Flaming Flemebae, Gelato....a day of icecream it two of its international forms

That was Skys spelling of french as I am not even going to try!

Today Brenna (who was totally gobsmacked that I didn't know what gelati was) whisked us away from class to get some. I have to say that my selection of Bacio (chocolate and hazelnut) White Bacio (white chocolate and hazelnut) and boysenberry was truly delicious. Where have I been all my life? David from the course had ordered some too but I ended up wearing the melts of it before we got it back to him, distracted as I was by my own tub.

I am enjoying this PDC immensly. Bill is teaching the morning and boy, can he tell a good story. I can't wait to share some of his experiences with people when I get home. The personal anecdotal stories are the ones that people remember and Bill has at least one story to back up every word he has ever written. He has had over 80 years of observation and considered thought about the world, it is a great treat to be here sharing his stories.

In the evening we (sky and I) set off to find
some dinner. Brenna had told us about a great italian cafe on Lygon st which is not far from where we are staying.

I had always thought that Auckland was bad for not having st signs but Melbourne is even worse! By the time we gave up looking for Lygon St (we passed it as it had no signs) we had been walking for an hour and a half. We really had our minds set on pasta but settled for a traditional french creperie for dinner as we both had sore feet. Sky had been wanting flaming food for many years so when we saw other guests having some she didn't even have to ask, the look on her face said it all!

So 2 savory crepes and one flaming 1 with ice cream later, we set off to find our way home. Having no map with us, we had to rely on the directions of our lovely waitress. She was spot on and luckily this end of Lygon St actually had a sign so we were able to find many,many cute italian places to eat.

I noted some land marks so we can find our way back to them another time.

Actually, not being much of a city girl, Melbourne is much easier to get around at night time (most of the 3.8 million people are at home) and we were able to really figure out how to get around at our own pace.

Guerilla Composting

I was shocked to discover this morning, (when trying to find a local compost heap for the organic scraps I had separated from yesterdays course waste) that there is in fact NO COMPOSTING BEING DONE HERE AT ALL!

Even the weeds plucked from the immaculate gardens here are all sent to landfill. (Read with a gasp of horror!) Well, you can take a waste reduction educator away from her work for a while but you can’t make her send organic matter to landfill!

Not when I know that the bucket of food scraps I collected today could generate at least 20kgs of greenhouse gas if left to fester away in the anaerobic environment of a landfill. Not to mention the nasty toxic leachate it turns into –with the potential to contaminate land and underground water reserves. Don’t even get me started on the impacts of soil degradation and erosion…..

So, I cooked up a plan (with Sky as my willing assistant) to start a secret compost somewhere on site to deal with the organic scraps. I discovered just in time that this blog is being read by locals (hello!) so decided to move my guerilla compost off site so as not to be evicted. When relaying this story to Bill he shared his experience of getting in trouble here last year for donating some liquid nitrogen to a local tree….

Anyway, after going out for a lovely meal at Zum Zum (where I offered a bored Sky 10 cents for every word she could make out of PERMACULTURE and 20 cents for each word if she could come up with over 25 – she came up with over 30!)
We searched our room and luggage for anything resembling a spade or similar digging implement for our late night composting mission.

The best we could come up with was a couple of travel spoons which were not very big. We took our bucket, spoons, dark glasses and camera for a brisk walk around Melbourne depositing some juicey organic matter into every little spoon dug trench and hole we made. We felt both virtuous and naughty all at the same time!

NB No soil was harmed during the making of this blog.

Day 1 of the Melbourne PDC

Wow, this place is amazing and Bill Mollison is hilarious. I am in love with Melbourne already. Arriving late at night last night, we didn't really get to see anything. Trinity college is like something right out of the pages of Harry Potter and the dining hall is from Hogswort I am sure of it. I'll attach some pictures of us having breakfast there tomorrow, especially for River and Sage and Romy, you guys won't believe it!!!

