A change of direction

For anyone who has been hanging on all this time wondering what the hell happened at Greatrakes over summer, you’ve probably realised by now that I’ve decided to take the blog in a different direction, and rather than providing monthly updates, from now on I’ll be adding content whenever I feel the urge to do so – which may be several times a month, or maybe not for a few months at a time. So to tie up some loose ends, let’s just say that summer here was very late in arriving (in Axedale we only had one day in November that just managed to sneak into the 30s), however once it had finally done so, it came with a vengeance. For the last three months we have been baked dry with searing heat and very little rain – on the rare occasion that storms did form up in Central Victoria, we watched despairingly as they slid away to the east and west of us. Meanwhile to our north, in Queensland and across the top end of Australia, there have been record rains and devastating floods as the third year of La Nina drew to a close. For a year that had been as wet as it was though, here in Axedale we ended up watching our paddocks turn to dust, and by late February we were forced to bring in a couple of rolls of hay to supplement the dwindling supply of grass for the sheep and alpaca to eat. Thankfully we received a healthy drop of rain at the start of March, and a couple of days of good follow-up rain towards the end of the month – not enough to refill the tanks yet, but enough to get some green back into the fields.

Luckily here at Greatrakes we have an excellent bore that produces water that’s technically drinkable – as the rainwater tank behind the garage that I use for my vegetables started to get lower, I invested in some new hoses and hooked up a watering system to the bore for us to get through – and what a success that was, with bumper crops of beetroot, garlic, spring onions, mustard, beans, strawberries, basil, eggplants, sweet corn, cucumbers, zucchinis and tomatoes. For the first time in twenty years we’ve had a garden that we’ve been able to utilise to grow substantial amounts of produce – in fact this year we’ve hardly had to buy any vegetables, apart from those that we didn’t grow enough of last year (such as garlic, onions and potatoes), or those that we’re still waiting to finish cropping (such as pumpkins, sweet potatoes and melons).

We’ve picked at least 15 kilos of tomatoes alone this season – with many going towards making passata, sauces and confit, as well as being given away to friends and family. I’d have to say, despite my love of several of the sauces I’ve made, including some extra tangy and smoky BBQ sauce, it’s hard to go past the confit cherry tomatoes, either in a pasta dish or piled into a hot toasty – absolutely delicious little bombs of explosive, sweet flavour that are truly exquisite.

Over 10kg of potatoes came from just two raised beds, but unfortunately that still wasn’t enough to tide us over, so next season we’ll be increasing our crops exponentially. This was the first time that I’d tried growing potatoes using the layering method, where you let the plants poke their heads out of the ground for a bit before covering them with another layer manure and straw – repeated several times throughout the growing season, it saw us gather more than seven kilos out of each of two raised beds. Unfortunately, before I had hooked up the bore I had been using the rainwater tank and had tried to go sparingly as the dry summer wore on, sacrificing some of the watering that should have been going to produce big spuds – an error that resulted in about 4kg of the total 15kg being on the small side. Nonetheless, these were perfect for using in potato salads, or roasting tom make our own version of ‘pommes noisettes’.

I’ve never been a big fan of eggplant, but this year with all of the summer heat, our crops have been huge, and Vanessa has tried her hand at a couple of variations that have made me rethink this whole ‘not liking eggplant’ deal. In fact, I’d have to say that the roast leg of lamb (from our own paddock) that she recently cooked and accompanied with a smoky eggplant sauce using eggplants from our garden, washed down with our own wine that we produced this year at Shiraz Republic, would have to have been one of my all-time favourite meals!

I grew a small patch of garlic last winter from on bulb that we’d bought from the supermarket that had started to sprout – it produced enough bulbs to get us through the summer and make a valuable contribution to our sauces and pickling mixes, but sadly we’ve now had to resort to buying it again, so this year I’ve purchased a stack of bulbs of four different varieties, and we should be looking at enough garlic for us to be self sufficient for the next twelve months.

As far as mustard goes, I planted a small patch as a cover crop in one quarter of a raised bed, after I had harvested a crop of cabbages earlier in the season. Despite massive predation by cabbage white butterflies (which we would counter by spending about an hour a day picking off the caterpillars and feeding them to the birds), they produced a bumper crop of flowers, followed by so many seed pods that I gave up picking them all after filling three large paper bags. This turned out to be a big mistake, as the remaining seeds dropped everywhere, and I reckon I’ll be pulling mustard seedlings out from around my crops for many years to come. Still, with each paper bag full of pods producing enough seed to make a full bottle of the most delicious wholegrain mustard, we won’t be needing to buy more of that any time soon, so that has to count as a win, right?

When it comes to vegetables, I really love changing people’s minds about beetroot – it always amazes me when people say they don’t like beetroot because the only time they’ve ever experienced before is the soggy sliced stuff you get from a can. This summer we have rotated crops of beetroot throughout the season, growing several different varieties including the regular red beets, as well as golden varieties and even a striped variety that turns white when pickled! We’ve pickled most of the beetroot, both as slices and whole baby beets, but we’ve also roasted some to produce the most amazing flavours imaginable.

Meanwhile Vanessa has devoted much of her free time this summer to establishing a Dahlia garden. It’s been a tough year, but finally the hard work and hours of hand watering with a hose attached to the bore has paid off, and the house is currently filled with stunning blooms of all shapes and sizes. She’s also been paying close attention to the watering and dead-heading of the many hanging baskets that we have hung along the verandas at the front and back of the house – the pink and purple petunias along the front make a striking display as you approach the house, while out the back the cheerful mass displays of Calibrachoa and Bacopa perfectly compliment the gorgeous views out to the west.

Apart from the successes in the garden, and my continued slow recovery from Legionnaire’s Disease, the other thing of great note this summer has been the addition to our family of another German Shorthair pup – Mathilda, a gorgeous girl with a dark brown coat and a little patch of white hair on her chest – her father was a very tall dog and the speed at which her lanky legs are growing makes it look like she could be the same. After a few days of sorting out their pecking order and the ownership of various toys, Heide has really bonded with her new little sister, and the two have become great playmates (or partners in crime as the case may be). Reinhardt is far less enthusiastic about the young one’s eagerness to play all the time, but when things have eventually quietened down of an evening you’ll usually find the two of them curled up together on the same bed.

As far as work around the house, there hasn’t been a lot that we’ve been able to accomplish due to the heat. We did manage to build a new glasshouse though, thanks to an insurance pay-out after our last one was destroyed in a freak wily-willie (otherwise known as a dust devil). We were both working in our offices one afternoon when we suddenly heard what sounded like a truck coming up the driveway. With the searing heat and the natural amphitheatre that our house sits in, it’s not uncommon of an afternoon to see multiple wily-willies dancing across the paddocks, and they’re usually fairly small and harmless, but on this occasion it ran along the length of the house, tearing the cover off the spa and picking up a half full recycling bin from against the back of the house and depositing it several metres away on top of a hedge. We both ran out to watch this tornado-like dust devil roar its way across our side paddock before turning and running back along the edge of the Mount Sugarloaf Nature Reserve across the road from us. As it blew itself out we walked around the back of the house to survey the damage and discovered our glasshouse had been lifted up and twisted in two like piece of paper.

