FOR the Urban Bush-Carpenters’ first job of the year, I arranged to meet Houda at 10 am on Saturday at the South Melbourne Park Towers community garden.

We were late, predictably. But Houda didn’t seem to mind – she was waiting patiently on a bench in the shade, with a trolley and a thermos of coffee. The garden allotments were lush and pretty at the base of the imposing public housing block.

Cultivating Community – a not-for-profit group that supports community gardening – had asked us to clad two huge steel basins with timber and build a slim, wheelchair-accessible, raised garden bed. And to do it at short notice, in time for the garden open day on Saturday 5 February.

We began at our customary slow pace by sitting for a fine while and devouring Danish pastries. Houda poured us a small cup of Lebanese coffee – the first of many treats she brought for us throughout the day.

“It’s strong and sweet,” said Ste, who looked tired from the night before. “The ideal qualities of an Urban Bush-Carpenter.”

Houda told us she used to grow lots of food on her land in Lebanon, but had left nearly 30 years ago because of the Israel-Lebanon war. The community garden at South Melbourne Park Towers opened three years ago, and it was the first chance she’d had to grow veggies since arriving in Australia. She has become the garden’s caretaker.

We had a simple job, and once Houda gently suggested that it was time we begin work, we hopped to it. Geoff and Andrew measured and cut the lengths while Ste and I bought the long ‘bugle head batten’ screws (which have an internal hex drive, the kind an Allen key fits into). They’re good heavy-duty fasteners for timber joins because they give a no-fuss countersunk finish – they don’t stick out, like a chunky-headed coach screw would.

We made rectangular collars, stacked them together and slotted the sinks in. The containers will host a nectarine and an avocado tree – may they fruit abundantly. We didn’t have enough timber for the wheelchair-friendly raised garden bed, so we’ll return one night this week to finish it off. All in all, Houda was pleased. 

Houda, Andrew, Ste and Michael.

THE Urban Bush-Carpenters have been on assignment at the Merri Corner Community Garden. We were commissioned to build three sturdy compost bays, and we did it with style. I think they’d survive a cyclone – which may be just as well, given Melbourne’s recent tropical weather.

The bays have hardwood frames, fortified with sleepers at the base. We used tin for the cladding, the dividers and the top of the hinging lids.

The lids particularly pleased UBC stalwart Ste Hiley, otherwise known as Tall English Stephen.

To build them, we drilled holes through the rear posts, large enough so that the coach bolts would fit through loosely, then screw tightly into the lid cross piece, one at each end. As a result, the lids are sturdy and rotate freely.

“These bolt hinges are our P.O.D.” Ste enthused one morning, and then had to explain to me that P.O.D. stood for Point Of Difference. “I’ve told everyone about them.”

“Who’ve you told?”

“Well, no one really. But they’re amazing.”

It’s true: they are nifty. Also nifty is the size of the bays. They’re a bit larger than one square metre, which is the golden mean for hot composting.

Inside our bays, the community gardeners will be able to make piles that generate enough heat in the middle to cook an egg. The heat rapidly breaks down the organic matter and kills off weed seeds and pathogens. If the folk at Merri Corner remember to turn the piles regularly, they could have rich, sweet smelling compost in as little as a few weeks.

I LISTENED to music while I worked on Elizabeth Fekonia’s land: bluesman Howlin‘ Wolf – picking potatoes; Cuban singer/guitarist Silvio Rodriguez – potting seeds; Paul Kelly – making sweet potato cuttings; The Faces – digging holes; and Bob Dylan – weeding.

Yes, I settled into a nice rhythm at Black Mountain. I began toiling in the fields early, usually before 7 am, and worked until lunch. Then I wrote or interviewed people for articles. By evening, I was eye-rubbingly tired.

For the first few days, my legs were sluggish, but they became stronger. Some days I bounded up the paths. My muscles were weary each night, but I noticed that I felt more at ease: with people I met, with whatever task was due.

