Gannet Beach Retreat

We are lucky to have a beach shack at Bawley Point on the South coast that affords us an opportunity to unwind and indulge in surfing, boogie boarding, long beach walks, fishing and the local Clyde River Blueberry Farm. Gannet Beach is still our favourite spot - 100 metre walk from the house and good surf all year round, mostly. Off the coast is Brush Island Nature Reserve with seals, fairy penguins and seabirds. Good fishing spots on all sides and almost sure to catch mackerel and bream. Planning a mid winter trip to stock up the freezer with fish for the year while we wait for the 'fingerlings are us' guys to deliver some dam fish!

Two beaches south is the Murramurang Aboriginal Area, a protected area with important midden deposits containing valuable evidence of indigenous life on the south coast. It is a tangible link for locals to the past and has millions of discarded oyster shells. Just north of the midden is a lagoon, home to a serpent associated with creation of the land and local dreamtime stories.

Even though there has been local development of resorts and "Sydney" beach mansions it is still well worth a visit and it is relatively quiet and unspoilt. On the trip there or back make sure you stop in Milton at Pilgrim's for the best veggie burgers in Australia in a relaxed surfie atmosphere.

Can't wait for the next trip. Ciao.

Click go the dams. Loudly!!

Limnodynastes tasmaniensis, the Spotted Grass Frog, is widespread over most of the south eastern part of Australia. It has a pale grey to green back with olive green spots or blotches. Some, though not all, frogs have a distinctive pale orange red stripe running down the centre of their backs.

The males make a very loud (and irritating) single sharp click almost all year round, particularly spring to autumn when they are trying to attract females to their territory. We must have hundreds in our two nearest dams. Just as the cicadas stop chirping at the end of the day the frogs start up their deafening chorus. Hope they get mates and perpetuate the species as it is a sign of a healthy water system.

The grebes are back building their nests in the dams surrounded by water to prevent attack from foxes. The latter are getting bolder at twilight and we can often hear the vixen barking in our higher paddocks. Maybe our shooters can bag a few. Must have tempted fate because someone killed a ewe lamb two weeks ago. Very annoyed and if I can identify the gun's owner then he had better offer compensation.

Off foraging now for our dinner! Ciao.

Photograph Source: Barbara Hardy Centre http://www.unisa.edu.au/barbarahardy/ Photographer: John Hodgson.

Plant a nail and grow a crowbar

We have been sowing about 15 hectares of our western paddock with Triticale, two clovers and ryegrass. The aim is to have a perennial pasture that will self seed and require very little further attention. Sowed using direct drill method and because we are sowing north south and east west the whole job has taken about 20 hours. Well worth it in the longer run. Hope we are sowing nails and the soil and weather will grow crowbars....

The photograph below is immediately after the first pass. The woodblock print above is hopefully what it will become after we get some rain in March. The print is by Uratani Hiroto. He is a young and very talented artist who depicts abstract fields, usually ploughed or mown, in bright colour combinations. Beautiful and inspiring work.

Some of my artwork is now for sale at http://www.daramalan.com.au/art_crafts_sale.html and worth a visit, even if I do say so myself. Creating art keeps me grounded and sane amid pressures of the farm and self employment as a technical document writer. I would not trade it for anything though and would not go back into full time banking unless it was a truly fascinating venture.

Farming, art and writing is adventure enough for me right now!!

Tree changers

The plan is to use this diary and other notes made along the way to publish an account of life at Daramalan. May be a self published e-book but it will get written and hopefully will find an audience. I appreciate that we are escapists at heart looking for a tree change move to the country to regain our lives. We want to be 'human beings, not doings' and we are certainly not alone.

I have read almost all the available books on tree changing from Dirk Bogarde and Peter Mayle's experiences in Provence; Frances Mayes, Annie Hawes and Elizabeth Romer's Tuscan and Ligurian adventures and Patrice Newell and Joy Barrow's Australian accounts of olive groves and vineyards respectively.

But by far my favourite is Chris Stewart's Andalucian trilogy; Driving over Lemons, The Parrot in the Pepper Tree and The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society. He was the original drummer with seventies band Genesis, joined a circus, became a sheep shearer (particularly in Scandinavia), travel writer, yacht crew member in Greece, pilot and, now, owner of a mixed farm in Las Alpujarras, south of Granada, Spain.

He writes with humour and respect for his environment and neighbours. There is a great sense that he and his family are part of the community and not just tarting up a villa for summer visitors from England or Boston. The books are really worth getting hold of and are often in second hand bookshops - I guess most people read them once and pass them on. I am a book collector, well okay, a book hoarder.

I have worked in a steel mill, turkey farm, wine bar, sports centre, grain trading room, futures pit, investment bank and, now, a sheep stud. Surely finding out some of why all that happened is worth a quick read of the dust cover?

In a couple of years the Daramalan Diaries will hit a store near you so dig deep and support a tree changer!!

Unwanted visitors

Not being too specific but we had some very unwanted visitors to Daramalan late last year. A neighbour spotted a red ute going down to the river paddocks and we then discovered ten first cross ewes were missing. We put the word out in the local area that we wouldn't pursue them if the sheep were returned. Luckily they turned up in the front paddock on our sale day. Sheep rustling is still common unfortunately and is just disappointing and financially destructive. We will have surveillance cameras operating this year so we will be able to take them to the police if it happens again.