To be honest, we weren’t holding out much hope of getting anything back from our insurer – we were already pretty much assured that we weren’t covered for all the damage to our fencing from the October floods, so the thought of trying to convince them that we’d been hit by a freak windstorm that came and went within a minute, seemed like an uphill task. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained right? So we contacted ING and they sent out an assessor, who then came back to us with an offer for a cash settlement that would enable us to upgrade to a larger, sturdier model, made right here in Victoria by Sproutwell Greenhouses – provided of course we were prepared to build it ourselves.

Let me say, that as much as I am in love with the quality of the greenhouse, the instructions that came with the greenhouse (plus the fact that there were about 4 different versions of the instructions provided to us, each contradicting the previous), was almost enough to question whether it was all worth it. I’m sure I’ll mellow over time, as the new greenhouse really is a massive step up from the previous one, but right now I’d be hard pressed wanting to set up another one any time soon.

OCTOBER – NOVEMBER 2022: Water, water everywhere

This post, for reasons that will become obvious, is both very brief, and very late. October for us at Greatrakes was pretty much non-existent, due to the fact that we boarded a plane on the 6th of the month and jetted out to Prague for the start of a nearly month-long sabbatical in Europe. We left the house and dogs in the capable hands of my mum during that time, and only returned to Axedale in the early hours of November 3rd, having missed some of the wildest and wettest weather ever to have hit the region.

More rain

The big wet, as you will have seen from our previous posts, had actually been going for several months already, and with each downpour the flooding had been a little worse, so with a few days to go before our trip began, the last thing we wanted to see was another huge frontal system heading down from the north.

As October began, the floods from the 27th and 28th of September had finally started to recede, leaving behind them piles of debris stacked up against the fences of the lower section of our paddocks, with the fences completely pushed over in several places.

Luckily, with the help of a neighbour and a four-wheel drive, I was able to straighten them sufficiently to keep the sheep and alpaca confined, and to restore the electric fence along the creek line to working order, a day before we were set to leave the country.

The creek levels dropped before we left for our holiday – but for how long?

Fast forward to just over a week later, and in the early hours of the morning of the 14th of October, we were waking up on the Danube River in Austria to news that the rains back at home had reached biblical proportions, with dumps of over 200mm overnight throughout the catchments of Axe Creek and the Campaspe River. Lake Eppalock, which had been sitting at around 47% capacity when we moved to Axedale in late May, was now around 133% capacity, with water levels above 1.8 metres flowing across both spillways. In fact, so ferocious was the flow on the second spillway, that it had washed away the road below it. Of course, all that water was heading into the Campaspe River, and the first chance it had to escape its banks was at the McIvor Highway crossing at Axedale, which not only resulted in the road between Heathcote and Bendigo being cut, but also removed the entire road surface from a section just above the bridge, images of which were now making news across the globe.

The water levels reached to well above the dam, the highest since the house was built in 2015

We checked in throughout the day and night with mum to monitor the conditions, and despite the fact that the water levels had reached halfway up the final rise before the house’s ground level, plus the fact that the house was now literally cut off from all road access in and out, she seemed to be handling it quite stoically. The sheep and alpaca were all securely locked up in the top paddock, out of harm’s way, and the house was still very much high and dry, so she resigned herself to a couple of days indoors and soldiered on.

The sheep were certainly not in any danger of running out of food during October and November

Pastures aplenty, but fences – not so much

When we finally returned in early November, most (but not all) of the rain had cleared, and we were faced with the sight of paddocks towering with pasture. Unfortunately, the floods had completely destroyed around a third of our fencing, meaning that the livestock had to be confined to the top paddock until such time as I could erect a temporary electric fence across the main paddock to keep them from straying into the creek or the neighbouring properties.

Rosie surveys the acres of fresh pasture after all the rain.

Even then, the amount of pasture in the top paddock was way beyond the scope of the small flock of sheep that we had to keep down to a manageable level, and after sorting out the issue of getting them all shorn before the impending summer (if and when it finally arrived), we ended up enlisting the help of another Axedale local to come and slash the main paddock for us.

Picking & planting

In the meantime, the vegetable garden was finally starting to offer up some excellent produce, with rows of healthy cauliflowers and cabbages ready to pick, along with radishes, lettuces and carrots. A lot of the radishes, cauliflowers and cabbages ended up in various forms of pickled produce, such as piccalilli and sauerkraut, although I ended up having to throw most of the sauerkraut out a couple of weeks later due to it drying out (I’ll explain why in a moment).

The first of many cauliflowers from the garden.
Several of the cauliflowers ended up as delicious piccalilli

After harvesting the vegetables that were ready to pick, the most important job in the vegetable garden was to transplant all of the tomatoes from the glasshouse into the garden, as well as replacing the lettuce that had gone to seed with some fresh summer herbs. The tomatoes that I had experimented with planting out early were also doing well, as despite the rain and the cold days, there had been no frosts during our time away. I potted some of the seedlings up and planted the rest into raised garden beds, before refilling the planter box in the glasshouse with potting mix and a light top dressing of seed raising mix and sowing a bunch of different varieties of Basil and Dill. Little did I know it, but this simple action of emptying the remains of a bag of potting mix that had sat for a month in the glasshouse into a planter box would have a profound effect on the next two months of my life.

A bunch of radishes destined for the pickling jar
A big hearty Iceberg lettuce

Struggling to breathe

By the Tuesday afternoon of the week following our return to Australia, I started to develop severe asthma – or so I thought. Having been hit with bouts of it off and on throughout our European trip, I suspected it was just a return bout, and given that I had a journey into the office in Melbourne planned for the Wednesday anyway, I made an appointment to see my doctor in the city before work. He prescribed me another inhaler and a preventer and sent me on my way, but on returning to the office it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to do much, so I hopped back in the car and drove the two hour journey back home to bed.

The next day I felt worse and stayed in bed all day – by the afternoon I’d started to get hot and cold sweats. Given the wave of COVID 19 sweeping the state again, I took a Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) and expected the worst, however after a few minutes it came back as negative. The following morning my fever was running at 40 degrees, and I was struggling to even breathe lightly, so we called an ambulance. After testing negative on another RAT, and despite the advice of the ambos and the doctor on the virtual ED call that it was COVID and I should just wait it out at home, I insisted on making the trip into the emergency department. After passing yet another RAT and then lying in the waiting room for an hour, dripping with sweat and gasping for air, I was finally taken in for a chest x-ray before being sent back to the waiting room again. It wasn’t long however before the nurse came back in to inform me that I had a severe bout of what they suspected was pneumonia, and that I was being admitted to hospital immediately.

Things take a turn for the worse

Over the next two days my condition continued to worsen, despite the copious amounts of antibiotics I was being administered, until one of the doctors suggested they switch to treating me for Legionnaire’s Disease, given my recent history of working in a confined space with potting mix. Sure enough, within hours of the change in medicine, I started to come good, and I was finally able to go home on the Monday afternoon. The recovery from Legionnaire’s though is a very slow process, and the rest of November (and much of December) was pretty much a write off for me, both work wise and gardening as well.

We’ve all read the label hundreds of times, but how many people actually wear gloves and a mask when using potting mix?

