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Our farm, Elmswood, arcs around Gundy in the Upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales. The little town was once so photogenic that it was used as the location for feature films.
Our 1890s homestead sits at the junction of two rivers, the Isis and the Pages, on a low knoll overlooking flats of rich alluvial soil.
To the west, hills with ironbark and box trees rise gently; beyond them, massive geological thrusts have piled the landscape into wilderness, peaking with Black Mountain, sometimes dusted with Snow.
Beef cattle graze most of the land, sharing it with kangaroos, wallabies, wallaroos, echidnas, goannas, snakes, lizards, and many more creatures. We also keep about sixty ewes to supply us with fat lambs to eat.
A hundred hectares have been planted with olives trees, from which we produce oil and soap.
Below our homestead we’ve irrigated ten hectares to grow Lucerne for hay and silage. We gather eggs, jar honey, harvest vegetables.
A LOVE STORY
PATRICE NEWELL
Lantern … rrp $49.95
Publication/embargo date: 3 April 2006
My commitment to this land is far stronger than when we first took ownership. Then my feeling for it was wondering, awed, tentative. Now, like my trees, it is deeply rooted, convinced. Every day the mysteries of the place continue to reveal themselves …
This unique and beautiful book pleads for a more personal knowledge of Australia’s ancient, fragile landscape – a re-evaluation of one of the oldest relationships of all.
Few countries have undergone so rapid a change in land use as Australia since European settlement. On her biodynamic farm in the Hunter Valley, Patrice Newell has spent twenty years trying to slow down that relentless pace of change, and to heal some of the wounds caused by past practices. Ten Thousand Acres is the story of those years. It pays homage to land as the source of life and food, community and culture – as a living mantle rather than real estate.
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