Chatty December: Where I live!
Dec. 13th, 2013 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaI would love to hear about the part of Australia where you live, if that doesn't feel too RL-revelatory. (kass)
Not too RL-revelatory! Australia's a big place, though we mostly live around the edges. See handy map, with US map for comparison. I live in the bottom right hand corner of the mainland :
Here’s my state, Victoria. I live in the green section:
There's some rainforest to the east of where I live, in the Otway mountains:
It's a temperate rain forest, so it's cool and green and filled with giant ferns, as well as wallabies, koalas, and (it's said) a legendarily huge marijuana crop. It’s also home to a particular barking frog. Which is brown and shy and you'll never see it, but I have to tell you about it because it's called a variegated pobblebonk.
It's more variegated than your average pobblebonk:
Our coastline is famous for beauty and shipwrecks. The most tourism worthy bit is the Twelve Apostles, known in pre-tourism time as Sow and Piglets. There's not actually twelve of them. Recently, the main stack fell down so now there's even fewer:
It's dairy farming country. Generally, it's green and pleasant. Sometimes it burns. Sometimes it floods. Most of the time, though, it looks like this:
And there's cows. Lots of cows. They're always watching:
.
(These ladies are Friesian. There's also a lot of Jerseys. Dairy cows are huuuuge. Literally a ton.)
But what’s it like to live here? Pretty close. By small rural town, I mean there's 1,000 people. (The population sign says 850, but it hasn't changed in the fourteen years that I've lived here, and I know we're growing. I think 1000 is a fair estimate. ) Everyone knows everyone. I've spent the last fourteen years developing a database of family trees, nicknames, maiden names; it's a necessary skill to know someone's history, where their parents farmed, where their family came from. It's a very tight community, and it took a long time for me to feel like I was a part of it, but I do.
There's a little cluster of shops and houses that make up the heart of town. When the air ambulance comes, they land it on the football field which is close enough to the hospital. We've got a doctor's clinic, a pub, and a school. No nursing home, though we're fundraising to build a small retirement village. The dentist visits once a week, and other specialists every couple of months.
At the end of my street, there's a big paddock with cows and alpacas. We have a wealth of birdlife – mopokes and currawongs and cockatoos and rosellas, and further out of town, there's white falcons and huge wedge tailed eagles. We frequently have koalas and possums in our back yard. There's a mob of kangaroos that live out by the bus depot, and there's platypus in the creek behind my work. (I've never seen them, but apparently the population is doing really well.)
Out the back of work – the creek is off to the right in the trees by the picnic table. This is where I see the duck family wandering around. This is also the obligatory photo of my new car, back when it was new. (It's a very boring car!)
The shops are mostly shut on Sunday – you can get a newspaper as long as you're up early, or you can go to the supermarket, but unless there's a special event like a farmer's market, you can't go out for breakfast without driving for half an hour. Part of the reason I really got into baking my own bread was that if I wanted fresh bread on a Sunday, I had to get my hands in and make it. We go out of town to buy fruit and vegetables once a week – there's a great greengrocer 45 minutes drive away. It's worth the drive. Dry goods and other groceries are pretty good here, but because we're basically at the bottom of the supply chain for a supermarket, nothing is particularly fresh or green by the time it's worked its way here. You wouldn't find things like mangos or eggplant at our supermarket. We grow a lot of our own vegetables, as much as we're able.
On the other hand, if your car breaks down on the side of the road, people will stop to see if you're okay and if you need a tow to safety. This is handy because we don't have reliable phone reception. I wave to every driver I pass. If you're visiting the area, you'll see the other drivers giving you a farmer's wave – a little wiggle of the fingers from the top of the steering wheel. If you see stock on the road – usually steers that have busted out of a paddock, you pull into the nearest driveway to let someone know, and you flash your headlights at oncoming traffic so they don't hit anything.
Despite the basics being a bit hard to get hold of, we're on a gourmet trail – inside half an hour's drive, we have three artisan cheesemakers, a strawberry farm, a whisky distillery, a chocolatier, an eel farm, two vineyards, an olive grove and garlic farm, two organic beef farmers, raw milk, ice-creamery, cray fishers and local beekeepers. Look at these amazing strawberries – I bought a punnet, and it only had four strawberries in it, but those four strawberries were the size of my hand.