A hearty drop

One thing that we were able to do during November was to finish bottling our own wine, thanks to the wonderful people at Shiraz Republic and their Rent-a-Row program. Given my lack of energy, I wasn’t able to do much myself other than stick labels on bottles, but Vanessa and our friends Jarrod & Aleisha did all of the heavy lifting to clean, fill, cork and seal 72 bottles of lovely Shiraz. I did manage to stick the labels on the bottles however – labels that I had designed myself based on an oil painting I had completed of a red gum by the roadside just near our house. As a tribute to our new home and location, we’ve named the wine “Sugarloaf Road Shiraz”. It’s drinking nicely already, but it should really start to peak over the next 5-7 years. If we can make it last that long…

SEPTEMBER 2022 UPDATE – aka, never go the early crow

With a few days left in the month and a looming overseas holiday to prepare for, I thought I’d be incredibly efficient this time around and get the September blog out early. Well, you know what they say – never go the early crow!

On the 26th and 27th of the month, after a long weekend of beautiful sunshine and warmer weather, the heavens once again opened over Axedale. Monday wasn’t too bad, with some light rain in the morning and a couple of brief heavy showers in the afternoon. Tuesday for the most part was much the same – I counted 10 mm in the rain gauge at 6:00 pm when I checked before dinner. An hour later that figure stood at 19.2 mm as a series of thunderstorms drove across from Heathcote towards the west (an unusual direction for our weather to travel, and one that often results in heavy rain).

The measuring station on Axe Creek at Strathfieldsaye sat at around 1.53 metres all day – well below the height it needed to reach to flood the road crossings nearby. By the time I went to bed it was still sitting at around 1.54 metres. So imagine my surprise when I woke (early) at 4:30 am to find it had just hit 3.12 metres!

As soon as it was daylight, I drove down to the road crossing at O’Brien’s Lane, where it was plain to see that this time around, the flooding was far more severe than in the past few weeks. The flood marker that sits above the road surface on the side of the bridge itself tops out at 2 metres, and whereas the water levels had hovered around the 1.4 – 1.6 metre mark previously, this time the entire sign was underwater, with the markers on the upper sign showing a level of around 2.4 metres.

Back at the house, my first port of call was the control box for the electric fencing, as it was clear that the water levels would now be high enough to be shorting out the bottom wire. What I hadn’t expected was just how high the water would be – as I approached the gate to enter the main paddock, I could see sheets of water all the way along the fence line, and fast flowing water cutting right across the paddocks at the base of the large red gum that usually sits quite a long way back from the creek edge.

Down by the creek, I could see the yellow warning signs that mark the top wire of the electric fence flapping wildly as the torrents of water slapped against them.

Alas, the fast flowing waters had also brought with them lots of debris, which had banked up against the fence in several places, pushing it over like it was made of paper. I’m hoping that once the water clears, it will just be a matter of straightening up the star pickets again, but I guess time will tell.

Thankfully, all of the livestock had plenty of safe access to higher ground, and now that the steers have gone I’m not too concerned about them wandering out before I have had a chance to straighten the fences.

So much like the last few days of August, it seems that once again the biggest falls for the month have come right at the end. And yes, with two more days to go, it is possible that yet again I’ve jumped the gun, however the weather bureau assure me that this is it for at least the next few days. And they’re never wrong now, are they?

SEPTEMBER 2022: Spring has sprung

If August was busy, then September at Greatrakes was absolutely frantic! Not only have we been gearing up towards our overseas holiday in October, but we’ve been making preparations for the change of seasons in the garden, and we’ve also been inundated with visitors.

Golden hour at Axedale
Golden hour, the evening sun lights up the Sugarloaf after a storm at Axedale

La Nina 3.0

Axe Creek in flood at the O’Brien’s Lane crossing during September 2022

For the third year running it looks like we’re going to have a wetter than average spring and summer, thanks to the return of La Nina. Much of the ground in Northern Victoria is already saturated, and every new rain event brings fresh flooding. The Loddon and Murray catchments have been on flood-watch for most of the month, with weirs at Cairn Curran, Tullaroop and Laanecoorie reservoirs all spilling into the Loddon, and large water releases into the Murray from the Hume Weir at Albury.

Looking downstream from the O’Briens Lane crossing on Axe Creek

Closer to home, the Coliban and Campase rivers have been steadily flowing into Lake Eppalock, which may also spill in coming weeks. It’s currently sitting at around 85%, and is visible from the McIvor Highway at Derrinal, where it has started to back up into Mount Ida Creek.

Axe Creek reached a hefty 1.4 metres above the road surface at O’Briens Lane during September

Our own Campase tributary, Axe Creek, has been steadily flowing all month and has flooded on several occasions, with the water at the O’Briens Lane road crossing reaching a hefty 1.4 metres above the road surface.

Receding floodwaters in Axe Creek
Receding floodwaters in Axe Creek at the bottom of our paddocks

Thankfully we’re yet to see it burst its banks into our paddocks, although it has come mighty close to doing so twice now.

The dam seems to be holding at around 1/4 capacity

The minimal flows from off the paddocks into the dam have been enough to keep it stable at around 1/4 capacity – one of our long term projects over the next year or two will be to improve inflows and try to maximize water retention.

In the Glasshouse

We have ramped up our production of seedlings in the glasshouse this month as we start to head into warmer weather. The seeds that we germinated from the large red gum on the property have been potted up into tubes ready for planting out next March, and they are piling on the growth.

River red gums destined for planting in the bottom paddock next March

Our trays of marigolds and zinnias proved to be extremely bountiful, with an excellent germination rate on the marigolds in particular. Unfortunately, the zinnias were planted into trays of two different seed raising mixes, and the results in the Yates brand mix have been somewhat disappointing compared to those planted into my preferred Osmocote mix, which I sadly wasn’t able to purchase anywhere nearby at the time.

Zinnias and Marigolds.

The marigolds will make up the first lot of hopefully many annual displays for our new circular annual bed in the centre of the driveway, whilst the green-flowered zinnias will complement them in two triangular garden beds opposite.

Also growing in the glasshouse during September were plenty of celery, celeriac, bronze fennel and French breakfast radishes that have since made it into the garden, along with several varieties of tomatoes.

Tomato seedlings potted up for growing-on in the glasshouse

The very first crop that we planted, the mixed lettuces that we have been growing in the glasshouse, have reached a stage of maturity where we can’t keep picking the leaves as quickly as they are being produced, and I fear it’s only a matter of time before they start going to seed. We’ll most likely pull them up soon and switch to the ones we’ve got growing in the outdoor beds. I plan to grow some herbs such as Dill and Basil in the raised garden bed instead over the warmer months.

Our glasshouse grown lettuce crop has been a huge success

New annual display

One project that we have been working towards for a while now is to replace a bit of an untidy planting of lavenders and Westringias with a bedding display of flowering annuals. The highlight of this garden is an ornamental urn water feature – currently there is no pump fitted to it, but our ultimate goal is to have it bubbling away within a bed of massed colour.

The circular garden bed in the centre of the driveway

The original planting of this bed featured some nice plants, but we felt that the Westringias especially would eventually grow to a size where they would pretty much obscure the urn, which is visible from all of the front rooms of the house. We also had issues with the mulch on the bed washing onto the driveway every time it rained, and the thick planting of bushes making it difficult to control some pretty nasty infestations of clover and cape weed.

