5 January 2015

Last night the chooks were dawdling to bed, having a last peck at the feed, a last sip at the water, when I felt something behind me and turned to see the moon, just above the hill, a creamy-yellow disc surrounded by a bright yellow haze, edged with a thin circle of red trim. Slowly it made its ascent into the night sky, amazing all around with its magnificence.

Tonight it is much later, and we sit in darkness as we eat our dinner, bombarded by grasshoppers. A pale line of light forms along the top of the hill but still the moon waits. A cloud above the hill is lit from below. A tiny edge of brightness rises and suddenly the whole moon is there, veiled.

Behind us the bleating frog bleats. Now that I’ve seen him – he sits on the edge of the water trough, calling out to any waiting female bleating frogs – I feel I owe him an apology for my harsh words last week. He’s a sturdy little fellow, maybe 5 cm long, identifiably male from the glimpses of a lemon-yellow underbelly at his armpits and tops of his legs. His long back is a greeny-brown, and his toes end in fat round tips. He is a definite benefit, his beauty less showy than the moon’s but no less remarkable.

29 December 2014

Yesterday’s rain has gone, leaving behind it a fresh night sky with bright spots of starlight. Where the mists rose from the hillside (drifting lines of white fog that meandered up, forming curlicues that hovered before being sucked back down into the forest) we can now see – although it has always been there – that there is a patch of rainforest in a gully surrounded by eucalypts. At the front of the forest a stand of young eucalypts stood uniformly tall, uniformly bare-trunked to a ball of leaves, when the mist silhouetted them against the hill.

The rain has other benefits, like the steady call of frogs as night falls. There is a low background consistent hum of croaks from the paddock; closer to the house a ‘crik crik crik’ noise. Coming in above that an intermittent grrr-aak, grrr-aak grinding its way through the dark. Then there is the loud discordant screech that stops and starts. What was once a general ‘sound of frogs’ – the sound of summer nights, washed air, grateful bush sighing – now pulls apart into the stony creek frog, the green tree frog, the common eastern froglet and, unmistakably, the bleating tree frog.

Although I’m not quite sure that the bleating tree frog could really be called a benefit.

22/12/14

The first time we came to see the farm with a view to buying it, the owner, Eva, a woman in her eighties, who had run the property since the ’50s as a dairy farm with her husband, dead for ten years when we met her, told us that the white cockatoos had been so bad in the orange trees that morning that she’d got out her shotgun and had a go at them. Part of me was shocked – shoot at cockatoos, those whimsical jesters? – but part of me knew that one day I would understand. That day has come, with the sight not of cockatoos but of three king parrots sitting in our apple trees this morning, pulling at the developing fruit, chewing through to the seeds then moving on to the next one, unmoved by our shouts or thrown stones. Not having a shotgun to hand I rushed up the embankment waving my arms until they rose in a leisurely manner and landed a few trees away, watching to see if I would leave them in peace. More rushing and waving sent them off into the paddock. Beautiful they may be, with glistening feathers of impossibly bright red and green, but we want those apples. Our two apple trees are only two or three metres high, our crop is only going to be in the order of 20 apples, but that makes them precious. Maybe when we have a garden full of established fruit trees, loaded down with fruit, I’ll be able to emulate Jackie French and have a more ‘one for you, one for me’ philosophy.

The day turned hot, and I had to wait until the evening cool to wrestle with netting. I had just finished (one tree fully enclosed and the other covered in netting bags like a badly decorated Christmas tree) when my neighbour Rachel appeared. She had just seen another koala. We hurried up the hill, up behind the houses and along the wallaby track. There, in a spindly tree, was the koala, as promised. Hunched in the tree, its back to us, dark grey fur with a redder tinge around its shoulders. It seemed smaller than the others – the one we’d seen in the tree by the creek, and the one Rachel had seen in a different tree further down the hill. This was the first one I had seen without the aid of binoculars, standing on a hill almost level with it in its tree. Suddenly every eucalyptus amplifolia has the potential to hold a koala, to be infinitely more interesting than it was yesterday.

That’s the thing with living on the farm. The excitement can be intense, like seeing a koala up close, or it can be soft, like seeing the new silhouette of a wrapped apple tree against the deep blue night sky.

December 13 2014
Driving up here from Sydney last week I saw a collection of birds in a swampy area outside the little settlement of Craven. Craven is something of a ghost village, with a death sentence on its head. One of the coal mines wants to dig up that particular piece of land where a row of houses sits, so the road is going to be moved some kilometres to the west to accommodate this completely reasonable desire. It hasn’t happened yet and the houses in Craven continue to be inhabited, and the gardens continue to grow, but everything looks a little impermanent and tenuous. I’m not sure if it depends on the price of coal rising or falling, but whatever it is, Craven is situated in limbo.

