Being the proud owners of Lot 7 Willowthal Road, in St George Queensland was just the start of a very busy period in our lives and seven years later we are still developing our block. I will share with you over the next couple of blog posts the way we set our block up and why.
First things first though we needs to tidy up the land and clear out the rubbish, to see what it was that we had.
This is where the value of great neighbours can make all the difference. Our neighbours to the west of us proved to be invaluable and have become life long friends. They have helped us immensely with cleaning up our block, slashing back the regrowth, helping us with the huge burn piles and providing heaps of advice, encouragement and humour over the subsequent years, not to mention all their help and friendship.
Firstly, we needed to have the block slashed of all the regrowth and then get it fenced. There were huge piles of dead trees, scrub, and old fencing dotted around the block. We also found sheets of corrugated iron in amoungst the long grass. The block needed to be slashed twice in quick succession to get it clean.
Next we needed to burn these piles. It was obvious that they had been here for many years and we were not sure what wildlife now called these piles home. One concern we had was that wildlife now called these piles home and once these were lit, this of course would have a poor outcome for any residents. As it happens it was fine, nobody was currently in home.
It is important that if you are going to have such a 'burn-off' that you have the required fire permits, that the weather conditions are appropriate and that you have your contingencies in place in case the fires start to get out of hand. Also, it is amazing just how long these fires burn for, so you need to be prepared to supervise your fire for as long as it takes. A few chairs, a portable BBQ and an Esky thrown in the back of the ute worked for us!! We found that it was the second day that caused us some issues, with hot ash and the wind getting up.
Once the fire was well out and the ash had cooled, (this was about a week later for us) it was important to spread the ash out so that is was not concentrated in one place. This would adversely affect the soil pH, making it difficult for plants to grow there. We also needed to clean all of the rubbish out of the ash. This included fence wire, bared wire, fence pickets, concrete etc. With the help of our neighbour and his front-end loader and several ute loads of debris later, we could stand and survey our blank canvas.
All told in the end the block cleaned up really well, however be prepared to do some hard graft to get these good results.
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