-
Hello, Gday and Well Met
Hey all, pleasure to be aboard! Some great information and a lot of good spirit around here.
I am 29, and from one of the more wild and wooly areas of South East Queensland, Australia. Mostly subtropical, some old growth rainforest, grasslands and a bit of frost and hail in winter. No rain when you want it, and then it floods :D
I am a proud Dad, and a Horticulturalist by trade. I tried my hand at being a public servant for a few years there, however the serving wears you down and I played all the Solitaire I will ever need to play, hah.
I am one of nature's walkers, if I don't spend at least an hour a day wandering around the scrub around my home or at the very least poking around my organic herb and veg gardens I get a bit toe-ey.
I have always loved wild places,and related stuff... natural crafts, wildlife spotting, revegetation, seed gathering, bushfoods and medicines, photography, fibre and cordage crafts and the like. I am not the world's best stone tool maker at all but I can knock out useable pieces if I need to. I'm very big on a low impact, sustainable and open approach to the land and her resources. I have indigenous aussie ancestry in addition to a funky blend of norse, welsh and french of all things... so I often have a fairly novel view on the world around me.
Example, eating toasted grasshoppers is fine by me. But keep your elbows off the table while you do it (which you better know how to polish the old fashioned way, young man!).
Also a lot of "old timey" interests - I like to call them the "Nanna-Technologies" ie, you may have to ask Nanna for the low down :tongue_smilie: ) These include European herbalism and natural therapies, blacksmithing (though I am no kind of smith... if anyone asks I say "I am a bender of metal"), winemaking, reading books made of paper complete with dog ears and that great old book smell - not downloaded from the intertubes, knotcraft, old European cooking (though the rest of the time it's Indian meets Thai and goes to Mexico via the Pacific), and so on.
I love to cook with wild things, or things from my gardens,though once you take to planting things in the wild the lines to get a little blurry! I don't eat a lot of red meat at all but I make a wicked Biltong and am currently trying to perfect Scottish shortbread ... I am a tall lean streak of a thing so it may help fattening me up :P
I am Australian as I mentioned, and have lived up and down the east coast, right to the tip of it and then some. A little time in big city life showed me just how pointless and unhealthy I find it so my little tribe is currently enjoying 10 acres of old cow country, tucked away on a large hill (or a small mountain? :confused1:. Neighbours stop by once in a while with a pumpkin or for a yarn, otherwise it's a quiet, vaguely spooky dirt road and we like to keep it that way. Lots of animals, heaps of terrain to wander around in and we have fruit trees and very large rainwater tanks etc.
My fiance and myself both have first aid certs, are pretty handy people and of fairly canny stock so there aren't too many things we can't sort out with a think and some fencing wire as they say. We are not particularly "the world is gonna end!" but we know full well that at the end of the day, noone can take care of us and ours as well as we can.
6 billion people on earth and all but a handful couldn't care less bout little old us... so we are perhaps self-reliance inclined, rather than "fatalistic". The world rarely ends all in one go but can end for one particular region at the drop of a hat and you need to stand on your own feet. It's also a heckuva lot cheaper doing things your own way,from the wilds or from your own hands, which means more time for family and hobbies etc. We both know our way around guns though we don't keep any. A big dog (he's rhodesian ridgeback x english mastiff, temperament of an old mother duck), old fashioned neighbours and a collection of traditional aussie weaponry (strictly ornamental of course) fill that little niche.
Our families are services and rural professional in background so we picked up a lot of that growing up, even if we do make sure to keep a stash of sushi wrap where others would fit another can of beans :D
Longest I've been out and about and around a week, plenty of two and three day escapades and have almost always lived a short walk (or less) from fairly wild country. I know my way around a 200km patch of area that includes at least a dozen distinct ecosystems. I have no doubt about my ability to live and live well purely off my wits if the need arises. A house is just a very spiffy lean to when alls said and done and the city water supply is meaningless as I don't have one :D
We have 5 very large rainwater tanks, all currently full to overflowing. Lots of natural water around if you know where to look. Also bulk wildlife...birds and reptiles (both protected of course), natives like wallabies, fruit bats and roos, freshwater fishing and yabbies (in the US, that's a crawdad?), also introduced game animals like hare, red deer, pheasants etc.
Looking forward to getting to know you guys, and hopefully swapping some useful information and experiences!
Take care out there,
Hybrid.
