Sustainability Presentation

Limes ripening on the tree

Time for a road trip to somewhere that offered a chance to break out of the patterns of the daily routine and some new horizons. I have been wanting to go to see the phenomenon of Lake Eyre for some time, having driven past it on many occasions on other road trips.

Co-opting a friend into the trip added some extra chaos. It didn’t take a lot of planning, just the lining up of the dates really.

I packed the usual array of required stuff for a trip into the Australian ‘outback’; extra drinking water (20 ltrs); spare tyres (x2); 2 burner gas stove and gas bottle (9 kg); cooking utensils and pans; swag; fold up chair; fold up shovel; tow rope; tarpaulin; spare oil & coolant; spare engine hoses and belts. Apart from that there was a few other added bits’n'pieces; small portable fridge (about the size of a conventional ice box, but able to run off the car’s battery; some non-perishables; 2 bottles of wine; small tent.

Of course I also loaded the camera bag with extra batteries, dust protector and cleaners and memory cards.

My travelling companion is from the legal profession and I was thinking that this may end up a little like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but in the outback of Oz…

It didn’t start off all too well, as I arrived at my friend’s house to find him in a black mood, which wasn’t helped as he examined the back of my Subaru and sputtered ‘What’s all that crap! We won’t need any of that shit, it’s useless. You just need a swag, camp oven and a box of food. All that over stuff is rubbish!’

I wasn’t in the mood to take the bait and chose not to reply. We ferried his assortment of gear into the car, but after some debate elected to leave the camp oven behind. Being a senior operational officer in the SA Country Fire Service I refused to allow us to leave behind a gas stove and have to rely on burning wood fuel, especially in the tinder dry bushland. Sorry, not going to happen on my trip.

Things soon settled down as we got underway and I did the usual stop and re-fuel, tyre and engine check at the last major fuel stop on the road out of the city.

We pressed on and my travelling companion, a man of stature, relaxed enough to doze off to the soundtrack to the film The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford.

We made good time and arrived at Port Germein as the sun was lowering on the horizon; ideal time to take some shots with the Canon (I use a 5D MkII). I love the openness and softness of this place at this time of day, the clarity of the light and the glassy rippled smoothness of the water, as well as the worn nature of the timbers and metal of the jetty.

We had enough time to stretch our legs and fill our lungs with fresh sea air with a walk along the 1.25 klm jetty, before once again getting in the car and driving a little further on, to Baroota where my sister lives in a farm-house, nestled between the flat salt lats of the coast and the hard bony rocky foothills of the lower Flinders Ranges. Here we overnighted and relatively early the next morning headed off on the longer part of the drive, North to Maree and Lake Eyre.

It was a reasonably long drive, broken up with a number of stops for fuel, food and coffee. The fuel got increasingly expensive, the food was mostly from my own provisions (taken from the sneered at car fridge) and the coffee was of a surprisingly good standard. The temperature also climbed as we moved relentlessly further and further North.

By now my companion was re-telling stories from his numerous road trips, as a travelling solicitor servicing remote and regional aboriginal communities and he fluctuated between exultation and despair at the state and treatment of the indigenous population. Racism was a common thread in our conversation, sadly.

We made good time and by mid afternoon we had arrived in Marree, where we stopped for a brief drink and to gain some intelligence from the locals of the track conditions up to the camp site close to Lake Eyre. The signs were good and after another hours and a half we drove into a sandy, sparsely wooded area, marked by concrete picnic tables and benches, surrounding a long and narrow strip of water, pumped up as overflow from a local artesian bore.

