Hello from Oz

[Flintknapper_344]

G'Day from Oz.

I hope you don't mind an Aussie joining up here.

I've been visiting the magazine website a bit, quite often indirectly, as it often seems to have an article on topics I 'Google up'.

I'm middle aged, an ex-serviceman (AF). Married w/daughter (who is also in to self-sufficiency). Live in the country but work near a city.

[bee_pipes]

Well don't just leave it at that Flint! Haw about some pictures? What sort of climate do you have at home? Arid? Humid? What sort of crops and livestock work best?

Funny - google is how I found this place too - seemed like I kept getting hits for BHM on searches.

Welcome!

Regards,
Pat

[cheyenne]

Welcome! *I agree; don't leave it at THAT!

Are you being affected by the drought down there?

I've seen pics on TV about Australians being inundated by rats during drought cycles. *

Glad you joined the site. I'm from that 'other Oz', Kansas! Have thunderstorms goin' on now with snow to follow later this evening... it's spring!

[Flintknapper_344]

Thanks for the welcome :)

Hi Bee. No easy pictures sorry, but we live in the state of NSW, and the area is known as the Southern Highlands (http://www.southcoast.com.au/southernhighlands/index.html). It's a temperate climate, not far from the sea, very mild winters, snow is a novelty, but our slow combustion wood fire goes continually over winter (June-August).

Crops and livestock. Don't have. That is still but a far off dream to this mortgage slave for a couple of years yet. We do have a nice pantry, wood (and gas) heating, a comfortable house in a country town - and some dreams.

Hello Cheyenne.
The drought is 'bout over. Our climate is very much influenced by El Nino / La Nina, and we've just started into a La Nina cycle (coolest, wettest summer for some time has just finished). The trees are turning , autumn has come early this year.

Rats. No. But recurrent mice plagues in grain areas way to the west are known.

(Don't have a dog called 'toto' by any chance?).

Very interesting site and forum I have to say - and folk seem very friendly.

[RangerRick]

G'day mate, welcome aboard. How's things downunder for ya? Hope to hear often of your experiences from the other side planet earth.

;D

Rick

[Flintknapper_344]

How the Land Was Won

The future was dark and the past was dead
As they gazed on the sea once more –
But a nation was born when the immigrants said
"Good-bye!" as they stepped ashore!
In their loneliness they were parted thus
Because of the work to do,
A wild wide land to be won for us
By hearts and hands so few.

The darkest land 'neath a blue sky's dome,
And the widest waste on earth;
The strangest scenes and the least like home
In the lands of our fathers' birth;
The loneliest land in the wide world then,
And away on the furthest seas,
A land most barren of life for men –
And they won it by twos and threes!

With God, or a dog, to watch, they slept
By the camp-fires' ghastly glow,
Where the scrubs were dark as the blacks that crept
With "nulla" and spear held low;
Death was hidden amongst the trees,
And bare on the glaring sand
They fought and perished by twos and threes –
And that's how they won the land!

It was two that failed by the dry creek bed,
While one reeled on alone –
The dust of Australia's greatest dead
With the dust of the desert blown!
Gaunt cheek-bones cracking the parchment skin
That scorched in the blazing sun,
Black lips that broke in a ghastly grin –
And that's how the land was won!

Starvation and toil on the tracks they went,
And death by the lonely way;
The childbirth under the tilt or tent,
The childbirth under the dray!
The childbirth out in the desolate hut
With a half-wild gin for nurse –
That's how the first were born to bear
The brunt of the first man's curse!

They toiled and they fought through the shame of it –
Through wilderness, flood, and drought;
They worked, in the struggles of early days,
Their sons' salvation out.
The white girl-wife in the hut alone,
The men on the boundless run,
The miseries suffered, unvoiced, unknown –
And that's how the land was won.

No armchair rest for the old folk then –
But, ruined by blight and drought,
They blazed the tracks to the camps again
In the big scrubs further out.
The worn haft, wet with a father's sweat,
Gripped hard by the eldest son,
The boy's back formed to the hump of toil –
And that's how the land was won!

And beyond Up Country, beyond Out Back,
And the rainless belt, they ride,
The currency lad and the ne'er-do-well
And the black sheep, side by side;
In wheeling horizons of endless haze
That disk through the Great North-west,
They ride for ever by twos and by threes –
And that's how they win the rest.
Henry Lawson, 1899