-
-
Welcome to the forum and thanks for the intro.
-
Welcome........I know you better than I know my 7 siblings. Nice Intro.
-
Thanks Ken :) Although we normally reserve Fosters only for tourists :D If you ever come and visit, try the Coopers Pale Ale, and Boag's. Especially the Boags, those Tasmanians do lovely work!
Sourdough, the whole point of family I find is to go to great lengths to avoid having anyone know anything about anyone. Otherwise, there would be a LOT more brawls at Christmas time and the poor reindeer just can't take the stress :P
Well met Gryffynklm, I will apologise in advance for the inevitable day I spell your name wrong.
-
-
Welcome Hybrid, so glad you joined us!
Wonderful intro, btw.
-
That was quite an intro! Hello and welcome.
-
Welcome and well met. please share any recipies that you may have for outback dining
-
Nice to have you here. A family of Aussies (now living in Kiwi land) visit my little corner of the planet every Summer, and we have become great friends. Their descriptions of the land and people make me really want to visit.
-
hunter63, saying, Hey!
Good intro, sound intresting hearing about the different wildlife and critters.
-
Welcome. OK, I was a Fosters drinking tourist. I was in Melbourne in the mid-70's and made some sport jumps at Labortouche. What an isolated, historical place. I also had counter tea with Chloe (I think that's the name of the famous painting) in the pub. Got language lessons too, my favorite started with "Shove off to the Rubbity and tinkle a few ice cold chubes (tubes I guess)". Oh, I do miss my misspent youth.:blushing:
-
-
-
-
Welcome to the forum! Your very interesting fellow! Looking forward to any info and insights you have to offer.
Btw,you and your lady ever feel the need for some like minded neighbors,and there's reasonably priced land avalible in the area ,hook me up! I'm serious!
-
-
Thanks for all the welcomes, appreciate it! I am certain I am about to miss someone out so just slap me if it's you.
Sarky, will be doing that. Not sure how applicable they will be to people not living in my little corner of the big wide wood but I do a few tasty things with "weeds" too... mostly european and s. american in origin... common stuff you find around the edges. Lime grilled pigweed, yum.
Nice ship Crashdrive, where are the deep cycle batteries? or is this whole place run on squirrel powered treadmills? :P Gday Benesse, Winnie.
Preach, aussie's have this weird habit of trying to convince the rest of the world we live in a nice place. They don't need that much convincing as most of em are trying to move here already :P
Hunter, heaps of stuff I see splattered along highways would probably be really interesting to someone else... we have a family of grey rock wallabies that hang around (not pets at all, just eat the grass in the paddocks, but theyre pretty relaxed), I must have at least 50 tree frogs tucked away around the house and sheds themselves, not to mention Eastern Brown snakes, treesnakes, giant rainforest snails, dairy cows (not ours..they just kind of drop by, hang around) a thousand kinds of crazy bug and truly wicked looking geckos... and thats around the yard.
Some areas of Australia have lost almost all trace of wildlife so we basically leave ours alone and don't let people shoot inside the boundary. I lost heaps of wildlife pics thanks to a computer crash but am slowly getting them all replaced. I photohunt sometimes... ie... get within ancient hunting distance, take the shot. Kind of catch and release, with land animals.
GI, you're not the first and will not be the last to fall for the Fosters trick. I think it's actually english? Chloe would have taken your mind off it though. That's at the other end of the country from me, but she has a reputation.
Well met Camp, Rick (thanks, it has that kinda...lived in smell doesn't it), Justin and Ted... Ted, it's mostly family (oooollddd family... extra thumbs and all :P ) properties around here but if there's some kind of mass exodus, I'll let you know. Finders fee will be picking rights on all the trees, and mycological collection access guaranteed for life :D
Welder, that's a rabbit waiting to end up on the news. One too many rabbit traps... I can see it now...
"Police say the suspect, Thumpie McHare, had posted aggressive lyrics from the song Cows With Guns on his Myspace and sources close to the suspect say he had a long standing obsession with the movie Watership Down, as well as spending many hours a day viewing online images of ensnared rabbits and Aussies wearing Akubra hats. He recently obtained a high powered...."
-
gday mate and welcome to the mad house
-
gday Mule. Northerners rock...even if I can't understand some of what they're saying while they do :D
-
Welcome. You'll sure learn a lot here, I know I have. Nice to have you aboard!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
