So welcome. Dear listeners to the discipline of freedom podcast. This is your host Ali specie. So this is a conversation with Blass Hickson, who is a pioneering farmer and artist in the Arcadia region in Southeast Queensland. She's passionate about biodiversity and planting trees to protect the Australian landscape. It's the most wonderful weaving conversation about having the conviction to hold your vision when all around you are doubting you and you've been described many times in your life, has been just a girl. It's a big, long conversation and I learned so much, and I expect you will too. I hope you enjoy it. So then I got involved in biodynamics, which was a way of making organics work for you. Um, but things like, I remember the DNR, two fellas came from the Department of Natural Resources one day and they said, Oh, you know, we can see that there's a locust plague happening and they've all hatched on your property, and we want to come and spray it before they get on the wing. And I was going, Oh, I don't want this, I don't want this, I'm certified organic they came a couple of days later in a helicopter and we could see that the ground was just moving with these things. Anyway, when they came a few days later, there was not one in sight. And Jeff, the manager that I had helping me, we went for a ride and here they were in all these rows of trees with the golden orb spiders that have such a strong net. Had caught all these locusts when they went on the wing and the birds were there having a feast on them and Putting guano basically back into the soil to fertilize it so it was a really good example of how the natural cycles can work with you So you don't have to spray it. You don't have to spray anything You know, you've got everything working for you in the system. And, it was just fantastic. I loved it. You know, I thought, wow, this is really working. That's when I really understood what I was doing was such the right thing to do. So I'm sitting here with Blas Hixson, who I've only met in the last couple of days. And we're going to look at her chart and talk about how the discipline of freedom plays out in her life. So Blas comes from a farming background and she has a 10 acres it's been said, but give or take, where she's creating an ecosystem, and it's like a vertical, system of farming. So where you create a canopy that then allows other things for it to take care of themselves underneath it. Now she's going to explain this much better than I am. But it reminds me of, Mary Reynolds, who wrote Garden Awakening, who started the movement, Build an Arc, who I interviewed for my podcast, Pat Chats. So, I'm super inspired to hear how a woman, who, has three brothers, and farming in Australia, I'm sure there's a story there. She's had the courage to create this oasis in, Queensland. We'll find out more about that in a moment. And she's a painter, so she tells the story of what she's creating with this. Oasis. We're going to call it for want of a better word right now. She's an advocate for creating this self generating and regenerative ecosystem. So welcome Bloss. I know I've given that very awkward introduction. Um, but we'll, we'll go with this and see where it takes us. I actually have 13, 000 acres. Oh, sweet divine mother of God. I can't even imagine what 13, 000 acres would look or feel like. Well, it's about 10 kilometers by eight kilometers, with the mountain range on one side, and it's right at the top of the catchment of the Fitzroy Basin, which runs out at Rockhampton. And it's in what they call the sandstone country. It's just beautiful sandstone cliffs. It's where Carnarvon Gorge is. Um, and it, it is just beautiful. It's a lovely spot. I live in the Arcadia Valley, which means paradise, I think. So, and it, and it just feels like paradise. And it's, what they say, it's a very nice address. Um, and very fertile country. but like all Australian country, it is very vulnerable. And since it's been cleared, and it's only been cleared since the 1960s really, which is what, 70 years? Um, which isn't that long ago. I mean, it, you know, sounds like a long time ago in the big picture. It's not long. Yeah. No it's not. Oh, no. In the big picture. It's a blip. It's a blip. Yes. And it was a part of the Brigalow scheme that Joby Jockey Peterson started in the early 1960s. And Brigalow is an acacia. Um, you know, we've got 800 different acacias in Australia. The wattle basically, all wattles are acacias. And all wattles are pioneering species. They're all leguminous, so they're all putting nitrogen back into the soil. So, The Brigalow area basically extended from the Darling Downs right up to Charters Towers and on the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range to the, well not quite to the coast, but it was quite a big area. But it was just thick scrub and so after the Second World War, with the invention of tracks and things on bulldozers, they realised that they could actually clear this scrub and, you know, It was beautiful, fertile country because, you know, these acacias had just created this amazing soil. So, Joby Jocke Peterson started the Brigolo scheme where he, took big, crown, areas of crown land that were leased out for, you know, 30 to 40 years. And he went to the leasees and said, well, if you want to give up your, lease, then you can have the best portion, you can choose the best portion and I'm not sure whether he said you could have it freehold or not, but the rest of it was surveyed off into