A SEASON ENDS

Each year as the month of November comes to an end I am always amazed to discover some significant aspect has been added to our peaceful observance of the costs of war borne not only by those who leave their homeland, but their dependants who remain and wait.  As you saw in my previous post we were visited by Amanda McLeay of TVTen and that night our floral tribute to the fallen was shown wide and far across Queensland and northern New South Wales. The immediate result was that holiday makers travelling north, who had overnighted in towns like Uralla in NSW called in to photograph our Remembrance Field and to ask for a packet of Flanders poppy seed. Then I received a request from a soldier’s wife, who had seen the TV presentation, asking if her husband could be photgraphed with her and their children in the Remembrance Field prior to his departure for Afghanistan.  I was told that when our men and women of the Australian Defence Forces are about to be deployed overseas the Department arranges for them to receive a selection of family photographs taken in the venue of their choice. This young soldier has already served in East Timor and Iraq. Of course I agreed to this request.

A soldier's family

These photographs were taken on the 19th November by which time time we had experienced three weeks of hot weather and the poppies were running to seed. Read the rest of this entry »

A UNIQUE DAY

Today at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month it will also be the 11th year of this century. 11-11-11-2011

It was at 11.00am on the 11th of November 1918 that the Armistice Treaty was signed at Versailles. The guns fell silent across the battlefields of The Somme and the awful conflict of World War One ceased.

I quote the editorial of my local Border Post newspaper, written by Ewan Leighton:

It’s almost been a century since more than 60,000 of Australia’s finest died in World War One. Since that time, countless more have been killed in conflicts around the world. It is this time each year that communities across Australia come together to remember our fallen soliders, and to pay tribute to the price they paid for the life we live today. On Friday November 11 the Last Post will play through the Stanthorpe CBD. This significant date marks nine decades since the armistice that ended World War One. It is time not to remember the conflicts but to pay our respects to past and present soldiers werving overseas. It is hard to escape the violence that is war when we still have thousands of our best men and women risking their lives everyday. Younger generations don’t seem to realise the importance of Remembrance Day and the significance it holds for many Australian families. It’s important to ensure younger generations grasp the fact that thousands of our best men and women are risking their lives everyday. On a positive note, Rememembrance Day parade numbers appear to be on the rise both locally and nationally. On a local level residents should go and see the amazing poppy field cultivated by Fay Helwig at Glen Aplin. It is crucial for all Australians to take one minute out of their lives tomorrow to remember those who have given theirs – lest we forget.

Michael & Lauren 2003

Michael and Lauren are seen here raising the Australian Flag above our Remembrance Field at Glen Aplin in 2003. This year Michael graduated from the Brisbane Boy’s College yet I am sure he will still remember this special honour. Read the rest of this entry »

SEPTEMBER ENDS

As I have mentioned in previous posts I have undertaken an experiment this year using the Remembrance Field to test the usefulness of a product called SAP. On the first day of June we broadcast this  water soluble polymer as dry crystals across the field and turned over the soil. I knew that whenever it rained these crystals would soak up the moisture and expand into a clear jelly like substance. In dry periods they would act as a water reservoir in the soil allowing plant roots to access the moisture. Although I have been using this non-toxic product in my organic garden to assist with water retention for the growing of vegetables and flowers for three years this was the first time I have added it to the soil of the Remembrance Field. We measured only 23mm (it takes 25mm to measure one inch) of rain in June. The field was cultivated at the beginning of July, which proved to be a dry month with only 3mm of precipitation, yet there was sufficient moisture for the Flanders poppies to germinate. After recording that 3mm there was no more rain for five weeks. Then over three weeks we measured a total of 45mm in six small falls and the poppies grew rapidly.

Spring arrives

During the first week of September we welcomed Tina and Julia, two girls from Germany, who came to us as Willing Workers on Organic Farms. The white and pink flowering peach trees were the first blossom trees to herald the arrival of spring. The girls enjoyed working in the cool sunshine, saying our first week of spring weather was like a mid-summer’s day in northern Germany.

