It's been two months ...

We left Brisbane eight weeks ago yesterday to come down to one of the southernmost inhabited places in Australia to set up a future home on our rural property. In one particular way, it has been a surreal experience. Apart from the obligatory dispenser of hand sanitiser at the entrance to most stores, there is no tangible evidence of the virus that has ripped through most of the world in 2020. Tasmania has been virus free for the last 3 months and the things down here appear to functioning pretty much as they always do, albeit perhaps a little more slowly than elsewhere! 

So what have I learnt so far?

1. I am a little weather beaten.

The end of the Tasmanian winter was not as harsh as I expected and I have not really suffered in the cold. But working outside all day (now compounded by the onset of the spring winds) have made my complexion a little ruddy! I am hoping that this look, together with being dirty most of the time and wearing Tasmania’s finest blundstone boots will give me a rugged edge, so that the locals will take me seriously. On current projections, this project will take much longer than two months to complete.

2. Most days I feel completely knackered.

I used to think that asymptotic theory was hard, but that was before I discovered the joys of moving rocks from one place to another (and sometime back again), sawing pine logs with a hand saw, splitting hardwood for the fire, slashing blackberries and generally carting garden soil around the place. I find that my back aches before, during and after work and that other parts of the body seem slightly more fragile than before. Like a good diesel engine it takes me a while to warm up in the mornings,  although like an ageing diesel engine the warm-up period seems to get longer.

Pepper offering to ease my load and carry my glove back to the house after a hard day in the fields

3. Heavy machinery rocks.

The other day I ripped a fence post out of the ground with the tractor (anything a blue digger can do …) and I was swamped by a feeling of complete euphoria. A few hours later I failed to smooth a piece of the front garden satisfactorily, despite receiving instructions from Cath on where and how to position the front loader. But even being in the doghouse didn’t seem so bad when I could drive the tractor back to the shed! I haven’t even started singing the praises of the brush cutters and the chainsaw yet. Next on my list is a hydraulic log splitter – swinging the axe is bloody hard work. See point 2 above.

One fence post removed

4. Everything takes time.

Despite the help of heavy machinery, it is amazing how much time it takes to accomplish simple tasks. The last two days have been spent building a garden bed along the edge of the drive, to act as a line of defence against the loss of topsoil due to rainwater runoff and also to house some of the trees we bought last weekend (see the post on retail therapy). I have no doubt that things will speed up as we become more experienced and more skilled but as the French composer Hector Berlioz once pointed out - time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils …

Seriously though, the time down here so far has been superb fun. The land around the cottage is starting to take shape and it feels as though it is finally ours. Most importantly we have planted 9 new trees in the environs of what will eventually be an extended garden. We have also transplanted the only tree (as far as we can tell) planted by the previous owners. This poor lemon tree was languishing in boggy shade and we hope we have given it a fighting chance by moving it into full sun and better draining soil. 

For the record, the trees in order of planting are as follows:

• Prunus shimidsu sakura (upright Japanese cherry)

• Prunus kiku-shidare-zakura (weeping Japanese cherry)

• Gingko biloba (Maidenhair tree) 

• Lemon tree (transplanted)

• Malus floribunda (Japanese flowering crab apple)

• 4 x Pyrus calleryna ‘Capital’ (Ornamental pear)

• Magnolia x lobeneri “Leonard Messel”

Malus floribunda

Finally, this is my 30th post on the blog and so far there have been 3161 views. Thanks to everyone who is reading my demented scribblings. I hope that I can post a few more before I start staring blankly into the abyss ….