Conscious Parenting and Natural Learning Conference

Conscious Parenting and Natural Learning Conference

When we were pregnant with Elijah, I came across Naomi Aldort. She's a writer and one of the world's leaders in parenting guidance. Her book, Raising Children Raising Ourselves, changed my world view of what parenting means to me and how I live the process of parenting daily.

She is coming to Australia for the first time ever this year. I am so excited to be able to meet her and hear her speak in person.

The website that has the details of the two conferences she'll be speaking at is
 www.consciousparentingnaturallearning.net.au

The dates are:

Wednesday 8th to Friday 10th August 2012 at Ballarat (1.5 hours from Melbourne)

Saturday 11th to Monday 12th August 2012 at Byron Bay (2 hours from Brisbane)

July - August update

We had a beautiful 5 weeks in July, working and exploring the Atherton Tablelands.

 

Through July and August our plan was to travel to the Daintree Rainforest and explore as much as we could, before heading up to Cooktown for another WWOOFing adventure.

The Daintree was spectacular.

 

 

Close encounters of the cassowary kind

A fast, camera shy cassowary

We played in the Rainforest and on the Beach and the place where the two meet.

 And we stayed next door to the crocodiles...

Our view from the Daintree River Lodges

We packed all our gear, left the Daintree and were on the road to Cooktown for a month of wwoofing when we had a very sad call from Stu's family. His granddad was unexpectedly very ill and in ICU in Sydney.

That evening we flew into Sydney and gratefully were able to say our goodbyes to Cliff. He passed away the next day.

Stu's grandfather was an incredible man in many many ways. It was so sad to see him go, but as we heard said time and time again by family and friends, he lived a full and wonderful life, with no regrets. He was a person brimming with a gentleness of spirit, kindness of heart and such goodness that shone from the very core of him.

He is worth knowing... even if it is by his passing. Stu spoke at the funeral and his words were as follows.

We are here to celebrate the life of a wonderful man. We knew him as Cliff, Cliffy,

Dad, Grandad and Great-Grandad. I call him Grandad.
Clifford William Bannon was born here in Portland in 1928. His parents were Joseph and Isabelle and he loved them. Cliff had an older sister, Roma and Cliff and Roma remained close throughout their lives and were very special parts of each otherʼs families.
Cliff and Nancy were married in Portland in 1953, a marriage that blossomed for the next 58 years. They loved each other with a passion and supported each other through the highlights and challenges of life.
Even to the last days of his life the most important thing for Cliff was to make sure that everything was set up for Nancy.
Cliff was father to three beautiful girls, Julie, Mary and Kim. He loved his girls more than anything in the world and did whatever he could to ensure their happiness. Cliff was quite protective of his girls and wary of any potential suitors. Eventually however three lucky young men came along and he loved Robert, Stephen and Bruce like sons.
Cliff was a loving uncle to Steven, Kerry and John.
Cliff was grandfather to 12 grandchildren - Rylan, Sophie, Olivia, Merryn, Chelsea, Trent, Rebekah, Nathaniel, Lyndall, Alisa, Bradley and Stuart and was Great Grandfather to Elijah.
I know that becoming a Grandad changed Cliffʼs life and I know that each of us Grandchildren are grateful to have know him and loved him for so many years. He had confidence in us, supported us and loved each of us for who we are. There were three things Grandad said to us over and over again. He loved us, Heʼs soooo proud of us, and he wanted us to always stick together.

Grandad was always happiest when we were all together.

Grandad grew up in Portland and attended the Portland Public School.
At age 16 Grandad moved to Sydney where he gained his certificate in Boilermaking and he returned to Portland, starting his first job at Wimpyʼs Open Cut Mine. 

After 4 years at Wimpyʼs he began work at the Wallerawang Power Station.
Grandad worked at the Power Station for the next 35 years until his retirement. During this time he trained many apprentices and was an excellent teacher. 

He loved his work and was revered among his peers for his skills and ability.
Grandad was well known for making boilers to provide warmth for households in the Portland, Wallerawang and Lithgow areas and beyond.

Grandad was asked how many boilers he had made over the years and after thinking about it for a while the best answer he could give was “hundreds”. 

