25/9/14
Grey floating mist settles heavily into the gullies, hiding the trees and the hills and cutting us off from distance. It reminds me of those Tasmanian calendars that were such standard fare for a couple of decades. They appeared so reliably at the end of every year, so much so that I took them for granted. Then I wanted them, and they were gone. They always featured mist: white mist curved like velvet over rocks; stretched wisps of mist swirled around treetops; time-lapsed mist rushed down rivers like tastefully-drawn cartoon ghosts. I valued those calendars for their connection with the heroic fights to save the Franklin River, for their vision of a splendid, dramatic world that was Australia – not another, more important, or more historic, or more beautiful country. They made mist special for me, beyond its own gusting, mesmerising specialness.

The trees and hills hidden by mist today were in full view yesterday under a clear blue sky. We walked up into an area of the property I’d never been to before, passing carefully through a sprawling edge of blackberry to a large open glade of wattle. It was cooler under the dappled wattle light. The soft floor was a nursery for seedlings, making us watch where we trod. On the edge of the grove a baby giant stinging tree extended its vast and dangerous leaves – disarmingly, heart-shaped – like a young beast yawning with razor sharp teeth. A baby native tamarind identified itself with one large serrated leaf on a spindly stalk. Saplings of white euodia of various sizes were springing up, ready to take over from the wattle once its short life ends. Like a textbook image of rainforest regeneration taking place, the grove, in its calm beauty, shouted Nature will win! What should grow, will grow!

We walked back to the flat and crossed the creek at a place I’ve crossed a hundred times, never noticing before how a fig and another tree entwine on the edge of the bank so it’s hard to see which branch belongs where. The other tree was identified yesterday as a shatterwood, joining all those other Australian names that speak of the colonists’ disaster or dismay – Wreck Bay, Lake Disappointment, Mount Warning, Cape Tribulation. I could almost feel the timberworkers’ disgust at this tree, so promising, so plump, so useless to them as it shattered. I could almost feel the tree’s laughter: I’m not here for you!

21/9/14
The clouds gathered in the dip in the hills to the west, slowly, unobtrusively. The air became humid and the air still. A catbird squawked down by the creek. In the distance a chattering bird set up a background strum. One of the children, invisible on the hill, called out, her high voice carrying like a melody. It was Sunday afternoon.

I don’t often get a Sunday afternoon. Generally I’m in the car, heading to Sydney. The afternoon spins by on four wheels, carried by the long stream of the black road past farms, through villages, alongside a scrappy industrial area. Then across the Hunter River and onto the highway, where the traffic gets more serious but the bush can still delight you with a clump of cheerful wattle or a cliff prettied by boronia. The Hawkesbury River widens as you come down the hill, solemn with the responsibility of being so scenic. The traffic becomes more manic and you’re drawn into Sydney, into traffic lights and narrow-laned roads, vistas of clumped high-rise and the curve of the Harbour Bridge. The road is so familiar that I can daydream the whole journey when I’m meant to be concentrating on someone else’s grammatical errors and structural flaws.

The afternoon drifted along. The clouds continued to gather non-threateningly, fluffy greys and whites, then they spilled over into the valley. They spread out, light blue sky glimpsing through. As evening approached they gained some suggestions of colour, pastel mauves and pinks like an old lady’s bathroom.

15/9/14
The chooks welcomed us on Thursday by clustering around the front garden, trying to join me in forbidden, fenced-off areas and digging around my feet as I cut vegetables for dinner. The asparagus crowns are sending stalks up in random abandon; the Chinese cabbages have remained small but have hearted; the ever-reliable kale has shaken off the aphids and produced whole new bouquets of grey curly leaves. I went inside for a moment with my vegetables and Martin called me out again, quickly. Two of the chooks were chasing one and a half metres of fast-moving, glossy, vibrant red-bellied black snake across the grass. The complete foolhardiness of their quest engrossed us – their little legs, their waggling bums in earnest pursuit. Did they think they had just seen the biggest, tastiest worm ever, or were they were actually chasing it away? Hard to say. We tried to call them back, out of danger, as the snake slowed down and they came closer to striking distance, but they wouldn’t respond. Martin threw a small rock which landed precisely between the chooks and the snake, causing the chooks to squawk and jump and the snake to double back and rear up. The chooks paused, but stood their ground, clucking indecisively while Martin changed tactics, grabbed some bread and called them to him. This time they came up the hill, leaving the snake to its own unfathomable devices, sniffing around the grass, twisting around an unknowable winding of paths, until it slid under the fence and out into the paddock.