Two German girls

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A COLD WINTER ENDS

I will remember the winter of 2011 as being a cold and dry winter. It was the coldest winter on the Granite Belt for eleven years. Such cold winters are always good for the orchards as they ensure the apple trees get sufficient hours of winter chill, needed to produce blossom.  Despite a dry July in 2011 the Granite Belt farms and our garden continued to carry over moisture from the soaking the district received July 2010 through to the floods of January 2011. This will be the first year since we moved to the Granite Belt in 1992 that the gully flowing between our dams and down to the river has run continuously.

Patches amongst the daffodils

The first sign of spring is when the daffodils bloom in my garden. I grow a number of different varieties of daffodils which means that I will have a display of blooms for several weeks. Whenever I or my Wwoofers are working the garden my cat, Patches, keeps us company. the Wwoofers call her their supervisor. Following an August show of rain I decided that I must begin thinning the Flanders poppies in the Remembrance Field. Every year the poppies germinate thickly and it becomes necessary to thin the crop.

This year I am also conducting an experiment to see if it is possible to bring the Remembrance Field to flowering in November without watering the crop. Last year was an exceptionally wet spring when irrigation was not required, but normally in other years I have been obliged to irrigate the poppies a number of times. This winter in June I added water soluble gel crystals (polyacrylamide) to the soil prior to the final cultivation of the field. I kept my fingers crossed throughout July that the gel would act as a water reservoir and provide sufficient moisture in the soil to germinate the poppies.  See the post for 3rd July titled THE YEAR 2011 (12) Read the rest of this entry »

AN IMPORTANT WEEK

My readers may well ask, “Why is this week so important?”

My reply, “This is the week the Remembrance Field must be cultivated to enable the Flanders poppy seed to germinate thus ensuring the field will be ablaze with red poppies in full bloom for eleventh November.”

Following on from the slashing of the wheat and poppies at the end of 2010 we have this year cultivated the field three times with our little rotary tiller. I rely on wwoofers - Willing Workers on Organic Farms – to undertake this work every year.

The first turning over of the soil is the hardest work and this year that was done by Charlie from Austria.

Charlie had the muscles needed to turn the soil and incorporate the straw. I then allowed the field to grow a crop as green manure. Read the rest of this entry »

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Below I share with you an extract from my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine.

My first great marketing success happened when I was fifty-five years old and my dark hair was starting to grey, but I knew myself to still be a good-looking woman. I paused, stood loosely away from the lectern and sought eye control with my already sympathetic audience. When every eye was focused on me and every woman feared I would
be unable to speak, I announced forcefully, ‘I am passionately interested in tourism!’
I do not remember what more I said, but I topped the poll and became a Director on the Board of Queensland’s Southern Downs Tourist Association.
The association had received a grant of one hundred thousand dollars for the development of a Tourism Strategy Plan for Toowoomba-Golden West and the Southern Downs. At one of the first meetings I attended as a Director, one of these strategists, Dr Hugh Lavery, an environmentalist, asked the question, ‘How can we in tourism capitalise on the history of the seven Flanders battlefields place names on the northern end of the Granite Belt?’
The light bulbs flashed and I knew I had the answer: In 1920 five hundred returned servicemen, who had served in France during the First World War, won blocks of land in a ballot. The Queensland government surveyor determining the course of a branch railway line to service this community gave the seven railway sidings the names of Amiens, Messines, Bapaume, Passchendaele, Bullecourt, Pozieres and Fleurbaix.

Seventy years later those siding names are now to be seen on a signpost at the Stanthorpe Museum and there is very little to mark some of the districts. A road traverses the region and it was portion of my suggestion that this road become a memorial drive.