I am doing the morning and afternoon teas for the course along with Sakina who is arriving tomorrow sometime. I spent this morning listening to Bill introduce himself before being whisked of on a recce around Melbourne by Brenna who did this job last year. It's a tough job, I have to go around picking up lush food from the local bakaries and cafes and have it set out ready for the breaks.

Today we had gorgeous french baggettes (I accidentally sunk my teeth into a tuna one, before dashing out to spit it out and rinse out my mouth). 2 apples later and I was still rinseing my mouth out! In the afternoon we had a selection of the most delicious italian biscuits I have ever tasted (I had to test them out naturally) I have a sneaking suspician that I may just regain the 2kg I lost working on the farm. I'll have to head off in a different direction each evening to explore Melbourne on foot for an hour or so.

Sky and I have our own room overlooking the green and all of the gorgeous stone buildings. I am not going to pick up or even touch a university prospectus or Whanganui may loose us forever. I have always wanted to go to a university like this.

We are currently in the Library above the lecture hall where the PDC is being held. I am going to dash back down now and catch the last few minutes of class.

So far we have missed two out of three planes...

Yep, that's right, we missed our flight from Brisbane to Melbourne yesturday!  Having woken before the crack of dawn to finish packing our bags, Abdullah, Sky and I jumped on board with Chris who was being our Taxi driver for the morning, delivering us to Robina in the Gold Coast to catch a Train to the Airport.

It was the kind of journey that had me praying in the back seat, a truly hair raising experience!  Sky found another Tick on herself but luckily it hadn't bitten into her yet and we flicked it out the window.  Half way along the journey, (once I realised that we were going to miss the earlier train) the car started to have a definite vibration that got gradually worse until we were forced to pull over, thinking we had a flat tyre.  The tyres all looked fine and each of us had a different idea as to what was wrong.  Having no minutes to spare we got back on the road and made our way slowly to Robina with 10 minutes to spare before the Airport train left.  We thanked Chris for the ride and wished him well fixing the car and getting back to the farm safely.

By this stage I was trying not to panic and did the maths as we waited for the Train.  It was 9:43, the train leaves at 9:53, arrives at the Airport at 11:34, our plane leaves at 11:50 - we were going to make it by the hair of our chinny chin chin.  We got to the airport station and ran for it, dragging our collection of large and heavy luggage behind us.  We got to check in to be greeted by a large line.  I sweet talked our way to the front only to be told that check in had closed and we had missed our flight!  

Qantus very kindly put us on another flight later in the day and due to sky having packed her shoes into our check in luggage, we nearly weren't allowed on this flight either.  Luckily there was a store at the airport and we were allowed onto our flight after showing off Sky's new thongs to the flight crew.

This was actually a blessing in disguise as it now gave us time to relax, eat some ridiculously expensive airport food and show Abdullah (who was catching a later flight) where he needed to be and help him read the relevant signs etc.  Being from Jordan and looking quite middle eastern, guess who was picked for the 'random' screening for explosive powder.  Just lucky a) he had not been making any bombs and b) that Abdullah is an organic farmer as traces of nitrate fertilizer would have raised suspicions and had him carried off for further examination! 

We had a few hours to wait in Melbourne Airport so we had some more ridiculously expensive food and also found a shower which was great as I was still hot and sweaty from the mad airport dash earlier in the day.  I have always said I don't see the point of running unless someone is chasing you, I now extend that reasoning to catching public transport, especially airplanes.  Not that it did us any good!

We stayed at Trinity College (University of Mebourne) last night and very shortly we will be off to the course to meet the legendary Bill Mollison.  I can't wait, I am going to listen very carefully to everything he has to say so I can fill you all in when I get home.

Carbon Farming

Darren is an active broad acre keyline designer and over the last few days he has been completely blowing my mind answering all of the questions I have about effective carbon sequestration.  I have long thought that the carbon neutral programs available are a bit of a joke and while planting trees is something we should all be doing, they take too long to really help us sequester carbon now.  

