Wednesday, June 24

The other year of the sheep



The sheep is fortunate to be one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals so it is an auspicious animal away from Daramalan too! Chinese astrology is based on traditional astronomy and calendars and a person’s destiny can be determined by the position of the sun, moon, major planets, comets, zodiac sign and the person’s time and date of birth.

The twelve year cycle of animal signs was built from observations of Jupiter’s orbit and in order they are rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and boar. Daramalan has a dog, two monkeys and a boar (pig) as semi permanent residents.

Sheep signs were born in 1979, 1991, 2003 and so on. Occupying the eighth position in the zodiac the sheep symbolises characteristics such as creativity, dependability, intelligence and calmness. They are comfortable alone and though also sociable they tend to stay on the edges of gatherings to observe. They are excellent caregivers and like the comforts of home where they can express their creativity.

Sheep at work don’t crave power but will work hard for the benefit of others. Next sheep year is 2015 so we will be expecting great things of that years new arrivals.


The Year of the Sheep


We have almost run the full annual cycle with our sheep so here’s what we’ve learnt so far. The lambs are born in early autumn (August) after a 150 day gestation period and weaned and tagged by November before sale. The ewes are shorn in late September after being finished in the best pasture.

We bought 4 month old first cross ewe lambs (Border Leicester sire and Merino dam) in December, culled the wethers (rams) that were drafted in by mistake. They have been grass fed throughout season and will be sold in December after shearing. All the ewes are drenched quarterly and we check for flystrike and weight/wool gain weekly. So far they have only eaten grass and forage crops we have planted, Brassicas last year and oats this. They have also not needed additional water as the dams supply the 5 litres per day they need.

We are looking into buying 200 Border Leicester ewes from a nearby operation and registering Daramalan as a ‘real’ stud so that we will be in the business of lamb production, particularly the rams, rather than only holding the stock for a year. It is a decision based on the long term profitability of the venture and although it means more work, particularly at lambing time, it will be more challenging and interesting. Good opportunity to put my degree specialization, genetics, to good use finally too!

Our aim has always been to produce the best wool and meat that we can using only the resources we have at Daramalan. Hopefully we will get 4kg of wool per ewe and healthy sheep weighing 60-100 kg at two years old. Our aim is also to make a living from farming and so far so good though it’s an income rather than a living. Becoming a stud will be better economics in the long run.

Aboriginal Australian Astronomy



After seeing the falling star and a couple of beautiful clear nights I started to look into what the traditional owners of the land thought about the stars and planets.

The Aboriginal Australians were arguably the world’s first astronomers and their complex knowledge, observations and beliefs about the heavenly bodies have become an integral part of their culture as it has been passed down through songs, dance, ritual and stories for over 40,000 years. It predates the Babylonians, who developed a zodiac in 2,000 BC, the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Indians and Incas.

The Aborigines’ beliefs about the stars were part of a social and value system that accounted for the daily risings of the sun and moon and the passage of the constellations and planets across the night sky. They were not interested in mathematical positioning of the stars but incorporated all natural phenomena into their traditional rituals and everything is interconnected with the Dreaming, an ever-present reality of how the world was created.

Aboriginal creation stories root the creative power deep in the earth itself and not in the heavens. Originally it is believed that the earth was flat and featureless and the sky dark until the Ancestors emerged from the land and sky, taking the form of man and animals and inanimate forces like water and fire. By their presence, actions and journeys they created the landforms, celestial bodies and all living creatures. Aboriginals believe that through their culture and rituals they are part of the natural world and therefore co-creators.

They were not interested in the distance in kilometres between places but that distance was contingent on what happened on the journey, how the travellers felt and the things encountered on the trip. Their ‘astronomy’ is based on parameters of social organization – kinship, marriage systems, gender divisions and social structures.

Most of the Ancestors and their spirits are believed to be living in the land where they last encountered other figures of the Dreaming but there are also mythological figures associated with the sky and specific constellations. The Boorong people of western Victoria believed that Gnowee, the sun, was made by Pupperimbul, one of the Nurrumbunguttias or old spirits, who were removed to the heavens before man was created. The earth was in perpetual darkness until Pupperimbul cast an emu egg into space where it burst into flame and flooded the world with light. Chargee Gnowee, Venus, is seen as the sun’s sister and wife of Ginabongbearp, Jupiter, thus reflecting family relationships. The Needwonee people of southwest Tasmania believe a star, Moinee, the child of the sun and the moon, created their land. Moinee shaped the land and rivers but fought with his brother Dromerdene (Canopus) and the stars fell from the sky to create a tall standing stone and an inlet.

Understanding the sky was conceptual and as such tribal elders passed down knowledge to initiates who were deemed ready to receive it. Some stories were the exclusive secret of men and others, notably those about Pleiades, were the preserve of women. Besides the gender divisions different groups had different stories so coastal tribes have more stories relating to fishing, canoes and storms than inland groups. The Merriam people who live at the eastern end of the Torres Strait place great importance on their constellation of Tagai that incorporates the Western constellations of Sagittarius, Scorpio, the Southern Cross, Lupus, Corvus and part of Hydra. Tagai represents a fisherman standing up in a canoe holding a three pronged spear and incorporates twelve crewmen (the Pleiades and the stars in Orion’s belt). As Tagai proceeds across the sky it represents the Merriam seasons. Myths involving the seven sisters of Pleiades and their pursuer Orion have been recorded in various forms across the Western Desert and as far as South Australia.

