Life on the Edge

Well, the view was certainly great while I worked this week installing a new 2,000 gallon water tank at the far edge and on top of the Gully dam. A bit of ditch digging in hard, rocky clay brought forth a few swear words, but I sit here this morning happy that the job is done.

The other two tanks, seen to the right and below this new tank, hold fresh, drinking water that I collect off the several roofs that comprise the Windgrove Centre (house, studio, shower block, shed). This rain water is first stored in tanks down at the centre (around 10,000 gallons) and then pumped up to the Gully Dam tanks as the need arises. What this is all about is insuring that there is great water pressure when showering. I mean, who likes to take a hot shower after a long, hard suffering day and have just a piddling amount of water drip onto one’s sore, tired body?

The new tank, however, will be filled with dam water and will serve two important functions. First, and foremost, is that for the first time in Windgrove’s 15 year history, there is now an immediate and quick response capability for fire fighting. Previously, if a fire were to break out (which happened in the painting studio in 2001) one had to chose between running the three hundred meters to the fire pump by the Peace Garden, starting it and then running back to the house to fight the fire, or, grabbing a bucket, fill it with water from the shower and throw it on the fire. Either way there were problems. The former took several minutes and the latter, although initially quicker, didn’t give much water.

Now, though, if there is a house fire, either of the two fire hoses fixed at opposite corners of the house can be immediately turned on.

The other use of this new tank will be to water the gardens in a more efficient way. And next year, when I hope to build a fairly large garden complex, this will help immensely.

Of course, having the best fire fighting equipment and the best designed garden are useless if there is no water.  In the last 14 months there has been no serious rain to speak of. The water tanks at the house are empty leaving only the Gully tanks three quarter full to provide potable water. The photo shows the level of water in the dam for fire fighting. Although not yet at a serious stage, if no good rain falls in the next couple of months things will start to get a bit parched.

I hate to admit it, but I might be forced to install a water saving device onto my favourite shower.  Bummer.

Within all our lives there have been those moments when we have come to a “fork in the road” and have had to choose to go one way or the other. Throughout history the symbolism of such a moment is always ponderous and fraught with indecision.

For years, there was only one road into Windgrove. For years, I was content to travel along it. Yesterday, machinery arrived to fork a new road off of it.

The reason is that Windgrove needs funding. No benefactor has arrived on gossamer wings to underwrite the costs for building the infrastructure of the Windgrove residency program and I refuse, for ethical reasons, to seek government funding. The sale of my art work barely keeps me afloat let alone supporting other artists. In the end there was a choice between remaining whole and self contained or opening up a portion of the land for sale.

Today, as I write this blog, machinery and men are busy creating a driveway to two new house sites that fork off the Windgrove drive.

Exciting, because the money earned from the sale of the house sites (six and eight acres virtual waterfront) will be used for the construction of, I hope, four artist-in-resident’s cabins as well as a multipurpose studio. Exciting, because I sincerely believe in the mission of Windgrove to be a “refuge for learning” and this money helps create this reality.

Sad, because I have had to let loose of land that I have wanted to keep “untouched” by human development. A creation of human habitat for sure, but a loss of habitat for others.

In the end, throughout all the emotional comings and goings of what is the best path to take for Windgrove, great care has been taken in the design of the driveways to minimise environmental disturbance and to create an aesthetic approach. Likewise, the house sites themselves, have been placed in locations following passive solar considerations as well as minimising any impact on the environment. A real challenge over the past year, but the final solutions speak of a high quality of care and understanding of the land.

Whoever ends up living here will be very fortunate indeed. 

Almost every evening for the past month I have been slightly obsessed with drawing up plans for the four Windgrove residency cabins; places where writers, visual artists, musicians and others will stay for two months to ponder their navels if they so choose. Not overly large (around 250 square feet or 25 square meters max) they must not only sit into the landscape comfortably, but also function well as a comfortable home away from home. Passive solar design considerations, the view from the windows, the layout of the tiny kitchen, the walk to the outdoor shower/toilet and the trees seen along the walk are all important.

What will it be like for someone, who has just flown in from America or Africa, to open the door and walk inside? How will they feel? Will their jet lag be momentarily replaced by an exhale of exaltation?

So, I sit at the dining table, books and papers sprawled out. There is no music on the stereo, the TV remains in the closet and all is quiet save for the wind in the trees and the sound of surf beating into the dunes. I look at each drawing and conjure up a person inhabiting the space between the pencil lines. I imagine the distance between each cabin. I look seven generations into the future and see people walking in and around a matured, landscaped cluster of cabins.

Are the birds singing? 

These cabins might not get built for another two years, but I am compelled now to start the design process; a process where the finished cabins will not look anything like what I am drawing tonight. But it is important, at least for me, to explore idea after idea and allow the mysterious growth of new ideas to spring forth from the composted ideas of earlier cabin designs.