Soil is a much more immediate and effective method of doing this and Darren has provided me with heaps of resources for pursuing this area of interest.  Not only does increasing the amount of soil carbon sequester carbon, it increases the water holding capacity of the soil and also increases soil organic matter and helps rebuild soil.

So between studying soil biota and now carbon farming, I am going to be a  very busy girl indeed.

Spot the Kiwi girl

It is an interesting experience to be the one with an accent.  I empathise with you more Deirdre as I am having to repeat myself alot so people can understand me.  It is still novel at the moment and is proving to be quite a conversation starter, I am not sure I would have the patience to live in another english speaking country if I had to do it long term!  Words especially the e and i sounds  are the worst.  The best so far has been when I asked for a bendy spatular.  A bindy spatular?  and Wedges/widges?  People had no idea what I was talking about.

Tonight Sky and I went done to the pub to have dinner with Janet, our friend from the Tauranga Rudolf Steiner School who is now the Principal of the School in Byron Bay which is only 45 minutes drive from the farm.  While out we saw Colete, a friendly local who is  doing the Permaculture course that Robyn Francis runs she informed me that there were a few parties in the neighbourhood.  I was planning an early night to really make the most of my sleep in tomorrow.  Cleaning up after dinner, Lachy, Sink and myself decided that we should go out.  We rang Colete and made plans to pick her up later.  Most of the people on the farm were going off site for the night and the day off tomorrow to watch the rugby.  I'm allergic to rugby but got some good mileage out of the fact that the All Blacks won!

So bottle of wine in hand we set off to party all beit in our tired state.  We didn't know exactly where we were going but knew the general vacinity.  We found the party easily enough as they had some beautiful fire sculptures leading the way.  

Being a long term pyromanic myself, I was fascinated by them.  We walked down the driveway and before we had even met anyone, stopped off to examine the sculptures and how they had been made.  Lachy and I deduced that they were old dry posts that had chainsaw cuts down towards the base.  they were burning from the inside out and the effect was stunning.  I wanted to see if they were dug into the ground so gave it a quick tap with my foot.  They weren't and sculpture toppled over.  The look on Lachy's face was hilarious and mine must have been similar.  I quickly looked around waiting to be evicted from the party for willful damage.  No one was coming.  I tried to leverage the sculture back upright from the base but it was too heavy.  Luckily my ceramics training has given my hands good resistance to heat and with a couple of sticks I was able to lift it back up, no harm done.  By this time someone had come along to see what we were up to.  I threw the glowing sticks into the air towards a giant bonfire pile.  "Don't do that, we didn't get permission to light it" too late, the glowing sticks are flying through the air.  Luckily it didn't set the bonfire alight and I made a grand impressionable entrance.  All before the bottle of said wine was even opened!

I met lots and lots of PDC grads and had a great night.  

A day off at last....

It was my intention this morning to sleep until at least lunch time but not too late as we wanted to visit the legendary channon market.  So when Sky woke me up and told me that it was lunch time, I leapt out of bed and got dressed.  I was not very impressed to discover that it was just after 8:30am!  

It was bliss to actually relax over breakfast in front of the damn and take time over my morning coffee.  It is a scorcher of a day and after breakfast Sky, Judy and I set off to walk to the market.  It wasn't long before we had all worked up a sweat so we were very relieved to be picked up by some other students who were driving.  

The Channon Market was huge and packed with people.  We brought some good aussie hats as soon as we got there.  To quench our thirst we had some sugar cane juice with lime and ginger.  It was so delicious that I had another one, while Sky opted for the Nimbin berry ice cream.  That too was delicious.  I brought some fruit leather that resembled the Rainbow Valley Farm logo but it didn't taste anywhere near as good as it looked.  Lucky we took a photo of it to send to Trish.

Sky spent the rest of her money doing backflips on the bouncy bungy thingy and then we had to dash back to the gate to meet our ride home.  We were there for 3 hours and didn't even get to see all of the stalls!