(Next to my phone for scale)
I know oversized fruit doesn't usually taste good, but these strawberries! They taste like Narnia. Here they are onlilacsigil's birthday pavlova:
I didn't grow up in a small town - I used to live in the suburbs of Melbourne, and until fourteen years ago, I'd only worked in large, suburban pharmacies. Rural pharmacies were a good financial prospect back then, because you have the opportunity to retain a lot of control - we're not part of a franchise or buying group, which is rarer and rarer. When I knew that I'd most likely be buying into a rural business, I spent half a year locuming in the country, to see if I could live in a country town. This isn't actually the best way to assess these things, as it turns out, because there's a big, big difference between visiting a country town for a few weeks, and upping stumps to live in one for fourteen years. I thought I'd moved to a different planet for the first year or so - I wasn't a pub goer, I knew nothing about football, and I genuinely didn't understand half of what people were talking about. For example, early on, a man limped into the pharmacy and said "I've done a corky." And I thought "He's done what to his corgi?" But it turns out that a corky = corked a hamstring = he'd hurt himself playing football. For a long, long time it was hard to build empathy because I just didn't understand. But now, the babies that were born the year I arrived are fourteen, I'm one of the oldest businesses in the street, and everyone knows me as The Chemist Lady. We're not even the only lesbians in town these days. This is a good place to live, and I'm glad to be here.
kass)Not too RL-revelatory! Australia's a big place, though we mostly live around the edges. See handy map, with US map for comparison. I live in the bottom right hand corner of the mainland :
Here’s my state, Victoria. I live in the green section:
There's some rainforest to the east of where I live, in the Otway mountains:
It's a temperate rain forest, so it's cool and green and filled with giant ferns, as well as wallabies, koalas, and (it's said) a legendarily huge marijuana crop. It’s also home to a particular barking frog. Which is brown and shy and you'll never see it, but I have to tell you about it because it's called a variegated pobblebonk.
It's more variegated than your average pobblebonk:
Our coastline is famous for beauty and shipwrecks. The most tourism worthy bit is the Twelve Apostles, known in pre-tourism time as Sow and Piglets. There's not actually twelve of them. Recently, the main stack fell down so now there's even fewer:
It's dairy farming country. Generally, it's green and pleasant. Sometimes it burns. Sometimes it floods. Most of the time, though, it looks like this:
And there's cows. Lots of cows. They're always watching:
.(These ladies are Friesian. There's also a lot of Jerseys. Dairy cows are huuuuge. Literally a ton.)
But what’s it like to live here? Pretty close. By small rural town, I mean there's 1,000 people. (The population sign says 850, but it hasn't changed in the fourteen years that I've lived here, and I know we're growing. I think 1000 is a fair estimate. ) Everyone knows everyone. I've spent the last fourteen years developing a database of family trees, nicknames, maiden names; it's a necessary skill to know someone's history, where their parents farmed, where their family came from. It's a very tight community, and it took a long time for me to feel like I was a part of it, but I do.
There's a little cluster of shops and houses that make up the heart of town. When the air ambulance comes, they land it on the football field which is close enough to the hospital. We've got a doctor's clinic, a pub, and a school. No nursing home, though we're fundraising to build a small retirement village. The dentist visits once a week, and other specialists every couple of months.
At the end of my street, there's a big paddock with cows and alpacas. We have a wealth of birdlife – mopokes and currawongs and cockatoos and rosellas, and further out of town, there's white falcons and huge wedge tailed eagles. We frequently have koalas and possums in our back yard. There's a mob of kangaroos that live out by the bus depot, and there's platypus in the creek behind my work. (I've never seen them, but apparently the population is doing really well.)
Out the back of work – the creek is off to the right in the trees by the picnic table. This is where I see the duck family wandering around. This is also the obligatory photo of my new car, back when it was new. (It's a very boring car!)
The shops are mostly shut on Sunday – you can get a newspaper as long as you're up early, or you can go to the supermarket, but unless there's a special event like a farmer's market, you can't go out for breakfast without driving for half an hour. Part of the reason I really got into baking my own bread was that if I wanted fresh bread on a Sunday, I had to get my hands in and make it. We go out of town to buy fruit and vegetables once a week – there's a great greengrocer 45 minutes drive away. It's worth the drive. Dry goods and other groceries are pretty good here, but because we're basically at the bottom of the supply chain for a supermarket, nothing is particularly fresh or green by the time it's worked its way here. You wouldn't find things like mangos or eggplant at our supermarket. We grow a lot of our own vegetables, as much as we're able.
On the other hand, if your car breaks down on the side of the road, people will stop to see if you're okay and if you need a tow to safety. This is handy because we don't have reliable phone reception. I wave to every driver I pass. If you're visiting the area, you'll see the other drivers giving you a farmer's wave – a little wiggle of the fingers from the top of the steering wheel. If you see stock on the road – usually steers that have busted out of a paddock, you pull into the nearest driveway to let someone know, and you flash your headlights at oncoming traffic so they don't hit anything.
Despite the basics being a bit hard to get hold of, we're on a gourmet trail – inside half an hour's drive, we have three artisan cheesemakers, a strawberry farm, a whisky distillery, a chocolatier, an eel farm, two vineyards, an olive grove and garlic farm, two organic beef farmers, raw milk, ice-creamery, cray fishers and local beekeepers. Look at these amazing strawberries – I bought a punnet, and it only had four strawberries in it, but those four strawberries were the size of my hand.