P’sP = 6P

Peter’s Principal states that Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

In like manner, even planting out this year’s trees takes a certain amount of planning in order that, 100 years down the track, the trees planted now will still be around. With hungry wallabies, rabbits, salt spray and dry, windy conditions, growing trees successfully requires some forethought (and a hell of a lot of work).

This week I took delivery of an order I placed four months ago. Six thousand, four foot long bamboo stakes; one thousand five hundred mulch mats, one thousand five hundred tree guards and 560 seedling trees.  In two weeks, the final delivery of another 940 trees from a different nursery will arrive.

I’m excited.

Tomorrow, just to make sure the planting out of the trees goes easily, I’m planning on having a full body massage.

Love those plans.

Life is full of strange twists. I'm sure all those people who know my history with Forestry Tasmania might find the following a bit difficult to believe, but confess I must. You see, just after another nasty "letter to the editor" where I complained bitterly about the practices of Forestry Tasmania, I had an epiphany and began to appreciate what the prophets, Paul and Evan, have been preaching: "The Styx Valley and Tarkine trees have been standing around for 60 million years and doing what? Nothing it seems. They are little more than the world's tallest dole bludgers. Better that they were turned into paper, at least, than waste another 60 million years". It all began to make sense; the dollars began to line up. Why, I thought, have I been promoting "peace" when I should have been promoting myself for a "piece" of the action. The kind of action that all of Gunn's shareholders are taking part in. I wanted dividend payoffs from chips, too, to help pay for my outdoor stainless steel barbecue with attached wok and complete set of steak knives You can't hold that against me, can you? At my age of nearing 60 I wanted to wallow in luxurious linen, not guilt. It just so happened that at this exact moment, our multi purpose Forestry Tasmania was wanting to expand their "chip" market with a supplementary export item. And talking about synchronistic, someone high up in the inner sanctum of political power also felt that if I could be bought out they could kill two birds with one stone (so to speak) both by silencing me and, using my design capabilities, gain a valuable commodity for consumer consumption. I gladly listened to their inspired deception plan and decided to go for broke. Money greased my conscience and I was in the winner's circle, designated chief scientist/ construction engineer under the auspices of projects of extreme state significance.

Working undercover with FT's leading forward thinkers (the same talented, imaginative folk who gave us Southwood and selective clearfelling), we came up with a cutting edge, visionary product: growing the "Pre-Salted Tomato" to slice into the profits of the world's hamburger franchises. Immediately (behind closed door approval), I went straight to Monsanto and received their blessings and their expert advice on how to do things in secret. The result was that this summer I was able to produce a small, but ground breaking crop of tomatoes grown entirely with salt water drawn directly from Roaring Beach. Yes! Salt water!

But now my dog and I are hopping mad because all this significant research is in peril because of the Greens. You see, just as I was laying the final length of pipe to augment the salt water delivery system (desperately needed if I am to expand the business and make mega tomatoes and bucks) the Greens and Tasmanian Conversation Trust have slapped an injunction on my taking any further water from Roaring Beach, a listed conservation zone in their cosmology. To them, salt water can't go any higher than the high tide mark. Don't they know about the wonders of modern petrol pumps?

What a rotten thing to do. Especially when a lot of work was already accomplished without bothering anyone with plans or need for bureaucratic, time consuming approvals. Using hard earned tax payer's money (from you know whom) and a 38 ton excavator taken off a forest coupe, the above photo shows the construction of the massive large holding dam. In order to uphold confidence-in-trading regulations, a government advisor told me to tell my neighbours that what was being built was an Olympic outdoor salt water community swimming pool with wave machine for those days when there wasn't any surf at Roaring Beach. (Our government is truly clever in ways of "necessary" deception.)

And aren't the aesthetics of the curving pipe beautiful? I took great pains to achieve this. This photo shows the actual start of the attractive pipe line from Roaring Beach to the holding dam. Salt water was to be pumped up to the dam and then gravity fed down to irrigate a massive under cover hydroponics greenhouse (yet to be constructed, but several prominent overseas investors are in the pipeline). But alas, those Greens. I despair. My "meandering pipeline" to the dam just won't do for them. In my defence, a senior media consultant from the government's enterprise sector said: "Relative to the size of the ocean, the amount of salt water taken from Roaring Beach by senior tomato researcher, Mr. Adams, is negligible". A cabinet level spokesperson further added: "Not one tomato workers job is negotiable". In my own defence I said: "I desperately want to receive next year's Federal "Export Hero Award". If John Gunn can receive it exporting chips to Japan, I want to receive it for exporting Roaring Reds (copyright) to every MacDonald's in the world. My motto: "Better Red than Green" should win all sorts of international political and business acclaim. We'll just have to see how this story ripens. Check back on April Fool's Day, 2005, April 1.

Like the gods suspended above the stage in a Greek theatre who arrive in the nick of time to solve a difficulty, two separate events have allowed for the placement of guardian stones in front of the house.

