One of the great things about living out here is how all the blokes treat gigantic pieces of machinery and seemingly impossible heavy jobs as humdrum easy tasks. Gary and I were wandering around outside our camp while I explained my idea for "rehabilitation" islands and security fences grown with native plants rather than making ugly wire fences.
My idea was basically to keep dumping wheelbarrow loads of prunings and organic rubbish along the proposed fenceline & building it up with mulch & prickly native desert plants, and Gary said, "Oh, I'll just bring the tipper truck round and dump out some loads of rock and soil for you, I can make it a four foot high wall, or higher if you like." One tipper truck load is like a mountain of soil about the size of my house in Champion Road - Gary can do up to eight loads in a day! Holy cow! On top of that, he's also going to bring the "ripper" in - a huge bulldozer thing that drags heavy steel tines through the soil, breaking up the iron-hard ground, so that I can put plants in; it will also help hold the water in when we irrigate.
He and Steve have also come up with a plan for bulldozing a big trench around the southwest side of the camp to create a flood wall and runoff which will divert heavy rainfall away from our buildings while feeding the acacia, hakea and grevillea that I'm going to plant. Forget about the wheelbarrow! We're also using bracken and prunings to build up the rehab areas, and once again the blokes have come to the rescue - Greg's going to bring truckloads of prunings etc in the big rubbish truck whenever he does a landscaping site cleanup, so my compost heap will be the size of a small house. I love it!
So I've been madly researching arid native plants that will act as barriers while attracting birds and things - there's a fantastic nursery in Perth who specialise in WA natives, and they'll be able to send me tube stock and stuff as I need it. Closer to the camp itself, and inside the main compound, I'm going to put lots of shade trees and bougainvillea, so in five years' time we will have an amazing oasis here.
The snakes will love it.
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