The physical work gave me a body-confidence to which I’m not accustomed, and it changed my state of mind. I wrote in a previous post about the practice required for me to gain faith in my hands and limbs, in the way they grip and move. After my time at Elizabeth’s I felt sure that I could be useful in whatever situation I chanced upon. Writing, on the other hand, makes me feel timid. I think it’s the contrast between observing and participating, hanging back and pitching in. On this trip I’ve found a nice balance: wwoofing, hitchhiking, writing and talking. It’s got me feeling grand.

When I left Black Mountain, the seeds I potted had begun to sprout and the seedlings I planted, grow. Soon will come the veggies. I planted fruit trees too, and daydreamed about the years, even decades, when people will pluck ripe peaches and nectarines from their branches.

I MADE sausages from Elizabeth’s bull, Otto. I’ve got a brother-in-law called Otto and he’s vegetarian. Sorry, Ottos. 

As I pushed the meat through the mincer, small pieces stuck to my fingers. I felt like Lady McBeth with King Duncan’s blood on her hands. “Out, damned spot!” I cried, rubbing my hands, but the tiny mincelets stuck fast.

I’ve been a polite semi-vegetarian for a few years. I don’t buy and cook meat for myself, but I’ll eat it when I’m a guest. It’s not that I don’t like the flavour of meat, but that for me, it’s better to go without if I’m not sure where it’s from, how it was raised and how it died.

Elizabeth showed me photos of the way Otto died. They hired a “bush butcher” to kill and cut him up. He was in the freezer by the time I arrived, but he’d spent his life grazing happily on their land and servicing the cows a little too often.

While I was mincing, Elizabeth came in and told me that six turkey eggs had just hatched. In the last week, three pregnant goats had given birth to several kids. The young billy goats would be slaughtered, processed for cheese-making rennet and eaten; the she-goats kept or sold.  

“Gee, there’s a lot of birth and death going on,” I said.

“Isn’t there?” Elizabeth replied. “It must be spring.”

When I finished the mincing, she added cassava flour, garlic and herbs to one batch, and curry spices to the other. We used hog intestine for the casing. It was – yes, it was – like an endless slimy condom. An unpleasant animal smell overwhelmed the room. When making sausages, you must twist each one the other way to the last, so they don’t unravel. I wasn’t very dextrous, but I got the job done: two big batches of snags made. 

Before I ate, I gave thanks to Otto. I don’t terribly much fancy butchering, and I’m not yet sure how much meat I’ll eat as time goes on, but the sausages did taste good that night. And at least I knew how they got there, and what was inside them.

Me mincing, all crazy eyed.

ELIZABETH and Frank Fekonia live on a thigh-tremblingly steep block on Black Mountain near Cooroy on the Sunshine Coast.

Frank is an eccentric, longhaired septuagenarian who long ago escaped from the army in communist Yugoslavia and landed in Sydney a refugee. He moved to Cooroy in the early 1990s (Elizabeth arrived soon after) and built a series of concrete structures, culminating in a concrete castle at the top of the block. The home has commanding views over the green hills towards Gympie. “Everything you see here, Michael,” he says to me often, “I built it. Every bloody thing.”

Together, Frank and Elizabeth have established systems that provide nearly all their food. This morning Frank pointed down at two nearby houses with large lawns. “They’re English. Strange people, the English,” he said. “Always mowing the lawn. Mowing, mowing. No food, just mowing.”

After a lifetime of labour, Frank’s lost his kick. He’s still got his raucous, squealing laugh, but he’s too sick to work. Elizabeth keeps their challenging block going, on two parts will, two parts faith and one part strong arms.

Each morning she does her rounds, down and up the hill, calling out to her cows and goats as she goes. They call back, and the singsong echoes around Black Mountain. She waters the veggie patch, milks the goats, checks the chooks, waters the pigs, looks in on the tropical vegetable food forest, and collects a bucket of pollard to keep Lydia the cow happy while she milks her.

