The latest news from Jo Clews

Here we are half way through our fifth year at Melangata Station and just where have those years gone? So many things have happened since we came here in 2016, most of which has been good with just the odd hint of sadness. Our original plan to establish a station stay and tourist destination has become a reality with the construction in the first year of a couple of toilets and showers on the side of the shearing shed that is now part of the campground. All but a couple of areas in the homestead have been renovated to a suitable standard and we have built new clean modern bathrooms to have paying guests stay in the homestead. As Ken keeps telling me, the homestead took 100 years to be in the state of disrepair it was in when we came that we won’t be able to fix it all up in just two or three. (My comment is always, “Why not?”) We are working on the shearers' quarters to offer yet more accommodation to travellers with a different budget, but the two rooms we have on offer are being regularly rented and the old shearers' bathroom has undergone a transformation and has been dragged into the 21st century with new toilets and showers for our guests' convenience. Our catch cry is everything is a work in progress and it seems we have plenty of work to keep us busy for some time yet. Our other plan was to improve fences and increase the numbers of sheep we have, but with the ever-present wild dog problem, coupled with the fact that 2016 was the last good year this region has had for rainfall, now means that after a few poor years there is insufficient feed to sustain the few sheep we do have. These last few months have been seeing us re-evaluating and we just might be at the point of making the decision, if in fact, it will ever be worth the effort to maintain enough of a flock of sheep to be viable. To say that this part of the plan has not gone as well as we would have liked is an understatement, but thanks to COVID we are having a fantastic tourist season this year and are busier than we ever expected, so swings and roundabouts really.

Since being here and living in a Monsignor Hawes-designed building, the only privately-owned residence in Australia, I have picked up on some of the interesting and quirky things that hide amongst the walls. Design features that is, and not just the birds, snakes, lizards and marsupials that literally live in the walls. Our walls really do have ears. Things come in sevens around the homestead. Seven arches, seven windows in the turret, seven windows in the lounge, you will need to visit to see them all. The house, because of its positioning, is like a massive sundial and the special window in the lounge is so well thought out that the more I learn about the man, I believe only he could come up with such a genius plan. I suspect there will be more little secrets that I haven’t found yet but because of what I do know, every day I am taking just a little bit more notice (perhaps that’s what he wants). It became apparent from very early on that if Ken and I were to have any chance of success at the things we wanted to achieve here we would need help, and so we asked and the response has been simply incredible. So many eager people have put their hands up to come and volunteer with clean-ups, fence building, campground hosting, pottering around the homestead removing cobwebs and weeds, painting outbuildings and generally assisting us doing things that would not have been done if it were just the two of us. Barry Callan has taken us on as his special project and he has started the Friends of Melangata mail-out list and twice a year in April and September he rallies a group together to come up and tackle some of the jobs we need done. A joy for me has been the landscape and although we have come to the conclusion that Melangata is all the rubbish country rejected by past pastoralists because it was too rough and rocky, for us is just perfect and makes for a very interesting tag-along tour for our guests. My passion is the plants and especially the edible plants that survive in this region. When you get to know what plants you can eat, there is actually a lot of food to be had. There is absolutely nothing

better than living in an environment for a long period of time to get a better understanding of how it has been possible for a human population to survive for many thousands of years. Exploring the many caves amongst the breakaways has become a favourite pastime and we are continually amazed at what we find, but fortunately (or unfortunately) we have become far too busy to even enjoy our own back yard and this hasn’t occurred for a while. Hopefully this is going to change come October when our steady stream of guests will dwindle as the days begin to heat up and no one wants to visit us when it is 42ºC in the shade. It's a shame as the period between December and February is the only time of the year when the front of the house is illuminated by the golden late afternoon setting sun. We have been blessed with so many wonderful, knowledgeable people coming to visit and thanks to Bevan Burchell who co-wrote The Field Guide to The Eremophilas of Western Australia we now have an official Eremophila count standing at 24 and many avid bird watchers have increased our bird count to 46. Geologists and an archaeologist have visited and helped give us a better understanding of how the land formations developed and how to look at the landscape differently to see things that we had missed. We have been privileged to be invited along with some of our local Yamaji Wajarri people to collect Bimba (an edible gum from

the Acacia tree) and learn more about the bush and the plants and animals in it and just spend some time with people that have such a deep connection to the country that I can only hope one day I will feel too. We are learning and finding new things every day and nothing is ever the same. There are no groundhog days here and even though it can be bloody tough and Bimba, an edible some days are just gum from the almost too hard to Acacia tree. bear, on the whole it is quite simply healed by a glorious sunset, a cuppa on a rock looking out to the edge of the world or a chance discovery of something new that just blows our minds all over again. It's what I have now started calling Melangata Magic and one day it just might see us no longer having to say, “It’s a work in progress,” but I kinda doubt that.