The road to Ladakh (in the steps of the ancient ones)

Sep 15, 2024 | autonomous edibles, building, culture, family on bikes, farming, food culture, food medicine, foraging, goats, health, interspecies relating, lifemaking, locavorism, medicinal plants, sacred country, social warming, street food, water, wild foods | 39 comments

We don’t like to find out too much before we venture to a new place, and we’re glad we didn’t know what was ahead of us when we woke at 4am to leave Manali at 5 in a 16 seat bus.

We climbed and winded through the dark for a few hours and as the sun broke we became aware we were moving into completely new terrain; a terra of glaciers connected to the Himalayas.

This is a dry-cold Mother Country,

inhabited by sheep, goats,

and shepherds.

India is a country of almost two billion people; most of whom do not live here, in the remote parts of Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh.

The scale of the mountains astonished us,

and as we climbed we began to feel cold for the first time since leaving central Australia months earlier.

The intensity of the climb, the winding and bumpy roads began to unsettle Woody. He had his first vomit

before our first road stop. He declined breakfast, but us adults had roadside chai and omelettes. None of us had jumpers to put on. Our wind and rain jackets were in our bags roped to the top of the van. Woody was grateful for the scarf his dad knitted him to keep him warm, and for his mum’s hugs.

This road from Manali to Leh will be closed in the coming months, due to snow.

We each had on all the layers we had,

and carried on climbing into the clouds,

and ice.

This high country desert is like no other environment we’ve experienced.

It was no smooth ride. Like the bus trip from Dharamshala to Manali, the driver threw us from side to side, racing at the hairpin bends, then braking suddenly. We don’t know whether it was motion or altitude sickness, but Woody threw up everything his body had, including his stomach bile, until he was just dry retching.

The physical intensity inside the bus was accompanied by the immense physical beauty of these lands.

The road was unforgiving in places,

and again, it was a journey encompassing a string of near-deaths.

What a magnificent place to die!

Much of the road didn’t have any barriers to stop vehicles going over the edge.

The vomit bag needed emptying regularly out the window.

Retaining walls, holding sections of the road in place, had given way.

As passengers, our attention flickered between oncoming challenges,

and spectacular beauty and life force.

As picture makers our beginner eyes marvelled as our stomachs churned.

It was joy and discomfort riffing each other, with fellow mammal Asiatic ibex coming into the mix at places,

and little settlements offering sustenance and motion relief.

We did not take the recommended pharmaceutical (Diamox, made by Pfizer), not just because of the long list of adverse effects these junk science tablets contain, but because we know we are hardier than the industrial medical complex gives our bodies credit for, and we trust the old ways – ginger, water, chewing and belching as one climbs, exerting little as one adjusts. Woody couldn’t stomach any of these things, except for sitting, exerting little.

As the hours passed, the road became wilder, and roadworks brought we traffic-species to a halt.

Desert rock became finer,

and more intriguing.

We stopped for lunch. Woody stayed on the bus and slept, while his parents entered a little Ladakhi café with fellow travellers.

We were all in a trance as we ate dhal and rice, and drank lemon, ginger and honey tea. The air was thin,

and our urine flowed more quickly than usual from our bodies. After lunch we visited the most beautiful dunny in the world.

Ladakh borders Pakistan controlled land, the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh, Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir, and China. Until 1960, when the Chinese government blocked access, it was a centre of trade along the Indus Valley between Tibet, Kashmir, India and China.

As the day aged the temperature warmed, and for a while we felt the comfort of the sun.

We had travelled only 300kms in the first several hours when we reached a plain with momentary sealed and straight roads.

Such comforts were short lived. We climbed again, and twisted and vomited up into snow country,

reaching the dizzying altitude of 5,329m at the very climax of the journey.

We met frozen rock,

and overturned vehicles,

mountain ponies,

and Changthangi goats and herders as we descended into the Leh district of Ladakh.

As we approached Leh, the largest human centre in Ladakh, small-scale agrarian settlements popped up through the rock. Many of the roofs of the houses supported cut hay, drying for the coming winter.

The annual rainfall in Leh is 35mm. Farmers and growers rely on melted glacial waters, which despite the land’s desert appearance,

is in abundance in the rivers and irrigation networks that feed into the homes, farms and settlements.

After 11 hours of travelling, we arrived in Leh in the late afternoon. Modern, touristy Leh, we noticed, is being transformed by cold concrete,

while old Leh is built with thermal-friendly clay and rock.

In a clay, rock and manure version of shelter culture, Mr Adani and his mines are not required.

We walked from the bus station to a cheap hotel room that offered beds but no running water, dumped our bags and headed out to explore. It was at this point, Woody, who had vomited 14 times throughout the day, turned to his parents and said, “The beauty of that journey was so worth the discomfort.”

