The house with habitation

After being occupied by our selves these past  11 weeks the house at Beachmere has been customized.

That it's sand all the way down is a real plus as no water stays about even after the most rigorous torrents. 

But topsoil and the like is a bit of a problem when you have only sand at your feet. Since the front had been covered with bought in soil so that  a lawn could be grown , we've covered it all with stones so that the lawn can't grow.

 Stone gardening is  a Beachmere standard -- you bring in what is foreign to the place and exploit the contradiction. And stones over sand make a superb mulch that won't need endless topping up.

The back is being colonized by horse manure, topsoil pinched from the front and copious amounts of grass clippings (see pile in pic top right) delivered by a local mowing contractor. So slowly, a vegetable supply line is consolidating. 

All in 11 weeks. 

The bountiful rain fall has helped verdancy.

No problems except that I put my foot through the ceiling while laying down insulation.... DIY insulating is a bugger of a job  and I don't recommend the activity. Give me shovelling dirt any day.

I'm good at that.

Stones? Why stones?


If you are going to put together a garden ruled by native flora the whole question of water use is a key consideration. But obtaining mulches and over laying them  once each layer has broken down  is going to be either expensive or a practical challenge -- especially if you want to deploy collected organic mulches elsewhere to better effect. On top of that, who wants to mow?  I soon learnt that a flywheel push mower isn't the easiest device to cut grasses among trees. And a petrol driven power mower...no thanks. I hate them for personal use. You become a serf to the lawn of the manor.

So getting rid of the grass and replacing it with something that would not easily break down began to make a lot of (ecological and energy use) sense. Stones need to be pre crushed of course and delivered (I bought the cheapest aggregate: $68 per cubic metre) but we are not talking about the carbon footprint cement requires. Stones are also porous so there is no run off, nor mud either.

[Consider the carbon footprint of cement with the carbon footprint of  petrol mowing  the grass year in year out weekly or fortnightly with the carbon footprint of a crusher making the stones with the challenge of growing or collecting and upkeeping enough organic mulch to cover the whole area...]

Stones have a higher thermal mass as well  as heat refraction than organic mulch but as the bushes and trees grow that stored heat and radiation will be reduced by shading.Of course these same factors make them great mulch for plants during the heat.

The underlying plastic -- weed mat -- is not much more than what  a few visits to the supermarket would cause (and collecting enough cardboard or newspaper was beyond me for the surface area while I was doing just that for outback).

So 'stoning' the area began to make a lot of sense.

I'm going to have a 'hotter' summer out front because of the stored and reflected heat generated by the stones, but as the flora grows that will change and the stones will start storing other temperatures. I also hope that the stones will provide fewer niches for sandflies (or mosquitoes) which can be the bain of any wetland locality such as ours.

Photo shoot: our house which is for sale.

With the realtor's images now available, our domicile scrubs up very nicely indeed. So nice you'd want to buy it and live here, right? It's House and Garden stylish.

With filters and a wide angle lens the place looks fabulous....

Buy it. 

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Our house is for sale. Get in quick!

Now on the  market for those who want to live the life of Riley in Northgate.

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3 bedrooms -- four if you include the 'sleepout'/studio.Close to public transport, the airport, the Gateway Arterial, schools, etc. Moreton Bay access -- boat ramp, fishing, walking and relaxing -- 4 km away down Nudgee Road. Hot spot,sort after, suburb.

It's Beachmere!

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The ongoing discourse here about shifting house to hither and then to yon has arrived at some resolution and his nibs -- c'est moi -- and his mate have contracted to buy a house in Beachmere (...so long as we can sell the one we have now).

"Beachmere," you may ask,"where the hell is that?"

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Beachmere is a distant suburb of Brisbane -- some 55 kilometres by road from the Brisbane CBD. It's a fishing village at the mouth of the Caboolture River and boasts the essential fishers' hardware: a boat ramp.

It has a caravan park(a rare thing indeed!) and a motel but really isn't touristy as most vacationists prefer the metro style of Bribie Island and the Sunshine Coast further north. It's a backwater with its own back water -- a few lakes that have been newsy because all the fish in them died in one foul swoop recently. (Google Beachmere and most of what you'll get is dead fish from a toxic algae bloom.)

Click on map to enlarge view

Why Beachmere?

Price.

10 minutes -- 12.5 km --   from Caboolture and its railway station. But...buses stop visiting Beachmere after 5.30pm weeknights.Four trips in the AM/ four trips in the PM.

Very flat. Great cycling/scootering country. You have to drive alongside goat  and horse farms just to get there on the one road in. While there are a few million dollar plus properties on the water's edge, it's more or less an Anglo Celt fishing  working class enclave: crab pots and tinnies with retired trawlers.

