I've entered BLOGLAND!!

Well I've finally jumped in. I resisted for along time....but like everything else on the internet, eventually I thought I'd better give it a go. (Lookout YouTube - you're next). I've been meaning to journal our life more regularly, so I thought this would be a good prompting for me to keep it up. Life moves so fast and kids grow up in a few blinks of an eye, so I want to make sure I'm documenting some of this amazing life as we pass through it!

Here's the brief background: my partner and I have been together for nearly 15 years, having met in a share house (who says housemates can't shack up?). We then had some fantastic adventures together in the world of dance music, which was still pretty underground in Australia at that time. My partner produced techno music and played live sets while I Djd and we participated in lots of parties and festivals about the place. We did a stint overseas, including a year in Japan, and it was after coming home from Tokyo that we fled to the rainforest on a mountain to get back to nature and find tranqulity...

Which we did, and our first baby boy was born in that rainforest on that mountain. That was the beginning of a totally new adventure - parenting. A journey that has expanded our universe like we had never imagined! Now that I am a parent, I think I FEEL everything so much more. Now I understand the unconditional love that a mother has for her child, I experience more keenly the pain in the world...everyone is someone's child!

But back to the story, although we could have lived on the mountain forever, we needed to buy our own place, so with a little sadness we prepared to move on and began the search for some land in the country that we could AFFORD.

So that's how we found our valley. If you can't live ON a mountain, you can at least LOOK at one.

In a relatively isolated spot in a rural area, we found the place where we would grow up our kids. Since we moved here 5 years ago, 2 more children have been born. One under the she-oak tree and one in the water.

I'm making it my mission to plant out this place as much as possible and make it lush and lovely. We had a pretty good headstart with lots of good trees already and some interesting features on the land. We really want to make good habitat areas as well, to be a sanctuary for the local wildlife, as this is a farming area, and there needs to be places for the wildlife to seek refuge.

Our lovely froggy friends are our most cheerful tenants. They are well settled in and really enjoy feasting at the frog restaurant every night. (We leave a spotlight on and all the bugs come down and get munched by the frogs). It's so interesting to see the frogs all making their way to the restaurant at about 9.00pm. And they always go back to their same hiding places at the end of the night. They like their routine. Sometimes the kids taxi them to the restaurant and they don't mind that either!




As part of our lifestyle here, we have embraced homeschooling, which suits us so well. We generally follow the natural learning philosophy. We see just about every experience as an opportunity to learn. I guess I'll talk more about this as time goes on....

We work from home, doing various creative projects including a sound design company. My partner also works part-time assisting people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

But our big dream for our valley is to build a solar-powered strawbale studio here, so we can offer musicians the complete eco-friendly recording experience. I can hardly wait! We're not ready to start building yet, but in the meantime we are learning all that we can.

Thanks for visiting!