Removing the plants

We have re-used a couple of the lavenders elsewhere in the garden, and we’ve offered the rest to a neighbour who is planting up a new garden, so hopefully they won’t go to waste. Unfortunately the Westringias had grown too large to be removed with any real chance of survival, but they’ll go into the compost and eventually return to the garden to feed a future display of annuals.

African and French Marigolds raised from seed in our glasshouse

We raised most of the seedlings for the garden in our glasshouse, from seed purchased from The Seed Collection. Unfortunately due to the issues with sub-standard seed raising mix mentioned previously, the zinnias hadn’t developed to the standard I would have liked, so the rows that had been earmarked for them in the display were instead planted out with mixed colours of a 25cm dwarf African marigold variety, sourced from Bunnings.

Works were carried out under the strict supervision of our site manager, Heide

With the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II leading to the declaration of a day of mourning on the Thursday preceding the Grand Final Friday public holiday in Victoria, we ended up with a four-day long weekend, and we were blessed with glorious sunshine in which to work. All the while we were under the watchful eye of our German Shorthair Pointer, Heide, who set up her office in the back of the car. Meanwhile, our other GSP, Reinhardt, sauntered off to find a shady spot on the veranda. Gardening is not really his game.

Planting out the marigolds

The new display features concentric circles of marigolds, starting in the centre with a 70cm high variety of African marigold called “Kee’s Orange”, followed by the aforementioned mixed dwarf variety and finished off with several rows of a 10cm pale yellow variety of French marigold called “Lemon Drops”.

The finished garden

After nearly a full day of working in the beautiful sunshine, we were completely exhausted, but thankfully we managed to get all of the marigolds planted and watered in well. Hopefully when we return from our holidays, this bed will be a mass of bright orange and yellow.

Elsewhere around the garden

The beautiful blossoms of an ornamental pear

With the arrival of spring, there also comes the arrival of blossoms, and none are more magnificent than the ornamental pears that line both sides of our driveway.

Ornamental pears in full bloom

There are 22 in all, and since mid September they have been buzzing with hundreds of bees, attracted to the masses of snow white blooms. There is a slight downside to them though – they do have a peculiar smell. It isn’t too noticeable when they’re grown as an individual tree, but when they’re planted en masse, they can permeate the air with a fragrance somewhat akin to a very strong prawn vindaloo, which is definitely an acquired taste…

A row of ornamental pears lines each side of our driveway

As previously mentioned, most of our tomato seedlings have been potted up to continue to grow in the glasshouse until after the threat of frosts has disappeared, but we have also experimented with a few plantings outdoors into straw bales that we’ve covered over with plastic sheeting to try to get an early start on the season – however this is purely for experimental purposes, and I won’t be too upset if none of these work out.

An experimental planting of early season tomatoes into straw bales

In the vegie garden we are starting to see a number of crops approaching harvest. Our cabbages and cauliflowers have been going gang-busters lately, enjoying the topsy-turvy mix of sun and rain.

Crops of cabbages and cauliflowers nearing maturity

Our potatoes have also started poking their heads up – little do they realise that they are about to be covered over again with layers of poo and straw, as we start to create our “tater lasagne” in a bid to maximise their production. The life of a vegetable in the Greatrakes garden is never an easy one.

The first shoots from our Desiree potatoes have started poking through the straw

We’ve now completely filled all of our available raised vegetable beds with crops. With our overseas trip coming up we’ve put a hold on adding any new ones, but once we’re back we’ll look at popping in a few more. We’ve also earmarked a couple of areas at the edge of our main lawn that are perfect for planting pumpkins, watermelons and other trailing crops, but these will have to wait until we’re back home as well.

Celery and celeriac, transplanted from seeds raised in the glasshouse.

The biggest concern now is whether we get any more severe frosts while we’re away. Most of the stuff that we currently have growing outdoors is frost hardy, but it’s always a gamble on getting your seeds in with enough time to get a decent growing season, versus waiting until you’re sure the threat of frosts is completely over.

Rows of carrots, parsnips, spinach and beetroot seeds have been sown

Sad goodbyes

Sadly this month we have had to say goodbye to the three gorgeous (but very naughty) steers, De Vito, Arnie and Buttercup. As much as we loved them and loved watching their antics as they ran around the paddock chasing the sheep, we’ve come to the realisation that we just couldn’t keep them any longer.

De Vito, Arnie (hiding behind De Vito) and Buttercup waiting to be loaded onto the trailer

A one-off fence escape is one thing, but when they were constantly breaking through fences and getting into the neighbouring properties, the expense of trying to electrify all of the boundary lines was just too prohibitive. Added to that was their tendency to charge and buck at people who entered the paddocks – all in play of course, but still highly confronting and quite dangerous when you’re talking about 1+ ton of cattle bearing down on you.

With the help of local agents McKean McGregor we managed to get them loaded onto a trailer and transported up to the Echuca saleyards. There were tears as the trailer left the property, and even Heide seemed a little upset – she chased after them out the front gate and down the road. After our break we’ll look at increasing the size of our flock of sheep, and possibly getting in some young alpacas (crias) to keep Rosie company.

Out and About

We’ve also had time this month to welcome several visitors, which has allowed us a bit of a chance to explore more of the local area. The highlight for the month no doubt has come right at the end, with a morning trip in glorious sunshine to Heathcote, where we visited the stunning Pink Cliffs Geological Reserve at Heathcote. This was followed by an excellent lunch at the Tooborac Hotel. We’ve also ventured out to check on Lake Eppalock this month, which is steadily filling up. With a bit of luck, before we head off overseas we may even get to see it spill over into the Campaspe River for the first time in 11 years.

Pink Cliffs Geological Reserve at Heathcote

AUGUST 2022: Settling in

The month of August has been a busy one at Greatrakes, with our focus predominantly set on two things – getting our working from home/commuting arrangements into a routine during the weekdays and using the weekends and the hour or so before work when we’re not commuting to prepare the garden for spring.

Sunrise over Mt Sugarloaf

Axedale Weather

The weather for August 2022 has been a fantastic mix of good rains and some crisp sunny days. The start of the month was actually fairly dry for the most part, although we had enough rain events to keep the back lawn waterlogged and maintain a good flow in the creek.

Axe Creek kept flowing throughout August

We had a Super Moon event in the middle of the month – something we used to dread up in the mountains because of the hoards of tourists it would bring. Thankfully we got to watch this one rise over the top of Mount Sugarloaf with just a chorus of frogs to keep us company.

Super Moon rising over Mt Sugarloaf.

Crisp, cold mornings with severe frosts predominated the early part of the month – one morning I measured the temperature inside the glasshouse at -5 degrees. Little wonder I failed at my first attempt to raise tomato seedlings in there – it was so cold that there was actually a frost forming inside the glasshouse itself!

Thermometer in the glasshouse showing -5 degrees Celsius

Thankfully, those cold mornings generally cleared to be beautiful, sunny days, although the temperatures for the most part still hung around the low teens. This allowed us to get plenty of washing done and hung on the line to dry – something we would never have dreamed of doing in August while living in the mountains.

The livestock in the side paddock enjoying the August sun

Sunny days generally give way to gorgeous sunsets, and they don’t come much better than those we get here in Axedale. We’re lucky to have a view to the west that is dominated by a line of treetops, including a large red gum, which gets silhouetted nicely against the fiery orange sky.