Since we are rooted in the mud and mangroves of Nudgee Beach. and remain preoccupied with the cultural substance of Cribb Island (extinct -- now buried under Brisbane Airport) -- Beachmere is in like mode.

Preparing to go offshore: island life self sufficiency

Up there among life's most stressful experiences is supposedly moving house. So far I have no complaints about the experience , but then I haven't as yet 'moved'.

But moving house is about getting rid of one place and preparing to go to another. It's the getting rid thereof that takes up my time now.

As we go about our daily chores in this matter you have to project yourself schematically forward in time in order to decide how much of the stuff you've got now will be at home and useful in the future abode.

I live with a hoarder so I need say no more in regard to what would be my philosophical preference. I also don't know exactly at this moment where I'll be going.

It will be an island in the southern reaches of Moreton Bay and while I hope it is one particular spot with house on Lamb Island that's not as yet contracted.

No yet.

But the context is very clear; anything that comes onto or goes off the island has to go by boat. With one crappy shop on Lamb Island (although shopping is good next door on Macleay and Russell Islands) the question of self sufficiency comes to mind? How prepared am I to make do?

I don't see 'self sufficiency' as a principle  but I'm skilled and prepped to make all of life's cuisine essentials:

• my own bread (I do now)
• my own beer (I do now)
• my own yogurt (I do now)
• my own sausages (I do now)

As well as grow a good range of vegetables and fruits (I do now). Thats' not why I'm doing this mind. The self sufficiency requirement  is secondary to the main impetus. I'm under a make do imperative .

But you see, all I need day to day is milk for my tea...(I gotta have that). And meat and fish: shop one/seahunt the other.

With town water and electricity I'm not going off the grid in a feral sense.I've also already checked out web access : ADSL I .

I can live with that.

How  feral I become after that remains to be seen. But I won't be able to rely on nicking down to the shop or wheeling a trolley into Coles or Woolies to stock up.

SLIDESHOW A visit to Lamb Island on Moreton Bay looking for a place to live

As is our want we took ourselves to the water's edge today and embarked on a passenger ferry to Lamb and McLeay Islands on the southern reaches of Moreton Bay.

Our intention was to look for a place to live  so we were house hunting with a list of boxes we wanted to tick -- or not  tick..

Shifting house. Destination: Macleay Island?

Wheels are moving here at maison dave.  The residents have pondered there wherewithall and decided to put the abode up for sale as soon as the touch ups are in place.

Such an  option has also increased the pressure to consider someplace to go to. And after contemplating and researching Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine (in country Victoria), Gympie and Ipswich in South East Queensland. The new flavour of the moment is MacLeay Island  in the southern reaches of Moreton Bay.

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Reputed to be the cheapest real estate in SE Qld -- Macleay houses an odd collection of up market greenies and the working, unemployed or pensioned poor attracted to cheapness. The irony being that the island is a delightful hide away wafted by sea breezes surrounded by wetlands or sandy beaches( and, as de rigueur to that,  inhabited by  mosquitoes-- just like the night time air here in Northgate -- in cooee of the swap: Boondall Wetlands .)

I've never considered the prospect of living on an island -- aside form the huge Terra Australis  one I'm on -- but my upbringing was on Victoria's Port Phillip Bay and my soul always resides on the shoreline. The prospect is like a second childhood.

When we began looking for another location to live my specific criteria included easy  public transport access, and the irony is that MacLeay -- with its frequent ferry service to the mainland, and direct connection to buses addressed  to the Brisbane CBD or via the Cleveland rail line -- is well served by public transport. (That also makes  it easy for others to come visit What a holiday destination, eh?.)

The island is also a cycling imperative and has a reputation as a great place to pedal -- so long as you prepare for punctures on the unmade roads.  I  see myself with a cargo bike or a setup like this (right) as a supplement to scoottering.

That's the schematism I'm working from for the moment. Maybe 90-120+ minutes into the city by public transport on the location that got bad press in the seventies through real estate scams. (Oh those gullible Victorians!) Not yet real estate intense in take off terms as it is too isolated for daily commutes and those who are car dependent. (Barging a car is expensive to and fro).

This blog's name may have to change to Kickbike, Kettlebell and Kayak  as that section of the bay is a sea kayak mecca and my notions for a coracle may be out of place in the currents between the islands. But fishing: every day. Great red soil in sections as the island is a segment of the mainland that was surrounded by  inundation 10,000 years ago. That mainland area used to be Brisbane's larder  but now  grows mainly strawberries.

So unless we change our mind, our eyes are on the water....

Someday you'll see me floatin' in the sunshine,

My head stickin' out from a low fluin' cloud,
You'll hear me call you,
Singin' through the sunshine,
Sweet and clear as can be:
"Come to me, here am I, come to me."
If you try, you'll find me
Where the sky meets the sea.
"Here am I your special island
Come to me, Come to me."