The next day, in the garden, the neighbour’s half-grown piglets appeared around the corner of the house in a sudden galloping, snorting confusion. They snuffled around the path then careered down into the garden beds, oblivious to newly-planted trees, wire cages, carefully nurtured seedlings. They ran in ever more chaotic circles, stopping only to sniff, to try to root up the more enticing smells. They came towards us, cheerfully expecting food of some description, racketting off again when they saw our empty hands. Then the neighbours turned up with a bucket of pig pellets – shaken rapidly it drew them away, and back to their pen.

The swirling, ungovernable energy of the pigs remained. I was left with a feeling of impermanence, of the fragility of our little garden. Our delicately tended beds, our carefully arranged stakes, our little paths, our chicken wire and netting were suddenly inadequate, effete – barely even temporary obstacles in the path of determined disruption.

8/9/14
Saturday was the Gloucester Platypus Festival, bringing together local efforts in environmental sustainability. There’s a lot going on in our area that isn’t related to the more unsustainable enterprises like coal and CSG mining. Rain bucketed down on Friday night (no-one noticeably complaining) but you could hear the collective sigh of relief through the valley when Saturday was bright and blue-skyed and the event didn’t have to be cancelled. Weeks of work would have been wasted, and you couldn’t even have complained.

I was working on a ‘make your own milkshake’ stall, where the milkshake is placed at the front of an adapted bicycle and mixed by pedal power – which was provided by the purchaser. The idea of sitting on a stationary bike and pedalling in order to froth their own milkshake was so enticing to pretty much every child at the festival that we were rarely without a queue of customers. There were some who were shy, scared of failure or something new, and some who were too small and needed a parent, grandparent or sibling to ride for them. But mostly it was an energetic crowd, waiting patiently as each rider went through the necessarily slow process of riding the bike sufficiently to froth the milk. In terms of simple (and sustainable) pleasures, this must surely rate.

Back at the farm in the afternoon we gardened, filled with the satisfaction of putting seeds into damp ground. Our newest technique involves placing hessian over the seeds so the chooks can’t dig them up as they germinate ¬— the chances of germination having improved vastly in the last couple of weeks. That night, when we switched off the light, there was a lightness in the sky, the near-full moon throwing dim shadows through the garden. Right in front of our window two tiny dots of bright light appeared, surrounded by a small cloud of dots that moved in and out of perception. Fireflies adding their brief magic to the night.

31 August 2014
The creeks are running, the rivers are spread out, forcing their bulk along with a steady sense of importance. There is mud and squelch underfoot, and the lettuces and rocket have exploded with growth. The one downside of all this rain – and you really have to search for it – is that the second day of our HotSpots program had to be curtailed. We were going to participate in a controlled burn of a section of forest on a nearby property, but the ground was too wet. The road to the property was too slippery for the number of cars involved, and the forest floor would have proved impossible to light.

Even at the local RFS shed, where we could at least cover the theory, a demonstration of how to light a grassfire fizzled out despite multiple matches and special burners. But who could argue with rain? Who could criticise its beauty? The spluttering flames that failed to rise, the creeping fire that failed to take off were just part of the merriment. We went back to our theory, learned about who you have to talk to before you light a fire – notify neighbours, get permission from the RFS – learned how to measure fuel loads – ground, elevated and bark – learned how to calculate which level of fire danger the arrow should point to – depending on time of day, temperature, humidity, wind speed – and learned how you can use that measurement to determine how fast the fire will run, how far the flames will leap. It doesn’t take much for the fire danger to change from ‘high’ to ‘catastrophic’, where fires will run along the tree canopy and jump from ridge to ridge.

We saw the grim need for all this theory as we left the workshop. A few weeks ago a local landholder failed to observe any of the basic precautions that we had just been taught. They didn’t notify neighbours or the RFS, they didn’t consider the then-droughty conditions, or fuel loads or wind conditions. The result is there to be seen in the long deep scar of burnt land rising up one hill and down the next. One of their neighbours was informed, 20 minutes before the fire hit, that their property was in danger. The other day – after all the rain – this neighbour saw a tree go up in smoke. It was a hollow tree that had been smouldering internally for three weeks, harbouring the flames that had finally burst out. But the surrounding land was wet and, as with our demonstration burn, the fire failed to spread. Luckily.