We found ourselves in a remarkable town,

with much history and prayer,

a town of 260,000 people,

built into rock and cloud,

with stupas on every corner.

and dogs, cattle and donkeys wandering the streets.

Leh is a town of cultural life force and of unmediated death,

of celebration and festival,

and, like much of northern India, it is yet another place of radically untuned traffic.

Local growers sell their vegetables,

their fruits,

and their saved seeds in the streets.

These farmers delighted us with their joy and wisdom,

and with their passion for their food.

We cannot get enough of the beautiful acceptance for earth-others inhabiting human-centric settlements in India.

Woody was particularly drawn to the local ass.

At times, we could not get enough air in Leh, at an altitude of 3,524m and with only 65% oxygen in every breath, we often had to stop and slow. Right. Down.

So much life attracted our senses in Leh. Old bulls scavenge the detritus on the streets,

and at the markets,

and little back alleys led us to quieter accommodations.

At Ree-Yul guesthouse, where we moved to after our first night, we met four Kashmiri motorbike travellers. We yarned in the sunny courtyard, they offered advice for our next leg, and invited us to take a pic with Woody on one of their bikes.

Each day we wandered the streets, seeking to lose ourselves in daily life here.

We beheld the preparations for winter, and the many local poplars (Populus nigra ‘Afghanica‘).

The stark qualities between human and more-than-human made forms.

The modern and makeshift.

and got among the forage-worthy plants,

such as the fruit-medicine sea-buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides).

These fruits, also known as Leh berries or Ladakhi Gold, are rich in antioxidants and essential minerals including potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron and phosphorous. Fresh off the bush they taste lemony and slightly astringent. On our last afternoon, we ordered a juice of this berry from a local restaurant.

For $15 we hired a motor scooter for a day and headed out of town a little.

The three of us on one little scooter slowly meandered up high above the town,

arriving at the 15th century Victory Fort on Tsemo Hill.

We paused for a while, looking out

and up

and through

remnant cultural structures of the past, as they stand in the present. We descended back into Leh and took chai,

before heading off to find one of the main sources of life in this little city, the Indus River. This took some time as the main road travelled alongside this mighty water serpent, but never within reach, with few side roads to take. We stopped for a lunch of Tibetan thukpa (noodle soup),

and with goodly nourishment in our bellies, eventually found a road to the river.

We spent time by the Indus, washing our feet,

yarning and knitting,

and it was here Woody learnt to ride a motor scooter.

Leh will remain in our hearts as the apex of this journey. Much like Hope Vale was on our 400 day bicycle adventure to Cape York, Leh is our most northern stop. As we ready to leave here, and descend south we feel a returning spirit enter us. Excitement for home, for reconnecting with friends, family and community. This air, albeit thin, is feeding us with new possibilities and projects ahead. We still have time in India ahead of us, and we remain present to what is in the now, but there is a turning at this juncture. There is both sadness and excitement.

Snake mackerel dreaming (to the far west of Gunditjmara Peoples’ Country)

Oct 24, 2021 | family on bikes | 23 comments

After 110 days of riding this pilgrimage we forever find ourselves becoming another story. We ride into bower spinach country, succulent and salty, and it predominates the through lines of our slow traverse. Young seal-play country leads us into the hearth of another family. Emu country runs through stumped pine forests, pulp of which is destined for Japan and other places. And all the while we find kinship and comfort in blue wren, blackwood and magpie countries. Welcome to another post from the road.

From the permeable skin of our Portland fingers runs old story barracouta – snake mackerel. When we handle such story we are altered by it indelibly and microbially. Snake mackerel flows into our story guts. Fish broth. From sea gut to land gut, then on to heart, lungs, brain, through vagus nerve country. Thinking for us derives, in this moment, from old fighting fish slime made in and of Gunditjmara country.

Settler industry toils its wisdom lines through Portland. Nearby monocultured forests are chipped, pulped and shipped around the world for single-use paper products. The local community garden is one of many recipients of the annual penalty Portland’s US-owned aluminium smelter pays to the local council each year for environmental damages – the pissy costs of doing big business on stolen land. On the road we are once again, at times, products and eaters of industrialism. Unlike the food of home (that we tend, perform daily tasks and ritual with, consuming the food medicines of walked-for relations), we become again industrial story by what we put in our guts, by what is available. This is why fishing, with all its story and community, is so important to us. To pivot. To not be so emphatically snared by store-bought, packaged and transported food. To live in more direct relationship with what we consume, as filthy and as violent as such story sometimes demands.

We have all been scored by snake mackerel dreaming,

and we’ve all had old story skins to shed and grow anew since our time in Portland.