Outside Craven, on the Gloucester side, is one of the very few straight stretches of road on Buckett’s Way. The rain has filled the ditches with water and any low-lying paddocks with swamps, and it was in one of these temporary swamps that I saw a small group of waterbirds. A number of egrets and two enormous birds, bodies the size of pelicans but with long legs, bodies a rounded mound of black and white feathers and beaks thinner and pointier than a pelican. It was only when I looked in the bird book that I realised how lucky I had been to see them, as they were jabirus. They do, apparently, come as far south as this, although I had always assumed them to be birds of the tropical wetlands.

So this week, as we drove up, I looked very closely as we came out of Craven. Nothing on the swampy area – more swampy than ever, thanks to continuing blissful rain – but then, further into the paddock, it was there again. We did a u-turn at the top of the hill and came back down, got out of the car and crossed the road to watch it stalk, elegant, reaching down and moving on, flamingo-like with its legs that joint backwards. It patrolled the paddock, walking down then back again – big body, stick legs – a complete anomaly in a field that doesn’t usually contain anything more exciting than a cow.

November 22 2014

For the last two Fridays we’ve been kept inside by the heavy hand of a hot day. A peaceful morning of lemon sun and bright birdsong gives way to the monotony of bellbirds. Leaves beaten dry clack in the wind.

As the last arcs of the sun fall behind the western hills we venture out, sitting on the eastern side of the house in a cool breeze. Last week a cloud of white ants flew into the air from an old tree stump, shining specks of light catching the last rays. They scattered through the air, flying with abandon, crashing into us and the trees and the ground. The chooks pecked avidly at every log they landed on. To the south a great grey streak of cloud splashed the sky. Trees on horizons turned black on grey-green hills.

When the night is completely dark the soft air hugs our bodies. First stars come shyly through the blackness.

November 14 2014
We were sitting on the back deck late in the day last Saturday with a farmer from Victoria, the father of one of our neighbours. We’d been discussing birds – he’d noticed a yellow-breasted whistler; I’d noticed my favourite bird, the leaden flycatcher, back in the garden on its migratory round, and I’d gone to get the bird book (a massive edition of Cayley) to show him approximately what it looks like – when Martin said, What’s that bird in the tree? and followed me inside to get the binoculars.

It turned out not to be a bird at all. It was a koala, in the exact tree that I had heard a sound from weeks ago when we were weeding by the creek, less than 100 metres from the house. We took turns with the binoculars, watching it climb higher, out onto branches that looked far too thin, making the branch shudder as it reached out for leaves. It climbed around the tree as dusk fell darker. I watched it turn towards us, giving me a full koala stare with its round face and fluffy ears. A kookaburra landed on the ground below it, and we only needed a wallaby (or an echidna perhaps) to wander past to create a complete Australiana diorama. We laughed, but our laughter was for our fortune, of being granted such a magnificent boon.

It was nowhere to be seen when we went down to look at the tree last night at dusk. We wandered around, cricking our necks, my ears yearning for the grunt or snort that would give it away. The bush creaked and sighed, but with bird sounds, late-evening chirps that sounded as muted as the sky. Just as we were leaving a sound came from further up the hill, in a stand of similar eucalypts – one tell-tale bellow.

November 4 2013
We have our bees, thanks to Martin’s intrepid journey to Maitland and back via bumpy winding roads in the dark, dodging bushfire and a tricky petrol gauge. A few were sacrificed to the god of travel, but the rest are out and about this morning, exploring their new surroundings.

We did our first lesson in beekeeping on Saturday. I think I’d expected a lot of talking about bees and honey, but instead we were marching up to the apiary along a sandy track in the sun and straight into watching how you start and stoke a bee smoker – a bit of paper to start it then pine needles, stringybark or paperbark, packed in loosely at first then stuffed in so you’ve got enough fuel to keep it smoking. Smoke calms the bees when you open the hive as they try to load themselves up with honey rather than attacking you. Our instructors – all generous, kind amateur beekeepers – told us that it needs to be cool smoke, not hot smoke that might harm the bees, and demonstrated what cool smoke is by puffing it onto our hands. It was cool. Once the smokers were puffing nicely we got kitted up – Martin and I (and quite a few others) in conspicuously white new beekeeping jackets with built-in hoods. Even manoeuvring into the jackets was a feat that needed assistance. We divided into small groups with an instructor to open each hive and almost immediately I had a frame of bees in my (gloved) hands.

