 Solstice Our last event of 2013 was a fabulous night with musician extraordinaire Paul Robert Burton whose concert provided a frame for the documentary 'Fractured Country" . Paul provided first hand stories of farmers and families affected by CSG he had met as he supported activists, mums, dads and grandparents at blockades around the country with his music. Our camp kitchen transformed into a stage as we sat under the stars, inspired by both the music and the ordinary people trying to protect the Land. A fitting acknowledgement of our Care for Country on the Solstice.  The first house completed at BIndarrabi!! Carol & Doone were thrilled to have a bed and fridge in their new house to celebrate Christmas day with fresh figs from their tree for breakfast. The house was completely built using the solar power from their stand-alone 3.5 KW PV tracking system. It is North facing with a polished concrete floor for thermal mass, 6ml e-glass windows, composting toilet, limestone walls with extra insulation in both roof & walls. In spite of the louvers in the cupola not being wired yet (they are electrically operated) to help with venting hot air, on a 39 degree day it was 10 degrees cooler inside the house. Definitely happy with that!. The in-ground 10,000 gallon concrete tank also doubles as a patio area. The house is designed for minimum maintenance and to Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) 29.  In the first week of January we had the fire trails behind the house sites put in and the all-weather road to the proposed fire-safe house from both precincts completed. It has been a busy start to the year! January Long Weekend saw much progress being made on our new Nature Loo composting toilets for the campground. We should be able to have the Grand Opening (?) at our Feb gathering :) We also added more concrete to the rock ford over to Harvest Field to smooth out a few bumps and a mighty effort was made to clear all of the Groundsell weed. Next year will be very easy to clear any regrowth. On Saturday night one of our Friends, Dr. Delton Chen gave an interesting presentation on a new project he is working on to provide a digital currency to be used as payment for companies who reduce CO2 emissions. This removes the stigma of a 'tax' and is not political. We wish him all the best in birthing his idea. And...... it is blackberry season! We all now value the effort put into gathering a bucket of blackberries ! Kathy kindly converted many of them to blackberry pikelets for morning tea. Absolutely delicious! Sorry there is no pic. We ate them all before I thought of it!  Bunya Nut However I did get a picture of our Bunya Nut efforts. A Friend brought us a Bunya Nut so we of course Googled a recipe for Bunya Nuts and found a recipe for a cake that we approached with some trepidation. It was delicious!!!!!!!!! First we had to crack the nut open, a special technique of throwing it on the ground, then boiling the nuts for around 3 hours until the kernals split open. We then de-hulled the kernals and they were ready for our recipes. The kernals are a little like a chestnut/potato mix and are 9% protein with the rest complex carbohydrates. As well as the cake we kept some and stir-fried them with garlic and ginger. Very moreish....great bush tucker!! Lets take a breath and see what the rest of the year brings! 
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Whilst you would think people who are attracted to a project like this would have a lot of similarity, and of course at the deeper level there is otherwise they wouldn't come, there is also an enormous amount of diversity of background and experience, which is very exciting as we look to build a vibrant, dynamic community.
We are having a whole week on the land from Jan 9-15 to start to add amenities to the campsite. This will not only be helpful for visitors but will support shareholders who will be coming and starting to build on their house-sites in the near future. So do come along and join us, either for a day, a few days or the week! Please contact us before the 9th if you are thinking of coming as we don't have phone access out there yet. I keep feeling so excited as we take another step along the path of this adventure. I would like to share a quote from one our times evolutionary thinkers, Andrew Cohen "In Love with the Possible: When you have the profound awakening that you are part of a cosmic process that's going somewhere, you find yourself falling more deeply in love with what's possible than you are with what has already happened. And this shift inevitably challenges almost all of your values and beliefs, including your ideas about what it means to love another person. What are the conscious and unconscious values that inform your relationships with other people? Are those relationships primarily based on the past—on shared personal history and outdated cultural ideals? Or are they evolutionarily inspired, informed by the understanding that we're part of a process that's ever-aspiring to go somewhere new? Are your relationships alive with the evolutionary impulse, with a shared love for what's possible? Once we awaken to them, these future-oriented spiritual values are going to impact, in the most profound way, every notion we have of what life is supposed to look like." |
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