The neighbourhood

Now that we've settled on the name of our new venture, we need to sort out the problem of the address.  According to the title deeds our address leads past the sewage treatment plant to a dead end nowhere near our farm. Visits from friends or deliveries are going to be challenging or non existent unless this piece of local government logic is mastered.

What better way to meet the neighbours than to knock on their door and ask them where they think they live.

We have only three neighbours, our road ends at the last neighbours front gate. So I decide to start there.  I arrive on foot as walking the kilometer or so gives me time to take in the afternoon. The road makes sweeping turns to cross two creeks. Its a private road and I am to learn that the neighbours own shares in a grader and maintain their no name road themselves. Later when I report that piece of information, the other half of the farming partnership's eyes light up -    a grader -  now that's a bit of machinery he hadn't considered.

 It's clear that not many people walk down our road, the neighbours dogs go berserk in a puzzled kind of way.
'Where's your vehicle!  Where's your vehicle '  they seem to bark.
'How can we pee on the tyres and check you out, if you just walk in?'

Their owners are welcoming  and in a half hour I learn the mystery of the address. It seems the legal documents are right -- up to a point.  Our road is connected to the 'dead end' but only in the form of a fire trail that cuts through a state forest with two locked gates barring the way.  Our neighbours got sick of loosing their visitors so they erected a sign to their farm. The local council was helpful, but each time it put up a sign, it mysteriously disappeared - the council was the first to give in. It seems a truce has been declared  -- but with whom?

As they have been there for 18 years, they no longer have trouble with friends loosing their way. Deliveries, they report are still a problem and anyone with a GPS tends to remain lost because the advice to 'make a left turn at the next intersection'  will send them sight seeing down to the sewage treatment plant.  

On our next visit I meet our oldest neighbour, he's lived in the area off and on for most of his 70 years. His grandmothers family were early farmers and timber cutters, a skill his father then passed on to his son.  He remembers cutting timber for the coal mines in the area, catching bags full of eels and roasting them for dinner over a camp fire and working the chain saw so hard that it set the bush on fire when he put it down for 'smoko', giving a new meaning to the term.

Our oldest neighbour is a wonderful walking local history book, he is also the proud owner of an eclectic open air machinery museum. He refers to his oldest chain saw as the heirloom and keeps it on the shelf along with all the others even though it hasn't started in over a decade. He has a '49 International that not only starts, but goes and rows of other 'stuff' that makes my city slicker knowledge and vocabulary redundant.

Our third neighbour, we discover is about 12 months ahead of us on the farming learning curve, and streets ahead in the infrastructure stakes.  In a little over a year they have renovated what is fondly referred to as 'the camp', turning  it into a cosy farm house for a family of three lively little girls. Fences, cattle yards, a tree house, veggie garden, chooks and a bunch of neighbourly cattle have all appeared in the space of a year.

As I circled back back to our block, I mentally filed the reams of new information and to that added a small mountain of jobs for our  'to do' list.
There was a spring in my step that I put down to the pleasure I felt about the openly genuine offers of help and information from each of the neighbours.

Paper work

Now we own our piece of rural paradise so it's time for the paperwork. The in tray has its first layer-

•    we are in a water catchment area- so there are restrictions about waste and  run off,
•    we are in a bush fire risk area- so there are restrictions about where and what we can build
•    there is the possibility that valuable minerals may be discovered - so we don't own the ground under our farm

The second layer in the in tray is very thin, it involves insurance. The phone call to the insurance company went something like
" Now how big is the house?"
"There isn't one."
"How many sheds?"
"None."
"Machinery?"
"Nope."
"Stock?"
"Nope."
"Crops, you have some crops then?"
"No, no crops."
The stark truth became painfully obvious, we had just purchased something that had an insurance value close to zilch!
Ah,  but what about third party - so money changed hands to cover that lost soul who stumbles down 'no name road' onto 'no name farm' and then stumbles and breaks his leg.

The third paper layer reveals an interesting piece of information, 'no name' farm has a name. It appears that locally it's referred to as 'Apple Gully Farm' because a creek called Apple Gully flows through it. So  on our next expedition we begin a search for signs of apple trees down in the gully.  No abandoned orchards, no feral apple trees, just the ever thriving thistles and blackberries. Those homesick early settlers have a lot to answer for.

But the apples were there all along, right under our noses.

A new paper trail, or in this case a Google trail, provides the information we need.
The vital clue was the tall and twisted limbs on some of the trees on our farm and sure enough they have a well known city cousin - the Angophora or Sydney Red Gum.
The apples in Apple Gully are the Rough barked Apple- Angophora floribunda and Angophora  bakeri
also known as the Apple Box. They don't have those flamboyant colours on their trunks like their flashy city relatives, but they solve the puzzle and 'Apple Gully farm' becomes the official name of our new venture.

The case is not closed yet, instead it's led to another interesting paper trail- the Angophora is not even a gum tree, it belongs in the myrtle family and in 1795 the angophoras around Port Jackson were given their first botanical names. It seems strange to name a tree after an ancient Greek vessel so far from the Mediterranean,  apparently the seed pods reminded the early botanists of angophoras and the name stuck.

The Decision is Made

In the end, the property chose us, it ticked all the boxes as they say.

Well off the beaten track, in fact so far off that it has no real address. To be picky, it does have an address, but if you follow the directions to it you end up kilometers away at the end of a dirt road leading to the sewage treatment plant.
Another box ticked - no more earnest door to door desperates selling religion or discount vouchers.

No neighbours in sight- another plus.

No vertical ascents, just green rolling hills and full dams.

And wonder of wonders, paddocks full of daffodils about to burst into bloom, yes daffodils all planted in rows down a nameless road in the Australian bush.

