Over the Christmas break Dorothy and I worked a little harder than we regularly do. We had a new farm and family guests were to arrive mid-January. Accommodation and access needed to be provided. I also wanted to carry out some basic landscaping and rainforest restoration.
A few shots of the shed before and after restoration above.
Anyway, Dorothy had in her mind to turn the old shed into suitable accommodation. She had imagined it to be stylish. I went along for the ride and we both worked very hard. In the end our work was quite sustainable in retrofitting an existing building. We installed copious Knauf insulation to reduce temperature fluctuations in summer and winter. We removed garage doors and replaced with modern glass and let lots of light into the building. Overall the shed is modern, yet eclectic. Existing log posts were covered in gyprock still showing their asymmetry. The ceilings were designed to park large bulldozers which now give us 4m high ceilings. A builder freind (Andrew Browne) told me that we really needed to install sarking fabric outside the insulation and inside the steel cladding to enable the insulation to work best. He said it would be easy to remove all the sheds corruated iron and place on the sarking. This we did, and whilst we were at it we replaced the steel on 2 sides with new black steel. This really made the building look striking. Apart from the mottled concrete floor it even has railway tracks embedded to facilitate the heavy machinery from the past. The shed remained warm at night and cool in the day. Windows give us fantastic views of the property, but we still spent lots of time in the beautiful outdoors.
Access to the site was problematic with wet clay soils. We moved around 2000 tonnes of material to create flat garden and parking areas. Stairs had to be built to the important outdoor toilet. We also built an outdoor shower with hot water, again to Dorothy’s design, and it works well.
Above Bobcat, excavator at work for erosion control and driveway installation. New plants propagated at our nursery and associated restoration works.
The family arrived and with my herpetologist son we scoured the property for reptiles, birds and marsupials. We found 5 species of frogs, 6 species of snakes, 4 types of lizards, many spiders with our head mounted torch lights at night and even a Platypus in our dam.
Above some of the species we and the Sydney University research team found
On the restoration side, we needed to do some immediate clearing around the shed to reduce the risk of fire. In the process I was surprised by the many native flora species amongst pasture and more weedy areas. I figure that I only need to give these plants a hand and restoration will be restored by nature.
During this period researchers from Sydney University also came for a field trip to check the genetics of a special lizard on site that can produce live young or is egg laying in different locations in Australia.
It is unlikely we will achieve so much in such little time again, but we both have big plans to restore this unique place into a ecological masterpiece to be enjoyed by many. Lessons from nature and new species for our urban greening business will also follow.
Landscape around the shed and overall site plan. Light green areas are pasture and purple areas are rainforest.
Much more to come……..
Robert Griffith