I am a water person, I grew up next to and in the ocean. When I see water I want to immerse myself. I live where I can see the sun come up over the ocean, I can walk to beaches in two directions. I can paddle my kayak any day I choose on the harbour nearby.
So howcome I just committed myself to buying 100 acres (40 hectares) of bush and farmland 3-4 hours drive from the ocean?
I thought it was all for G, my partner, who needs space and lots of it to spread himself out and muck about with sculpture and other activities. We had the money because the long running saga of Aunty Molly's legacy is nearly finished. I wanted to get all his stuff out of our place, I wanted to lose the tension of constantly having to ask him to move the latest pile out of my way. But when I stood on THIS piece of land, everything changed.
We settle in 4 days and take possession. I'm very busy getting it all together so I'll just post a few pictures.
This is the view looking up into the land from the entrance, you can just see one of the buildings in the trees. The cliffs at the back are part of the Wollemi National Park.
This is the view the other way and what we will see from our front verandah.
There are fruit trees - apples, pears, peaches, lemons, oranges + They'll all need attention because no one has cared for the land for two years. In the shed there's a tractor and lots of other gear but we'll be finding out exactly what as time goes on.
And there are two sheds, both full of stuff, the stuff is also in piles around the place.
We made an offer 30 minutes after we got there. We didn't even have to discuss it. Then later we started to find out more things about the valley and everything just kept getting better.
It turns out to be a well known area for
birdwatching - http://www.bmbirding.com.au/valley.html It backs onto a most fabulous set of rocks with spectacular and almost unused
canyons -http://www.david-noble.net/canyoning/Essay/GlenDavis.html described by David Noble.
A book has just been published about the shale mining - here's an
ABC interview http://blogs.abc.net.au/nsw/2010/09/history-of-glen-davis.html?site=centralwest&program=central_west_mornings with the author Leonie Knappman.
The area was opened up for shale mining in the late 1930's and the
ruins are still there http://web.aanet.com.au/bayling/glendavis.html and there are
great photos http://www.redbubble.com/people/salieri1627/art/2452214-3-man-o-war-glen-davis-shale-mining-ruins-the-hdr-experience .
We're going to be so busy exploring that it'll be hard to fit in a little grass cutting and fruit tree pruning.
I harvested the lemons today. There were a few mandarins that I picked too. They're all small because they were starved of water for so long. I'll give them to Vivien to be made into lemon butter. The mandarins, maybe some marmalade.
