In a sparsely populated region west of of Tabulam in northern New South Wales (Australia) an extended farmer family are making big environmental impacts of a positive kind. I visited recently to find out what is special about Pretty Gully and the people who care for it, and how they came to relish their lifestyle.
Going organic.
At the age of 18 months Toowoomba toddler Chloe was diagnosed with ADD (attention deficit disorder) and her hyperactive behaviour was exasperating parents Jude and Kevin. But they resisted giving her the drugs that doctors recommended. Instead an occupational therapist encouraged them to consider food allergies as a potential cause, in particular those notorious food additives- artificial colourings and flavourings. When these were removed from Chloe’s diet and the family started eating organic foods there was a rapid improvement in her behaviour and everyone’s health. So the challenge brought on positive change for them all.
The couple took the next step and began to produce their own chemical free food, so that they could be sure of its healthy status. They even bought a grade one Dexter cow, to guarantee natural, fresh milk. An impressive Irish small breed of some rarity, they decided to get a few more and established a Dexter stud over several years.
The family farm
Milking cows was not new to Jude as she had spent most of her childhood on a dairy farm in Bellingen. Twenty years ago her parents Jim and Lyn Wright moved further north with their five children to settle on a 2,500 acre grazing property – ‘Lanikai’ – at Pretty Gully, near Tabulam. The was stocked with beef cattle and run along fairly traditional lines, and fairly chemical free, up intil about 5 years ago.
At that time there had been a devastating drought and cattle numbers had to be drastically reduced on Lanikai. The family had become increasingly interested in conservation of the local flora and fauna and, for the wildlife’s sake, had been fencing off areas from cows to allow for natural forest regeneration.
Jim became the captain of the local fire brigade and began to develop a more sensitive approach to fire prevention. He stopped doing the annual burn offs of undergrowth that traditional, but inappropriate management practises demanded and recommends more slashing around boundaries to reduce fire hazard. (Burn offs are a major cause of bushfires after all!)
Eco-tourism
Lanikai is bordered to the north by several kilometres of the Clarence River and is opposite the Yabbra National Park. It is mainly forest, with just a 200 acre clearing around the house. Originally a gold mining area, with a small township, several old home sites can be seen scattered here and there, mainly marked by the presence of still productive fruit trees. Gold miners built a system of races across 9 km to flush gold from gullies. In more recent times holidaymakers have been coming to try their luck panning for gold in the local creeks.
Five years ago the Wrights decided to set up a proper camp ground and make a business of it. The bush campground is close to a creek, with a lovely rock pool, cathedral-like, with a closed tree canopy above, and there’s a big waterfall further on. The camp ground has a rustic bush kitchen with gas fridge and woodstove and the covered dining area is where landcare meetings are held.
A popular spot for watching wildlife, Jim takes visitors on walking track tours, visiting historic locations and resident animals, often going night spotting. The little bettongs that live there enjoy scavenging around the grounds at night, oblivious to human visitors. They sleep in amongst patches of bladey grass, which, of course, never get slashed!
There are also many miles of mountain bike tracks for visitors to explore. The Wrights’ beautiful home gardens, where landscaped flower gardens give way to jungly permaculture, as old orchards are being diversified, are also popular for tours. Field naturalists, pensioner and bush walking groups and the like love to visit Lanikai.
Rainforest management
The Wright’s extended family play an active role in helping to care for their local environment. Several of them sit on a local Government Trust body which governs management of the Pretty Gully Flora Reserve, that shares a border with Lanikai and was preserved by gazettal in 1912. This beautiful subtropical rainforest pocket covers a sheltered hillside site of several acres, at the headwaters of Pretty Gully Creek.
Daughter Nikki has drawn up a management plan, which aims to be a living, developing document and receives input from interested local residents. A Property Agreement for the buffer zone of wet scherophyll forest on Lanikais border with the Reserve has been undertaken as a protective measure for long term sustainability. A neighbouring farmer has followed suit. The Reserve could do with expansion and gaps in wildlife corridors leading to it would be planted, in the Wrights view of things.
Human diversity
Pretty Gully is not connected to the power grid and most residents use generators. The Wright family prefer solar power. Kevin has mechanical and electrical skills and is working on converting an old front loader washing machine to being hand operated. So washing will be silent while you get good old-fashioned exercise, something that the old hand wringer, great for speeding up clothes drying, is also good for.
Every family member has different skills and interests to complement the others. Jude has been specialising in the study and application of biodynamic agriculture on their nearby share farm. She makes up the bd preparations and tells Kev when to spray them. Jude is getting her parents interested in biodynamics and Kevin sprays the preps on their land now too.
Nikki, with husband Jason and son Hamish live on a corner of Lanikai, where they are permaculturing the gardens and very involved in local landcare isssues. Fiona, the other Wright daughter and husband have been actively helping on the tourism side of things. The whole family are very committed to organic farming and finding a balance in land management. They often come together for mutual help, such as at potato planting, mounding and harvest time.
The BD share farm
Jude and Kevin have been busy share farming a property adjacent to Lanikai for the past year. The150 avocardoes, some mangoes, sapodillas, longans and bananas, have been certified biodynamic for about 7 years. The land is on a basalt cap with wonderful rich red soil.
When they arrived a year or so ago the orchard was very neglected and root rot was killing off many of the avocardoes. The kikuyu grass was waist high! Slashing around trees and mulching helped reverse the trend. Planting of bananas as companions helped to soak up excess moisture around the avocardoes and spraying of biodynamic preparation 501 was also useful.
Trees now enjoy a regular sheet mulching regime, getting locally available sludge, from a soup canning factory, sawdust from the mill, cardboard and several types of rock dust on top, to hold it all down. Compost is also made, using the bd preps.
Power towers
The great majority of the avocardo trees that I saw were vibrantly healthy. As slashing and mulching wouldn’t normally be enough to reverse their previous near death condition, I could only deduce that the added presence of two ‘Radionic Towers’ (also known as ‘Towers of Power’) must have made a big difference. These were constructed a few months after the family’s arrival.
The Towers act as antennae for cosmic forces, such as paramagnetism, which have a stimulating effect on earthly biological processes and are particularly effective in helping plants combat fungal problems. Hubbertus Bobbert, the property owner, showed Jude how to use pendulum dowsing to locate positions for the towers, and specially designed them for the job. The Towers were positioned ‘beneath a ley line’, with one at each end of the orchard.
Hubbertus incorporated biodynamic preps in glass jars into them, to broadcast the appropriate ‘message’ into the energy field, with soil remedies at the top (500 and anti-phytophera) and atmosphere remedies (such as 501) at the bottom. A central copper pipe within the Tower was filled with pieces of quartz. I could feel their subtle energy radiating out as we drove through the orchard, and admired the lush new leaf growth of adjacent trees.
Leapfrog
As well as farming and raising their families Jude and Nikki are very active in the larger community, and have been helping develop an innovative educational program called ‘Leapfrog’. A landcare group initiative, it is a means of raising awareness about frogs in the local environment through schools.
The landcare group now have an educational package for a four week schools program of various activities, designed with help from a local zoologist and teacher. The kids catch tadpoles and make audio tapes of frog calls in springtime. Tapes are sent off to a volunteer frog expert who identifies the species. So far seven local schools are involved, and a different slant is often used by each to get the message across. For instance one school uses an economic angle to encourage frog appreciation – the more frogs you have, the less farm chemicals are needed for insect control.
So I found that Lanikai is more than just a place to camp, it’s a whole experience of responsible farming and earth care. A place to rest, rejuvenate in nature and be inspired!
© Alanna Moore 1998. This article was first published in Green Connections magazine (Australia).