(Next to my phone for scale)
I know oversized fruit doesn't usually taste good, but these strawberries! They taste like Narnia. Here they are on
lilacsigil's birthday pavlova: 
I didn't grow up in a small town - I used to live in the suburbs of Melbourne, and until fourteen years ago, I'd only worked in large, suburban pharmacies. Rural pharmacies were a good financial prospect back then, because you have the opportunity to retain a lot of control - we're not part of a franchise or buying group, which is rarer and rarer. When I knew that I'd most likely be buying into a rural business, I spent half a year locuming in the country, to see if I could live in a country town. This isn't actually the best way to assess these things, as it turns out, because there's a big, big difference between visiting a country town for a few weeks, and upping stumps to live in one for fourteen years. I thought I'd moved to a different planet for the first year or so - I wasn't a pub goer, I knew nothing about football, and I genuinely didn't understand half of what people were talking about. For example, early on, a man limped into the pharmacy and said "I've done a corky." And I thought "He's done what to his corgi?" But it turns out that a corky = corked a hamstring = he'd hurt himself playing football. For a long, long time it was hard to build empathy because I just didn't understand. But now, the babies that were born the year I arrived are fourteen, I'm one of the oldest businesses in the street, and everyone knows me as The Chemist Lady. We're not even the only lesbians in town these days. This is a good place to live, and I'm glad to be here.
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Date: 2013-12-13 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-19 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-13 01:45 pm (UTC)And omg, an eel farm?!
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Date: 2013-12-13 03:24 pm (UTC)I knew you lived in a small town, but I didn't realize how small. It sounds like a lovely place to live.
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Date: 2013-12-19 10:32 am (UTC)It's small, and sometimes it seems a little too close for comfort, but most of the time it's awesome.
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Date: 2013-12-13 03:58 pm (UTC)This is a lovely post. I love hearing about your little town.
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Date: 2013-12-19 10:43 am (UTC)And thank you! It's a nice little town. I love it dearly.
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Date: 2013-12-13 04:23 pm (UTC)Pobblebonk is my new favourite name.
SOME DAY WE WILL VISIT YOU!
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Date: 2013-12-19 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-13 05:38 pm (UTC)Also... mmm. Strawberries. I want some!
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Date: 2013-12-14 12:49 am (UTC)I love this post. I've never been to Australia, but the several friends who've been have all loved it. ^_^
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Date: 2013-12-14 06:13 am (UTC)I imagine them smoking and playing loud music while scaring little old ladies. They probably also wear leather jackets.
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Date: 2013-12-20 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-14 12:22 pm (UTC)OMG THOSE STRAWBS.
And happy cows. And everything green. And pobblebonks!
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Date: 2013-12-16 01:12 am (UTC)Dairy cows - seriously planning to take over the world one day. /o\
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Date: 2013-12-21 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-17 09:00 pm (UTC)Also I'm pretty sure I heard a variegated pobblebonk! Or maybe 20! At any rate I definitely heard a lot of frog-like things.
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Date: 2013-12-22 10:42 pm (UTC)The pobblebonks make a lovely burbling sound, and there's lots of kinds of them, so even if it wasn't the rare one, you probably were hearing pobblebonks.
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Date: 2014-01-03 07:45 am (UTC)- the pobblebonk is a great name
- OMG those strawberries are mind-blowing! (And look delicious)
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Date: 2014-01-04 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-02 08:46 pm (UTC)I didn't grow up in a small town - I used to live in the suburbs of Melbourne
It must have been a huge shock. I went Canberra (too cold) to Melbourne (too pricey) to Geelong, but I couldn't imagine going much smaller. Not that I'd miss the people so much as miss the cinema and the 24 hour KMart and having Bunnings within a 5 minute drive.
And the library. I'd miss that so much more than the people.
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Date: 2015-09-08 03:44 pm (UTC)stepgran grew up in Sydney and she gets irritated when people think Australia is just bush and surfing. It is nice to see the greenery. :)no subject
Date: 2015-09-10 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-14 04:21 pm (UTC)Those cows to me look like Holsteins. lol I remember from ag class some of the other breeds, and maybe this one? We have jerseys here, too. When I was little we had Brown Swiss.
Pobblebonk!!
That's great that you're doing well with your business.
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Date: 2015-09-15 05:18 am (UTC)Variegated pobblebonk! It's such good onomatopoeia - they really do sound like that, their call is a kind of burbleburbleburble-plonk noise.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2017-01-10 07:30 pm (UTC)I also live somewhat in the boonies. I grew up on a dairy farm in upstate NY and left to go to college (3 hours away in an even boonier part of the state) and law school (8 hours away in our nation's capitol), and then I came back. I currently live just a couple miles from where I grew up. We have gas station convenience stores in our village, but have to drive 20 min to the next village to do any sort of grocery or clothes shopping, and even further if you want to go to a mall or anything like that. I like it, mostly. *g*
Also, I had the same thought about the cows looking like the Holsteins we had on our dairy farm, and find it interesting from your comment that Holsteins and Friesians are one and the same.
Lastly, those strawberries look amazing!