basically 10, 000 acres of Brigalow country. And if there was eucalyptus or other ones, then it would be a bit bigger, but they considered the Brigalow to be the valuable soils. So, since the 1960s, um, they have been developing this, the Brigalow scheme, the Brigalow area. The property where I am today, they decided not to relinquish their lease. They decided to see their lease out and then it would be cut up. So most of this was happening in the 1960s. And then in 1985, when this property's lease expired, um, the government came and said okay, well we're going to split it up and put it into a ballot system. There were these ballot systems. Mind you, in the 1960s, the ballots, if you, my husband drew a property in 66, and he was, it was a part of the ballot system, and they'd taken, I think like five areas off Planet Downs and there might have been nine people were in the ballot and so it was pretty easy to get a block but you had a lot of work ahead of you because you had to develop this land which was just thick Brigolo scrub. So by the time the 1980s came around most of the land had been developed. And the land where I was, was developed. And it was the year after my mother died in 85, that this property, and I was up at Cloncurry living with my father, that this property came up, these two properties came up to be balloted. And everyone got very excited about who was going to be who's neighbour down in Arcadia Valley. Anyway, it came and it went. Two people won it and Didn't think anything more about it. And then the following year, the fellow who drew Lot 13 gave it back to the government because he was a peanut farmer from Kingaroy. He couldn't see any neighbours. He didn't, you know, couldn't grow peanuts. Anyway, everybody was just shocked that someone would give this beautiful block of land back to the government. The conditions were that you had to own it for seven years before you could sell it. And you had to develop it, you had to live there. Anyway, so it was re balloted in 1987. And at that stage I was living in Sydney. So in 1987 you would have been 20? 30. 30. Yes. I was living in Sydney. working and completely forgot about it all but we had reapplied for it. Um, and just Your family had? Yeah, my youngest brother and myself had reapplied to go back in it and I just completely forgot about it. And I just had this bizarre weekend with my cousin and a friend and we'd walk, I was living up at Palm, I was living at Wellbeats at that time. And, Um, walking around Palm Beach with these two, Pillar was an artist and Hughie was, I don't know, he always wanted, he dreamed of being wealthy but just never quite got there. And we would go past these people's houses and they'd just dream about living there and, you know, they just talked money the whole time. And I just said, Oh, no, I'm off to England and then I'm going to go to India and yeah, no, it just wasn't. I was studying Taoism at the time, actually, I was studying Taoism, bend with the breezes, go with the flow, surrender to the universe. And that's what I just thought, I'm just going to travel around. Um, for diesel and red wine. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. And, and just, yeah. The only things you need to sustain yourself. Exactly. Ha ha ha ha. And anyway, it was the next morning. Billo had left early. Hughie had borrowed my car and disappeared. And I was sitting there doing an assignment when my brother, Bud, rang up. And I'm telling him about the day before and, you know, etc, etc. And then I told him about my plans to go to England and then back to India to see Roo, my youngest brother. And he just made this comment and said, Well, you'll need a fair bit of money when you get back. I said, Why? He said, Well, about the most amazing thing you can imagine has happened. I went, What? He said, Guess. Anyway, I'm sitting on the top step. Looking out at the ocean, trying to work out what could be the most amazing thing that could ever happen. And he said, um, I said, not that ballot block, he said, yes, it's all yours. Woo! And I just was, I had no one to tell, Huey had gone, Billo had gone, I went down to the beach, I just had this energy and I was walking up and down the beach. Like, uh, and I ran across this. Do you remember the date? It was the 28th of July. 1987. 1987. Um, I ran across a neighbor and he said, Oh, I'm, I'm moving out of the house. Do you think he can look after the cat? He had this cat who actually had about seven owners. Um, And I just said, I'll find this property in Queensland. Fuck the cat! Anyway, that was just the beginning of, yeah, the next part of my life. And it was huge. I kept thinking, wow, I'm going to get run over by a bus, and something's going to happen that's just But yes, I had won 13, 000 acres in the most beautiful part of Queensland. It wasn't quite a virgin block. It had been pulled. There were three paddocks. There were four dams. Um, so it was ready to just move in to. I didn't have to do all the colossal work that Rodney had had to do beforehand. There was still plenty to do. I always dreamed of building my own house. And, you know, now I had the opportunity. It was fantastic. I had, I dreamed of this very fancy round house and my father came down and he just said, keep it simple. Just keep it simple. So I did. And it's grown over the years and I've built quite a few little houses. Um, I enjoy building. And so how, the question that I always start with is, what was valued when you were growing