Apart from the sheep stealers we have several other groups of unwanted visitors on the farm. No, not the Tiger, Brown and Red bellied black snakes or the various spiders and biting insects that are around all year. We have kangaroos, cockatoos (again), rabbits, foxes and wombats in ever increasing numbers. Since we can't shoot native animals it is frustrating.

Someone is shooting though as can be seen from the sign above. Not condoning their pastime pleasures but if they are bagging a few rabbits and roos then that's okay. The only time we have heard them they all disappeared before we could ask them to at least stop shooting into the property. If they kill a sheep then there will be trouble!

www.daramalan.com.au

Well, hurrah!!

Finally www.daramalan.com.au is registered, written and launched. It took so long for me to master the Dreamweaver software and even now I would have to say the site is more information brochure ware than cutting edge cyberspace.

It does at least have enough pages to promote the Daramalan Stud, the Border Leicester breed, our ram sale and photographs of the rams, my art for sale and The Vagabonds music. It was a challenge but also very rewarding and it can always be jazzed up a bit later.

Thirty years of banking has also finally been useful as I now have cash flows, budgets, reconciliations and a chart of accounts. Good to see that we are making some money but a long way to go before it will allow us to retire gracefully. If Rudd has his way we will all be working until we are 70 anyway!!

Anyway, check out the website and drop us an email with any art orders or suggestions.

Crookwell Region Rocks

The print featured is by the very talented artist Tom Kristensen, one time guitarist with the cult band Love Me. His woodblocks are really fantastic and worth looking out for - just Google his name and there are a few overseas galleries that handle his work.

Pigeon House Mountain is on the South Coast between Ulladulla and Bateman's Bay and is a good example of an old volcano. Worth the climb for the views of the area but be prepared for a challenging ascent.

Australia is an ancient island and Aboriginal culture goes back 40,000 years. Geologists have dated rocks here that date back 4,400 million years! The Chinese may have mapped part of northern Australia in 1422 and Dutchman Willen Jansz in the Duyfken was the first European to land in 1606. With no precious metal ores or spices the Dutch stayed north in Indonesia and it was Captain Cook who charted the east coast in 1769. The First Fleet arrived in 1788.

Fossil evidence similarities with Africa, India and South America support the theory that these three continents were all once joined as the super continent Gondwana. There are rocks in Australia however that predate any others preserved on earth.

Australia is geologically relatively stable with no active mountain building or major fault systems. It is New Zealand that still has the active volcanoes. Australia 'sits' on the Indo-Australian plate and is moving northwards at 70 mm per annum. Doesn't sound much but is 15 metres in 200 years of white settlement and for the Aborigines it is 3 kilometres.

We have had earthquakes though, notably in Newcastle in 1989 and in north east Tasmania and around Aelaide. Australia is probably the lowest and flattest land mass on the planet. Mount Kosciusko at 2,228 metres is the highest mountain and the average height across our Great Southern Land is 330 metres.

The Great Divide is the spine that starts at Cape York and runs through Crookwell onto Victoria. It separates the short rivers flowing east to the Pacific Ocean longer river systems draining westwards across the plains. The Great Divide is about 150 km inland from the east coast and is typically 300-1600 m above sea level. There are basalt rock remnants exposed at Bega for example that date back over 40 million years. Our volcanic origins are visible at places like Pigeon House Mountain and elsewhere.

Daramalan does not have much basalt soil so pasture and forage crops are our best choice rather than broadacre crops. Crookwell is a big potato growing region though where soils are richer. The farm's alluvial river flat paddock is rich though and we will be planting alfalfa later in the year to establish a feed paddock for years to come.

Off to plant some turnips and ryegrass now so back soon!

Falling Sheep Flock Numbers

Last year it was reported that Australian Sheep flock numbers had fallen to a 104 year low, dropping 7% on 2008. The 71.6 million sheep is about 40% lower than in 2000 and the ewe population seems to be aging too suggesting that producers are more focused on sheep for dinner rather than Italian suits. Contributing factors are the long drought, low wool prices, high feed costs and rising lamb prices.

The concern is that the ewe flock, in particular Merino ewes, will lose its critical mass and that future demand for lamb and wool will be harder to meet. We know that first cross ewe prices have stayed firm and the average price in the end of 2009 and start of 2010 sales was over $140.00. We paid 30% more this year for our 102 first cross ewe lambs at the Goulburn Sales and still expect that we will double our money so will continue to invest in sheep.

The profitability of a wool-meat enterprise, and especially a Border Leicester Stud, still compares favorably with cropping enterprises and sheep are still the first choice for the Daramalan property. We have a friend who has an Agri-Investment fund that owns large broad acre farms and has yet to post positive returns in three years.

Our biggest decisions of the first quarter have been made.

We culled the Sylvia Vale stud ewes hard and sold 50 to Southern Meats. That leaves us with a stud flock of 153 (113 from Sylvia Vale and 40 of their best ewe lambs). We have also drafted them into two mobs of 77 and 75. They will be joined to our best two stud rams, Osiris and Hermes, over the next 4-6 weeks.

We have also drafted out the best 39 ewe lambs to go into the stud flock next year and, most importantly, the best 67 ram lambs that we will nurture and then sell the best 45 in November as the first Daramalan Flock Rams. Fewer ram lambs will mean higher quality at the sale and we want to ensure that we start as we mean to continue.

All in all it has been a very busy past three months and with fencing, maintenance and crops to be sown it is going to be busy for the next few months too. We are learning plenty and fast and would like to acknowledge Terry McIntosh and Craig Coggan's help and advice. We could not wish for two better mentors.

More soon. Ciao.