The next stage is 'closing the deal' that fine line between being as excited as a six year old with a brand new toy and as cool as a city slicker  cucumber who is can do a deal with one eye shut. So, no contact with the agent for a week then just barely feigned interest is expressed.
"Yes, we're still looking, what else is available?"

Meanwhile we return to 'no name farm', hop the fence and go exploring. Even to a city slickers eyes, it's apparent that this farm has not seen much activity in years. Trees with trunks as thick as your arm are growing in the tracks while others as big as a light house have fallen over the fences in too many places.
And slowly we realise that we have stumbled onto a wombat retirement village, as the  creatures have established condominiums everywhere, complete with vast earth works that the Colditz escapers would have been proud of.

The wombat or 'vombatus ursinus' lives underground in a complex of tunnels. They have an entrance and a back door that doubles as an escape tunnel. They seem to dig a good number of test burrows before they settle on the right real estate, and judging by the number of abandoned tunnels, they tire quickly of  their homes and move on to another patch.  A small child and/or a medium sized dog could easily fit down a wombat burrow.

We note that there is a fine crop of blackberry in places, while scotch thistles and serrated tussock are also doing well. 'What Weed is That' could become bedtime reading if we decide that 'no name farm ' is the place for us.

So after a couple of weeks of being cool, the offer is made and accepted and we are farmers- albeit farmers with L plates on our bikes with trainer wheels.

We discover the identity of the real suckers.

Property number six is beyond steeply undulating. The agent slows to put the Toyota into '4 wheel drive' and we are barely past the front gate. We push up the track, sliding sideways on the loose gravel. My high school study of geography tells me that the contour lines are getting so close they are blurring into one solid line.

Some time in the past a 'pioneer of the area' cleared this land, probably before the invention of chain saws and bull dozers. Now mother nature is getting her own back, tree ferns, bracken and good sized eucalypts are reclaiming their hills, contour by contour.

We nudge carefully down the track, the view is unforgettable as much for the vertiginous descent as the outlook. I file property number six under 'memories of trekking in Nepal, without snowy peak backdrop.'

Note to self - research mountain goats or research farms with fewer contour lines.

Back at at a lower altitude, the conversation in the Toyota turns to livestock, as the urban would be farmers interrogate the agent about options on farms aspiring to be cliffs.

' The run of suckers is late into market this Spring' we learn. ....

The run of suckers!! ... are we that obvious!!

' Yer, this has been bad -there's a 48% drop compared to last year'

The ramifications of the GFC are clear, yet here we are in the back of the Toyota being confronted with our sheer naivety.

'Yer, the new season lamb market is way down this year.'

The would be farmers both breathe a sigh of relief - another lesson learned - keep your mouth shut and all will be revealed.

Later I quietly google 'sucker' ..... "A lamb still sucking the ewe and ready for slaughter. The most succulent lamb of all."

Are we suckers?

Wandering along the main street of country towns window shopping for a farm is an interesting way to while away a morning and it's clear everything is for sale. 'ultimate country living' -- 'for the equine enthusiast' or ' secluded acreage' feature strongly in the widow displays , my favourite... ' steeply undulating' ... left me wondering if climbing gear was not optional or at the very least mountain goats will be the only stock worth considering.
And what story lies behind - ' 120 ha, 2 bedrooms, no bathroom, mortgagee sale, DA approved for stunning home.'

But back to the suckers. In the back of the 4 wheel drive I shuffled the files over to the other seat as we bounced over the cattle grids. The agent explained that he was more into the 'stock' rather than 'station' side of the business.

At the first property there was a problem with the gate, -wrong keys or wrong property? Not a promising start.

Next stop was 'Lost Hope Farm', a sad and sagging house with a good crop of dust taking hold, possibly sadder was the dog chain at the back door with collar still attached - do I even want to know that story?

A Good Idea - Lets Buy a Farm

Maybe it was the half deaf neighbour's choice of radio station I was forced to share- or was it the fact that I could hear the sound of the 747's lumbering down the runway at the airport a good 15 km away?

Suddenly it seemed like a perfectly natural idea - find a rural getaway, a farm - an escape. The city was crowding in and the only way to beat it was to leave it.

That was the biggest decision, or was it. Where would this farm be found? Do you just scan the papers and check the 'open for inspection' times in the rural real estate section and then wander round on Saturdays checking out the ... what does one 'check out' on a farm?

Friends and family provided input from across the advice spectrum -
'You're what!!!'
'A farm! You'll go broke.'
'Leave the city, you'll be bored stiff.'
'Fantastic, you can have a horse!'
'Great, think of all the fresh veggies you can produce - and chickens and cows and...'

Nothing much happened for a month or two, then the tree change urge started to gnaw away again, so one weekend a 'tire kicking ' exercise was organised. We headed off into the hour and a half circle we had drawn around the city to catch ourselves a farm.

Step 1.  Cruise up and down the main street of chosen country town and peer at the 'For Sale' displays in the real estate agents windows.

Step 2.  Enter the offices with enticing window displays and enquire about properties for sale.

Step 3.  Be prepared to be catagorised as a weekend tire kicker.

Step 4.  Be persistent, because country real estate agents are a loquacious group, with plenty of time to dispense country wisdom to would be farmers. You'll learn stuff that will become important in life. Information mentally filed away included -the paths of the power lines, where the local tip could be found, tips on soil quality, weeds to watch and roads that led well off the beaten track .

Well we left our first meeting knowing that real estate agents are known as stock and station agents in the bush and they like to tell you the about the prices the 'suckers' fetched at the last sale. Did he include us in the sucker category?