The red mark between Blue Wren’s eyebrows (above) is the love bite of old Chinese medicine at play. Both Blue Wren and Magpie received the gift of needles by a Portland healer who allowed us to document the process. Magpie uncharacteristically slept through for several nights after her second treatment, bringing much needed deep sleep.

After leaving Karina and Daryl’s cosy caravan, where we gently laboured to help in each other’s lives, including house painting and a pergola design from us,

and a dry little shelter and clothes mended from them,

we arrived, by the good fortune of mutual friends, in this little cove. A self-contained flat.

The flat is part of a farmlet, lived in by four generations that can be roughly described as the Couttie clan. Introducing Peter, Fifi, Finn, Rory, Caitlin and Aaron.

The eldest of the clan, 91 year old vet Peter, holds much mammalian health knowledge and he was eager to share it. We made two short (great) Grandfather University videos centred on some of his life-long learnings.

The remarkable Peter swims a kilometre three mornings a week, and still carries out much of the farm work. He also cured himself of cancer a few years back.

We had 18 magical days on the farmlet, eating fresh produce, chopping wood, baking bread in the little baker’s oven in the flat, and helping out with various projects. When he wasn’t fishing, Blackwood threw himself at playing with Finn and Rory, and helping with the garden work.

There was an abundance of love and story, fish and citrus. At just nine years old, Blackwood fed two families on one particular night by his patience and skill. He was much praised for the deep nourishment he brought to everyone.

While at the Couttie farm he received reading and writing lessons from Steiner teacher, Grandmother Fifi. Throughout his nine years we have intentionally foregrounded orality and left literacy alone. Blue Wren’s doctoral thesis included a critique of writing, querying whether literacy plays a part in the problem of hypertechnocivility (his term for ecological estrangement) – the terminal psychosocial disease advanced more or less unwittingly by Second Peoples who have lost their stories. While writing bears many gifts, especially as a transmission of story, myth and minority perspectives, it also works to make the world less tangible and more mediated. While story has generally been big in his life, literacy, we’re thankful, hasn’t dominated Blackwood’s first decade. It seems right time for him to learn now, not because we adults push an idea about literacy onto him but because he is becoming curious. Becoming curious about reading and writing coincided with having right guidance in right place. Fifi is a gifted and caring teacher. While Blackwood exercised some of his early pathways into mediated life, Blackwood’s parents also used mediating tools to tell another kind of story,

and share more neopeasant skills from our kitchen on the road.

While at the Couttie’s farmlet Blackwood, who lives mostly in direct relationship with the living and dying of the world, spent a day making a rabbit retrieval tool.

He first spent time selecting the limb, respectfully harvesting it (with words we were not privy to), then fashioning it with his knife.

He then fixed the rubber sling. Bonza tool Woody! Each night on dusk he would stalk the farm rabbits. While he was unsuccessful in hitting and capturing one, he trusts that these skills and knowledges add up,

as they have with his fishing,

his salvaging of discarded or snapped off tackle,

and bike riding. The Couttie’s farm harboured a bike he could borrow and he was in heaven riding kilometres each day on a single-speed BMX. Just to give some perspective, when he is on Merlin-the-tandem with his dad, there are 27 gears to help their transits, just like Magpie’s Cosmo.

When we finally left Portland and the restorative hearth of the Couttie clan we entered bower spinach country. We have followed this songline for some time, but this bountiful edible really came back into our focus over this next leg, incorporating it in many meals.

We rode to Bishops Rock, hopped off our bikes and were immediately greeted with hot tea and cake from two women who were camped for the day in the car park, wishfully awaiting their partners to return with fish.

One couple Lebanese, the other Russian, we exchanged stories on beekeeping, veggie growing, fishing, our favourite Russian band and, of course, Covid before riding on to Bridgewater Bay to find a camp for the night.

Hidden behind wattles and bower spinach covered shrubbery we found a sheltered nook to call home.

We raised the tent and got a fire going.

Blackwood continued on with the bookwork Fifi provided him.

We spent some lovely days at this little camp, cooking the fish Blue Wren speared,

and those that Blackwood caught on his line. Wrasse have nourished us well on this journey. An underrated fish, we were told some years back by a fellow fisher that they need to be oven-baked with lemon to bring out their best. But just about any fish cooked on coals taste good if they’re freshly killed, bled and gutted.

We walked along some of the Great South West Walk to Cape Bridgewater,

hungry for and sadly starved of First People place names (at the very least),

out to the fur seal colonies. Can you spot them below?

A little way along this walk we came across a rust-bitten jetty,

where we made the following short video expressing how we are feeling being part of a new underclass in Australia. Almost two years of rupture and suffering for so many – anthropogenic virus, death and illness, extreme lockdowns, vaccine mandates. Thank you to all those who have reached out from overseas, distressed at seeing reports of Australia’s extremist Covid policy. We have even been offered a home in Sweden. You might consider supporting us and others like us by signing (and sharing) this petition before October 27.