We swam and lazed about for the rest of the day until Darren Doherty (guest teacher) arrived and we took him back to the market.   Sky stayed behind to catch tadpoles under the watchful eye of Judy and I had time to wander around the stalls I missed the first time.  We scored a trailer load of crushed sugarcane (minus the juice) to feed to the stock and use as mulch.

On our return home Darren rang home to let his family know he had arrived safely.  The sage advice of his wife Lisa was "don't flirt or everyone will think your wife is a haggis"  I have been giggling about it ever since.  I can confirm that Lisa is no haggis and Darren has been no flirt (just in case your reading this Lisa!).  

The evenings entertainment was a game of chinese whispers instigated by Sky which proved to be hilarious.  Themes mostly revolving around poo, compost and worms in true permaculture style.

Concussed kingfishers, Microbes and Djungbung Gardens

We had a very exciting day today.  This morning as we were preparing breakfast a Kingfisher smashed itself into the kitchen window.  It lay on the ground dazed and confused until Nadia carefully picked it up and took it to a post near the damn to gather its wits again.  It was in shock for quite a while and decided it was more comfortable on Nadias hand than  anywhere else.  Australian Kingfishers are quite different to the ones I ahve seen in NZ.  They are a deep and silky Indigo Blue with long black beaks and a brown/yellow breast.  I got some great shots of it so will post them here soon.  

This afternoon Paul Taylor (Mr Compost Tea) was a guest teacher on the PDC.  We had planned to go to Djungbung Gardens to visit Robyn Francis but put off the the trip to later in the day so I could attend Pauls' session.  I have decided that microbes definitely do it for me.  Between Fungi and Bacteria we have some powerful allies in our quest to build sustainable and healthy soil systems.  Even when we are working in completely degraded ecosystems, with microbes on our side we have the power to return these damaged ecosystems to their former glory.  

Paul is very inspiring and he and his wife Judy both love New Zealand so hopefully we can get them over more often to run some workshops.  I am very excited to come home and get a brewer going.  It brings a whole new tangent to guerilla gardening.  Instead of late night public plantings that usually don't last long before they are damaged or removed I can mix up a brew of compost tea and wander the streets late at night flinging the microbial soup far and wide to nourish and support soils everywhere.  The impacts of increased soil life are astounding and this is definitely the field I am interested in pursuing.  

Later in the day Sky and I went to visit Robyn who lives in Nimbin.  Despite popular opinion neither of us were offered any drugs and while it definitely had a hippie flavor to the township we didn't encounter even a whiff of anything illegal or untoward.  It was just after 5pm how ever and the only shop still open was the organic store which was small but comprehensive.  I am amazed that small, even tiny settlements here can sustain at least one organic shop and Whanganui with a population of over 40,000 can't even support one.  At least we have a good market which does give us easy access to organic and local produce.  

Anyway, back to Djungbung Gardens.  Robyn is a very inspiring teacher who works all over the world but mostly at Djungbung gardens, her little 5 acre piece of paradise.  It was great to see her again and to quickly wander around her place (it was just getting dark) seeing incredible and innovative projects all around.  The main building is passive solar designed and built of earthbrick.  It is very beautiful.  I'll post photos (as soon as I work out how to) when we go back later in the week - we forgot our camera today.

We met some of her many students and had a fine dinner of local pizza around the fire.  It was great to have a night off working and to relax with friendly and interesting people from around the world who are all gathered to study Permaculture.  Sky loved it but couldn't quite get the gobble down with the turkeys.  I however discovered that I am quite conversant with turkeys - take from that what you will!

Huntsmen spiders as big as my hand and ants nest in my gumboot!

We arose before dawn again this morning and as I was helping to milk the cows that morning Geoff passed me some gumboots as it had been raining all night (94mm) and there is mud everywhere.  Pre caffeine and blurry eyed I put my bare foot in to be met by something nasty.  I whipped it off and tipped it upside down and there was an explosion of around a billion large ants running in every direction.  Nadia was right in front of me and we were both as shocked as each other.  Geoff is adament that it was unintentional, although funny and reminded me that I should ALWAYS give my gumboots a good bash before I put my feet in.  Lesson learnt and it certainly woke me up in a hurry!  Lachy helped me set up for milking and I managed to milk Rose with no problems, mmmm fresh raw milk what a treat!  