Sunset silhouettes

The end of August saw some significant rain events, with the last couple of evenings for the month producing almost 2 inches of rain. Temperatures overnight were generally warmer, and we had a couple of colossal thunderstorms. Even though a lot of the storm activity seemed to go around Axedale on either side, we did manage to cop a direct hit a few times, which dumped a significant amount of water in a short time. This brought the creek right up, cutting the road at the ford for the first time this year – it even managed to get some water flowing into our otherwise fairly useless dam.

A very wet end to August
Floodwaters rising in Axe Creek
Even the dam got some water

Of course all of this rain and sun meant that the grass has been growing quickly, so we’ve taken every opportunity we can to “make hay while the sun shines” as it were, and give the ride-on mower a good workout.

A perfect day for mowing the lawns

Around the garden

The lawns aren’t the only thing in the garden we’ve been giving our attention to though – we’ve been lucky enough to have been given the use of a friend’s trailer, which has allowed us to make regular trips to the garden supply centre in nearby Strathfieldsaye. This has meant we have been able to mulch the floor of the glasshouse, as well as filling in the rest of the raised vegetable gardens.

No more having to keep the glasshouse floor trimmed with a whipper snipper!

The glasshouse has been put through its paces, and we’ve been producing plenty of winter crops. Nothing beats being able to wander out and pick your own fresh salad leaves before dinner, especially with the soaring costs of lettuce this year.

A bed full of lettuce seedlings

In fact we’ve produced so many lettuce, cabbage and Brussels sprouts seedlings this year that we haven’t had room to plant them all out. Luckily we’re on friendly terms with some of the neighbours now, so we were able to find a home for all of the excess, with none of them going to waste.

Too many vegetables to fit in our garden!

It’s not just vegetables that we’ve been producing in the glasshouse though – we have plans for a spring/summer display of annuals in the driveway, so we’re growing several trays each of a few different varieties of marigolds and zinnias.

The glasshouse is getting a good workout

We’ve also managed to raise a bit over a hundred river red gums from seed that I collected from the big paddock tree last month. Being able to collect the pods, gather the seed and plant it out while still fresh has given me fantastic germination rates. These seedlings will be grown out in tubes over the spring and summer, and should go a long way towards starting our revegetation project down by the creek.

Tubes of river red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) raised from seed collected on our property

We’ve also been supplementing our own growing with supplies from The Seed Collection. This month we’ve planted out potato tubers, rhubarb, horseradish and asparagus (green and purple varieties), and we’ve started gathering up a bunch of Dahlia tubers ready to plant once the weather starts to warm up a bit.

Dahlia tubers ready to plant

There’s also a lot of preparation work going on to get the garden ready for our spring planting. With the cold overnight temperatures still preventing us from sowing seeds like tomatoes and capsicums in the glasshouse, we’ve shifted to raising a few plants in a tray of jiffy pots inside the house, to get a jump start on tomato production this year.

A tray of jiffy pots with tomato seeds

I’m also experimenting this year with raising tomatoes in bales of straw, so the preparation work on these is in full swing – lots of watering and fertilising in order to get the straw inside rotting down to a stage where plants will grow in it.

The start of our straw bale garden experiment
Lots of fertiliser and water needs to go into the bales before we start planting

Last but not least, each time we visit a nursery or garden centre we try to pick up a new variety of Grevillea for our Grevillea garden – this is proving to be a big hit with the local honeyeater population!

Local birds

Speaking of honeyeaters, we’ve noticed a stack of different species in the garden this month, including White-plumed, Brown, New Holland, Blue-faced and Yellow-faced varieties. They’re particularly drawn to all of the new Grevilleas, and at times some of the small bushes have been absolutely covered with birds, especially the Brown and New Holland Honeyeaters.

Brown Honeyeater
New Holland Honeyeater
Yellow-faced Honeyeater

There are a lot of birds that seem to be nesting at the moment as well, including pardalotes, thornbills and magpies – we’ve even managed to spot a family of white-winged choughs making a nest of mud and cow dung in the large red gum in the bottom paddock.

Spotted pardalote (male)
Yellow-rumped thornbill
Australian magpie
White-winged chough
White-winged chough on the nest

Other birds we’ve spotted lately include striped cuckoos, welcome swallows, sulphur-crested cockatoos, little corellas, and eastern rosellas. We were even visited by an owl one night, most likely the same barn owl I have seen a couple of times along the road when I’ve been returning home after dark – we didn’t see it this time around, but he left us a deposit – the back end of a baby rabbit, high on top of one of the timber posts near the sheep pen.

Eastern Rosella

Dining out

So much of our time has been taken up with the garden and the new house, but we have found the occasional few hours where we’ve been able to get away to try some of the local restaurants. The local pub here at Axedale always does a great meal, but this month we’ve also managed to journey a little further afield to Kyneton, where we had a fantastic lunch at French restaurant Midnight Starling, to Euroa for an excellent pub meal at Seven Creeks Hotel and a little closer to home in the nearby town of Heathcote, where we had an absolutely stunning lunch at French restaurant Chauncy.

A dish of artichoke hearts at Chauncy in Heathcote

All in all we are absolutely loving life here in Axedale, and we look forward to some warmer weather and longer hours of sunlight in the day as we head into spring.

JULY 2022: Making our mark

It’s been a little over a month now since we moved in at Axedale, and although we pretty much fell in love with the place straight away, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things that we’d like to change. So these last few weeks we have set about making our own mark on the place, with a number of adjustments and improvements here and there.

Old sign, new home

Greatrakes sign
Greatrakes sign

The sign that used to reside on our front gate at Mount Dandenong has had a fresh spray of paint and now sits proudly beside our front doors. Unfortunately it was a little too narrow to sit perfectly across the fence railings outside the front gate where we’d originally intended it to go, so we’ll look to get a new sign made for there.

Seedling production

The new greenhouse

One of the first additions we made to the property was this polycarbonate greenhouse, from Maze Products. This had actually been provided to us as part of the insurance settlement after the June 2021 storms at Mount Dandenong had brought a large stringybark down on our previous one. By the time the replacement arrived, we had made the decision to move house, so it spent several months in storage before it arrived here at Axedale.

Inside the new greenhouse

These greenhouses are really tough (it took an entire messmate to bring down the last one), and they are relatively easy to assemble – this one went up in an hour or so with very few issues, and hardly a curse word uttered. The location is perfect – plenty of sun all day and only a few steps away from our compost bins and vegetable beds.

Inside the new greenhouse

Inside we have already started to grow plenty of vegetable seedlings. There are a number of trays of brassicas such as cabbage, cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts, as well as a few different lettuces – these will all be grown to a size slightly larger than the standard vegetable seedlings you buy at the nurseries, before being planted out into our new raised garden beds once the current crop is done.

Lettuce seedlings destined for the vegetable garden

There are also 4 different types of tomatoes being grown in here – we’re getting a frost here on most nights at the moment, so it will still be months before we will be able to grow crops like tomatoes outside in the garden. The plan for now is to select the biggest and best plants from this current crop and grow a few to maturity in pots that will remain in the greenhouse.