I can only imagine how many people are warm each winter thanks to grandadʼs boilers.
He was a problem-solver, and had a can-do attitude.

He always believed that there was a solution to whatever the problem. 

Grandad would say... “Iʼve been thinking about it, and what weʼll need to do is.....”
It didnʼt matter who drove in the back gate to the shed, no matter the problem, Cliff came up with the solution and was always willing to help. 

He willingly gave his time, expertise and labour and asked little in return.
Whether it be the wheel of my toy tractor or the engine on my car, Grandad had the solution.
Grandad played some football and golf in his youth, but he wasnʼt much of a sportsman. His real sporting passion was horse racing and he followed it with great enthusiasm. 

It is easy to picture Grandad on a Saturday listening to the races on the wireless. 

Grandad would never back a favorite, but was always looking for
the outsider (the battler). 

He was always keen to give tips and put bets on for the grandkids on Melbourne Cup day.
Grandad was a member of the Portland RSL Club 

and a Life Member of the Lithgow Workmenʼs Club.
I received an email this week that I thought described Grandad beautifully.
“Your grandfather was such an awesome man.

I have told Rosie on several occasions that I want to grew old like him, laughing and playing around with everyone and having all the young people want to hang out with me.
Even though I only got to meet with him on three occasions he left a big impact on me.
He seemed to be the type of guy to live life to the fullest 

and when you do that I guess you can always pass on in peace.
My prayers are with you and his beautiful soul, 

which I am sure is joyously flying over us, happy and free.”

While our time in Wallerawang with family was made bittersweet by Cliff's passing, it was an absolute joy to be able to be surrounded by family again. Something that we haven't had much of with all of our travelling around.

It was also incredibly cold. The beauty of the Blue Mountains area is strongly tempered by the frigidity of the winters.
Bit of a change from running around in shorts in the Daintree.

It did fine up a bit though, and we had a lovely couple of days running around in the sunshine :)

We're now back on the Tablelands and loving it. More news soon :)

wwoofing in Julatten, QLD - Part 1

wwoofing in Julatten - Part 1

For two weeks in June we stayed and worked on a property between Julatten and Mossman, 110km north-west of Cairns, at the northern end of the Atherton Tablelands. The property was once a nursery for rare palm trees but has been somewhat neglected and so Fred and Jeanette (the new owners) are tidying it up and restoring much of the native habitat. There is a creek that runs through the property that is part of the Upper Mitchell River catchment and that makes the property eligible for grants to improve the 'health' of the creek.

Lots of great tropical plants

This is one of the exotic palm trees. Covered in spines like an echidna. No climbing!

Misty sunrise

 We were involved in a couple of interesting projects while in Julatten. The first was the new herb garden. This was Rosie's project and as you can see it turned out beautifully! It's an old bath tub standing on cement blocks to keep it out of reach of furry creatures.

We also built a vegetable garden. We learned that vegie gardening up North presents a number of challenges that aren't as much of a concern in other areas. Fred and Jeanette's last vegie patch was a bit of disaster, destroyed by a combination of white-tailed rats, pademelons, wallabies, the neighbour's peacocks and the heavy rain during the wet season (Julatten average annual rainfall is over 2000mm and the record rainfall for a single day is 801mm!) so this time Fred had put a lot of thought into how to make this garden a success.

Fred is an engineer so he tends to think things through. (He is passionate about solar energy and I learned a lot from him about how solar power works and how to get the most benefit from it.) So Fred had observed where the water ran during the wet season and planned the garden on one of the 'drier' spots. Fred dug channels half a metre deep around the border of the garden and used corrugated iron sheets as the edging.

Elijah was in charge of soil testing

Stu learned to operate a tractor, and tractors became Elijah's new favorite thing!

We laid sleepers as edging for the garden beds so that there was a path down the middle. We filled the beds with soil and freshly-collected cow poo. Fred welded the door on and we used irrigation pipes as the roof supports. The ends of the pipes went over star-pickets and we braced the top with a length of square steel tubing. Next it was time for the chicken wire. The entire enclosure needed to be covered with chicken wire to keep out the pests.

Rosie "c-clipping" the chicken wire

Next we installed a watering system and Rosie planted the first seeds.

The finished project. Hooray!