Bali Ha'i,
Bali Ha'i,
Bali Ha'i!

Gympie's flood map haunts your mind

Just got back from Gympie...

Went there to reconnoitre the territory. Staid in Mary Street in  a local pub and spent the two days exploring real estate, real hills and valleys; and real prices.

There are plenty of steep hills in Gympie and when the place floods, as it does regulary, these rises serve as isthmuses and islands in the stream.

The 1999 flood (pictured below)was one of the biggest Mary River floods to inundate the town.

That year, the pub we staid in was under water to its first floor as was most of Gympie's main street, Mary Street. It's a strange feeling to walk around town with the presumption that you are walking in the deep end  of a very large -- and for now, empty -- swimming pool. When Gympie floods, a massive amount of  water is needed to drown it.

So when you go looking at real estate in Gympie  the flood map has to be in the back of your mind.

Even the sewage system has to breathe  through outlet flus (pictured above)  that rise these activities  above the highwater mark 

The irony being that what should be  a town icon -- the sewer flus -- don't suit a tourist image of  a tidy town so they aren't celebrated.

But floods come and go..and if your road into town is inundated,  maybe there's  a back way around the shoreline.? but then, maybe not...

We also learnt

• that some very  tasty sausages (and hickory smoked) are made in Gympie
• that you'd need a mountain bike to cycle around town  if you wanted to remain seated uphill (scootering is a downhill activity only)
• that the McMansion pandemic has also infected Gympie's new housing estates
• that there are even more real estate agencies in Gympie than Opportunity shops.But as many Op shops as computer shops.
• that I can walk anywhere in town from Mary Street,  up hill and down dale,  in about 30 minutes.
• that you can get cheap espresso and quality food in main street cafes.

Is Gympie calling?

Here at maison dave there have been many traumas over the last 6 weeks and in terms of kith and kin, one death. These changes are also an opportunity that  carries  a carpe diem promise.

"Gympie -- stay where you are, we're coming to visit."

Two and a half hours by train north of Brisbane -- it  takes longer to travel to  the Sydney Western suburbs! --  Gympie ticks a lot of boxes -- such that I have to suspect it is has to be  a  best kept secret.

The occasional flooding of the Mary River is a drawback  as is the penchant for political conservatism (it was a stronghold of One Nation for a  time) -- but the campaign to save the Mary River from the Traveston Crossing Dam has shaken up local alliances and the  hippies are now accepted valley partners.

Aside from my partner's biological roots (and I don't mean flora) in the district, it's a trade off for not shifting all the way south to Central Victoria. But you need to try before you buy and after a lot of homework we are set to do more field research.

For my part , so long as I have ready rail access to Brisbane  and the primary adhesions of urbanity -- a railway station, shops, espresso,a  public library, a general hospital, town water and sewage -- within a formated radius of no more than  5  and preferably 3 kilometres (give or take a metre or two) from a chosen abode -- I'm happy to call it 'home'.

And I like Gympie. I spent time there as a community artist and walked its byways.Even marched down its main street with the locals cheering me on.  It's a very Anglo-Celt town. The annual Gympie Muster  suggests its cultural preferences.

...but hey, I'm not going to start wearing iconic style Akubras just to fit in. If I'm to wear felted rabbit fur I want it in pork pie format..(And Akubra  do make a pork pie  shaped hat but keep it out of their catalogue).

So imagine me -- pork pie atop my head, humming a country and  western tune -- boot scooting the streets of Gympie.

To live perchance, not in Bendigo but Gympie!

There I was  doing my homework. Industriously researching the geography, sociology, economy and ecology of Central Victoria with a mind to reside there.

As I reviewed and referenced by dint of my web browser, I honed in on specifics that seemed to serve me -- "us" really as it is a plural thing: me and the missus -- as working criteria.

Before I could say "Eureka Stockade, I have found myself in Bendigo (or Ballarat)!" we realized that Queensland had its own Bendigo (or Ballarat) by the name of Gympie.

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Gympie isn't anywhere as big as these southern cities.: 14,000 inhabitants compared to over 80,00 plus for either of the two Vic locations.

But if Gympie was in Victoria it would be utilized and gentrified  the same way that Ballarat and Bendigo have been by the Victorians. On a railway line -- the urban train network -- 2 and a half hours from the Brisbane CBD; in the Mary River valley with a gold seam that had been mined  since  the 19th century.

The irony is that despite the analogies, Gympie is a forgotten niche primarily because real estate and settlement in South East Queensland is obsessed with the sea. Harvey Bay to the north; and  Noosa and  the Sunshine Coast to the south east, attest to the fact the invading sticky  treacle of  development dollars have simply passed Gympie by so that the lifestyle dollar could purchase  ocean views.