Sky and I both swam in the dam today and it was surprisingly warm or at least not as freezing as we expected.  Everyone else thinks that we only think its warm because we are from New Zealand.

Meet George, he/she lives in the composting toilet room.  He/she is rather large - in fact the biggest spider I have ever seen in my entire life!  Nadia assures us that it is not poisonous and that it does a very good job of hunting out the less desirable (!!!) creatures that loiter in the vicinity.

Today was spent getting the place spick and span ready for the PDC on Sunday.  36 students are enrolled and everyone was buzzing around with long lists of jobs to do.  Nadia did a beautiful red earth and lime wash paint job on the inside of the composting toilet room.  The floor for the student camp bathroom and dining room was poured.  Everything was cleaned and tidied.  Still plenty to do tomorrow but everyone is pretty excited.

Resident kitchen frogs

This morning Nadia was showing me around the kitchen and its various systems.  I was going to make scrambled eggs for everyone for breakfast and she directed me to the best wok which was hanging on the wall of the 'wet room' in the kitchen.  I pulled it of the hook and flipped it over to discover a large green frog.  It gave me quite a fright and I in turn gave Nadia a fright.  Having been away from her kitchen for weeks and weeks she had forgotten about the pair of green tree frogs who had taken up residence in the 'wet room'.  I think it is very generous of Nadia to forsake her favorite wok as a habitat for frogs. The other frog of the pair lives in the drain of the sink!  Sky has taken to finding food for them and regularly delivers live ants in the general area so they can have easy access to fresh prey.

Down on the farm

During my late night wanderings last night to find our dinner, I found the Brisbane Museum.  Sky and I both thought that would be a good way to spend our morning in Brisbane before catching a bus to Byron Bay.  

Well, maybe we have been spoiled by living in the same place as the Whanganui Regional Museum where you can loose yourself for days and still not see everything.  We were not impressed with the Brisbane Museum at all.  

The building itself is magnificent, built as the town hall it is full of incredibly ornate architectural details and the entrance room is indeed awe inspiring with its vast height and beautiful domed ceilings.  If architecture excites you then it is worth a visit.  There are two exhibition rooms, neither were very inspiring or interesting and we were through in 5 mins!  The most interesting exhibit in the whole place was a small box containing an unknown object.  Visitors were invited to write their ideas for what it was and where it had come from into a book.  It made for hilarious reading, both for the ideas and the creative spelling and use of english.

Sky dressed in a black jacket, jeans and her new 'cowboy' boots given to her by Aunty Penny before we left was wilting in the unfamiliar heat and humidity.  So we hunted out some 'thongs' (not the g-string variety) and other more appropriate clothing to fill the rest of the morning.  

I found an amazing tree not far from our hotel that looked like some sort of acacia but had a eucalyptus sort of trunk and form.  It was dropping very hard seed pods everywhere so I pocketed some to show Geoff who new immediately what they were and reeled off a very long botanical name that I can't remember, it's common name is Leopard Tree, very popular as a street tree in Australia although we only found one.

We caught a bus from Brisbane to Byron Bay and I noticed a few Permaculture properties along the way.  Identifiable by the plantings on contour, lots of stored water, copious tagasaste and other useful support species.  There were very few plants I could identify along the way.  This will be useful to help me learn and remember species rather than specific plants as each climate zone has its own variations.

We had an hour hour or so to wander around Byron Bay.  It is very funky with quite a few organic shops for such a small town.  Our favorite was 'Fundamental Food' where we brought dried Goji berries and other snack essentials.  Sky also stocked up on lollies (not organic ones) to ration out to herself over the next few weeks where we won't see a shop.