Indoor crop of lettuce

The previous owners left behind a raised self-watering garden bed that just so happens to fit perfectly across the back wall of the greenhouse – with lettuce prices currently as crazy as $10 a lettuce, and prices on many other vegetables also skyrocketing, our plan is to be as self-sufficient as possible this season by growing as much of our own veggies as we can.

Maze 100 litre water tank

When we set the greenhouse up, we gave it a very slight fall towards the rear, which allowed us to hook up a 100 litre water tank, also from Maze, on each side to collect any water run-off from the roof. Eventually they will sit on their own custom stands, however for the time being a couple of milk crates will have to suffice.

Composting

240 litre compost bins

Just outside of the greenhouse we have started a composting production line. At the moment we only have a couple of these 240 litre bins, made in Australia by Tumbleweed, but the plan is to have a whole chain of them going to take all of our kitchen scraps and garden waste. Compost is an essential ingredient in building and maintaining a healthy and productive vegetable garden, and the more we can make of it onsite, the better it will be.

Raised vegetable garden beds

Raised vegetable garden beds

We were lucky enough to inherit a number of raised timber garden beds with the property, and we’ve added to these with a number of raised metal garden beds from Australian manufacturer Birdies Garden Products. These beds are a lot more durable than the timber ones and should last us many years – eventually we will look to replace all of the timber beds with more of these.

Metal frames to support peas

With it currently being the middle of winter here, we are limited as to what we can grow, given that most nights we get a decent frost. At this stage we’ve concentrated on the brassicas, planting several types of cabbages and cauliflower, along with beets, peas, onions and carrots.

Raised garden beds

The beds do take a bit of assembling, as they come flat packed and each section needs to be bolted to the next, plus there was a fair bit of work involved in filling them all, but in the long run we hope that all the effort was worth it – we should be able to produce enough vegetables to be reasonably self-sufficient in coming years.

An assortment of vegetable seeds and tubers

We’ve also just received our first order from The Seed Collection, a Melbourne based supplier with plenty of great varieties. I’ve never used these guys before, so I’m not sure how they will go, but our initial interaction has been positive – the order was packed, sent and received within a few days and everything ordered was supplied. As you can see, the packaging looks to be very well done as well. Time will tell how we go with germination and cropping.

New gardens

Grevillea Garden

There are a lot of honeyeaters and other nectar-feeding birds in this neck of the woods, and with this section of garden within the main view of the kitchen and dining room windows, I felt it lent itself well to low(ish) growing Grevilleas and other natives. As the Silver Birch grow we will trim their trunks so that they emerge out of a thicket of Grevilleas, Banksias and Correas that the birds will absolutely love.

Memorial Garden

The “formal garden” (we’re choosing to call it the Memorial Garden) is a beautiful spot to come and soak in the peace and quiet of country life. The centrepiece is this magnificent pedestal and urn, but unfortunately it was obscured by a planting of Hebes that had grown so tall and thick, it was hard to imagine that anything actually lurked beneath them. While the Hebes were beautiful in their own right, they were out of place, so we have removed them and replaced them instead with Mother’s Love roses.

Gardenia Beds

In the large circular driveway at the front of the house there are two triangular garden beds that had been planted out with a row of Bay Laurels in each. I assume that the intention here was to create a medium height hedge. The front two thirds of each bed had been left empty, so we’ve lined the edges with low growing Gardenias, and we’ll eventually fill the centres in with Orange Blossoms

JUNE 2022: A New Beginning

After 7 years at Mount Dandenong, the last two spent in and out of lockdowns due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Vanessa and I decided in late 2021 that we would like to live somewhere with a bit more space around us, away from the suburban rat race. Two years of working from home had proven that we were both able to do our jobs remotely for the most part. and although Mount Dandenong is hardly a busy suburb, it is still part of Melbourne, a city we have both fallen out of love with.

After much discussion, we decided to start looking around for a property that was off the beaten track, but still close enough to a railway line and/or a major highway so that we would be able to commute into the CBD whenever necessary. For Vanessa, a house with a big kitchen and enough space to entertain guests was an absolute must-have, while for me it was all about the land and the wide open spaces, somewhere that we could potentially turn a profit from in future years, whether from livestock or produce. Ideally we wanted somewhere within 2 hours drive of the CBD, with a good community around it, but where you wouldn’t ever feel hemmed in by encroaching suburbia.

After looking at a number of houses in lots of different regions, we struck pay dirt when we came across a listing for a property in Axedale, in central Victoria. Situated roughly halfway between Bendigo and Heathcote and approximately 15 minutes drive from each, Axedale offered us the perfect blend of rural lifestyle and ease of commute, with access to high speed broadband making it the perfect spot for setting up our home offices.

Driveway

The house is simply stunning, only 7 years old, and feature-packed with all the mod-cons you could ask for, including a massive kitchen with a four-metre long island bench and a separate butler’s pantry. With 3 large bedrooms and a study that could easily double as a fourth bedroom, it is an entertainer’s dream, and there’s even a huge shed that will make a perfect art studio for me.

It’s situated on 23 acres (9.31 ha) of beautiful pasture land that runs down to Axe Creek, a tributary of the Campaspe River, lined by stunning River Red Gums and abundant with birdlife, including kingfishers, flame robins and a number of different parrot species. From our bedroom window we can look out and watch the sunrise over the low hills of the Sugarloaf Range just a stone’s throw away, while the back veranda looks out towards the creek, where the sunsets in the evening are absolutely stunning.

From our kitchen window we can see the sunrise light up this magnificent River Red Gum. It’s just over the fence in the neighbour’s property, but the view is all ours.
This magnificent River Red Gum is on our property, a short distance from the creek.
Axe Creek dries to a series of waterholes in summer, but after recent rains it is flowing well
The creek is lined with beautiful River Red Gums

Along with the property we also purchased some livestock, including a dozen sheep, 3 steers and an alpaca. As an added bonus, one of the ewes was pregnant, and she gave birth to a lamb on the night before we moved in to the house.

The lamb that was born on the night before we moved into the house.

The sheep haven’t been named, but the previous owners had named the steers – the larger of the three is Buttercup, while the two twins are named Arnie and DeVito. The alpaca, named Rosie, acts as a herd guard for the sheep – apparently there has never been a lamb lost to foxes on the property since Rosie came on the scene.

Rosie the alpaca
The three steers, Buttercup, Arnie and DeVito, with one of the local roos in the background.

The dogs didn’t know what to make of all these animals at first, but Reinhardt quickly made friends with the steers, who themselves are really just like big puppy dogs. Heide is a little less sure of them, but is slowly getting used to them. Her favourite pastime lately is to sit at the window and watch the dozens of kangaroos that graze throughout the day in the paddocks around us.

Reinhardt and Buttercup getting to know one another.
The steers love an occasional treat of carrots.
DeVito clowning around.

Hanging with the Gang

Male Gang Gang Cockatoo Callocephalon fimbriatum

In the nearly 7 years that we have lived at Mount Dandenong we have made a concerted effort to attract more native bird species to our garden through the extensive planting of indigenous trees and the removal of introduced weed species. There are times however, when the value of the “weeds” outweighs any gains to be had from their removal. The classic case in our garden has been this well established Evergreen Dogwood Cornus capitata.

