BRUDERHOF VISIT 2010

In my last post I explained our connection with the Danthonia Bruderhof who in the past decade have established a community near Inverell in New South Wales. We have enjoyed many reciprocal visits. Two weeks ago we received a request from Mike, one of their school teachers, to bring a group of ten students aged twelve years for a visit with Eberhard.

Due to Australian immigration laws many of the Danthonia Bruderhof comprise young people who have desirable workskills needed in Australia. They have immigrated as teachers and nurses. Many are young married couples, with the other partner often having other useful skills. This preponderance of youth could lead to an unbalanced community without the wisdom of elders, if it were not for the older parents and grandparents who temporarily live with the community using Tourist visas to gain entry into Australia.

Even so, every year living memories of the early days of the Bruderhof in Germany are being lost with the death of members from the first community. Yet here is Australia the Danthonia Bruderhof have a living connection via my husband. Mike asked that a group of ten children, two teachers and a senior couple be allowed to visit for an overnight stay. He wanted these American born children to hear from Eberhard what life had been like for their Grandparents, or great-Grandparents in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s. In return they offered to assist us with farm and garden work.

Eberhard and Mike

When this excited group of youngsters arrived they served us a a delicious German style kuchen they had brought with them for morning tea. Then after a discussion with Eberhard about the early days in Germany the four adults, Mike and Tabatha (teachers) with Joe and Nancy (elders), asked me what work I would like done in the garden. I told them the primary job was to harvest our abundance of produce – climbing beans, little yellow cherry tomatoes and cucumbers. Then the next job would be to wash down our extensive verandas and the gazebo area and prepare lunch. They had brought home made salami (they have their own butcher shop at Danthonia) cheese and bread. I supplied lots salads, fresh and pickled. The pickled vegetables included beetroot, zucchini and icicle pickles, made from green skinned cucumbers. Nancy was delighted with the icicle pickles, saying she was familiar with these from her youth in Canada within a Mennonite Community.

• ICICLE PICKLES – A TRADITIONAL CANADIAN RECIPE
• 2 gallons of cucumbers cut int 2 inch pieces
• Dissolve in hot water 1 pint of salt and a pea sized amount of bluestone – copper sulphate
• Cover pickles with boiling water and let stand for a week, stirring at least every other day
• Put a heavy plate on top of the pickles so they remain submerged in the brine
• Drain. Cover with boiling water. Let stand 24 hours. Drain
• Dissolve Alum (size of a walnut) in boiling water and cover the pickles
• Stand 24 hours. Drain
• Bring the following syrup to a boil and pour over the pickles
• 8 pints – 16 cups white sugar
• 2-1/2 quarts or 12 cups vinegar
• A handful of pickling spices in a muslin bag
• Let stand for 24 hours. Drain off syrup and bring it to the boil. Pour the syrup back over the pickles
• Repeat 3 more times – 3 days.
• Bottle

After lunch Mike took eight of the youngsters down to the dam, dressed for swimming, which they dragged with our net twice without finding any fish. It seems we need to restock the dam with Golden Perch fingerlings. They then went swimming in the river.

Nancy and two girls remained to assist me in the kitchen by preparing the little yellow tomatoes for Tomato and Lemon Marmalade.

Cherry sized yellow tomatoes

When the marmalade preparations were completed Nancy and the girls went swimming in the river while I stirred the pot.

I observed that keeping such an exuberant group of youngsters energetically occupied while under the supervision of an adult is a key to maintaining harmony within a group. They know they are loved and cared for.

Mike next took the youngsters down to our Glen Aplin primary state school, only 500 metres away, to kick and chase a soccer ball around the playing field.

Tabatha had brought big pots in which to cook spaghetti and reheat tomato sauce and precooked meat balls. It was great to sit back and watch the adults supervising some of the youngsters in our kitchen as they cut up onions and prepared onion ring fried in batter. Then we all moved into the dining room to eat.

Tabatha and Joe

While everyone enjoyed the onions rings, Joe and Tabatha served up the spaghetti and meatballs. There was still plenty of salad left over from lunch.

Main course

When harvesting the vegetables during the morning, the boys had informed me that our Sugar Baby watermelons were ripe. I agreed with them and after they were picked the melons the boys carried them off to our cold room for chilling. Our evening dinner finished with water melon slices.

Tabatha serves water melon slices

The dishes were cleared and the children changed into their youth costume before conducting a small service to show their respect for Eberhard. German songs and hymns were sung, interspersed with Bible verses read by each youngster. Nancy accompanied the children providing music on an accordion.

