On creative destruction ...

The fates conspired in our favour and have allowed us a lightning 5 day visit down the Huon before Easter. It has been a long time between visits for me (and hence also between blog posts), as I haven't been able to get down since January. The intervening period has seen La Niña wrecking a path of destruction that has  caused devastating floods in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. Contrary to this experience, Tasmania in general and the Huon Valley in particular has experienced a very dry summer. So despite the odd threatening sky, the land is bone dry and we are realising just how important our decision to increase our water storage capacity was when we first came down in August 2020.

Two stainless steel tanks, a threatening sky but no rain

A new development in terms of our water usage has been the installation of a water filter for the cottage. Despite the assurances of some neighbours that rainwater is completely safe to drink, we decided to install a fairly elaborate filter system to replace the need to boil all the water before cooking or drinking. It doesn't take much imagination to visualise the state that gutters get into and we also saw the colour of the water that was vacuumed from the bottom of our oldest tank when we had it cleaned recently. The rather unsettling sight of black water being cleaned from the tank that supplies the house was enough to nudge us into action. The result is a rather natty system with three filters to pick up both large and small particles from the water, another to remove odours and a UV light treatment to kill bacteria. 

The new filter system

Along with the physical labour of digging holes and slashing the ever-encroaching blackberry bushes, I have now discovered that living on the land provides acute mental stimulation as well. To wit, it can lead to the re-discovery of concepts ostensibly completely unrelated to country life. The idea of “creative destruction” was coined in the mid-twentieth century by the Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter. As anyone trained in economics will tell you, creative destruction is an important part of a market economy and refers to the fact that economic progress requires the systematic destruction of old products and technologies and the creation of new ones. In other words, the theory of creative destruction assumes that long-standing arrangements and assumptions must be destroyed to free up resources and energy to be deployed for innovation. Having studied economics at one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious universities, I believed that I was completely on top of the concept and could be relied on to give a cogent lecture on the subject to any eager young mind keen to learn. Or so I thought ...

The bath tub leaving the front garden under protest

 

I now have a completely different view of creative destruction – it represents a situation in which Cath changes her mind and a very heavy item needs to be relocated from its previously chosen position, one which it has occupied quite happily for quite some time, and moved to another position which is currently (and no doubt temporarily) preferred. A recent case in point is the 200kg bathtub which we previously located in the front garden and used for our first crop of tomatoes and later garlic (see "Rehabilitating a relic ...", posted on 8 October 2020). Despite having lived in this position for almost two years, it was decided that it was no longer in keeping with the front garden. So we a great amount of effort, which included said object being rolled around on wooden logs before being lifted by the bucket of the tractor, the bathtub was relocated to the back of the shed. It will now most probably serve as an incubator for seedlings - at least for the time being! 

On the positive side, the process of creative destruction means that the front garden is constantly evolving and it unrecognisable from the shell of a paddock we took possession of in August 2020. As autumn is now fairly advanced, some of the leaves on the trees and shrubs are starting to take on their autumn hues. One particular standout is the Acer rubrum 'Autumn Red' that we planted in October 2020. The tree seems to be very well established, despite being planted in some rather compacted clay-based soil, and the colour of the leaves is certainly echoing its name.

We return to Brisbane to start the process of readying our house for sale as a precursor to moving down the Huon permanently in the not too far distant future. Hopefully the stars align and everything works out as planned ...