The Aborigines’ knowledge of the southern sky was extraordinary for people dependent on naked eye astronomy and they made accurate observations of even inconspicuous fourth order stars. They devised and memorised a complex seasonal calendar based on pattern recognition of the stars. Rather than the Greek ‘join the dot’ pictorial images the Aborigines identified a whole cast of characters in their stories. The Aranda people of Central Australia distinguished star colours (red, blue, yellow and white) and in Eastern NSW the red star, Aldebaran, commemorates the story of a man who stole another man’s wife and hid in a tree. The angry husband set fire to the tree and the flames carried the adulterer into the sky where he still burns red.

Generally across Australia the Aborigines shared a similar cosmology in which the universe had four tiers, similar to the medieval European three level view. The earth is imagined as a flat disc surrounded by water and covered by a solid sky dome. Beyond the dome is a land of beautiful flowers and rivers where the spirits of the dead are carried and we see them as stars shining through holes in the cover. The sky dome is supported by trees guarded by an old man or held from above by the stars and the emu whose nest is in the Coal Sack. Beneath the earth is a lower world through which the sun travels on her nightly journey from west to east.

North of Sydney there are some rock carvings that are thought to represent some of the constellations and even supernova events from 1066 or even 12,000 years ago. These rock carvings are close to the engraved representations of two ancestral sky heroes, Biame and Daramalan.



The Aboriginal Australians noted the correlation between the passage of star patterns with the seasonal supply of food and as a reminder of the moral lessons told in their myths. They typically see the sun as female and the moon as male, which is different to the Greeks and American Indians. She wakes in the east and lights a bark torch that she carries across the sky to the west and spills ochre and red powder as she sets.

The Milky Way is seen as the great sky river in which the bright stars are fish, the smaller stars are lily bulbs and the Coal Sack is a large plum tree or lily pads. The Southern Cross is variously seen as a stingray being pursued by a shark, two brothers at two campfires cooking a giant fish or the footprint of a giant wedge-tailed eagle. Interestingly the Greek and Aboriginal legends about Orion and the Pleiades are very similar with the former seen as a hunter or rapist and the latter as seven sisters or girls fleeing from the unwanted advances. Scorpio is prominent in the Southern sky and is often associated with two lovers who violated tribal law and fled to the sky where they are pursued by tribal elders who are throwing boomerangs and have dislodged the boy’s tribal headdress in the chase.

Comets were seen as sky canoes carrying the spirits of the dead to their permanent homes or the gleaming eyes of the spirit men searching for victims to kill and suck blood from. Meteors are often seen as flaming spears thrown across the sky by the ancestral beings.

So the Aboriginal Australians were concerned with observing the patterns of stars and integrating the stories into their daily life and rich culture. How sad that so much of their 40,000 years of culture has been destroyed or taken away from them. We respectfully renamed the property Daramalan after the spirit sky hero and acknowledge the traditional owners of our land, the Gandangara.

Wildlife and weather



April was an eventful month with plenty of activity. Craig and I saw an amazing falling star at the end of the second day of sowing oats and I had my first close encounter with a reptile, a large Tiger snake that I almost mistook for a piece of polypipe. Quite scary but at the end of the day they will keep away from us if we leave them alone.

We also had our first real frost in April and the temperatures are heading down sharply with sub zero nights in May and most of June and even snow at Crookwell. In early February there were three days over 39 degrees so we certainly get the full range.



Rainfall so far in 2009 has been above average so perhaps we are returning to a more reliable climate at least for Daramalan. We have been lucky so far with none of the eleven dams running dry in living memory. So long may the weather continue and the more Mediterranean the better with warm wet winters and hot dry summers.

Chateau Daramalan?...not yet



One day we will make wine from grapes grown on the property but until then we’ll keep congregating in Orazio’s garage like some arcane alchemical society….This year we bought Mataro (Mourvedre) grapes from Flemington Markets. It will make a light and fruity red (think Beaujolais nouveau…) that is as good to drink as it is for cooking and with our allocation of 55 litres there will be enough for both.



Making wine is easy. Making a good wine is harder. In April we simply crushed and destalked the grapes into large plastic barrels, covered with flyscreen and left for five days to ‘boil’ (ferment) as the grape yeast gets started on the sugar. Then we put everything through the grape press (ours also does apples, pears and, one day, olives) and then poured into scrupulously clean plastic barrels, the ones used for table olive importation. They are covered to keep out fruit fly and a month later the wine is transferred into glass demijohns. We will decant into bottles in mid July and seal to prevent oxidation. Should have about 78 bottles so enough to use as gifts to a few people, particularly those that have been saving all their empty screw top wine bottles.

What we have tasted of the ’09 vintage is very good and has berry flavours while the ’08 vintage was fuller and definitely had cherry and liquorice, like a very young Cahors wine from France. The ’08 Grappa was superb but none from this year as a little goes a long way!

More than anything it is just fun to do something that has been done every year for fifty years and we will continue the tradition.

Cheers!!