Swag under the trees at bush campsite

Water bombers at the Cherry Gardens Airstrip

So where are you?
The Cherry Gardens CFS is one of the oldest in South Australia. We celebrated our 75th Anniversary in 2009.
That’s pretty amazing really. We still have people, who are members of our Brigade, who have been with the Brigade for more than half of that time. Sure, they may not be operationally active, but they are still part of the Brigade and this community.
As it is now there are over 300+ households in the district, a significant number more than when I first joined back in 1980.
I did a quick tally earlier in the week, to count up exactly how many operationally active members we have in the Brigade and it made for some interesting analysis. Let me spell it out; we have 29 listed members; 6 are Air Support, 1 is a Deputy Group Officer, which = 7.
That equals 22 active fire-fighting members, 9 of whom are from outside of Cherry Gardens, which means that we have 13 local members, of which 3 may be in the district during the day in the working week. Yes, that’s right just 3. OK, we’re coming in to the holiday period, which increases the likelihood of more people being around during the work week, but that’s not a certainty.
It really concerns me, for a whole range of reasons, that there isn’t a lot of interest from local people to come along to their own Cherry Gardens CFS and considering lending a hand.
I don’t know why we don’t have more locals and I’m concerned that the Brigade will fade away and be lost from the community. That would be a sad and tragic loss for a Brigade that has a long, proud and honourable history, full of great deeds, innovation and humour and is respected in and across the broader CFS.
Do you know that we have 7 female members? Do you know that we have members who are in the final year of their High School education, members who are tradespeople, accountants, nurses, trainers, cleaners, administrative staff, retirees, part-time employees & full-time employees. Just regular people, who want to be involved. Regular people who are parents, partners, uncles and aunts and family members just like you.
The current situation is that we are having real trouble getting daytime crew and the consequence is that another CFS Brigade has to respond in our place. Oh well, someone else picks up the slack, right? No, it means that another 10-12 minutes goes by before another Brigade even gets to roll a wheel and now they have to come from further away because they’re not local. It could be that you need them, or your neighbour. An extra 15-20 minutes waiting for the CFS to turn up can make a situation go from bad to truly awful.
Maybe you don’t know what it is we do? Or think you can’t join in? Maybe you’re ideas of the CFS isn’t matched by the reality of who we are? Perhaps you think the CFS isn’t interested in having you as a member, or that the CFS hasn’t got a role that you could perform?
One thing I do know is I need to hear from you all, as to why you haven’t considered being involved in the CFS and what we may be able to do to make it possible for more locals like you to be involved. Please take a moment to contact me. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Or to borrow a phrase from a recent, but somewhat controversial Tourism Australia advert, ‘So where the bloody hell are you?’

Planning for the upcoming fire season can make the difference between a relatively good outcome day and really bad day.

Sticking blindly to a plan isn’t necessarily the culmination of success, especially if the circumstances are fluid and changing rapidly, as is often the case in a fire.

The planning process is extremely valuable, because it allows you the opportunity to think through all the various scenarios and permutations of events that you are likely to encounter on any given day that you may well need to take into account.

However it may all come down to nothing if you have taken the appropriate steps to support your action plan.

One of our 2 fire trucks - Cherry Gardens 34P

There could be one simple, but crucial thing that could stop the fire services getting to your place; not providing suitable or sufficient access in to your property.

So how much access are you expected to provide, I hear you ask.

Well consider the size of the fire truck in the picture above and then allow some extra space above and to each side of the fire truck. This equals a minimum of 3.9 metres horizontally to 3.3 metres vertically. If you want to round it out to make it easier to remember then I would say let’s make it 4 metres across by 3.5 metres up.

OK, now go and measure what you have been thinking was a good driveway size and see if it matches.

Same size or better = Good

Smaller or tighter = Bad

If the truck won’t or can’t fit in your driveway then your planning and your plan aren’t of much use. You will need to work out what your realistic options are.

If you’re unsure how much space that looks like and want to see something that equates to the required space for a fire truck to fit through, then take a drive by the local fire service and look at the doors that the fire trucks exit through, measure them up as a comparison and see if your place ‘measures’ up to that specification.

Just one simple thing could make the difference between a good day and a really bad one.

In this last 12 months I moved into a new house (new to me that is). It’s a suburban block, a small one at that. But being in Adelaide I figured that it would probably have good soil. A quick look on Google Maps, along with a bit of investigation as I did a regular walk most days, gradually enlightened me to the fact that the soil was indeed rich and would grow most anything. So the plan was hatched to put in a small vegetable patch.

I picked a patch of lawn right out from of the house, adjacent to the footpath. There was some consternation expressed about the vulnerability of planting a veggie patch so close to the street, which I was a bit surprised at. So I asked my fellow householders ‘Why?’.

Their response was ‘What if someone steals the veggies?’ So I asked ‘Who?’ This seemed to baffle them, as there didn’t seem to be any response. No one was sure who would steal vegetable from a veggie patch.

