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.