We had a very sweet encounter with a young seal at this jetty, which we hope to share with you in a future video. After three days in Bridgewater Bay, where we also bumped into two veteran Artist as Family blog readers, Louise and Jo (Jo and her family put us up for a night on our first big ride to Cape York) we headed off through the backroads towards Nelson, stopping at this incredible cave complex that again bore no First People recognition. The cave, we later discovered, is called Tarragal.

We found a camp site at Swan Lake, though failed to find a lake. Or a swan. Blackwood ran between bikes helping the heavy rollers through the sand ruts that had a few times dangerously brought our bikes mid cycle to a complete halt. It was a fast descent down to the camp and we knew it would take some work to get back up the next morning.

It’s always a relief to find a quiet spot to camp before it’s too late in the day. Enough sunlight to dry out dew-dripped-on-bedding and slow the spread of mould.

Making home is a ritual.

Embodying it and giving praise for such comfort is an essential practice.

Patterns of this pilgrimage are forming. When we stop somewhere for a while we recuperate and reflect, though arguments occur more frequently as our needs get split. When we are on the move we perhaps perform more as a contiguous family unit, holding each other’s back. Blackwood’s help between the bikes has been remarkable. He rode with Blue Wren to get Merlin up the hills, and at each peak ran down to push Magpie’s Cosmo up to the next step. He wasn’t asked to do this. He just stepped off and stepped up.

We left the quiet of the slippery side roads and joined the C192 for a difficult 37 kms on a road with loads of trucks and little shoulder. The truckies were generous and gave us a wide berth so the only real endurance was the persistent headwind,

all the way to Nelson. As you may recall from our first post back in early July, the feather pointed south so we rode in that direction as far as we could. We then decided we’d head west and for most of this pilgrimage we have been creeping along the coast in that direction. Nelson marks another potential direction change.

Crossing the border into South Australia and entering what is, in tangible speech (because the map is not the territory) Bunganditj spoken-for country, is not currently an option. The little sleepy town of Nelson will no doubt provide time to reflect on where we’ll go from here. In the meantime, we are fishing up the Glenelg River with a paddle and a local canoe,

and bunkering down in our conspicuous story tent for wet weather in Victoria’s most affordable camping ground.

We’ve added nearly another 100 kms to our now 700 plus km pilgrimage. We’re not sure why we’re counting such numbers, as crude as they are. Maps and numeracy can never account for the full bodied existence of being storied in country, but perhaps they provide some context for just how beautifully slow we are travelling, averaging about seven kilometres per day.

So, where now Dear Reader? That’s anyone’s guess. We hope you are also going at just the pace you feel liberated to go at. Sending our best health to you and to yours.

With much love,
Artist as Family. x

Where are we now? Our lockdown in Warrnambool

Sep 8, 2021 | family on bikes, gift economy | 28 comments

Where are we now? Well that’s a complex question. Let’s begin with the tangible end of the answer. We’re in Gunditjmara People’s Country, living in retrosuburbia between beautiful Moyjil

and Merri Island.

When we first arrived in Warrnambool this man, Mark Dekker, spoke to us in Dhauwurd wurrung. He said, ‘Ngatanwarr wartee pa kakay Gunditjmara mirring-u,’ (Welcome brothers and sisters to Gunditjmara country). Mark’s daughter Violet (pictured) and son Beau are Gunditjmara kids, and they are growing up speaking their First People’s language.

We’ve been staying in a self-contained unit as guests of Rod and Hanna. Back home we are good friends with their son Connor, pictured below (some time ago) with his siblings Stella, Maya and Agina.

Rod and Hanna have been so generous to us, as has Hanna’s mum who lives across the laneway. Meet Mor Mor, a true elder who is heartily embedded in her community and, we were to discover, in service to many. She is currently reading Sand Talk, and like Rod and Hanna, Mor Mor has been leaving food packages on our doorstep.

We really landed in a most caring neighbourhood. Steve and Kathleen live next to Mor Mor. Here they are on a ride to the pier we have spent so much time on.

They too have been dropping off food bundles, and Steve bestowed on us a treasure chest of gifts he had collected over the years including panniers to replace our torn ones, a multitool knife for Blackwood and a tin whistle for Magpie. He made improvements to Merlin the tandem, repaired Blue Wren’s boots, and made a leather pouch for Blackwood’s new pruning saw,

which he received for his 9th birthday from his Nana and Papa.

Gifts also flowed to us from saltwater mother country. Patrick (who shares his birthday with Blackwood) caught a beautiful Australian salmon on his hand line with scrap chicken for bait (apparently rabbit works well too).

With all these gifts we couldn’t help but feel even more grateful for this life than we ordinarily do, and it was in this milieu we recorded and shared two new songs, Roadside fruit and Love real high.

