I was only gone a minute

I’ve only been out for a week and whilst catching up I stumbled across this article on the Cooma Shire website;

DEVELOPMENT PROPOSAL
Gold & Base Metals Mine (including open cut mine, ore stockpiles, treatment plant and private road)

Property Description 188 Chakola Road, Chakola
Lot 37//DP750568, Lot 66//DP750568, Lot 9//DP788585, Lot 1//DP976760, Lot 105//DP750568, Lot 18//DP750568, Lot 19//DP750568, Lot 20//DP750568, Lot 41//DP750568, Lot 102//DP657899, Lot 6//DP788585
Applicant's Name Capital Mining Limited
Application Number 132/09/DA
A development application has been received in respect of the above property. The proposed development is considered both Designated Development under Section 77A and Integrated Development under Section 91 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979. The full Application and accompanying documents may be inspected at Council's Environmental Services Division at 81 Commissioner Street, Cooma during normal business hours, or at the Department of Planning's regional offices at Wollongong (Level 2, 84 Crown Street, Wollongong) or Queanbeyan (Suite U107, 1st Floor Riverside Plaza, 131-139 Monaro Street, Queanbeyan.


So what does this mean to me – a lot, Chakola is only 5km south of us. An open cut mine of approximately 66km2 will have untold effects on the ground water resources of our area, not to mention the damage a spill from a slurry pit could have on the Murrumbidgee River.

What they are looking for – or have found, as well as gold is tellurium. For those not familiar with tellurium it is used to make a lot of modern day items including Solar PV panels. If I’m reading things right the vein runs 14kms north towards Colinton, which means it runs strait through our property – just dandy. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what happens next.

We're Back!!!

Well, we’re back. We all took a break over Easter after a couple of hectic weeks before. So where did we get up too? I attended the AGM of the Bee Association, at which I met the famous Mrs Duck Herder. A lovely lady, we had a chat about her bees, compost and bio dynamics, shared secrets about the location of various apple trees and the best acorn places in Canberra. It was nice to meet a fellow Blogger face to face. On the way home I nearly skittled a dozen small deer on the highway, a learner driver in front of me slowed down – I thought it was so I could over take; but in fact it was to let a herd of deer across the road.

On Good Friday I went into town to collect acorns – I manages to get a trailer load, but because everything was wet I had to feed them to the pigs almost straight away. I had a nightmare time driving into town on the Monaro Highway so I decided not to go in again over Easter. That afternoon I saw a fox dash off away from the chook pen in the half light. A quick check of the chickens revealed some missing, so he was obviously busy

The fox didn’t get the Easter Bunny. Eggs where scattered across the farm Sunday morning and the annual Easter egg hunt was conducted with the full enthusiasm of all involved – and chocolate was eaten in large quantities for breakfast – but not by me. Funny how the Easter Bunny puts eggs at either end of the far and the clues all follow the longest route. That Easter bunny sure is a sadist.

We had good rain over the weekend, 15mm one day and 20mm last night. It started raining at about 9:30pm and didn’t stop until 5:00am good solid soaking rain. Somewhere between 3:00am and 5:00am the Cook and I had a good chat about my stupid idea to put a bell around one of the goat’s necks and chains on the others. All three of the goats had decided that the spot under our window was the best place to stay out of the weather and the “ding-ding” of the bell kept us awake for hours. When the bell wasn’t ringing, the other two goats would walk along the veranda dragging their chains – I can imagine roast goat will be on the webber tonight (still no oven).

The Cook had spent a couple of very long days in the garden, mulching, composting, weeding digging and replanting. It all looks rather splendid and with the over night rain should take off. I think she was looking forward to a good nights sleep. Today she has been in the garden harvesting the rhubarb and cooking it up – mmmmm!! yummy rhubarb strudel for dinner. She spent some of Easter bottling tomatoes as well and now we have almost a winters worth of those as well.

We have another piglet schwarm. A schwarm, for those who don’t know, is a group of about ten or so piglets that run around the farm in a small group – like a swarm of mosquitoes but more devastating. Luckily they have been pretty harmless so far, I think they have nabbed a couple of duck eggs, some lose acorns and the chook scraps. They are an absolute cack to watch and take on a character all of their own. The schwarm only lasts a couple of weeks, once they are too big to escape under fence of their pen it’s all over. It’s when the pigs are truly free to range, unless they go near the garden, then they are dinner.

I think I should check the compost heap if I don’t see the goats tonight……..

Introducing - Andrew

It’s been unexpectedly busy the last couple of days. Tuesday night I was driving home down the highway just on dusk, on the other side of Prospectors Hill when I passed a bloke pushing his bike up the hill. It’s a notorious stretch of road; three people have been killed there since we moved here. Being Tuesday I had the trailer on the car, but I couldn’t pull over because of the traffic – so I waited till it was safe and chucked a U-turn. I pulled up and asked him if he wanted a ride into town, it’s not unusual to see people riding bicycle along the road – but not many are pushing.

