Towards the end now

 The landscape for the final five kilometres or so is typically open pastures with small clumps of eucalypts or individual trees standing in the midst of grassland. However, the surrounding hills and ridges have a good forest cover.  I love the little oases that farm dams become - providing habitat for frogs and reptiles and an assortment of birds.  The trees cast welcome shade for the cattle.

 The influence of just a single tree is very obvious in this shot as the lush green grass grows under and around the base of this large fig. Rainwater is funnelled down the branches and trunk of the tree while rain also drips off the leaves, providing both additional moisture as well as shade for the grass below. It's also pretty obvious that cattle haven't been in this paddock for a while or that luck grass would be eaten down.

 Almost the entire length of the road has been unsealed and so the final few kilometres of sealed road is a welcome relief and provides a modicum of respite for my feet which have taken the brunt of the irregular and loose surfaces of the road up to now.  I rather unwisely wore anklet gym socks and ordinary flat soled shoes which in hindsight was not the best of decisions for a walk of this length.

 Oops, a little out of sequence, but we can live with that, can't we.  An old milestone now used, somewhat inelegantly, I think, as a perch for a letter box.  7 miles to Kyogle and 33 miles to M which I assume would be Murwillumbah (though I think it would be further than that, but maybe not).

 A chorus of bell birds tinting away accompanied me for the very last couple of kilometres. The thicker eucalyptus forest grew between the road and a creek, providing the kind of habitat that the birds enjoy. Unfortunately, bell birds are doing great damage to eucalpyt forests up this way and beyond.  They 'farm' lerps which are little animals that suck the sap out of the ecualypt and the birds then eat the sugary secretion that the lerps produce when they are annoyed by the birds. The bellbirds keep out other birds that also eat the lerps, resulting in too much lerp damage to the trees, and which can result in the death of large areas of forest.

And finally! The end is in sight. 17kms and 4 hours later I arrive where I had left my vehicle earlier in the morning.  I think 4 hours is a somewhat slow result, but the walk was a very relaxed one and I stopped many times to take photographs and enjoy the views, and my feet were quite sore during the last third of the walk due to inappropriate sock-ware.  Anyway, I'm very glad I did it, and I look forward to taking you along to my next long distance walk sometime soon.

Seven Years in the Northern Rivers

So ANZAC Day also commemorated my seventh year living up here in the Northern Rivers (Steve didn't move up here until six months later in October). It doesn't seem that long - but then again how long is seven years supposed to feel, I wonder.
I have been trying to remember what sort of things I wanted to do once I had moved up here. Big transition stuff, you know the thing. Become vegan or start running marathons. Bit about the only thing I can remember with any certainty was that I wanted to learn to swim properly. But alas, I've not done anything about that. I did go for a couple of runs with the local Hash House Harriers for a while when I first moved up here, and when I lived at my friend and colleague's lovingly renovated dairy bales at Pearce's Creek, near Bangalow, I did go on some very long walks every weekend. But that's about it, really.
Certainly, though, I have developed skills I didn't have before moving up here but most of these revolve around Larnook, so maybe I'll leave them for the 7 year anniversary of Maryville@Larnook in September/October.
But I don't have a 7 year itch. Loving living up here and will continue to do so.

Limits

Now that we have been living here for getting on to our seventh year (well in September), I thought I'd reflect on the kinds of ecological limits that influence the growth of the plants here at Larnook.  One of the most critical is the frost that we experience during June and July. Last year's frost was the harshest we've experienced here, although still not as bad as the 'black frost' that hit the area in 2007, the year before we moved up here, which bit so savagely even into the well established mango trees which sit on the highest part of the property.  But they were still pretty harsh, though, remarkably, we didn't actually lose many plants, but many suffered from burn. I really hadn't expected that we would experience frost living in the sub-tropics, but of course, we do get cold temperatures for a couple of months just before dawn, due to our position 50 or 60 kms from the coast. (Note to self: work out exactly the straight line distance from our place to the coast).
The second limit is rainfall, believe it or not. Once again, a bit of a surprise, but we seem to have quite dry winters and springs.  The period between June and October can be very dry, and if we don't keep the water up to many of the shrubs and fruit trees we have planted, they become very stressed. Indeed, as Liam would not-so-happily confirm, most of our fruit trees are doing below-par because we really don't water them anywhere near as often as they need to be. So, as I see things, frost and rainfall deficits leading to very dry soils, are the two most important environmental factors limiting what we plant and what thrives here at Larnook.

Keeping us poor on the land

Back when I was looking at properties to buy when I first moved up here in 2008, I recall a woman who lived next door to a property we were really interested in, saying, in an off-hand way, 'we love it hear, but it keeps us poor'.  Now, we are far from being poor, but living on a property, where you buy in mulch in the truck-load, does bring with it additional expenses, which does have an impact on the bottom line of the household budget.
This year seems to be a bit of a doozie so far.
First, the hot tub motor started to sound rather sick and rattly, so we had to buy a new motor and Steve installed this (having Steve as part of the household team does, however, save on any number of expenses, so there is a big savings there :-).  Unfortunately, the ozonator has also had the richard, though we are still able to manage without it, though I think we will be buying another sooner rather than later. Ozonator, that is, not a new hot tub.
Then, our friendly pest exterminator had to rid our house of termites, so that was an extra cost that we hadn't accounted for in this year's budget.
And then to top it off, we discovered to our horror that our solar panels were not feeding in the power that they had collected into the grid. We had a guy come out this week to check the inverter and sure enough, it has packed it in.  A little online investigation found that many, many customers whose solar system had come with that particular inverter, had also experienced the same problem, though it seems we have been lucky with the length of time ours did actually work.
Anyway, this isn't meant to be a whinge, just a little observation on the costs of living at Larnook.