So this is where we’ve been in tangible, relational and creative senses. But all the while our critical faculties have been working too, noticing things around us that don’t speak of love, of being in service, of being cultured in care and connection. On a street level, for instance, shops selling alcohol are deemed essential services and are well open for business while children’s playgrounds are closed and desolate.

Here, what is allowed to be open is lucrative and immunity harming, while what the state has closed ordinarily brings well-being, learning and social warming. Why then is there a refusal to apply cost-benefit analysis to COVID debates? We have so many questions. What if natural immunity is really superior to vaccines (as reported in Science)? How exactly has the Australian government’s ‘culture of secrecy’ threatened democratic journalism, and what does this mean for this time? Why has the Therapeutic Goods Administration taken offline (since August 31) its Database of Adverse Event Notifications (DAEN), including numbers of deaths caused by Covid vaccines?

The below TGA screen grab was sent to us on August 16. It shows 462 deaths reported after taking the two Covid vaccines – Pfizer’s mRNA Comirnaty and AstraZeneca’s viral vector. So are these figures accurate? We’ve been trying to find out for a week but the TGA page is consistently unavailable, “being investigated as a priority” (as above). If these (below) figures are accurate, would this data even be allowed into the corporatised media today? With the Australian government’s growing culture of secrecy, their attack on journalists and whistleblowers, and a general state of compliance or muzzling in a fully corporatised health care industry, how can any of us possibly know what is true?

Furthermore, considering Big Pharma’s track record and a Federal Government bringing in even more extreme anti-democratic bills (signed off by Labor; opposed by the Greens) should we not be seriously suspicious of what is going on? Should we take a novel vaccine produced by known corporate criminals or look for cheap, no longer patented well-studied treatments in times of need? Should we take a novel vaccine just so we can participate in a vaccine economy? What has happened to the Left? Is there a Left left? Do we just continue to cancel comedians while the world burns?

Arggh, so many notional questions. Time to get back to the real stuff.

Whales, rainbows,

rain clouds,

sacred country,

and community. While we couldn’t gather or labour with our neighbours directly in Warrnambool, we could still converse in chanced upon public outings, connect and consult digitally and help plant neighbourhood food for the future. Blackwood made useful mulch from a near silent shredder (something we’d never heard of),

Blue Wren and Magpie planted out deciduous and citrus fruit trees,

on common,

unceded land.

While in Warrnambool we were asked to speak on 3WAY community radio. This is our yarn with presenter Gillian Blair, which centred on child-led learning, fermentation, de-monetisation and going off the (corporate-industrial) grid.

So that’s where we’ve been, Dear Reader. That’s what’s been riling us and what’s been grounding us. Of course we can stay in the sickness of the news – the sadness, fear, grief, division, tears and silencing of alternative narratives – but we can also celebrate the utter gift of life we have been given.

Singing and dancing, gardening and playing, loving and connecting do not counter or cancel the sadness, grief and anger we are feeling, rather these former things bring balance and hope to the latter. Asking questions doesn’t mean we have worthy answers to share, rather it means we’re in a process of adding societal substance to the complexity of now, while refusing to seek out reductive political narratives – them/us; right/wrong; pro/anti.

We hope you too are finding balance, laughter and a little dose of Zappa each day.

Baptism by ice and lemon: from southern Djaara to saltwater Wadawurrung country

Jul 13, 2021 | bike life, family on bikes, foraging, free camping | 50 comments

Well, the quill of the feather pointed due south.

As we came onto the street fully loaded, our neighbour Bob greeted us and said (quite concerned), “You’re heading north aren’t you?”

A kilometre later at the top roundabout, south meant taking the third exit (right), and as we did so another neighbour, Gordon, took out his phone.

The bikes were laden and our legs not yet in tune.

It was always going to be slow going at first. We stopped for a splash of mineral water at Sailors Falls,

and Irish strawberries (Arbutus unedo) recharged our energy fields,

and then we truly left home, and crossed this threshold into Wadawurrung mother country.

We rode on through the Spargo Creek Road forest, crossed the Western Freeway and dropped into Gordon with these beautiful wood blewits (Clitocybe nuda) blinking up at our foraging eyes in a small reserve.

We were keen to get out our instruments for our first play on the road, when Maureen, a local resident, came by and introduced herself.

Maureen invited us home for a cuppa, which quickly developed into a backyard blitz, where we helped weed out the bent grass, trim the poa tussocks,

and plant them in another patch of the garden.

In the gloaming hour, Maureen showed us Kirritt Bareett, the hill where Bunjil resided after he created the first people.

With an invitation to camp over, and the lend of a few more blankets, we spent our first night in the tent at Maureen and Vince’s. It got down to minus 2 degrees celsius.

