The Gatekeeper

Today I made a gate for Ginny's Garden. Its made from some old disparate bits of wood that come from very different previous uses and purposes, but have come together to create this humble, yet aesthetically pleasing entrance into a space for growing food that we have been dreaming, talking about and planning for nearly two years.


The gate to Ginny's garden
It occured to me this afternoon, that what we have built here, is in many ways no different to what the early European settlers built when they first arrived here and almost everywhere else in Victoria. The first Europeans to arrive from Van Diemens land with the intention of making a profit from the port Phillip District, landed at Indented Head on the Bellarine Peninsula, and set about constructing a dwelling and vegetable Garden. It didnt prosper. We know the European history of Australia is littered with failure and ignorance. We cannot hope to think that we are that much different in our thinking but we at least try to have some level of sensitivity towards the land we tread and attempt to cultivate.  I just hope that the same ignorance of our forefathers doesnt live on in us, though an intuition  that it inevitably will, is the only path we can hope to tread with insight that leads to a different future.

We dont claim any special knowledge. We are amateurs at both living and growing and all we do is but an experiment.

At this time of year, we hear the call of the Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo. That is what this blog is named after. Someone called it the truth bird. The truth Bird. I heard them the first time last feburary and again this februrary. I saw one this afternoon, pointing it out to Ginny, high in the sky beating its wings laconically, almost lazily. We have feathers of the red tailed Cockatoo mounted and framed on the wall. You might say, we have taken it as our totem. We want to integrate with the land we tread, as much as possible, and this is no easy task in the world we live. We think of ourselves and see ourselves as wage slaves trying vainly to emancipate ourselves, even if it is only a partial emancipation. We collect, forage, build, create, and try and grow. We arent experts. We are learners, experimenters, and this blog we hope will be a chronicle of this journey of emancipation.

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