First, and definitely more "machina", was the 38 ton excavator shown delicately dropping into place two of the three dolerite boulders. When they first arrived on a rather large ten wheel truck, I was fearful of just dumping them in location thinking they would just roll through the house. They were, therefore, deposited elsewhere (with a big roar as they crashed down off the tip truck's tray). However, how does one move a three and a half ton boulder? The solution presented itself when the dams were being dug in the form of a nice, big yellow machine. But, even though the boulders were eventually placed in the correct spot, for the first few days they looked out of place, almost harsh. I began to fret over how to soften them into the landscape. On Monday evening, after a busy day working in the studio plus talking to two sets of tourists from New Zealand and Canada, and easing into a bit of stupor preceding bed time, there was a knock on the door. Standing next to his bicycle was a young German asking permission to stay for the night. At first I will admit to adamantly telling him "No!", but seeing the tired and disappointed expression on his face, my "welcome the unexpected guest " side of my heart one over from the "give yourself some privacy" side. I showed him a tent, the path to the beach and said: "I'll see you in the morning".

Well, Daniel has been here for three days now using his muscled 28 year old body and artistic mind of a graphic designer to create a more pleasing entrance to Windgrove. Once again, I have been reminded how good things can come in big or little packages. The key is to simply stay open to the possibility that a solution will present itself. And, when it comes knocking late at night, don't turn away out of tiredness.

Last Friday's journal entry focused on a few drops of water coming into the house. Well, maybe more than a few; a flood. What I failed to mention, though, was that while I was dealing with this inconvenience, the big effort of the day was in overseeing the completion of the last dam to be constructed at Windgrove in the past two weeks. All up, two new dams were built with the third one on Friday simply an enlargement of an existing upper reservoir for the Peace Garden pond. Now, just below the Peace Garden, a small reflecting pond has been installed. Presently, it looks a bit raw and maybe (to some people) even unnecessary, but for the past four years the thought of putting in another water element kept entering my imagination. And, who am I to question the muse? Since the 38 ton excavator, complete with a bucket capable of holding three cubic metres of dirt, was already on the land building the Gully Dam, now seemed the time to direct its big scoop this way. In a few months, after the top soil has been spread, new grass has sprouted and the pond filled to overflowing and reflecting a pink sunset, I'll take a photo and put it up on the blog.

Built between the she-oak hill on one side and the hill of the large keyhole circle on the other side, the biggest of the dams, the Gully Dam (above photo), is purely practical in that it will allow for a good sized garden and small orchard as well as instantaneous bush fire protection through a gravity fed system of sprinklers on the roof and hoses on the ground. Because both the hills had exposed dolerite outcrops dropping down their sides going into the gully, there was every chance that all we would hit when digging started was more rock or gravel (meaning no dam). But.... we hit a good seam of clay and were able to create a waterproof dam 100 feet (30 meters) long,16 feet (5 meters) at its deepest point and 75 feet (22 meters) wide along the Gully Dam's dam wall. Not only was it a joy to know that Windgrove's future water needs would be met, it was also a joy to see how Andrew, the operator of this massive, earth moving machine, could handle it with such skilful sensitivity and grace. There is still a lot of work to be done in the digging of a quarter mile long trench and the laying of two sets of pipes (fire/garden water and drinking water) as well as all the junctures and multiple fittings, but the really big work has been accomplished and for this I am happy.

How's this for a laugh? No, I am not displaying my collection of stainless cooking pots on the floor of the living room because they look good there. Rather, they have been strategically placed to capture the many drips of water coming off the ceiling. A week and a half ago I wrote how I had gone on the roof to fix a leaking sky-light. Well, back then when it rained only one pot was needed on the floor. Now look at how many are needed. Obviously, my repair job created more leaks than it fixed. Reminds me of the time I tried to patch up a relationship by explaining my actions. Well, the more I explained the more furious she became. Silicon, like words, can't just be thrown around with the hope it will be effective. Do I dare go up on the roof again?

Just when you think that everything is done and you can kick back and enjoy the fruits of your labor, the kick is of a different sort. After all the planning on where to put up the eight tents for the RISD students, the one area that I thought was the most sheltered from the prevailing south-easterly, southerly, south-westerly, westerly, north-westerly and northerly winds (directions from which storms come) turned out to be the most vulnerable. On the same day this week the wind knocked the ladder over, that night it played havoc with the two tents on the above site. I hadn't figured on a freak "north-easterly" blasting into the one unprotected direction the tents were facing in their horseshoe shaped, treed enclosure. They had been left up because a group of Greenpeace "front-line" people were coming for a weekend of R&R in early February and, of the three tent areas, this was the most beautiful and private. (One reason the site is so nice is that I had brought in 15 tons of sand to level out and soften the ground.) I wonder how the RISD students who slept here would have coped should the wind storm have happened during their stay? Something tells me they would have loved it.