Life and Wildlife on the Banks of the Murrumbidgee
At the start of the planting season, I'm so excited to see my new young plants. I spend a lot of time sorting them, checking them out, figuring out where exactly I'm going to put them, and admiring them fondly. At the end of the season, I'm equally excited to see my piles of empty... Continue Reading →
A few years ago, I went to a workshop on erosion control, which gave me a number of tools to use against soil erosion. One of them involves using logs and brush to make multiple leaky weirs, which slow water and sediment moving down a slope, allowing the silt to drop out instead of being... Continue Reading →
I know we’ll need all the water we can get for another summer of heatwaves, coming in just a few months. It’s also perfect for this year’s tree planting that the soil moisture is good. However, the flooding is beginning to become just a little tedious – especially the creek. When Mullion Creek goes up... Continue Reading →
I have a love-hate relationship with fences. A good fence is essential for stock management and control. On the other hand, I hate having to get over barbed wire, as I’m not good at the seamless leap over. Barbed wire is particularly important if you have cattle who like to lean on them. Sheep don’t... Continue Reading →
While we were collecting last year's corflute covers and drainage discs down in last year's Big Gully planting, we found the young trees mostly well grown, a few bowled over by wombats, a few being chewed on by insects - those I'm hoping will provide food and attract birds in the future. The thistles were... Continue Reading →
After months of weed control, plus stripping tree covers among the Stinking Roger and Saffron Thistle, we’re finally into the planting season, despite being still surrounded by the post-drought thistles. My mini-forest sits outside our bedroom door reminding me to keep it watered and fed. Mini forest The retrieved covers are stacked high in the... Continue Reading →
After the drought ended in February last year we were so excited to see the green tinge creeping across the landscape. But of course, a lot of that was weeds that had been allowed to germinate in bare ground – left bare by the drought. Because the ground cover was still fragile, it was necessary... Continue Reading →
Since the end of the drought there has been a spate of sheep and cattle thefts ("duffing") particularly by thieves using empty caravans to stuff suddenly valuable animals into. It's suspicious if an apparent grey nomad has a trailer that bleats or moos. That's not the sort of stock-taking I'm doing. With my mother's death,... Continue Reading →
When the whole world is sharing a pandemic, I thought it would be nice to share some of the beauty we're "locked down" with, including the dragon's breath sunset above. Our friends George and Rosie from Berkeley also gave us some wonderful long lens photos of birds and kangaroos, stars and sunsets. And of course,... Continue Reading →
Having a river in your backyard is a lovely idea, not always so pleasant in reality, as fences and dead animals go swirling past in a flood, or when you find out that a city upstream is putting something in the water that shouldn't be there. Waterwatch has been a great way to find out... Continue Reading →
Amazingly, we're done with our main project for 2018! After the bitter weather on our big planting a few weeks ago, I was worried we'd never get our whole Glossy Black Cockatoo project finished. Thankfully, Darren Menachemson and a wonderful crew from ThinkPlace plus a Greening Australia "Adopt a Plot" team came to our rescue.... Continue Reading →
After months of flu last year, I was very excited when Ben Hanrahan from Greening Australia offered help with planting our new Glossy Black Cockatoo area on the steep gully behind the house. It's been a dry year so far, with only scattered amounts of rain making the soil just moist enough for planting. Mostly... Continue Reading →
It's an embarrassment that when I see litter in our paddocks. That's because it's usually my own: one of my tree guards that has blown off and landed in the creek, or among the ti-tree, or strung up against a barbed-wire fence. But collecting them again is the easy part. The problem is what to... Continue Reading →
Suddenly, while I was still coughing and wheezing from the flu, spring arrived on the hills around us. It seemed as if every type of wattle and fruit tree began to flower simultaneously, even while the mornings remained so cold and frosty I couldn't step outside without going into a coughing fit. Best of all,... Continue Reading →
They look so innocent. But my, they have big teeth. And lots of them. I'm currently not feeling very friendly towards kangaroos. Since we finished this year's main tree planting early I had a chance to go and check on our WOPR planting, a ten hectare plot near the river We started with direct seeding... Continue Reading →
When trees attack they often do so without warning. A few months ago, a massive old eucalypt (I thought possibly a Blakely's red gum, but my identification skills are poor - or maybe a very large Red Box (eucalyptus polyanthemos ) in the crop paddock near the house suddenly turned into a crushing giant squid-shaped... Continue Reading →
Despite the dry ground and heavy frosts, 2017's winter planting season has gone really well. I'm down to a couple of weekends planting extra plots to use up 100 leftover plants. Increasing the number of regular helpers has made a great difference, as has Matthew's reliability and skill as my outstanding Chief Planting Assistant. Plus... Continue Reading →
I've been looking out for Rakali for a while now, ever since my wonderful assistant Matt found a yabby claw out on the creek bank while we were doing water testing at Lizard Crossing. I was told that water-rats (or rakali) like to take their food out onto the bank to eat. Unfortunately, the first... Continue Reading →
Sometimes everything just seems to go right. This last weekend was one of those. We finally had a planting location where we could use the ripper. This is my big project for this year - a big windbreak on Adnamira which will connect a gully with the existing ridgetop windbreak. Last year we had a... Continue Reading →
We have some beautiful beetles here, and some that annoy me by eating trees that I would like to have survive, but I'd never paid much attention to the little black beetles that crawl around on the ground. Then in March we had a visit from Kip Will from UC Berkeley who was interested in carabid... Continue Reading →
One Bend In The River 