Locksley, central Victoria.
Aussie White sheep, Nubian goats for milk and meat, chickens, horses, dogs, bees, an orchard and a vegetable garden. Speckle Park cattle sometimes, when there is fodder for them. Wild deer come through whether we want them or not.
The sheep are shedders. Their coats drop off in sheets or chunks at certain times of the year and they are never shorn, which is why we chose them. It takes an entire annual operation off the calendar.
The Speckle Parks are the same decision in a different form. You do not run stock you cannot feed, so the season decides how many, and some years the answer is none.
The chickens live behind portable electric netting with the coop on a trailer, so the whole outfit gets towed to fresh grass instead of wearing one patch down to dirt.
The farm runs on both halves as well. I can plan levels, drainage and earthworks, work out where a dam sits for the best hydrology, and run pumps and pipe to get water to stock, the vegetable gardens and the orchard. That is engineering, and the ground does not negotiate.
I can also listen to the trees, and to what the animals communicate without making a sound. The land tells us what it needs. Every time so far, the resources to do it have turned out to be right under our feet.
Nothing here is for sale. It is a record of a place and the work it takes, posted as it happens.
In January 2026 fire went through the whole place. The house and the shed were the only things that came out of it, and what happened afterwards ended up painted on a wall at Mt Buller.