Aug 17 2009
Sprung
Sprung
With the full moon came more rain, and it’s almost like old times again. The dust of the road is washed from everything and green shoots burst through soil and bark. Spring’s sprung early as predicted, the peach blossom, magnolias and macadamia flowers attracting honey bees and tiny native stingerless types, along with monarchs, sapphire emperors and other butterflies and the first errant fireflies. Dozens of species of birds flit through the trees, from flocks of tiny red and green finches to giant wedge-tailed eagles cruising low over the canopy.
Everything’s come alive at once and I’m propelled from bed early in the morning, ready and raring to go. Wonder Boy scrambles for the bus with a bellyful of porridge and a bag of finger knitting, ready for his long journey down the winding dirt roads. He’s the first on and last off the bus, living out here at the edge of the known. The morning is warm not long after dawn and the outer layers of clothing are shed as the sun rises higher through the unusually fluffy clouds.
Work resumes on the additions to the old wooden shack. First come the large, heavy blocks on which the structure will rest, shifted carefully into position deep in the ground, bedded over the smashed rubble. These cyclopean stones are easy to move if you roll them into position and they nestle well into the slurry of fire ash poured over the smashed rubble (to establish a level and fill in the gaps for subsequent mortar) ‘cyclopean’ because you have to be a Cyclops to lift them.
I’ve been collecting rocks for quite some time, rolling them out of the creeks after logging and destructive cattle have caused riverbank landslips. It’s easy to tell which stones don’t belong in the river, the boulders that haven’t been there long – such errant rocks are coincidentally the very ones that you need to use, with flat opposing faces or square edges; they’ve fallen into the creek fairly recently and haven’t been tumbled and eroded in the stream. The rounded rocks belong in the river and are all but useless for building purposes anyway.
The layers of stone rise slowly in the trenches, carefully fitted into a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle; the cement is just a filler and the rocks need to be carefully laid so that they interlock without movement before the mortar is added. To do the job properly it’s wise to assemble a layer of rocks and then lift each one from its slotted allotted position to mortar it carefully into place.
Every foot or two you square the entire foundation level off so that a flat surface exists for subsequent layers, so that the structure will hold together. Every now and then you insert a large ‘throughstone’ that passes right through the wall, and you place the stones so they’re laying at the most stable horizontal angle. You’re always working with gravity. Building a securely straight wall relies on the same principles as having an erect posture; the base has to be stable if the upper reaches are to stay standing.
Why not build for the ages? It’s all art, but the craft is all in the details; the mores and habits of building become self-evident with practice, and then you understand why humans have created their edifices the way they have. For instance, it’s important to lay the stones as flat as possible and not lay them on edge to fill gaps. Ideally they’re placed lengthways, pointing out from the centre of the walls or structures. And you have to overlap the stones like bricks so that you don’t build vertical fracture lines into the structure. It’s all a matter of balance, levity and gravity.
I’m building a two-storey fireplace and chimney that joins into the foundations and walls of a projected oval stone room – an oval orifice. “I think you’re overbuilding a bit,” Dave the builder suggests. “You’re sure going deep – that’s a lot of cubic metres of stone you’re moving.”
“One fifth down, four fifths up.” The quote pours from my lips like an old adage. “The footings are designed for a two storey structure – maybe.” It’s good to have an excuse to take a break and roll a smoke. “This way it can have high ceilings. Coffee?”
“Sure thing.. But even so, you’re definitely overbuilding – the way you have all that stone locked together it’s not going anywhere.”
“That’s true,” I agree, making for the shack, “but it’s all built on sand over an underground river, so the foundations have to be a little more solid.” A minute later the espresso coffee is heating on the gas burner and we sit on the pile of rocks beside the shack, bower birds flitting through the sandpaper fig over our heads as small honeyeaters dive out of their way.
“And you’re fixing the old fireplace at the same time, I see?” Dave indicates the crumbling stonework of the old chimney base jutting from the wooden walls of the hundred year old structure.
“Aye – that’s why all this started in the first place. When the first trench was down a foot it became obvious that the old shack’s built on lousy foundations that badly need shoring up – see?” Nodding toward the lime and river sand base that’s been exposed by my excavations, I pass him the makings and light up. “So it became a good idea to add another fireplace here on this side of the wall, if it was necessary to dig so deep anyway – and then it became a good idea to add a room to the fireplace. The way this slope is angled it was easy to start tunneling foundations in from the lower side, so naturally the trenches are deep – deep enough for a two storey structure. And so it goes, with the building designing itself.”