Vince (DJ icon from PBS radio’s Soul Time) and Maureen really keep a spirited home,

and their neighbour Andrew kept dropping off food packages for us over the fence while we were there. Such generous souls! Our first 24 hours were magical.

Just down the hill, heading towards Mount Egerton on our second morning, we came across John Smith in his front yard. We pulled over for a quick yarn and a laugh and rode on,

finding some lovely saffron milk caps (Lactarius deliciosus) on the road to Lal Lal.

We thought Lal Lal might be a place to lay our heads, but with all the downhill of the morning and still energy to burn, we selected a few books to take from the free roadside library and thought we’d try our luck at reaching Meredith before dark.

The delicious three-cornered garlic (Allium triquetrum) greeted us on the edge of town.

We rode through rough forest tracks and C roads for a few hours until we realised we’d better start looking for a camp at Elaine. Being landlocked and running alongside the A300, Elaine didn’t offer much in terms of a public reserve to pitch a tent. It was looking like an undesirable roadside camp when friendly Dave walked across the road to see if we needed assistance. That came in the offer to pitch our tent beside his woodshed. Thanks Dave!

The mercury fell to minus two again, and the fields over the back of Dave’s fence felt the full exposed force of the frost.

Home is the combination of kindness and fire. Thanks Dave!

In Meredith we swapped over the Lal Lal books,

and had a play in the sun,

before pushing off for Lethbridge to dry out the tent,

and cook up the mushrooms with the sourdough leaven we are carrying and mixing up each day.

The combination of the cold and the riding is keeping us perpetually hungry. We stopped in Bannockburn, played some tunes, received our first coin for our efforts, and cooked up some grub.

On dusk we headed down to the footy ground and on the margins of the reserve set up camp. We crashed early and woke an hour or two later to the sound of spinning wheels and a car zooming past our tent just metres from our heads.

A few hours later we woke again, this time to the thump of lemons being used as grenades at our tent. Despite the burnouts and lemon hurlers we got our first decent sleep of the trip. It was a balmy zero degrees and we had everything we needed, including lemons.

On the way out of Bannockburn we discovered the lemon hurlers had had a busy night. We rode down the noisy A300 without breakfast and found the sleepy Batesford Tennis Club,

where we set up the camp kitchen.

Some late season roadside apples and a few overhanging mandarins filled us up some more,

and we collected wild fennel seed (Foeniculum vulgare) as take-away spice.

Woody jumped off the bike and harvested some wood sorrel (Oxalis),

munching the golden flowers with gusto.

We’re not sure why we were drawn to easting into Geelong. The feather’s quill was only ever to be a starting point to enable the flow of the journey to set itself free. But it felt right and so we followed our intuition. And soon found ourselves beside a mussel and paella float, and struck up a yarn with another family about the indefatigable learnings when living in the realm of school of the road.

Blackwood quickly tried his luck with the local fish populations,

and we slept, cooked and sang our way across the afternoon.

With more musical pennies in our pocket, though no luck with the fish, we gathered up sea lettuce (Ulva australis) to join the evening’s meal.

Invited to stay in Tom, Clarrie and Lachie’s home garden farm in the burbs, we once more set up camp on dusk.

The next morning we feasted together on backyard rooster that Jenna had despatched the night before, and were treated to the soup of a pumpkin that had spent the summer growing where our pumpkin coloured tent now sat.

Just like our pumpkins back home are powered on humanure, same too here in Norlane,

as is the whole damn fine garden. These guys are living the RetroSuburban dream.

We all jumped on our bikes after a nourishing closed-loop brekky and headed downtown to join Wadawurrung mob celebrate their culture.

Blackwood added another hunting tool to the kit,

and we pedalled down the Bellarine Peninsula,

only to be hi-ho-ed off the highway by gardeners Ivan and Gretta to spend some time with them and the family’s herd.

Brother Zephyr called while back on our bikes, and so we pulled right off the road to hear his news and to share ours, finding lilly pilly (Syzygium smithii) delights alongside our conversation.

This was our biggest day in the saddle yet. Almost 50 kms with just a few big climbs. We were well spent by the time the pelicans witnessed our arrival.

Friends Jo and Tony offered us to stay in their beach shack at St Leonards and thus have given us a chance to get out of the cold and damp over the next few days when a load of rain is expected.

We’ll spend time gathering some saltwater nourishment thanks to Wadawurrung mother country,

resting, and carrying out some modifications and upgrades.

The generosity of people has been overwhelming over this past week, both at home, online and on the road. We are so grateful for your support in leaving home and during this first 180kms.