Though it is quite rightly regarded as a weed species in the Dandenong Ranges due to its ability to produce hundreds of seeds each season, the specimen that is growing above the wildlife pond in our garden fills an important role of mid-storey tree that ordinarily would be taken up by Acacia species such as blackwoods and black wattles.

This tier of foliage provides an important source of food for birds and animals, as well as functioning as a superhighway between the trunks of the larger Eucalyptus trees. Since moving to Mt Dandenong, I have planted a number of blackwoods around the vicinity of the dogwood, with the intention that as they became established the dogwood can eventually be removed, however there are still a number of years to go before that scenario will ever come to pass.

In the meantime, every autumn we see the fruits of the dogwood being eagerly devoured by native birds. Usually its the Crimson Rosellas that feast for weeks, however in the last couple of days, a family group of Gang Gang Cockatoos has moved in. They’re actually quite happy to munch away all day while dogs and people run around on the paths below them. As such, I was able to get some really nice shots of a couple of them.

Female Gang Gang Cockatoo Callocephalon fimbriatum

A trail of destruction

East coast low—Wednesday, 9 June – Thursday, 10 June 2021

On the morning of Wednesday, 9 June 2021, a low pressure system commonly known as an east coast low began to move across the Gippsland coast. By around 2:00 pm, southerly winds began to increase across areas of higher elevations and a constant, driving rain set in. Here at Mount Dandenong, 600 metres above sea level, the winds tore through the tree tops and we knew we were in for a wild night. The destruction that followed though, no one could really have foreseen. By daylight on Thursday, the numbers of trees downed would be estimated to have been in their thousands. 119 homes were rendered uninhabitable, with another 140 or so badly damaged. Thankfully, in some form of miracle, there were no deaths.

An east coast low brings winds rarely experienced in these parts and the results can be catastrophic.

On Wednesday night as darkness fell and the wind increased to speeds of up to 120kph, Vanessa and I made the decision to sleep in the lounge room, with a couch and a dog each. Around 7:00 pm we heard the first boom and the whole house shook. We thought at first that we must have been directly in the path of a huge thunderstorm. It wasn’t until the third or fourth boom that we realised there was no accompanying lightning. What we were hearing was the first of many giant Mountain Ash trees in Singleton Reserve, most over 50 metres tall and aged well over a hundred years, being topped like skittles in the intense winds.

The view of Singleton Reserve from our driveway.

The power first went out at around 7:30 pm and came back on again almost immediately. Throughout the evening the lights would frequently flicker and we knew it was only a matter of time before they would finally stay off. That happened at around 9:00 pm. We tried our best to get some sleep, but neither of us could really nod off, especially as more booms rang out at regular intervals. At 10:45 we heard on the emergency services scanner, that one of the local CFA crews was attempting to clear a path through fallen trees on the corner of our street, in order to rescue an ambulance and SES vehicle that were trapped just down the road. Apparently they had been responding to a call out for a woman trapped in her house and a tree had fallen across the SES vehicle, crushing it like an aluminium can. As we watched from the relative safety of our window, several more trees came down where the CFA crew were working. They hurriedly backed the truck away, just as another tree came down on the spot where the truck had been. Over the scanner we heard them (wisely) abandon their efforts and head back to the depot – at that moment we realised that should the worse happen, we were now totally isolated from any help.

The spot where the CFA crews had been working to free an ambulance and SES vehicle before further falling trees forced them to retreat.

By 2:00am we were both feeling the effects of trying to sleep on a couch with a frightened dog alongside us and we decided to head into the bedroom, however less than half an hour later we heard an almighty crash behind us. I ventured outside with my torch and saw the unmistakable outline of a large branch resting only metres away from the wall where our heads had just been. We headed back to the lounge room with all thoughts of sleep abandoned. The booms continued throughout the night, and we listened in disbelief as crew after crew of CFA and FRV firefighters attempted to gain access to the mountain, only to be thwarted at each turn by fallen trees.

One of several giant Stringybarks that fell into our property from our neighbour’s yard – this one landed just metres away from our bedroom wall.

When dawn finally came, a pale sun rose across a scene out of a horror film. With the winds still howling around us, we wandered down our driveway where a 30 m high Messmate Stringybark had crashed down during the night, completely blocking any vehicle access to our property. We realised then that the ‘branch’ that had narrowly missed our bedroom the night before was in fact another, even larger Messmate Stringybark, which had fallen right across our neighbour’s yard. With despair I realised that underneath its crown lay the smashed remains of a 45 year old Magnolia that had been one of the most beautiful trees on our property.

The giant stringybark that fell during the night.

Down on Ridge Road we saw huge stands of Mountain Ash and Mountain Grey Gum laying across the road in all directions. The tree that had fallen where the CFA truck had been in the middle of the night had just brushed the side of our neighbour’s home, smashing the fibro-cement cladding and destroying a stained glass window, but thankfully not doing any serious damage. Right up and down our street, the story was repeated, but miraculously there were no reports of damage to houses.

A Mountain Ash that fell across Ridge Road and miraculously only just grazed the side of our neighbour’s house.

One thing was becoming abundantly clear as we walked around – a large portion of our fences had been demolished by fallen trees on both the north and south sides of the property. I desperately wanted to survey the rest of the property for damage, but as we watched more trees fall over in the reserve, we decided to head back into the house until the winds eased.

The tree that had fallen across the driveway had also taken out a copse of Blackwoods, along with much of our fence line.
The combined mess of the Stringybark and Blackwoods where they had come to rest on Eyre Road.

As it turns out, the decision to head inside and start calling our insurance agency probably saved our lives. At around 10:00 am we felt the house shake again and looked out of the window to see a large branch that had fallen across the garden outside, smashing huge concrete planters and bird baths as it fell. As we rushed to the front veranda to take a closer look, we realised that it was in fact another huge Messmate Stringybark that had just fallen across the driveway.

The second Stringybark to fall across the driveway.
This tree was much closer to the house than the first and it managed to smash a number of pots and bird baths as it fell.

By around 2:00 pm that afternoon the wind finally abated and we managed to venture out again to start checking on our neighbours. Right up and down the street we heard of massive damage to gardens and outbuildings, but not to houses. Sadly, just before nightfall we heard that there were a couple of houses at the end of the street that hadn’t fared so well. Thankfully though, there were still no reports of fatalities.

Right along the street there were trees down, but thankfully very few reports of damage to houses.

For most of the day on Friday we spoke on and off with our insurance company, as well as checking in with some of our neighbours. An electrician managed to make it all the way to our place from Beaconsfield to perform a make-safe on the damaged garden shed that housed the power to our water pump and the pond. Luckily he arrived just as the SES managed to cut a path through the trees that were still down across the main road, although he was forced to backtrack several times and had a few hairy moments where his van just scraped underneath some mammoth fallen trees.

The damaged garden shed.

On Friday morning I spoke to a neighbour who had been off the mountain for surgery throughout the week. She had been unable to get in touch with her husband and daughter who were in their home during the storm, although she had been told that they were OK. I wandered up the road to check on them, and once I found them safe and well I put them on to my phone to speak to her. A large tree had fallen from Singleton Reserve directly onto the roof of their carport, with the car buried beneath. We walked together along their fence line to check in on another neighbour whose property backed on to Singleton Reserve – miraculously the house had escaped major damage, despite the appearance that a multi-lane freeway had been bulldozed through the trees.

