The paddock that would become the market garden. Easter 2007
The first day of spring is always a special day in the year of anyone who grows produce. It marks the renewal of the annual cycle that allows us to start again and produce sustenance with the wonder of what the ensuing season will provide.
For us though, it additionally marks the day that we first arrived at Near River in 2007, to commence growing food for our community. This is a piece about getting to that day.
Upping sticks and relocating our city lives to the country in our mid-forties, to follow a dream to become farmers and grow food for a living had many questioning our sanity.
This was how Near River began, a one-day some-day kind-of maybe semi-retirement plan that got kicked into gear and snowballed at pace. There were concerned family members, like Mum, with the ‘no one makes money from farming’ refrain, and friends who viewed it as a pipe dream, who then had to eat their words when after a few years we started supplying them with hams at Christmas.
One of the strongest links to food growing came from my maternal grandfather, Frank, who had a day job of Secretary to the Lord Mayor of Sydney. His other delight was his gardens where he relaxed by growing flowers and vegetables for his family. His neat beds produced a range of produce and we’d always leave Nana and Pa’s place with a huge bunch of fresh silverbeet or other leafy greens. I spent some time with Pa watching him tend his beds and sow the seeds in trays and leave them on the sill in the warmth. Since moving here and setting up our enterprise, I’ve discovered that Pa also kept chickens, namely Rhode Island Red bantams. Mum was quite surprised to see some here one day and that twigged her memory.
Each New Year’s Day the extended family would gather to celebrate Pa’s birthday. I was about ten years old at one of these gatherings when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I declared “I’m going to be a farmer”. “Oh you’ll never have enough money to own a farm”, said one great uncle amid the muffled laughter to my response. We certainly had no agricultural ‘assets’ within the extended family, and at the time the common perception of ‘a farm’ was a few thousand acres, so in one sense Uncle Bill was probably right.
Like many Australian children growing up in the 1960s and 70s, we were lucky to have less restriction on what we could do and where we could go. Living in a cul-de-sac that backed onto bushland in Sydney’s suburban northwest was great with days spent exploring, tree climbing, yabbying, and being very active through the Scouting movement led to a heightened environmental awareness that certainly continues to this day.
Mum and Dad had longtime family friends who were farmers, and as a family we’d spend a couple of long weekends each year either chasing sheep at Tarana east of Bathurst, or picking apples in an orchard at Orange, both activities that I found appealing, being outdoors engaged with the natural world.
However my agricultural path was rather drawn out and prolonged. After completing my secondary schooling, I’d spent a decade, the 80s no less, working in sales and marketing in the music industry, having a good time and learning a lot about people, marketing and publicity. After this I returned to my original passion and studied horticulture and landscape design, a city farmer if you will, and proceeded to grow a lawn mowing franchise into a landscaping business. After twelve years operating in Sydney, a short move to the Southern Highlands would whet my appetite for country living. It was at this time that Therese and I met, and I relocated back to Sydney.
It was October 2006 when matters received an oversized nudge in the right direction. Therese and I were watching Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki present a lecture in Wollongong on sustainability when just before he left the stage, after giving an impassioned presentation, in a raised tone he implored the audience to ‘eat organic food’. We turned to each other and realised that if we wanted to pursue this dream, we needed to do it now rather than someday, one day down the track.
To focus our resolve, we committed to spending one weekend a month out of Sydney exploring potential areas to move to, and set some general parameters in that we wanted to be no more than four hours away from Sydney and within an hour of the ocean. It was at this time that we met another couple, Lyndon and Beth, who were also very keen to do exactly the same thing, so we teamed up. Time was spent attending agricultural shows including the Mudgee Small Farm Field Days, Tocal Field Days and Hawkesbury Field Days, copies of The Land were scoured, and hours were spent devouring information from the Internet. The Mid North Coast was proving appealing, notably through the help that the Mid North Coast Organics Groupprovided with their open days and farm visits. Research was also drawing us towards Port Macquarie as a centre given its population size, location and associated infrastructure.
Around March 2007 Therese and I found ourselves wandering along the real estate windows of Port Macquarie on a Sunday afternoon eating an early dinner of fish and chips before the drive back to Sydney. We’d spent the day at Alan Parker’s organic farm out at Rolland’s Plains as part of a Mid North Coast Organics open day. We were a little despondent as time was marching on, we were taking all these actions, putting in lots of effort, and yet nothing was turning up. But then there it was, a twenty-two-acre property with a four-bedroom house close to a river and priced accordingly. Obviously the agent was closed at the time, though a call the following week ensured we’d be returning at Easter to check it out.
In the interim, time was spent looking at climate data for Wauchope, employment opportunities were sourced, and in general the activity level was moved to a higher gear.
Easter rolled around and we inspected the property. It was a little further out from town than we’d envisaged, but the house was perfect. Given we’d be sharing the house and property with Lyndon and Beth, there needed to be adequate space, and whilst it was a little worn around the edges, compared to others we’d seen, this was a palace. We could certainly make it a home. The additional infrastructure that had not been listed in the ad only added to the benefits, and the aspect was perfect, an east-facing slightly sloping outlook with protection from the south and west. Possibly most importantly, it had been used as a hobby farm with horses for the last fifteen years, so chemical and fertiliser use had been kept to a minimum. Wonderful.
Then we took the walk down to the river. This agent did his job well. The money shot, a pristine piece of Mid North Coast hinterland forming the northern boundary to our potential new home.
The Pappinbarra River that forms the northern boundary at Near River
In the space of an hour we’d fallen in love with this piece of paradise. Now to check that our partners felt the same way about it as we did, and coordinate ways around all the other obstacles that seemed to be in the way.
Anyway we’d found a most suitable place, now all we had to do was make it work.
Over the ensuing months, activity and attention stepped up a gear. In July we returned with Lyndon and Beth and the property met with their approval; our offer on the property was accepted, with a long settlement; sorting finance was a little more convoluted than expected, though eventually successful; arrangements with Therese’s employer needed to be locked in, namely around remote work provisions; and our place in Coogee needed to be let, so a managing agent had to be appointed.
And of course the packing and transporting. Landscaping requires tools, and two-bedroom units rarely have much storage. There was a trailer of assorted materials parked outside the unit, and a single rented garage that was stuffed to the brim with ‘necessary’ stuff. There were numerous trips north with a fully laden trailer.
Finally everything was set with all the last pieces of the puzzle in place. I do remember the strong sense of arrival that the four-hour drive from Sydney brought into focus, along with the belief that this was a moment I’d been waiting my whole life for. Appropriately it was the first day of spring, the day of renewal.
The first part of my now shared dream had been realised.