A sing-a-long

Bruderhof youngsters

Fay relaxes

All too soon the evening ended. Joe and and Nancy accepted the comfort of our guest room, while Mike and Tabatha took the youngsters down to camp overnight beside our Severn River frontage. They built a campfire and then rolled out their swags to spend a night under the stars.

You can read more about the way of life that Eberhard and I have enjoyed at Das Helwig Haus B&B in my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine.

Book cover

Das Helwig Haus B&B owned by Eberhard and Fay Helwig is situated at Glen Aplin, near Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, Australia.

This is a region noted for Australian wildflowers, four wilderness National Parks and sixty wineries. In 1997 Eberhard and Fay established the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies, a European wildflower.

To obtain Fay’s book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine send an email to helwig@halenet.com.au The price is $33.00 posted to destinations within AustraIia.

Internationally it is available on

http://stores.lulu.com/strictlyliterary

http://books.google.co.uk/

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TEA FOR TWO, OR MORE

As a child I was only allowed to drink milk or water until the age of twelve, with a soft drink as a special treat during an occasional visit to town. My parents drank Bushell’s tea with their meals.

Nowadays there are multiple drink choices available for adults and children alike. One has only to walk into a supermarket to see rows of bottles and cans stacked high containing cordials, fruit juices and carbonated drinks. At the dairy counter there will be different sized containers of milk, in plastic or cardboard, offering a variety of flavours.

Move to the racks of tea and coffee and you will have a choice of roast coffee beans from all over the world. You can buy beans or ground coffee, some of it decaf. Usually in the same aisle it is possible to select dried teas in surgical dressings, as one of my friends once described the sachets commonly called tea bags. You will be confronted with brands and varieties from many countries.

It was on a trip to the USA in 1981 that I first encountered the powdered concoctions mixed with water which the local people called iced tea. Later, when I visited my German in-laws in 1990 I was offered a choice of herbal teas with the evening meal. These were always served as a hot tea.

In 1992 we moved to the Granite Belt to establish Das Helwig Haus B&B. Amongst our first visitors were Meg and Peter Stevenson with their children Darren and Belinda. During an excursion they discovered a herb farm and returned with several pots for my garden. One of these little plants grew into a Lemon Verbena bush.

Lemon verbena

Read the rest of this entry »

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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 »

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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 »

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CHRISTMAS AT DAS HELWIG HAUS B&B

I have been blessed by the arrival of a useful young Korean man called Jerry, who majored at a Korean University in tourism. When he returns to Korea he plans to work for an Uncle who has a resort on the hills overlooking the eastern sea towards Japan. Jerry told me that I was the ‘busiest’ grandmother he had ever seen. I think he was referring to the amount of work I do. I have found him helpful at cleaning bathrooms, hanging out washing and pressing sheets. He is excellent with meal service too, cleaning up the kitchen and packing the dishwasher after meals. He is a Wwoofer - a Willing Worker on Organic Farms and came to me expecting to undertake garden work. www.wwoof.com.au There will be plenty of that! Now he says he is delighted to be here as he has found himself gaining experience in a tourism business. The photo below shows Jerry emptying compost onto a garden patch where I’ll plant potatoes and sweet-corn next spring.

Korean Jerry

I’ve had an exhausting time since my brief days of rest and recreation in Hong Kong as I’ve been preparing for our winter season when every Saturday night I serve a German style, roast goose Christmas dinner to our in-house guests. This is our 17th year of providing Bed and Breakfast, plus a Saturday night dinner for our guests at Das Helwig Haus B&B who come to visit the sixty wineries of the Granite Belt. Read the rest of this entry »

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HONG KONG 1

This is the first of a series about my days in Hong Kong in May 2009. The business part of this trip was quickly finalized when I signed the contract with a Chinese firm to have copies of my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine printed and shipped to Brisbane for Australian distribution. It now appears that these books will be available for me to autograph by July. During my absence  our business Das Helwig Haus B&B was closed. My eldest daughter, Carol, accompanied me. Both of us had been to Hong Kong on previous trips and knew how to travel around the islands of Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories using the efficient underground trains, ferries and buses, all of which are inexpensive forms of transport. Our hotel was centrally located in Kowloon near the Mong Kok entrance to the subway station and from our window on the 36th floor we were able to look across the buildings to the island of Hong Kong. Our window gave us a view towards the west with the morning light shining bright on the tall buildings over which we looked towards the island. Although the whole region is commonly known as Hong Kong and there are several islands within the area, this one hilly section ringed by sea is called either Hong Kong Island, or The Island.

Western view across to Hong Kong Island.