So the question is, Dear Reader, where to now? Any guesses? We look forward to sharing our next leg with you down the track. Signing off for now, with love, Artist as Family xx

Ten panniers, four instruments – most of what we’re taking

Jul 6, 2021 | bicycle activism, bicycle touring, bike travelling with dogs and small children, chance, community, creative frugality, Djaara mother country, family on bikes | 18 comments

Meg’s bike, or rather Magpie’s bike (we’re going to use our forest names for this trip), is called Cosmo, after Cosmo Sheldrake. Here is the breakdown of what she is taking:

Pannier 1. Daily food pannier number one (6.4 kg). Thanks Marita Smith for the gift of Golden Lion and the Reishi. We’re taking our sourdough leven with us to make fermented crumpets for lunches. We’re committed to doing this trip single-use-plastic free so will be only buying produce that comes in its own packaging like avocados or that we can buy in bulk and put in our own bags and containers. We are taking a little of Magpie’s homemade miso, some cacao from Loving Earth, and oats and spelt from Burrum Biodynamics via our wonderful not-for-profit food co-op, Hepburn Wholefoods – making best practice farming affordable for low income households like ours. Thank you to all the volunteers.

Our food co-op is the same age as Blackwood, who has grown up with home-grown, foraged and not-for-profit organic food. He initiated his own co-op film last year and this year he was asked to be in one of a series of short films about the community-owned model.

Collective health doesn’t exist in the exclusive hands of science, science is just part of a much bigger story. Community health belongs in the many giving and making hands of strong community. To feed the world industrial food and medicine only serves a treadmill of ill health and produces destroyed habitats. This tradition comes from the death-seeking ideology of mechanistic scientism, which still proliferates western medicine in new profit-driven forms like virus engineering and other kinds of synthetic biology. We say enough of that sad old story! Community health is a return to eldership. Our dear friend Alison Wilken has been the volunteer-buyer at Hepburn Wholefoods for several years. Alison also co-runs our town’s Community Supported Bakery (CSB), Two Fold Bakehouse. Last time we left home for a year on our bikes Alison spent our last day helping us clean our house. We kept the tradition alive today too. Thanks Alison – your commitment to nourishing your community is both seen and respected.

Back to the pack… we’ll never leave at this rate… so many loved-ones to farewell…

Pannier 2. Daily food pannier number two (5.3 kg). Thanks Su and Dave for the gift of dried Melliodora strawberry grapes. Thank you again to Hepburn Wholefoods for stocking dark chocolate from Spencer Cocoa (Mudgee, NSW + beyond) and spelt pasta from Powlett Hill (Campbelltown, VIC). Thank you Tree Elbow soils for the humanure-grown garlic. Thank you Tree Elbow garden, chooks and nearby commons forest for the gifts of our dried-ground porridge additives. The organic soba noodles we buy in bulk from Hakubaku (Ballarat, VIC). And thanks to the local rural livestock supplies for stocking animal grade diatomaceous earth, which we use as a natural wormer and for being able to drink dodgy water.

Pannier 3. Magpie’s clothes pannier (4.8 kg). We have chosen books we adults both wish to read. Since taking this photo we found (in the pack-up) a half-size hot water bottle for sub-zero nights. Our loads are going to less weighty in a few months but right now woollen thermals, jumpers, beanies, mittens, scarves and jackets are essential to squeeze in.

Pannier 4. Artist as Family’s bedding (5.3 kg). We have liners for our light-weight, down-feathered, down to 0 degree celsius sleeping bags, making them sub zero proof, at least we hope. We have sleep mats to rest tired muscles upon.

Pannier 5. Artist as Family’s general ‘sub’ (5.0 kg). This pannier includes wet weather gear, spare bicycle tube, sun hats, 10 lt water bladder, towels, first aid kit, toiletry bag including spiralina gifted by generous community friend John Mayger, and other things since added like the gourd shell shaker – see below instrument pic.

Magpie is also taking our tent (2kg), violin and shaker (0.8 kg) and Zero (6.5 kg) on Cosmo with water bottles and handlebar bag filled with daily necessities (22.5kg). In total (not including Magpie’s weight) Cosmo fully loaded (including bike weight) = 58.6 kg. With Magpie (52kg) and Zero upon a fully loaded Cosmo the overall weight = 110.6 kg.

We are very excited to be taking these story-making tools with us.

Blue Wren (Patrick) and Blackwood’s tandem bike is called Merlin, after Merlin Sheldrake, brother to Cosmo. Here is the breakdown of what is riding on Merlin:

Pannier 6. Blue Wren’s clothes pannier (6.5 kg). Books, journal, pen, pillows for Blackwood and Blue Wren, warm clothes, sleeping bag liner and rain jacket.

Pannier 7. Blackwood’s clothes pannier (4.4 kg). Warm clothes, sleeping bag liner, rain jacket and cycling gloves.