up? What do you remember was like a theme or in your family? We talked about apprenticeships before, I, we just worked, I had three brothers and there was myself and my father didn't really see me any differently. from the boys. So, I was fencing, mustering, cattle work, you know, driving the tractor. I was just a part of the workforce like the boys. And I used to complain a bit, um, but in retrospect I'm so grateful for all the skills that I learned as a child. Also, My mother, my father was a vet. He was, um, tertiary educated and so was my mother. She was a teacher. And when we lived in Bathurst, because I lived in Bathurst up until the age of seven, both my parents came off the land, and they really were keen to get back on the land. And for my father, being a vet was just a means to an end. He just wanted to get back onto the land. Um, So while we lived in Bathurst, my mother taught at the Bathurst High School. She taught all the slow learners. So when we moved up to Cloncurry, and she started to teach us, the most important thing for her was our education. And after The Slow Learner, she thought we were all geniuses, you know. And it was so encouraging for us. And she was such an enthusiastic teacher and learner. That, I think that had a big impact on us as well. She was also an artist. And I think that's where my love of art started. Is being taught art by my mother. So I had a very rich childhood of, of hard work and, and also,, learning, um, and also creativity. So yeah, it was, in retrospect, it was just everything I could need for what I needed. And I drew the blocks. Wow. And so, you said your father, you know, treated you the same as the boys, you know, whatever they could do, you could do as well as them. So did your mother then encourage you you know, I think of Phoebe, um, Waller, is it Waller Bridges? Um, so the girl who does Fleabag and stuff, and she said that her mother said, You can be anything as long as you're outrageous. And I think what wonderful advice to get from your mother. Like my mother was, my mother was exactly the opposite of that. Like she, you know, she definitely wanted, She wanted us to be nice girls, she certainly wasn't thinking that, you know, be outrageous, she wanted to keep us safe. And I understand, coming from that particular time for women, you know, cause my mother stopped work when she, got married, she had five children, my father was the breadwinner, you know, all of that. And my mother was a strong woman, and they were a great team. But she certainly wasn't saying, you know, do anything darling as long as it's outrageous. So what would you say? Isn't that wonderful? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mother was very much, she was sort of on She was very much involved in women's, you know, the women's liberation, the um, she was a real suffragette in a way, I think. She just was looking to be independent herself and not to be classified as a wife and things. She didn't like cooking, you know. She wanted her own identity. She did, she definitely wanted her own identity. And my father was quite strong, so, you know, she started to lose it a bit. Um, but yeah, she, she encouraged me to do anything. Yeah. And I guess, you know, going out and working with dad and the boys was something she wished she'd been able to do. Yeah, she got protected as a daughter, you know, because So, in a way, she sort of encouraged it, encouraged me to learn the skills. Which is amazing, yeah. Yeah. Because, like, Australia, from my impression, you know, the boys were, it's a very patriarchal society and way behind like what Ireland was and Ireland certainly wasn't the avant garde of feminism. No. Um, but here when you come here first, like men, I think we were speaking about it the other day, like they're isolated. So they're sort of awkward. Yes. You know, they spend a lot of time alone, I think, because of, you know, the land and all of that, so, I think. My mother died in 85, and my father remarried, one of my mother's friends from university, Sue. And she was a doctor, and she was going on to do amazing things herself. And one time I asked her, um, I must have been doing a project, I asked her and my grandmother about, um, How they felt about the women in our society and if they felt that they had, you know, achieved things and whatever. And Sue, Sue just wrote me the most wonderful thing about how after, you know, after the Second World War that, you know, there were so many men who died overseas that there were all these positions for women to take up. And how they just embraced them, you know. Um, that was their opportunity to, to do medicine and do what she had to do. But she raised five kids. She did all the cooking, all the cleaning, you know, she's never once, denied anything for her career. She just did everything. She was amazing because she was so determined to be successful at it and be a good mother and a good wife. Um, she was just incredible Sue. Whereas my grandmother, you know, she was the eldest of a line of maybe five children. Um, they had a property at Mudgee. And I asked her if she ever had any regrets about, you know, not being able to do it. And she just put me straight back in my place and said, I went, okay, I won't go there with you. I don't believe she had a happy life, she had a very conventional life and, and, you know, she just didn't break the norms. Whereas my mother was determined to break the norms and, and so, and my stepmother Sue, yeah. So I was very