THE BETOOTA BRIEFING

the house sits on the edge of the landscape with no delineation between it and what is beyond, allowing you to be a voyeur into myriad lives. Our rst summer there we watched a dingo bitch teach her pups how to hunt kangaroo right outside the kitchen window, honing their skills over those hot months. Particular animals became familiar: ‘Was it Gammy [legged] or Stumpy [tailed]?’ we’d ask, about the goanna in the laundry.

These years absorbed in building the house kept me from doing much else on the land. I started dealing with the blackberry infestation—I have hundreds of hectares of it, that bastard plant— and shot dozens of feral pigs. But more importantly, by spending time on the land without taking any major decisions or big moves to change it, I evolved a capacity to see it di erently.

The native vegetation changed signi cantly since destocking. Pioneer plants such as Cassinia and Phragmites began to colonise areas and I felt alarmed and con icted; my European roots told me I needed to act, put on my Fat Controller hat and do something. Instinct told me sit tight; the land will tell me what to do.

Before long the Cassinia grew into small trees and I began to walk through spectacular mallee forests full of emu-wrens, Richard’s pipits and rufous whistlers. Destructive pigs became a memory. The blackberry-control program, which had caused me such frustration, began to be e ective.

Somewhere along the way I started to see this place not so much as something I owned but as something I was entrusted to protect for future generations. And despite my accountant pestering me about pro ts, returns, balances, I was fortunate enough that it was not my primary motivation. Yes, economic sustainability was a goal but, importantly, the bottom line didn’t de ne my thinking; that could come once I’d made room for it.

I felt that one antidote to the property’s remoteness and its brutal colonist history was to provide food and shelter where friends, thinkers, experts and folk who thought di erently about the land could congregate and share their knowledge; create a social sustainability.

Making room for seeing di erently has been half my life’s work. Launching into a new paradigm of acting di erently is shaping up to be the second act: discovering how this land can become economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.

To be continued … n yambulla.com.au

Opposite page Yambulla’s six-bedroom solar-powered lodge brings modern comfort to a remote part of a remote property. The four interconnected buildings, along with a natural water-tank pool, overlook the sweeping valley below.

with ERROL PARKER, Editor-at-large The Betoota Advocate

LOCAL FARMER’S WIFE FILLED WITH JEALOUS RAGE AFTER SEEING HER NEIGHBOUR HAS A BIGGER RUSTIC OVERSIZED WALL CLOCK THAN SHE DOES

A grazier’s wife out on the Betoota City Limits was under the impression that she owned the largest rustic wall clock in the postcode, until she learned this week that someone else does.

Walking into her neighbour’s recently renovated homestead, Julia Coleman politely smiled as details of paint and nishes were explained to her. Her neighbour, Sally Driscoll, knew exactly what she was doing.

And after leading Julia through the eggshell-white hallway into the robinegg-blue living room, Sally started talking about her new wall piece.

‘It’s 3950 mm wide, the biggest clock they had at Jumbled,’ said Sally. ‘We had to DynaBolt it to the wall. It’s like the one you have, isn’t it?’

Julia nodded.

‘Mine is only 3500 mm,’ Julia said. ‘And we only used a handful of masonry screws.’

Sally smiled.

‘Well, this clock is actually from France, I think. We got it through Jumbled because, I dunno, they just have such great stu there. They only had one, though. They actually couldn’t deliver it because of the size, so I got in the car and went down there,’ she said.

Julia nodded again, staring at the giant timepiece.

‘We were so lucky we got the roof rack option with the new LandCruiser. It would’ve been so annoying if I had to tow the horse oat all the way to Orange and back.’

Julia had seen the new Landcruiser in the driveway as she parked her three-year-old Prado under the peppercorn tree out the front. It was another kick in the teeth: she might as well have turned up in the beige AU Falcon that her adult stay-at-home son drives around town.

‘The whole clock actually weighs close to half a tonne,’ Sally continued.

‘Which is a lot, when you think about it. What do you think?’

The lies that Julia had told herself about her own clock had already started to unravel. If she didn’t own the biggest rustic wall clock in Betoota, who was she?

‘I think it’s lovely,’ said Julia. ‘Just wait until Diane sees this, she’s going to scream.’

More to come. n betootaadvocate.com

GALAH.

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