Parts of Singleton Reserve had been almost completely flattened.

Later that afternoon, as it became clear that we would be spending another night without power or access to our driveway, I walked down to the end of the street to chat with the father of the neighbour whose house I had been looking at that morning. He noticed the trees down across the driveway and asked if we were stuck. When I replied that we hadn’t been able to get the cars out of the drive since Wednesday, he headed off to his sons house, where the sounds of chainsaws and heavy haulage equipment could still be heard. Half an hour later, he returned driving an old Massey Ferguson tractor, with his son and a mate hanging off the back, wielding two giant chainsaws. Within a few minutes they had cleared a path through for us, pushing the massive trunks to the side to allow us just enough room for a car to get through.

My brand new glasshouse was completely destroyed.

By Saturday morning we started to get a little concerned about the lack of urgency of any coordinated response to what was clearly a disaster. It seemed that there were dozens of separate tree crews, SES, CFA, Parks Vic and FRV officers on the mountain, but few of them seemed to be talking to each other. We had three separate welfare checks in the space of a couple of hours – we were happy that they were indeed doing them, but there seemed to be a hell of a lot of doubling up. I heard from a neighbour that the road to Montrose was temporarily opened so I headed down that way – if I’d thought it was bad up here, there was nothing that could have prepared me for the utter devastation further along the ridge. In places there were entire hillsides flattened, in others trees as wide as buses hung precariously just metres above the road. I saw several houses that had been completely destroyed by fallen trees, and many others with trees across driveways or through fences. I wasn’t in the right headspace to take any photographs (I’m still not), but here is a link to a video that follows pretty much the same route I took.

All the way along the ridge there were downed trees and power lines.

I headed down to the Stihl store in Bayswater to buy a larger chainsaw, as well as a new chain for my smaller one – unfortunately when I arrived I discovered that every single chainsaw in the place was gone, as well as all the spare chains! I quickly looked up the next closest store and made my way to Ringwood, where they still had a bunch left, although as each person in the queue before me was there to pick up a chainsaw I did start to panic. Luckily most people were after smaller ones – I on the other hand walked out with a very heavy, very large 25″ bladed monster, spending a considerably large chunk of our increasingly unlikely holiday savings in the process. I also stopped to pick up some jerrycans and fuel as our insurance company had promised us that they would be able to source a generator so that we could finally have some lights.

With hundreds of power lines down we were thankful our insurer had managed to source a generator.

By the time I returned home the SES had closed off all access to the mountain from the Montrose end, so I had to divert through to Basin–Olinda Road. After 270mm of rain, it had started to wash out in places, but thankfully I made it through unscathed. A message from AusNet, our power supplier, gave us an estimate that the power would be restored by Sunday night. This was rather strange we felt, as we’d only just been looking at the smashed transformers, wires entangled in branches and poles leaning over at acute angles. Not to mention the fact that in all of the service vehicles we’d seen in the area, not one of them was from AusNet.

Any talk of getting the power reconnected quickly seemed unlikely, given the massive damage that had been incurred by all sorts of infrastructure.

From the limited news we could access on Saturday it seemed that most journalists were either oblivious to the situation up here, or had decided to move on to other news. There had been flooding in Gippsland and tragically, a couple of deaths, so with the media for the most part being kept out of the the ranges there seemed very little interest in reporting the true depth of the situation. There was a slight peak in interest when parts of Kallista and The Patch were told that their water was unsafe to drink, however this soon gave way to reports on the death of Geoffrey Edelston, the upcoming lifting of COVID restrictions and the possibility of getting crowds back to the footy. Sadly this continued throughout the weekend – in one of the few reports that even mentioned it I heard one commentator ask a representative from AusNet why the power hadn’t been restored by now, stating that “it’s just a storm—we get them all the time”.

This wasn’t just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill storm.

It wasn’t really until the following Wednesday, a full week after the storms, when the penny finally dropped that this was serious. AusNet announced that their initial assessments had in fact been wrong and that up to 3000 homes around Kalorama, Mount Dandenong, Olinda and Sassafrass would be without power until July 10 2021—a full month after the power first went out. Suddenly the mountain was swarming with news crews and commentators were screaming at politicians to do more, or to bring in the army.

A tree crew work to remove tons of debris from across downed power lines.

For us it has been an exercise in coping. It’s also reinforced to us that although it can be quite scary living up on he mountains at times, the way our community has banded together has reinforced why we love living here so much. Neighbours who aren’t too busy to take the time to check on each other, to call and chat to people who are doing it tough. Random acts of kindness like the local CFA volunteers organising care packages for vulnerable people or a rotating roster of people willing to go around refuelling and restarting generators regularly throughout the day for those elderly residents who are unable to do so themselves.

Parts of our garden lie buried under a multitude of fallen trees.

Gardens and sheds can be replaced—houses can be repaired or rebuilt too, although I dare say some may never be. It’s going to take many months and possibly even years to completely clean up the damage and many decades to replace the thousands of trees that were lost, but at the end of the day, residents here have dealt with tragedy before and have continued to prosper in spite of it. I’m sure we will continue to do so this time around.

Late on a Sunday afternoon and the chainsaws finally get a break after working flat out all weekend.

Let’s just hope that if only one thing good comes out of this event, it’s that something is finally done to fix the shambles that is Emergency Management Victoria, although I won’t hold my breath. The decision 9 days after the initial storms to finally call in 120 ADF staff to assist with the clean up and distribution of care packages shows how incredibly out of touch this useless bureaucracy is. This interview with one of our legendary CFA volunteers by Virginia Trioli on Melbourne radio a full week after the storms sums up the general feeling in the community here – it’s hard to imagine how the management of this disaster could have been handled any worse.

Four years on

Four years ago today we turned the key in the front door at our house in Wyndham Vale for the very last time, bundled Reinhardt and Zelda into the cars and made our way across the city traffic to arrive at our wonderful new home in Mount Dandenong.

The Wyndham Vale house itself had been nice, and we left behind some wonderful neighbours, but we weren’t all that sorry to say goodbye to the western suburbs, especially considering the house and garden that we were moving into.

Four years on and we’re still good friends with our Wyndham Vale neighbours, but we’ve made a whole bunch of new friends here as well. It really is a wonderful community, and no matter what the stresses of the working day may bring, every night that we leave the city and return to the mountain, it still feels like we’re heading off on holidays.

Things have changed a lot in the four years since we moved here. The moss covered “lawns” that we inherited have largely gone thanks to a combination of dogs and a couple of overly dry summers, and we’re slowly working our way towards replacing them completely with paths and gardens.

The Rhododendrons, Camellias and Azaleas that dominated the garden when we first arrived still continue to thrive, but we’ve also worked hard to establish a lot more native plants, as well as thousands of spring bulbs to bring colour to the garden at what is otherwise a pretty dreary time of the year up here.

We’re actively working to introduce additional wildlife friendly elements to the garden too. Number one of course is the wildlife pond that we created a few years ago, but we’re also looking at providing more lower and mid level habitat to provide extra food and shelter for birds. It seems to be working, as we’ve noticed a marked increase in the number of birds such as honeyeaters, whipbirds and bowerbirds using the garden over the last 12 months or so.

So here’s to a fabulous 4 years, and let’s hope there are many, many more to come!