So he tossed his bike on the trailer and I drove him into town. He wanted somewhere to stay so I took him around to the Pub. Astonishingly it was shut, I’ve never seen the Pub shut before, and there is nowhere else cheap to stay in town ( I now know due to new owners it's shut Monday and Tuesday). He had no sleeping bag or anything and it gets cold at night in Bredbo this time of year. So I offered him to stay at the farm, which he accepted. We had a chat on the way I found out his name was Andrew and he was an Architecture Student from Cardiff in the UK – and he was riding his bike from Sydney to Melbourne.

So I rocked up home with a stranger. Luckily the Cook was working and wouldn’t be home for a while. We fed the pigs and did the other chores and went inside for dinner. Of course the living room was half full of piglets – somehow that number has grown from three to four. I cooked dinner and we all sat down and ate.

Andrew told us a bit about what he was doing and we talked about the best way to go to Melbourne. He had intended to go from Cooma across the Snowy Mountains to Wagga. I suggested that that wasn’t a good idea with only one gear. I think in the end he decided to go south from Cooma to Sale then on to Melbourne.

The Cook got home a little bit later and we sat up for a while and chatted. Next morning Andrew packed up his bike, tied his bag to the back with a piece of string. The dog had stolen his piece of string and he had to steal it back it from her – covered in slobber, which took some effort. The Cook was amazed that he only used a piece of string holding everything together and cracked some joke about doing his trip on a shoestring. She made him a packed lunch and he rode off up the drive and headed south. Good luck mate.

We’ve had a few people looking a pigs the last week or so and I am running out of grower Sows. I can’t complain – having fewer big pigs over winter is a good thing. I’ll be collecting acorns this week as well, as I’ve said before it hasn’t been a good year, but Good Friday and Easter Sunday give me a couple of days with out cars in the car parks around Canberra to get as many as possible.

There is the Bee Association Annual General Meeting tonight so I better go to that. I also had a call from the NSA people last night about doing some work here in a couple of weekends – but I think that isn’t going to happen at this stage due to many reasons.

The damned foxes have taken a couple of chickens, they must have come into the chicken yard this time because I don’t remember some of them ever going over the wire before.

Where's my Karma???

Gosh, alot happened over the past couple of days. It started on Friday, Yvonne rang me because she was worried about the damage that Buzz's cattle where doing to our water hole. I rang him later on and asked him nicely if he could move the cattle away from the river. I ddin't feel very nieghbourly - but it's the only water we have. We ended up getting close to 11mm of rain that night.

On Saturday Ben and I travelled into town to pick up the new toy - it's red and it's supposed to suck up acorns! We took it for a test run down at one of the parks. It dosen't work the way we expected it too, but it does clear away all the trash so we can get to thet acorns alot easier, so the battle was half won. Plus the cook will get bags of compost from it.

Sunday I had an appointment to pick up some cheap feed at Royalla, so off I tottled. Got down the highway and decided I needed some fuel and pulled into the local independant fuel guy. I ran into a feelow I'd met earlier in the week who also owned a Jeep. He pointed out a leak under the vehicle and a cloud of white smoke coming form under the bonnet. We had a closer look and discovered one of the transmission lines had ruptured. I grab a couple of hose clamps and a piece of hose and we repared it right there - like something out of "bush mechanics". So off I went only ten minutes late, when I arrived I opened up the back of the trailer and the hinge broke - lovely. I finally was on my way home when I passed a mates place and noticed he had some sheep on the highway. It was half way up a steep hill so I couldn't stop. I pulled up at his driveway and walked the 2km up his drive - his kids where on the internet so the phone wasn't working. I finally made it home, a couple of hours later.

As I was driving up to teh house I notice a large pile of sand where our pump used to be. I went down to have a closer look - I couldn't for the ife of me work out what had happened. As I made it down to the water hole I could see it had been dug right out and a fence of cattle panels erected around it. The pump as sitting on a nice sand ledge and the hole was brimming with water.

The Cook had wanted me to clean out the water hole from teh mess the cows had made. So I went up to the house and asked her to come down and have a look. She couldn't believe her eye's. Buzz had come down the day before with a loader and cleaned the whole mess up that he cattle had made and fenced it off. The trade off is that he can keep his cattle on the river.

I drove around that afternoon and dropped off a bottle of wine and thankyou in appreciation for what he had done.

Others things happened as well, a run in with the snake, ducks and chicken stuff, I fed the pigs acorns for dinner which they love. The pig yard was quite for over an hour while they ate about sixty kg of acorns. More happened but I can't remmeber right now.

'Failure of vision' on water crisis

The following is an article from today's Australian Newspaper - I think Ms Barlow nails it. Short term government means short visioned leadership.


AUSTRALIAN governments had failed the "vision" test by investing with "cult-like faith" in flawed technology to avert the national water crisis, a top UN adviser claimed yesterday.

Maude Barlow, a Canadian water expert who last October was named the UN's senior adviser on water issues, said the price for this lack of vision was being paid by ordinary Australians and farmers.

She accused federal and state governments of having "no overall plan" to save Australia's water heritage. Instead, governments had clung to a "vague belief in the magic of markets and kneeling at the throne of big technology".