In the nineties for a time, Harvey Bay was the fastest growing region in Australia. To get to it the retiring grey hairs trekking north for the sunshine had to pass through Gympie in their quest;  but the property largesse seems to have missed Gympie.

So housing -- good housing --  is cheaper than in Brisbane.

Three trains per day -- including the fast Tilt Train -- to Brissie or back -- and a lot of excellent assets, as country towns go, Gympie is an attractive proposition.

While the Mary River floods -- as rivers are want to do -- it is a river that still runs free after we all beat the state government and stopped the dam at Traveston.being built. So the local, unique and protected  lung fish, Mary River Turtle, and  Mary River Cod Fish still have a show of surviving in the catchment.

So the move, if it eventuates, has historical context. With the Traveston dam campaign still  fresh, just to the north,forming the eastern shoreline of Harvey Bay,   Fraser Island was saved from loggers in  another great victory for the Australian environment movement.

Is it time to move south from Sub Tropical Brisbane to Ballarat or Bendigo?

I live in Brisbane...and it's not the first time I've lived in Brisbane.

I lived in Brisbane -- during another existence -- October 1972 to January 23rd, 1974. I lerft as the 1974 drowned the city.

After that stint, I returned to Melbourne. and more of less stayed there until 1982 when I moved on:  to Newcastle (1982), to Sydney (1983), back to Melbourne(1984)...and then to Brisbane (1985 - today).

And now, because of the confluence of economic, familial, psychological,  social and physiological forces I have the option -- albeit a schematic idea in our heads -- to move back south.

But since a shift into Melbourne urban real estate is expensive -- and Helen  is keen on a regional  existence anyway --  the preferred option is to move south to the Ballarart or Bendigo region in Central Victoria. some 1800 kilometres away from where we are now..

So I'm doing my virtual homework exploring Bendigo and mapping the properties of  Ballarat. -- locus of the Victorian Gold Fields of the 19th century and the site of the Eureka Rebellion.

So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We'll make the tyrants feel the sting
O' those that they would throttle;
They needn't say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!

--Henry Lawson.

I gotta say that I like what I see.

Of course the two cities are great competitors -- see: Bendigo is so totally cooler than Ballarat  -- and   it is a hard call, especially from memory (as I have spent time in the district) and by dint of online research.

That we do have a choice is delightfully prescient  in the way we can project our lifestyle preference onto one location. But the challenge is to carefully weigh up what we think is important and what we want from a place to live.

What is important?

Well there's the rub: how do you rate one place against another?

Here are some criteria I've been working from. Not quite in order of significance but factors nonetheless:

• Direct fast rail service to Melbourne with a generous timetable.
• Easy access cross / intra city  transport options -- walk, bike or bus/tram.
• Lower house prices than Brisbane
• Rich local cultural and political  (eg:option of a SA branch) life
• A local  boxing gym ( eg: Lynden Hosking , six time Australian boxing champion, three times Oceanic champion and 1996 Commonwealth champion runs a boxing gym in Bendigo)
• Generous domestic heating options.
• On the lee side of the bushfire threat (ie:  south, east or south east of an urban centre at some distance from combustible bush or grasslands.)
• A local university campus.
• A population under 100,000 residents.
• Access to an exciting hinterland: (eg: the Grampions, the Great Dividing Range, lakes and rivers to fish, etc)
• A good local general hospital/health services

After the sub tropics, cold is a factor to consider. Winter  can be a tad coolish down south and my first winters on returning there in 1974 after being in Brisbane were  very hard to adapt to.

While I'm a city boy (Melbourne bayside) , my forbears come from the North East of Victoria -- that's north of Ballarat and Bendigo around Yackandanadah and Corryong.  So I'm not going ancestrally home. But then a distant relative of mine, a leader of the  Cornish Association of Victoria,   represented the Labor Party for Ballarat  in the Vic parliament , 1980-1990 -- John Mildren.

I still have cousins in the district and my father's family -- not North Easters but  Irish working class (originally from transported convicts) -- always staid at Daylesford guesthouses through the 1930s, partaking of the mineral waters. That was my first introduction to the region as before that, a 'holiday' was staying on relatives' dairy farms in Yackandandah or Lang Lang.

Sop I'm casting my thoughts southward..

These lines from  Judith wright's poem, South of My Days. have popped out of my head:

Oh, they slide and they vanish
as he shuffles the years like a pack of conjuror's cards.
True or not, it's all the same; and the frost on the roof
cracks like a whip, and the back-log break into ash.
Wake, old man. this is winter, and the yarns are over.
No-one is listening
South of my days' circle.
I know it dark against the stars, the high lean country
full of old stories that still go walking in my sleep.

Next step: I come visit and will be in Victoria this year during the coldest month of July..