Zaytana  Farm is about 30 minutes drive away from Byron Bay and we were picked up by Erin the farm manager.  Nadia and Geoff had just returned from America that morning and were tired and jet lagged.  We arrived just in time to share a meal and then they went off to Bed.  Lauchy and Singh are the current interns on the farm so they gave us a quick tour.  

A PDC is starting here on the farm on Sunday so it is all go completing a shower block for the student camp ground and finishing the pour on the new outside verander area.  Tomorrow I am being woken at 6:30 so I can make friends with the two house cows so I will be able to help with the milking while we are here.

We made it!

We arrived safely in Brisbane this evening after a manic morning racing around Wellington getting a new passport and getting my Vietnamese Visa transferred into the valid passport Thanks Penny for making that possible, you are a star!  Also thanks to Air NZ who flew us up to Auckland to catch the afternoon flight to Brisbane at no extra cost to us, you are all stars too!

Being somewhat frazzled from the extra days travel and the stress of our predicament, we decided to splash out on a hotel for the night.  We had a spa a yummy dinner and a good nights sleep.

Can anyone technical tell me how to delete darren off this post?  I stuck the picture in the wrong spot.

You have got to be kidding me!

We left Whanganui this morning 20 minutes ahead of schedule which meant that we had time to call in for a quick Bon Voyage to Gary and Emily in Otaki. We didn't have time for a coffee but we did get to oh and ah at their healthy litter of three day old kune kune piglets.
We got to the airport right on time, farewelled Nelson and Dani and rushed to the check in to unload our luggage so we could wander around the book store and get some lunch. The good news is that our luggage came in under weight. The bad news is that the nice lady behind the check in counter just had to check something and disappeared out the back with my passport. I wasn't worried, we were here, everything had fallen into place nicely to get us to this point - what could possibly go wrong? Five minutes past and we had read all of the signs and flyers on the counter, people in the line behind us were started to eye us up suspiciously. Hmmm, had I indeed paid that speeding ticket I got last summer? Still we waited. I started to wonder at the wisdom of using borrowed luggage, where had those bags been and what had they contained? The minutes continued to tick past. Had my part in organising the Whanganui rally against the anti-terror legislation bumped me too far up the terror suspect list? Did I have too many friends in Tuhoe country? I was decidedly uncomfortable by this stage. many people had checked in through the line beside us and all of the people that had backed up behind us had easily been processed and issued boarding passes. I had that same naughty girl feeling I get whenever a police car is behind me. Then another lady came marching towards us, passport in hand. "Are you Lisa?" "Yes" (read with lump in throat)"You can't travel on this passport it has been cancelled" "What? You have got to be kidding me!" "No, it has been cancelled, I have just been on the phone to Canberra, they will not let you into Australia with this passport" What the #@%! are we supposed to do now I thought. I looked at Sky, she didn't seem that impressed. I had lost a passport several years ago and cancelled it so I could get a new one. Somehow the passports has got mixed up which is odd as this was the one that was filed in the right place and there were no others lying about. The lady from Air NZ informed me that I could get an emergency passport for $650 but we would not be getting on the plane today. Having had little to no sleep last night, I now found it hard to concentrate, what should I do? 

Not able to think of anything better, I balled my eyes out!  This had a cathartic (and embarrassing for Sky) effect and cleared my head enough to call home to see if the valid document could be found.  Many thanks to Trish and Ron and Farrell and whoever else helped to rifle through my drawers and filing cabinets looking for it.  After it failed to turn up I decided to bite the bullet and get a replacement.  In comes super sister Penny who came and rescued us from the Airport and then drove us around everywhere we needed to get the documents together for a replacement passport.  I got to the Dept of Internal affairs about 2 minutes after it closed so we had to wait until the next morning.  We stayed with Penny that night and I had a really good sleep after not getting very much for the last few crazy weeks.  Sky was calm throughout the whole ordeal and even cooked us a delicious pasta and vegetable dinner.