"The only sectors being asked to make a sacrifice are home owners, who really make up a very small share of the water problem, and small farmers, who cannot compete with their larger competitors," Ms Barlow told policymakers and industry leaders at the Australian Water Summit in Sydney yesterday.

She said Australian governments "of all stripes are busy building expensive, energy-guzzling desalination plants".

Western Australia has had one plant online since 2006 and is building another, while NSW, Victoria and South Australia are building or planning to build desalination plants.

"Building big desalination plants, weirs and pipelines such as the Victorian Government's north-south pipeline also gives control over Australia's water to foreign water corporations," she said.

However, a spokeswoman for federal Water Minister Penny Wong, who is in the US until tomorrow, last night said Ms Barlow's "assessment is inaccurate", pointing to the Government's $12.9 billion Water for the Future plan.

"As well as making the necessary investment in water infrastructure and efficiency to enable our cities and farmers to adapt to climate change, our plan also includes a massive investment in returning water to our rivers to improve their health," the spokeswoman said.

Ms Barlow will on Saturday visit South Australia, which has been gripped by a water crisis for more than two years, to visit metropolitan stormwater recovery sites and the stricken Lower Lakes.
Last night, she told The Australian people were suffering under draconian water restrictions and higher rates.

"The penalty for many years of bad judgment by various levels of government at state and federal level is being paid by ordinary people and farmers," she said.

She singled out industries such as mining, bottled water suppliers and non-sustainable agriculture ventures as contributing to the "national water emergency".

She told yesterday's water industry summit that in NSW, at least 16 river systems had been permanently damaged by careless mining practices.

"The devastation caused by long-wall and open-cut mining operations is as horrifying as it is widespread," Ms Barlow said. "The destruction of aquifers and heavy metal pollution of ground and surface water is nationwide, and a disgrace."

Hey boy's - come here for a minute....

Our pig tattoo arrived the other day, in the mail, at last. It is a frightful looking piece of kit. They are what is known as a slap brand. It uses our Property Identification Code (PIC) and we apply it by whacking it against the pigs hindquarter. The tattoo needles penetrate the skin and the ink leaves an indelible pattern. I think I will need to have a couple of practice runs with this first – Kids – Kids – where are you??? I need you for a minute…….

To get a pig brand in NSW, you need to first apply for a PIC thought the LHPA – this is similar to the NAIS that the Americans are fighting against currently. Once you have that, they’ll issue you with a certificate. You then need to send a copy of your certificate to a Rural Supplier who stocks pig brands and they’ll make one up and send it out too you. Other states may have different ways of doing this. If you’re sending your pigs to a processor they won’t be accepted without a brand – it’s also the only way you’ll know if you’re getting back the pigs you sent.

I might be picking up my new toy this weekend. I’ve found myself a push along motorised garden vacuum for collecting this year’s acorn harvest – should speed things up a bit. I’m hoping to collect a lot of acorn this year, enough to last until well into spring. This will see me back and forward into town for the next few weeks every day.

The Cook has invited a couple of guys from Bush Heritage over for dinner tonight. I don’t think she expected to be three hours late getting home last night either. The Bush heritage guys are sleeping in the Scottsdale Shearing shed so a nice dinner, in a warm house, will be a real treat for them.

Don't let the crazy things scare you

There are days when I return to the farm and wonder just what has gone on. I arrived home yesterday, with the trailer and bread, and things were in full chaos. The Cook was trying to fill the pig’s giant trough with a small bucket, the horses and goats were trying to break into the pig pens, a couple of pigs had broken out, the kids were running around the dog was barking at something and piglets were squealing for food. I stopped and I looked; I took it all in and thought to myself – at least I was in the jeep, I could still lock all the doors and keep the crazy people out.

The piglets have been evicted. They have spent their last comfortable, warm, dry and well nourished night in the house. This will make the Cook very happy. Specially seeing we have dinner guests, or potential victims, expected tomorrow night.

Part of the problem yesterday was the electric fence wasn’t working properly. The problem, as usual wasn’t one single issue but a number of small things that accumulate until the energiser just cannot cope. I think I have convinced myself that I need one of those nifty electric fence fault finders. I have looked at these before and always baulked at the price – they are more expensive than some of the energisers, but I think it’s time to bite the bullet and stop trying to find problems by torch light.

We did have a little more rain this morning – if that’s what you can call it. Two days of drizzle and barely a single millimeter in the gauge. I’d love to be getting just some of the 500mm reported in some parts of NSW. Our total rainfall for March was 37mm which is about half the average. The back two thirds of the farm missed the 28mmm we had earlier so it was down to just 9mm – less then a quarter. There is absolutely no moisture in the ground, all around the district trees are dying and people who have plantations or orchids are finding new trees dying daily. It takes almost four years for ground water to catch up to rainfall so we are seeing the effects of the 2003-6 drought at the moment. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like in 2012 – but I know it will be far worse in Canberra then here. Their dams are at 42% and dropping and ground water is a significant part of their supply.