Pannier 8. Artist as Family kitchen (7.4 kg). The plastic case contains a breadboard made by Blackwood out of his namesake, a diamond stone for knife sharpening, a Trangia stove and cooking kit, a strainer, matches, steel wool, a 3 lt billy, a foldable Luci solar lamp, three sporks, and (since added) a spatula. Additionally in the pannier we have a Trangia fuel bottle, two bottles of gifted garden-grown and locally pressed olive oil – one from friends Sandipa and Sambodhi, the other from Yonke (so much gratitude!), gifted friend-harvested salt (Thanks Yael and Matt – who stayed with their family at Tree Elbow on our last year-long adventure), a foldable bucket, Tree-Elbow grown Mountain Pepper, two tea towels (if you think they look grubby now, just wait a week or so), Tree Elbow honey, Tree Elbow dried chilli, more sneaky chocolate (thanks Brenna Fletcher!), and almond butter.

Pannier 9. Artist as Family’s dry store food packaged in reclaimed ziplock bags (8.9 kg). This includes rabbit, goat and roo jerky, various fruit leathers and dried fruit, dried mushrooms, and dried vegetables. Living well away from the slow-death-by-industrial-food grid is labour-intensive, as it is love-intensive. It demands close relationships with the living of the world and direct, sleeves-rolled-up encounters with birthing, consuming (in an earth-first sense), growing, ageing, dying and decaying.

Pannier 10. Artist as Family’s hunting, foraging and fishing ‘sub’ (8.2 kg). This pannier is our food-procuring kit. All these tools will mean that we can harvest fire wood, weedy root vegetables, wild fish and feral meat. Needless to say, this is Blackwood’s favourite pannier. Tyson Yunkaporta speaks about accountable and direct violence in one of his chapters in his book Sand Talk. This echoes a chapter on accountable killing in Blue Wren’s doctoral thesis, Walking for food (2014), where he reveals all the veiled violences of industrial food, be it a vegan, vegetarian or an omnivore diet. The 70 pound carp bow (below) has a coil and line that attaches to the front of the bow. We are taking our Carp song with us to share on the road. It starts with the story of us cooking carp on wood coals by the Millawa (Murray) River, and ends with these words – Eating carp cleans the river and the charcoal will clean you. We look forward to making a recording of this song at some stage on our pilgrimage.

Blue Wren and Blackwood are also taking a blanket (2kg) and the guitar and recorder (2 kg) on Merlin with water bottles and handlebar bag filled with recording and film equipment (33.7 kg).

In total (not including body weights) Merlin fully loaded (including bike weight) = 71.1 kg. With Blue Wren (75 kg) and Blackwood (30kg) upon a fully loaded Merlin = 177.4 kg.

Well, that’s the summary of the material things we are taking with us – our home (tent and bedding), food and tools. One more sleep before take off. We are sooooo excited!! Thank you everyone for your kind messages of support and love, and for your generous gifts. We are feeling so held and nurtured by our community, both near and far.

This will be our last post for a few weeks. We are going to go offline to lose our bearings and find our touring legs. We will throw the sulphur crested cockatoo feather up tomorrow morning to determine our direction. We hope, Dear Reader, that your feather takes you in the direction of where you need to go this year.

Signing out from us here in Djaara Country,

Artist as Family

Back on the road

Oct 29, 2015 | bicycle touring, family on bikes, free camping | 3 comments

We’ve been busy getting ready to leave, packing panniers, cleaning the house, planting out the garden for our tenants and for our return in three months’ time. The two panniers that go on the front of Patrick’s bike are our food and kitchen supplies. This is what’s inside:

We’ve also been putting up little signs around the garden to aid the permaculture tour that is coming while we’re away and also to help our tenants navigate the garden. Here’s a selection:

It’s a bit difficult to see how the swale works in the above picture so here’s one from 2009 when it first went in. Water travels from our bath/shower along a spoon drain that has been plumbed level across the contour of the land. Water is distributed through 30 metres of food growing garden beds and ‘passively’ harvested deep into the ground. This is one way to help climate-change proof your garden. The whole system is gravity-fed.

We’ve also been harvesting our (unprecedentedly early) garlic,

bottling the last of our plum wine,

and much bike tuning.

Then we were off without the anxieties we felt on our first trip, heading east a gentle 22 kms with plenty of stops,

to our first hidey-hole camp in the wonderful Wombat Forest on the edge of Trentham.

We are not going to be blogging here as much over the next three months. We’re going to be rather busy getting to 20 book events in 90 days. We will be micro-blogging however on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, so please join us there @artistasfamily.

Wherever you are Dear Reader, we hope you’ll check in with us along the way and share your thoughts, reflections, advice and even botanical knowledge. Which reminds us, does anyone recognise this plant? We came across it on the road between Daylesford and Lyonville.

Blog

Category: family on bikes