#lorinna

Family….

Lady Bird Farm - Lorinna

Our home, when the girls were growing up from babies to primary school.  

Lorinna is an isolated, remote valley, roughly an hour and a half from Devonport, in Northern Tasmania. We lived here ‘off the grid’ generating our own power from the sun, and a creek that ran along the boundary of our land. We got solar power from sunrise to sunset and hydro-power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and we had ten beautiful acres, all to ourselves! Ten acres that we loved, cared for, nurtured and maintained for twelve years. Blackberries, thistles, ragwort and bracken overran the place when we bought it. I can remember days on end when I would be out, with a baby in a sling and gumboots on my feet, in the paddocks, pulling ragwort up by the roots, all day! For the thistles Steve made a special thistle shovel, specially shaped to a point, for digging, lifting and flinging those rotten thistles into buckets, for burning. 

We were surrounded by trees and silence. The water we drank was straight from the creek, cold, sweet and pure. Our girls played outside morning to night. Everyone knew us, and we knew everyone who lived in the Valley. There was a Community Hall where we held a weekly Market. I started a Playgroup for all the babies and young children. Ladies Group met at The Hall once a month for chatting, craft sessions, and a trade table where we swapped home-grown/home-made produce, and once a month we had a Community Dinner Night. Everyone brought a couple of dishes to the communal table and these trestle tables groaned under the weight of some amazing food! All the kids ran around the Hall in the dark, playing, squealing, laughing, feeling free and adventurous, and we had no worries at all for their safety, because everyone knew who they were and someone was always watching ‘the kids’! I’m so happy that the girls were old enough, when we left, to still remember their life there.