The project soon got underway. I chose to use the ‘no dig’ method, which is, obviously, not to dig a garden bed, but to prepare one into which vegetable can be planted.

There were, luckily a stack of remainder ceramic roofing tiles that were stacked at the back of the shed, so having marked out an area of ground I commenced by digging a shallow trench, into which I would vertically stand the roof tiles, to act as a border for my ‘no dig’ vegie patch. The trench allowed me to put the roof tiles into the ground to a depth of approximately 150mm. I was also able to use the design of the tiles so that they locked together on their edges, in the same way as when they are laid on a roof. This allowed the whole thing, measuring  about 2.4m x 1.2m to be quite stable and strong, with the roofing tiles now sticking about 300mm above the lawn.

Once the edging was done I then started laying on a thick layer of soaked newspapers over the top of the tile bounded lawn, making sure that there was plenty of overlap between the sodden paper and that it went right up the inner edges of the tile.

Next I spread a light layer of soil over the newspaper, no more than 75mm thick. Over this I layered pee straw in fat ‘biscuits’ until it was level with the top of the tiles. As I laid out the pea straw I also added some blood & bone mix.

Once the whole thing was done I gave the whole plot a good watering in, to settle the straw and wet and activate the fertilizer. The next step was to head off to the local nursery, fore-armed in the knowledge of what vegetable seedlings were ‘in season’. I bought a 25 litre bag of potting mix and 8 punnets of various vegetables.

Once back home I worked out where in my little patch I wanted to plant the veggies. I cut open the bag of potting mix and stood the seedlings in a shallow tray of water. Where each seedling was to be planted I pushed my fist into the pea straw, creating a small opening, which I filled with about 2 fistfuls of potting mix. Into this potting mix I planted the seedlings. One bag of mix and several punnets later I had the making of my veggie patch.

My no dig garden about 3 weeks after the seedlings went in

Red chard

I have been picking produce from it nearly every day and it looks like continuing unabated, much to the surprise of friends and neighbours alike.

Now, some evenings and weekends, people stop as they pass by on their walks and chat to me about their delight and enjoyment as they have watched my veggie patch grow.

My next challenge to my house mates is to make at least one meal a week to be only from produce that has been grown in our own garden. So far no-one has declined or scoffed at the idea.

So stage two of the veggie garden has gone in, against the neighbour’s fence , so now I can do some simple crop rotation.

And the best part? It has required little to no maintenance! Really. Being no dig means that I’m not having to till or weed the soil.

I now have spinach, silverbeet, beetroot, peas, beans, endive, rocket and chilli in one patch with tomatoes, corn, parsley, pumpkin and cucumber in the other. And every day there’s something in my dinner that came from my garden.

That’s one simple challenge that I think every family can undertake and be successful at.

Fresh pea crop

Over the winter a lot of people don’t give much thought to what you might need to do to keep yourself safe from wildfire.

Like most things it just means that you need to do some straight forward planning, using appropriate and valid information.

Cherry Gardens CFS fire appliances

What it comes down to it there are these 4 simple things you can do to keep yourself safe from wildfire

1. Prepare.Act.Survive – read the material available from the SA CFS website on the basics
   
2. Bushfire Safer Places – learn more about where there are safe havens in your area
   
3. Plan now to stay and defend or leave early – make a list of things that need to be done around the house, even if you plan to leave
   
4. Bushfire Behaviour – do a bit of research and understand what it is you may be dealing with

It doesn’t take much imagination to picture what could potentially happen if an uncontrolled wildfire  were to threaten your home. It only takes a small amount of planning to look at the realistic options you may have, including allowing the various options for your circumstances; at home alone; at work or school; at night; during a family gathering; when no-one is home; when you may be home without access to transport; if the kids are home alone; what about the pets/livestock.

In our wider communities there are no full-time fire services available, only the professional volunteers, who will have to leave their homes, their jobs in order to get to the fire station and then out to the fire.

It’s also important to remember that this is a limited resource, so in the event of a wildfire there will only be so many fire trucks to go around. So in order to improve your chances of surviving the upcoming fire danger period it’s important to remember the 4 simple things you can do to keep yourself safe from wildfire.

A little timely planning could make all the difference for you and your loved ones this coming summer.

3 thousand litres, 4x4 drive fire truck