Dinner Fun

After all the excitement of the Giant Pumpkin Competition (see below) we had a lovely dinner with Mel and EB, Julia and Andrew.  A great way to end a great day.

Kyogle Giant Pumpkin Competition: Where Size Does Matter

 Our friend, Andrew, chose his first visit to Larnook, to coincide with Kyogle's famous Giant Pumpkin Weigh In. Well actually that's not quite right - he had no idea that the event was happening but he certainly enjoyed himself. And who could blame him, surrounded as he was by giant pumpkins and squashes and even the occasional weighty watermelon.

 The field wasn't as extensive as last year - it had been a tough year with such a dry spring and summer but what was on show was quite impressive.  Later at the Farmers' Market we hear stories of anguish - of pumpkins literally exploding or disintegrating into an oozy mess.  Nevertheless, there were some massive veges on display.

 As well as some quirky, fun ones.

 And this was the pumpkin that we could guess the weight. And wouldn't you know it, for the second year in a row Steve correctly guessed - a whopping 612kgs!

Here is Steve being presented with his cheque by Chris, the Kyogle Giant Pumpkin Weigh In Coordinator.

What a great weekend

Our friend, Jason, from Sydney, arrived on Friday evening to spend the long weekend with us.  The weather into the Gold Coast airport was sodden and there were some doubts about whether his flight would go ahead or if it did it might have to be diverted to Brisbane, but luck was on his side and his hire car pulled up outside our garage around 7.15.  Lots of drinking of sparkling wine, dinner and spa time occurred shortly afterwards.

After our regular Kyogle Saturday morning, Jas did some work on a painting he has been working on for us for a while now, while I prepped for dinner. The weather had promised cool and wet on Friday night/ Saturday morning so I decided on a slow cooked pulled pork even though the day became progressively hotter and sunnier.  Julia and Bluey came over together with a new friend, Blaine, from Kyogle.  Blaine has taken over a cafe that we occasionally frequented so look out for some big things happening in Kyogle over the next month.

 Anyway, it was a great night - lots of things to eat and drink and lots of chatter and laughter.  The best kind of night.  Then on Sunday Jas, Steve and I headed off to Bangalow market, as that was the only local market Jas hadn't experienced, but it was a very very hot day so we pulled stumps after a
couple of hours and headed north east to Brusnwick Heads.  But, before we left Bangalow we had a browse in a book and art shop and I found this wonderful historical and picture book of the circus.  It has a very interesting chapter on animals in the circus, and even more amazing illustrations so I need to make it my own.  
The beach at Brunny Heads was spectacularly beautiful and we frolicked in the waves for an hour or so before hauling our bodies out to dry on the sand for a while.  Gelato followed soon after and then we headed for Julia's place at Cawongla for afternoon drinks.  Yes, we do lead a very civilised life up here in Larnook/Cawongla.  Blaine came up for drinks as well and we all enjoyed Julia's tour of his amazing garden before settling down in his beer garden for some polite drinking. A huge storm had been brewing which broke without much warning so we all ran in underneath the shelter of the dairy bales.  We really felt like we were part of the storm as the dairy bales is not the most stable or robust of structures.  We received an enjoyable 34 mm of rain out of it.

 And then today dawned sunny and warm so after an enjoyable breakfast of my corn fritters and bacon and mango chutney on the back verandah we drove up to Border Rangers. We stopped at the Blackbutt lookout and

 marvelled at the wonderful view of the Tweed Vally and Wollumbin/Mt Warning before driving further along the road to The Pinnacle lookout which again gave superb views.

 And then we drove clean across the national park to its western edge and went for a walk to Brush Box Falls where we could admire the water hurtling off the cliff face.

 Isn't this the most wonderful ancient liana.

After lunching in Kyogle on pluto pups and scallops - what could be more Australian - we got back home around 3.00pm.  Jas only had an hour before he needed to drive back up to the airport so he got stuck into planting the rainbow gum that he kindly bought for us at the Bangalow markets yesterday.  This species, which doesn't grow naturally in Australia but does grow in PNG and the islands surrounding, is extraordinary.  When mature its bark is coloured in the most beautiful patches of bright crayon colours. We had to plant it in the spot least likely to suffer from frost as it is a tropical species and so doesn't tolerate frost at all. Fingers crossed it will be OK.  Oh we also made up a new saying based on the farmer's market in Kyogle. Lettuces come in two types - your more pedestrian iceberg lettuce and anything else is a fancy lettuce.  So 'that's as fancy as a Kyogle lettuce' is now part of our Larnookian idiom.