slaves people won’t have cotton for their clothes.’
I wonder if that is the same thing as people saying these days: ‘It is unsustainable to get rid of intensive farming systems. If we get rid of these (horribly exploitative) farming methods there won’t be enough food to go around.’*
To say such things ignores what humans have proven their whole existence on this earth and that is that we are a very ingenious bunch. If there’s a problem we will find a way. It also shows the extent of our greed. For the sake of more: more profit, more production, more things we will do…anything!?
I see this battle of getting our farming practices right, learning to work with the environment, treating our animals and the worlds people** kindly, shifting our paradigms around from Capitalism to….who yet knows what…, as the great struggle of this age.
I can not believe that the people from whom our chocolate comes from have never themselves tasted chocolate. Locals along a certain coast in Africa are forced out of traditional fishing grounds, with nowhere else to go, by massive trawlers fishing for the far off European Union. Beans are exported from countries where people are starving. These things are not right and ought never to be.
I’ve had it argued to me that Environmentalism (to put that blanket definition over it) ignores people for the sake of animals & plants. I disagree entirely. Taking care of the worlds environment cuts right to the root of many people problems. Living in balance with the earths capacities to sustain us is essential to long-term human health & survival. I’ve also had people say: ‘I don’t believe in global warming.’ All I can say is that there are some cases where simply choosing to ignore something does not make it go away.
Would we drive our cars and refuse to put fuel in them, change the oil, check the fluid levels or take care of our brakes and simply shrug it off with a ‘I don’t believe in looking after my car.’ and ‘I don’t believe in car breakdowns.’ I think the same holds true with looking after our land, air & water. If we refuse to maintain it then it will break down. I think most people don’t tackle this problem because it is bigger than one person can handle, and that is true, but it takes individuals. It takes every individual making little decisions every day. The poor of this world do not have the benefit of having information available to them at the click of a button. We do. We have no excuses.
____
* By the by, there are actually extremely successful methods of increasing production 100 fold through ethical, natural, organic farming methods, one of which is Permaculture. Farmers are also finding higher percentages of Carbon in their soils (Carbon Sequestering) through better management of livestock grazing. (My dream is that every locality will be surrounded by permaculture farms providing for its food needs, rather than massive monoculture farms shipping all around the country and the world. Of course different diets will need to be adopted – e.g. no cheap mango & papaya for Southern Australians, but instead a rediscovery of temperate climate foods!)
**We are now a global world and therefore the people in South America who grow our coffee, the people in China who grow our beans, the people in Africa who grow our chocolate, the people in NSW who produce our eggs, are our responsibility. If we exploit them simply for our own benefit we will have to answer for it. Ignorance is no excuse. The information is readily accessible for anyone who cares enough to access it.
Tulitha King 