2016 been a huge and amazing year for Glenda and I. About this time last year, we made an offer on a huge house with couple of acres in the foothills of the Strzelecki ranges in a little town called Korumburra. This offer was accepted and in early Feb we moved in. Since that time, we have gained three Alpacas, two dogs, seven chooks and some fairies in our 120 year old oak tree.
For a guy who was never a “happy gardener”, I have spent a lot of the year creating a large vege garden and maintaining our native garden and forest. We have also acquired a chain saw, a brush cutter, a large chipper and a ride on mower and trailer. All get lots of use.
I spend three days a week in Melbourne, back working for Millennium Science (who very graciously took me back after my gap year) and stay a couple of nights with my son Locky in my old house. Always interesting being a “visitor” in my home of 32 years. The other 4 days a week I spend here in the hills with our menagerie, our little eucalyptus forests and all the native birds that call our property home. I rarely get “out” with a camera these days, but I do try and capture some images around the property. There is still some scope.
Glenda has been crafting up a storm, spinning, knitting, weaving and dying. She has lots of wool to work with. She is making some amazing scarves and jumpers. It adds a bit of something when the wool comes from your own alpacas or from animals we looked after in 2015. Her experiments with “natural dying” are fantastic, using plants from our property to dye the wool.
While we do miss some of our friends and family at times, we are only a couple of hours away at most and we have had a regular progression of people coming to visit and stay. The house sort of naturally divides into two halves, so our visitors have their own private area with a couple of bedrooms, living area, bathroom etc.. It all seems to work well, and I hope we will continue to have people to stay in the coming years.
We have been talking about living in the country for over 30 years. So, now we finally made it. When we look back over the last year, I still find it pretty amazing how much our lives have changed.
Regrets? None! We are loving every minute.
Merry Christmas everyone and I hope to catch up with many of your in the coming year.
You can have a look at a bit of our year in photos here – http://garyberesfordimaging.com/portfolio/korumburra
Cheers
Gary
Snapped Photography 