Elizabeth is mad for ferment food. Every day she mentions in passing yet another product she makes or ferments herself. Yesterday it was vinegar; the day before, a kind of fermented tea called Kombucha. She makes her own cheese, yoghurt, kefir, sourdough bread, sauerkraut, butter, ghee, soy sauce, miso, tempeh, lemon wine and soap. I’m sure there’s more. She teaches short courses in nearly all the above, as well as her TAFE classes in organic gardening.

Before I left Melbourne I made a mouldy attempt at sauerkraut – much to my housemates’ disgust. Here I did it better, and it turns out to be very simple.

I cut up two cabbages finely, added half a tablespoon or so of salt and crushed the cabbage in my fists until my fists were sore and there was a puddle of cabbage-water in the bowl. Then I packed it into a huge jar, pressed it all down and put a couple of the outer leaves on top to keep the cabbage submerged in its juice. We left it for days to ferment – usually about five days, depending on the season and how tangy you want it – then drained the juice and stored the sauerkraut in the fridge. 

Elizabeth, Lydia and the new milking machine.

I MADE it to Cairns. It’s a long way to hitch hike. For six weeks, in every lift or chance encounter, I had this exchange:

“What are you doing?”

“I’m heading to Cairns for a friend’s wedding.”

It became a kind of pilgrimage, and Cairns – in my imagination – a lush, secret village in the clouds. I’d never been further north than Fraser Island. What would life hold after Cairns?

With just over a week to go, I was loafing on the Sunshine Coast. I had a closer look at the map of Queensland, and observed that I still had 1700 kilometres to travel. The next day I put out my shingle again. My first lift was from Australia Zoo’s wildlife rescue team. I shared the backseat with kookaburra with a broken wing, sheltering in a cardboard box. The rescuers were on their way to pick up a python from a construction site.

As I got further north, people spoke more and more about the weather. “It’s some strange kind of year, this year,” they’d say. “An early wet – we never even had the dry. The weather’s all mixed up nowadays.” The radio reported predictions of a ferocious storm season coming. Climate change is bringing more intense, variable weather.

One sunny afternoon I waited for hours on the highway at the Bundaberg turn off, just north of Childers. Eventually, I gave up, crossed the road and hitched back into town. The next morning I got an early lift, but my heart sank when I was dropped at the same turnoff.

Hitch hiking is a slow way to travel, but you can’t beat it for the people you meet: beautiful, heavily pregnant Spanish women, South American spiritual drug-takers, travelling salesmen, miners, police. Most of my lifts have been from people who hitched when they were younger, or from lonely middle-aged men.

I waited another hour at the turnoff. Finally, an aging sports car pulled up. It looked like the car from Back to the Future. When I got in, Rodney, the driver, told me at length about the engine, and I tried to rev my approval at all the right moments. He had a chubby face and a curly mullet hairdo, and his eyes had long since parted ways. When I asked where he’d come from, he told me he’d been on suicide watch overnight at the Hervey Bay hospital. “They’re probably still looking for me,” he said. “I’m in a bad way these days.”

Rodney said he didn’t have anyone to talk to about his troubles. We spoke about cars and motorbikes and road maintenance, well past my capacity. He drove to Gin Gin, toured me through the town to the free camping area and returned me to the centre. He showed me great care.

Further north, as I passed through Proserpine – in a little red Mitsubishi driven by a man named Matt – no smoke billowed from the sugar mill. Matt was a plumber-turned-mineworker who grew up in Mount Waverley, the same suburb as I did. He split for the north a decade ago and now lives at Midge Point, near the Laguna Quays resort. “I’d come up here in my twenties, working,” he said. “Everything was a grind in the city, my marriage ended, so I came back – I wanted to find that feeling I had when I was younger, that sweet way of life.”

He told me that so much rain was a curse for the cane farmers. Right now, the earth was too soft and the big harvesters would bog. If the rain keeps up until the wet season proper, the farmers will lose their crop. The mills close in December.

For my friends’ wedding on the beach, at least, the weather held out. And it was, as forecast, a damn good knees-up of a wedding.

The Sunshine Coast Highway near Brisbane. A long way to go.