January 2007

All right, so I've been slack on the update front. Mostly because half my non-working hours are spent working on someone else's website, so getting around to this has been in the, 'oh heck, can't I just put it off a bit longer' category.

We had a remarkable coincidence thing happen recently. We received an email from a QLD couple who had travelled down on a working holiday. One of the things that they wanted to do while here was see if they could track us down. They had no idea where we were in Tassie, and figured they might have to travel some distance to find us. They told us where they were and that they were helping a couple rennovate an old house. From the clues in the email, I was able to guess just who's house they were talking about and wrote back to say if they wanted to, they could walk the 1500 metres required and could visit us anytime they liked. And Marcus, Carolyn and their son Halley visited us often while in Tassie and, as they are travelling puppeteers, musicians, magicians and bhuddists, they made interesting company. We had, on one occasion, a spontaneous private magic show, watched Marcus play a key fiddle, a medieval instrument of which there are only 2 he knows of in Australia and listen to Marcus's stories. A natural born storyteller! One afternoon, with the two boys talking Lego, Marcus remarked how he had read of a little boy who was fixated with Bionicles; it suddenly dawned on him that it was Caleb.



Carolyn was keen on bull kelp and had been hunting the coast line for it, and lo, she'd found heaps and had cooked it up for several hours in star anise and soy sauce and we were given some to try. I can now say I've eaten bull kelp, and I'd also put it above snails for culinary agreeability. But only just. Sorry Carolyn. It'll be on the menu only during serious food shortages and famines. Being bhuddists meant they were vegetarians, Caleb had a hard time understanding why Halley couldn't eat lollies that might have gelatine in them, and as they had, for philosophical reasons, an objection to onions and garlic (two staples around here - hommus without garlic is like a sea without salt) there was a fair bit of head scratching going on when it came time to feed them. Because our fetta cheese is made from non-animal rennet it was OK, but not so the yellow stuff from the supermarket. They were happy with frequent cups of chai tea. But we had to avoid use of the microwave... and I was able to quiz Carolyn as to what the objection to them is. Apparently the story is that the atoms in the universe swing either clockwise or anticlockwise (I can't remember which), but that a microwave spins them in the opposite direction to the universe. Needless to say, that has not stopped us spinning atoms backwards. They have now returned to QLD, and we miss their night time visits and, being natural born recyclers, the old doors, water pumps and building materials they had access to and were happy to bring with them!

The garden is going great guns and we're eating snowpeas, peas, broad beans, carrots, strawberries, potatoes, onions, silverbeet and lettuce at the moment. Still salivating over the prospect of yams, which are growing beautifully but are not yet ready for the quick toss from pan to mouth they have in store for them.

Along with eggs, milk and cheese, we're getting back into the food sufficient swing.

At work I'm doing what I always do ... pushing things to the max, and an idea that came as a result of watching a group of kids coming into the centre everyday over the school holidays and playing networked medieval warfare games, resulted in a discussion with the school principal, and a few funding submissions later we are running a series of workshops in medieval warfare techniques with Hobart's Stoccata School of Defence and Stephen Hand. But no, this is not enough. Now we're running Celtic Calligraphy workshops and the resulting banners and pennants will be used at the Medieval Mayhem Festival in April, as part of National Youth Week, and the public demonstration of workshop attendees new skills will be held, along with performances by the Harlequins, a medieval musical group, a medieval fashion show and, hopefully, lots of stallholders with medieval ware, like silversmiths, herbalists, pottery, woodwork, honey etc. This area is alive with small home businesses that deal in products that have 'medieval' roots, and while I'm not so sure the culture is something we need to emulate, especially the public dunking of housewives with an inclination towards forthrightness and disobedience (I would have been dunked till dead), they were right into sustainable practices.

I'm also the coordinator of a local project, Gearing Up, which is a partnership of DIER, Geeveston District High School, Huonville Police, STEP's and the Huon Valley Council. We've a fuel efficient Hyundai Excel and a small group of volunteers who will help local young people complete the 50 hours of logged driving time needed to get their P's. As up to 30% of young people in the area are driving unlicensed, generally on back roads where the big logging trucks tend to appear suddenly around one or another of the hundreds of tight bends on narrow dirt roads, it's a big community safety issue. More funding submissions later... I'm getting back into the 'speak'.

Trev has picked up a bit of casual work here and there, and is currently packing cherries for $17 an hour. And, if nothing is happening on the house front, will move onto apple picking soon after the cherries are finished. We've seen cherries as cheap as $3.95 a kilo and, as apricot season is on, we're eating them and spitting out the box. Apricot jam, dried apricots, chilli apricot sauce, oh, and we picked up a 10 kilo bucket of seconds cherries and Trev is currently turning them into cherry wine.

Caleb is enjoying his school holidays and is getting very brown with all the swimming in dams, pools and the beach. We've had some hot days, days in which I look up the BOM and check out how hot it is in Gympie, and realise we've trounced them. At least it's not humid, and there's a cool change as soon as the sun goes down.



The house, yes, well, the house... we're back on the waiting list, this time the earthworks bloke. He has to clear a level area, and do the drainage work prior to getting in with the auger. Everytime I start thinking about it... I do my best to stop.

*The sound of radio static* and she's gone.

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