Dave looks at the stinging nettles springing up through the huge expanse of collected stones on the untidy site. “You sure have the rock for it around here.”
Not long after the coffee rush I’ve finished a layer of stone that’s two feet high on top of a smashed rubble base, and the convoluted shapes of the projected chimney and walls are beginning to emerge from the empty vacuum left after many hours of digging with mattock and shovel. All the materials are weatherproof, so the long-term project is picked up and put down between other tasks, chores and artworks. There’s no real rush – if there was, bodies would break and mistakes would be made. Shifting gears by doing other things stretches you in different ways so you don’t become locked in to shapes and habits inimical to human freedom and health.
It’s a great rationalisation and may even be true – and it’s the only way to live anywhere near a level of self-sufficiency without grinding yourself down.
Lunch is quick - fruit picked from the orchard (the mandarines still haven’t quite finished and there are plenty of tangelos and oranges, edible cumquats that work like a wake-up call, lemonade and raspberries) and nuts collected at the end of autumn, eaten with yoghurt and honey. It has to be quick because the vege garden calls, needing a couple of hours of rehabilitation before the clouds come over the hills and down into the valley in earnest shades of grey.
The soil trays are already prepared for this ideal weather and organic seeds are ready in jars to fill them – cherry tomatoes, blue corn, sunflowers, pumpkin and parsley. Beans go straight into the prepared beds along with marigolds and cucumbers, carrots, watermelons, lettuce and capsicum. It’s going to be an early summer so there’s no point planting anything that will bolt in the coming heat - except to collect seed.
The winter’s been so mild the super-sweet stevia and some other herbs have survived to continue this year. Burgeoning potatoes, arrowroot and taro have to be culled for cooking and transplanting into empty fields and folds.
Then, after another smoko and a couple more mandarines, Dave retreats to his campsite in the bush and it’s time to plant a couple of dozen rainforest trees along the regenerating riverbank, on a friendly absent neighbour’s place; he’s told me it’s all right with him to replant as much rainforest there as possible. The trees are well established in their pots – they’ve been waiting a long time for humid enough weather to find their permanent places in the world.
The turtles are out, sunning themselves on a log. They hardly hibernate at all any more. Silver perch and pink-eyed mullet rake the surface and stream away from the turtles when they dive into the water at the sight of me struggling through the shallows with relays of trees, mattock, shovel and cages – an early warning system for all the rest of the river life.
Today’s plantings are all hardy food-bearing types, with fine, complex root systems that hold the soft silt together through floods and that recover easily if broken or covered with debris. They have to be hardy pioneers that attract rainforest birds and animals, handle harsh sun, strong winds and cold winters – and they have to be local species that are fireproof. Planting them is easy – but they also have to be watered, mulched heavily with layers of leaves from the banks and fenced for the first year or two with cages held up by sharpened bamboo stakes – to discourage any inevitable rampaging cows that will turn up over that span. They all have to be subsequently weeded, watered and checked, but only about twice a year for the first two or three years. Then the cages come off and are freed up for more new trees. If you do the minimum, it all works; living an idyllic existence in paradise is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
The shorter hardy lilli pillies, buttonwoods, sandpaper figs, sally wattles, honey bushes, Bangalow, walking stick and cordeline palms and native frangipani are mingled with potentially gigantic booyongs, carrabeens, black beans, strangler and blue quandong fig trees, rosewoods and red cedars. They’re protected by a partial canopy of tall wild tobacco, wild peaches and casuarinas that have been planted by birds, springing up on the compacted, trampled soil of the slashed, burned riverbank ever since the cow farmers left more than thirty years ago.
The trees have been growing here in the nursery along with plenty of other native and exotic species for at least a couple of years - most of them raised from seed, while some were transplanted out of harm’s way from roadways. It’s become one more fresh little task for Wonder Boy, who gets off the bus and sprays the trees and garden beds with the gun-like nozzle attachment on the long hose, blissed out and singing to himself.
He feeds the peacocks, guinea fowl and heavily pregnant house possum while I cook dinner for us both, followed by a dessert of spelt pancakes with organic maple syrup, honey, lemon and stewed apples. Then he insists we play a game of Dungeons and Dragons – old style, without computers, by candlelight.
Sprung.
Time flows on…
- R.A.
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