Railway siding names at the Stanthorpe Museum

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KEEPING THE FAITH

The story is told in my book Wildflowers, Wilderness and Wine as to why we established the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies on our land at Glen Aplin in 1996.  I would have preferred to establish a memorial drive linking the Granite Belt hamlets of Amiens, Messines, Bapaume, Passchendaele, Bullecourt, Pozieres and Fleurbaix which had once been railway sidings for a soldier settlement where former servicemen who had survived the battles in France settled on rural blocks to grow apples. When farmers feared the poppies could spread and become a weed nuisance, we decided to plant a field with wheat and poppies to show the poppies were not a threat to the rural community.

We first opened our garden and field in November 1996. We charged a $2.00 entrance fee and raised $1,000.00 which we then donated to Brisbane Legacy.

The Australian Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League (the forerunner to the RSL) first sold poppies for Armistice Day 1921. For this drive, the League imported one million silk poppies, made in French orphanages. Each poppy was sold for a shilling: five pence was donated to a charity for French children, six pence went to the League’s own welfare work and one penny went to the League’s national coffers.

Eberhard and I decided that, as a matter of integrity, we must visit the battlefield region in northern France and made arrangements to travel to Europe in January 1997. We were met at Villers-Bretonneux by Jean-Pierre Thierry, O.A.M., President of the Association France-Australie who became our guide for a day in the Somme .

My words will not describe the desolation of the wet, windswept fields we saw that day.

Wheat field near Pozieres

As a farmer I could look at this soil, over seventy years later, and see in the structure of the clods of earth the clay that had been brought to the surface by the trench digging and shelling. It is the clay that shows as white in the field. Read the rest of this entry »

THE REMEMBRANCE FIELD

Most visitors to my garden understand the significance of the red Flanders poppies growing in the Remembrance Field and the edging hedge of the herb rosemary. Rosemary is the token worn on ANZAC Day and the red poppy is worn on 11th November the date the Armistice Treaty was signed at Versailles to end World War One.

“But, what is the significance of the blue cornflowers?” they ask.

Cornflowers and poppies

My answer is of particular interest to the residents of Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, because the planting of blue cornflowers represents our remembrance of the crew, doctors and nurses of the Centaur an Australian Hospital ship sunk off our coast by a Japanese submarine. Read the rest of this entry »

PREPARING THE REMEMBRANCE FIELD

The spring months in Australia are September, October and November but it is only here on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland that this otherwise sub-tropical and tropical State actually experiences a real spring. This is due to our altitude in the border highlands near the New South Wales border. Within Queensland our district is famous for the cold winters, but this year the weather was pleasantly mild. It was the warmest winter since 1993.

Also, at the end of August southern Queensland experienced a minor heatwave, giving the region the hottest August days since 1946. Wow! What a way to enter spring. Naturally such a mild winter and then the burst of heat in August has pushed my garden and the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies into rapid growth.

Rows of Flanders poppy plants

The Remembrance Field was cultivated during the first week of July which germinated the poppy plants. In August I went through the field with a hoe, chipping out rows of poppies to thin them. In the photo above you will see one cornflower plant. In August I transplanted several of these seedlings into to field. They will later provide a scattering of blue flowers amongst the red Flanders poppies. The Latin name of the cornflower is Centaurea cyanus and it was the mythical creature the Centaur who supposedly gave the power of healing to mankind. To Australians the Centaur is also remembered as the name of the hospital ship bringing our wounded soldiers home, which was sunk off Brisbane during the second World War by a Japanese submarine. This year a concerted effort is being made to locate the wreck of the Centaur. Read the rest of this entry »

BOOK SIGNING

As a published author I must now undertake book signings at the shops stocking Wildflowers, wilderness and wine. As many of you know I had a life prior to moving to the Granite Belt with Eberhard almost seventeen years ago and the opportunity presented for me to visit the districts of Dalby and Bell again this past weekend.

BOOK CITY Dalby

I was amazed when a man I had known 50 years ago at a time that we were both members of a Rural Youth organization approached me, with an expression of delight, to renew the acquaintance. We chatted about old times for an hour or so before he bought the book.

An important reason why I had chosen to appear at BOOK CITY on Friday was that I wished to attend the Bell camp draft where my 94 year old father, John Mulcahy, was to be honoured. Read the rest of this entry »