Australia Sept-Dec 2023

The day didn’t start well. Our 2L milk carton doesn’t fit in the door of the fridge so had to be put on its side on a shelf. Now opened, the lid of the carton is no longer watertight, or “milktight”. A puddle formed around my foot as I stood in the kitchen.

Never mind, today was about putting our mark on Australia for generations to come. We had >400 native trees to plant. But the day started with scrambled eggs on toast with Dale and the kids, so much for free camping! Or maybe it was exactly that, free camping, free food etc.

The trees were in trays and ranged from 2” to 8” in height. Dale referred to the tool we used as a “tree pig”. Essentially it was a 3’6” tube with a bore sufficiently large for the tree plug to go down. At the bottom was one fixed jaw and one hinged jaw that, when shut, was a bit pointy. About 6” above the base of the tube was one foot rest that I stood on to push the tool into the soil. There was also a foot-operated lever that opened the jaws so that, when the tool was lifted from the soil, the tree fell through into the hole made by the tool. At the top of the tool was a trigger to release the mechanism and the jaws shut ready to start the process again. A quick stamp to compress the soil around the tree and off along the row to plant the next. That sounds so simple and yet the reality was very different. I’m sure that the tool is ideal for fine, well-tilled loamy soil, but that is not what we had. I accept that Dale had run a tine almost up the entire length of the rows we were planting, but the soil was extremely compact in some places making it extremely difficult to get the tool down into the soil. Roughty-tufty Oz farmers wearing hard-soled boots who have hands of leather had a slight advantage over a pom in trainers with hands that have done little more than caress a keyboard since leaving home. Bun and Vivienne put tree guards around each sapling as we went along. After an hour we had some respite as someone was spraying nearby. Despite the farm being a few thousand acres, there is a trial site (for seeds) close to where we were working that needed spraying. We retired to the garden to make up some more tree guards, each from from two bamboo sticks and a 2L(?) milk carton with notches cut out to allow the sticks to be pushed through. After about 90 minutes we’d made a big pile of the guards leaving Bun and me with bamboo splinters in our hands.

Dale and I had a chore to do, we had to fetch the fire truck from another part of the farm (I think all large farms have their own fire truck to sort out burns that run out of control and also if machinery catches on fire during harvest) and take it to a field where one of Dale’s workers was spraying a crop. The fire truck would be used as a water bowser rather than being there in case of fire.

Once back at the house, we loaded the guards into the UTE and back off to the trees. Both Charlotte (12yrs) and Vivienne (9yrs) can drive the UTE although Vivienne’s foot is a bit heavy on the brake! Dale and I continued to plant the trees. I was assisted (?) by Henry who passed me the trees that were supposed to be planted randomly but Henry preferred a bit more structure. Bun and Vivienne put the guards around the trees and we finished as the sun was going down. Our (not very straight) rows of trees, each with a guard, looked impressive. It’s good to know that there will be lines of trees around, offering shade and a wind-break, for generations to come.

That evening I had a shower in Bill to make sure everything worked OK (the van, not me), which it did, while Bun luxuriated under the shower in the house. Dinner, followed by marshmallows around the fire pit, put a load of washing on and off to bed.Read more