Like many firsts, there’s nothing quite like the first time you hold a frame of bees. There in front of you is a multitude of bees, crawling all over the frame and indeed on your hands (gloves). You’re not running away from it, but you’re standing still, watching the bees get on with their business. Alarmed at first, I moved to actually seeing what they were doing in their busy wanderings. I saw a drone, briefly, before it flew off – the larger, male bee who serves a purpose once in its life (if it’s lucky, as our instructor said, chortling) – but the rest were all field bees, females who tend the hive and the brood and manufacture the honey by some alchemical process we may learn about next week. Sweat ran down my back in the heat, in the jacket, but holding bees, observing bees, learning how to swing the frame around to inspect both sides, seeing how to lever the frames out of the box, scrape the propolis off the edges and ensure that the frames were clean and adequately spaced – made for an exhilaration, a freedom from ancient fears that completely overcame my discomfort.

19 October 2014

Usually it’s Martin saying, ‘I just saw …’ or ‘Come here quickly – ohh, it’s gone’ but today it’s me saying, ‘I heard the strangest sounds – I came to get you but they stopped.’ I heard them first down by the creek. We were cutting lantana – we have a little bush regen project going down there, which is going very well, with lots of young trees coming up amid the dead lantana stalks – and I had moved towards the rainforest section while Martin was at the other, open, creek-bend, end. As I moved towards another section of lantana I heard a purring noise, that turned into a rhythmic snoring sound, getting louder then finally becoming pig-like snorts that tailed off, back to the purring. It could have been anything, coming from anywhere – a frog or a bird in the congested lantana that I was approaching, trying to scare me off? Then the sequence was repeated. It was coming from the rainforest, up the hill. The pig-like sound was disconcerting – wild pigs? They have a reputation for ferocity. I walked hesitantly towards the sound. Was it coming from a tree? Twice I walked up the hill, slowly, quietly, peering into trees, ready to leap back if a pig exploded from the bush. Twice I went back to my lantana when the sounds stopped.

The afternoon grew slower, the shadows longer. We went back to the house where I did some more weeding in the vegie garden while Martin made dinner. Suddenly, through the soft dusk, a commotion arose from the rainforest section of the creek. A series of loud shrieks and grunts and snorts, a cacophony, very guttural.

By now I had my suspicions but I had to check them, finding a great range of noises (shame about the American commentaries) at http://koalaland.com.au/what-sounds-do-koalas-make. I was right. There must have been at least two koalas by the creek. One of our neighbours sighted one a couple of weeks ago – climbing their verandah post, hoping it led to food – but that was the first evidence we’d ever had of koalas on the property beyond noticing a very strong distinctive odour in some areas. Today’s display shows that we have more than one. The farm reveals itself to be ever more precious.

11 October 2014
Spring may be a European concept, but here at the farm there’s a definite spring-like atmosphere. Normally staid goats cavort in the field, the three young ones following their parents in a steeplechase across a ditch. The swallows have been more successful as parents this year and in the space of two days their babies have transformed from tweeting beaks that look picturesquely over the rim of the nest to speeding bullets travelling in formation. The garden has exploded into waves of seeding asparagus, rocket and parsley while the kale and chicory are only slightly behind, bulbous with bees on their flowers. It’s a scene of complete serenity – the asparagus ferns wafting, the kale flowers punctuating the green distance with lemon-yellow flowers, the brown snake gliding past the compost bin …

This is the brown snake’s second languid appearance in exactly this spot in two days. I know it’s the same one because it has a small scar near the tip of the tail. I’m so close – collecting lettuce – that our eyes are at the same level. I can see that it has pale eyes, which helps me to identify it as an Eastern Brown Snake, rather than a King Brown (orange irises). It keeps gliding, moving its whole metre and a half length around the path established by its head, more interested in what may be in the compost bin than in me. I still remove myself swiftly, watching it at all times. It doesn’t exactly follow me, but it does end up on the paving near the sliding doors, casually searching, poking its nose up the corrugations of the tin for any lunchtime snacks. The frog we saw on Thursday night is not seen again.

More attractively, sightings of an echidna – a young one, sticking its long nose into the soil in a ‘you-can’t-see-me’ way – near the front gate, a young wallaby by the road and a pademelon vanishing up the gully. We have only seen the pademelon at night previously and it’s a treat to see it in daylight, to know its colouring (very dark brown, almost black, with a red tinge around the head) and see more clearly its powerful legs and stubby tail. Daylight saving must have confused the wildlife as well.