It was interesting on my first early morning start -  I was still functioning on Australian time which is two hours ahead of this region, to look out this window and see almost no movement in the streets below, but people practicing exercises in the park. Like all Asian countries Hong Kong is slow to swing into action in the mornings, but residents party or shop well into the night. Read the rest of this entry »

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EBERHARD’S BLACK FOREST CAKE

Eberhard's Black Forest Cake

One of Eberhard’s Black Forest cakes famously appeared on TV eleven years ago when SBS TV sent a production crew to Das Helwig Haus B&B on the Granite Belt to film him preparing and serving a German Christmas Feast. The feature film has repeatedly been shown on the SBS TV Food Lovers Guide to Australia. Eberhard will be 83 years of age in July and my daughters and daughter-in-law decided that it was time for him to pass on his secrets to them. Thus I was able to capture in film the process. One of the girls wrote down the recipe. Read the rest of this entry »

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SUCCESS BREEDS SUCCESS

It can be said that nothing succeeds like success. Once a successful outcome has been achieved more successes will automatically follow. Das Helwig Haus B&B on the Granite Belt near Stanthorpe in southern Queensland was named by the journalists of The Courier-Mail newspaper in 1998 as the Best B&B in the Sunshine State. As our fame spread every journalist who visited the Granite Belt chose to write about our Bed and Breakfast home or my garden.

Back in the 1980s when I had lived at Dalby, I had begun a course called Writing for the Media from the TAFE College in Adelaide. The knowledge I gained was to assist me enormously. I could write advertisements and by 1998 had I designed our website layout for http://www.webstation.com.au/accom/helwig

When contacted by SBS TV The Food Lovers Guide to Australia asking for details of our  German style Christmas in July dinners I wrote a TV script of how we spent our days. The presenter arrived carrying my script in her hand and proceeded to follow it during their two day stay.

Eberhard is filmed preparing a goose.

Eberhard joked with the crew, “What is the difference between a cook and a chef? A cook does his own washing up. I do my washing up!” Read the rest of this entry »

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A NEW START

A successful business has three essential components.

• A good product
• Good financial management
• Good marketing

A good financial manager and a good marketer are never found in the same person. My husband, Eberhard, is a work motivated Introverted, Sensing, Thinking and Judgmental personality/temperament type – an ISTJ. This type are the salt of the earth and make great middle managers, school inspectors or hospital matrons.

I am an Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling and Perceptive type – an INFP – a spirit motivated person. Although rare in number this type are to be found in nurturing positions as teachers, nurses and missionaries, but they also have a capacity for creativity and drama as actors or writers.

There are values that Eberhard and I have in common like we are scrupulously honest, but apart from the Introversion of preferring small groups of people over large crowds, we are opposites in many ways. My reading of psychology helped me greatly to understand the motivation of my husband, especially his work related values and how to partner him in a joint business. We developed a clear demarcation of duties, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses that each possessed.

Eberhard managed our finances and the nitt gritty matters of keeping everything functioning smoothly.  I am the holistic thinker looking to the future and planning our marketing – a visionary. I chose to call our Bed and Breakfast home Das Helwig Haus B&B - The Helwig House; to provide a German decor, German music and German food. Thus I differentiated it from every Honeysuckle Cottage, Apple Blossom Inn or Camellia Cabin in the district.

Das Helwig Haus B&B

After moving to the Granite Belt my personality began to bloom. Here no one knew my father, my former husband or my children. For the first time I was not seen as a daughter, wife or mother, but as an intelligent, hard working woman to be valued as a person. Already in his sixties, Eberhard had achieved most of his goals in life and was willing to support me while I followed my dreams. In 1995 I was asked to contribute to the tourism community by standing for election as a Director of the Southern Downs Tourism Board. Read the rest of this entry »

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A FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL

From the very beginning of writing this Travels in Life series my focus as been on my desire to read, write and speak eloquently.  I have written about my country childhood deprived of music and books. I’ve have written about my twenty-five year marriage when I was kept so busy that I found it almost impossible to read or study.

When my marriage ended I began a two year fight to avoid bankruptcy, selling my home, the factory and attempting to sell my farm in an endeavour to pay the debts which had been incurred in my name. Just as joint assets may be divided for a divorce settlement, the Family Law Court also considers such as debts as were in my name, joint debts of the marriage. In addition, my husband had signed a guarantee to meet any shortfall when purchasing the factory.  His wealth of more than a million dollars was tied up in family trusts within the transport company controlled by his father, uncle and brother. This meant that I wasn’t fighting for my rights against one runaway husband, but against four ruthless men determined to protect their family assets. Read the rest of this entry »

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