lucky to have my mother and my stepmother. What great influences. And you know, and they, you know, there is a saying that you've got to see it before you can believe that it's possible. And, I think if you, if you've got strong role models, that's why I'm so passionate about mentoring because I think that, if you've got strong role models, then you think, oh, I could possibly do that. I can. I can imagine beyond what my circumstances or my position or my situation is now for it to become something that before seeing this I couldn't have imagined because we can be so conditioned by, familial thinking, educational thinking, you know, that there's a particular position, yeah. I guess I just wasn't brought up as a normal girl. And in fact, my father used to curl his lips and go, Ugh, you're acting like a bloody girl, you know. And to be a girl, it's about the lowest form of life. It could be on this earth, so I never wanted to be in here. And then I got sent away to boarding school, to an all girls school. And it was a school that my mother went to. And when she went there, it was a very progressive school for women. And she loved it. You know, they were just right into educating women and making, letting them find their true potential. But by the time I got there, it was sort of a bit. It wasn't good, the education was definitely not good. It was a bit, um, it was very popular, it was a bit snobby, it was, it was full of, Girls from divorced marriages that were sent away to be out of the way and out of trouble, you know, and things. And it just wasn't the school that my mother had been to. So it was more like a finishing school than it was. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, because we're speaking about friendship, aren't we? Yeah. I mean, no, it's interesting, because I know so many people who have sent their children there, You've come through there themselves. And one of the things, which is interesting, like, I went to the same school as my mother had gone to. And again it was a snobby. Like, it was the snobby school in the city. And where you had white gloves for your blazer and brown leather gloves for your gabardine. And you, and it was called FCJ, which was faithful companions of Jesus. And we used to call it fellas can't join. But we had a great headmistress who was, you know, quite strong. So, um, I think she was certainly a strong leader. But, whereas I see in Australia, which is curious, there's definitely this network of, And it goes against what Australia perceives itself as being, where, oh well, you know, I went there, so my sons will go there, so their sons will go there, so, and the same with daughters, and there's this, building of the network. And as a immigrant, you see that people have these very, very strong networks, which are wonderful from the point of view of you've got the tradition, but also it can be quite closed in its thinking. You know, there's definitely an old boys and an old girls network. Yeah, I don't know about the old girls network, certainly the boys. It's my. My brothers went to Shore in Sydney and they would have been like fifth generation. Right. At that school. And maybe even sixth, I'm not sure. Did they send their sons there? No. Well, when we moved to Queensland, we sort of broke the ties with New South Wales. Yeah. And I really noticed that now in Queensland amongst the men, how their network, you know, through rural Queensland, they have this network, you know, Being in the beef industry now, which I just miss out on, you know, because I don't have this network of fellas to talk to about what's happening where, why, whatever. Are there many women farmers? Most of the women farmers are usually widows, um, and now daughters. Daughters are taking, in fact in my area it's amazing that it's the daughters that are taking over rather than the sons. Um, my friends in Ireland have an interesting one where they've, where they say that all of the children want, you know, they'd have their own careers, but they want a piece of the land. Yeah. So they want the sort of, the benefit of it, but I think they want somebody else to manage it. I know. And it is hard, you know, it's hard to keep. on the land. Yeah. Especially if it's not in a very viable area, you know, it is hard work and it's heartbreaking work too when it doesn't rain. And it's isolating work. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's tough. It's really tough. Um, and so many, yeah, sons just think, oh, you know, I just don't want to come back to that. And also the parents tend to get them very well educated, so they do have options. Well, it's exposure as well, you know, like if you're very well educated, you're opening your children up to a whole new world. And so then they see other possibilities, which again comes to, what you can see, you can believe is possible for you, you know, and like my father used to always call travel the university of life. And if you see, that there's a career for you in banking or if you see a career for you in science, if you see a career for you in design or creativity, you know, whereas before, people didn't, they just saw, oh well, my father's a farmer, I'm going to be a farmer, this I love this story of my friends in Ireland, one particular family. And the kid when he's, and he's the youngest son. And when he was pissed off at his father, he'd say to him, I'm going to be a fisherman and I'm not going to be a farmer. Well, that's what my father and I used to have. He'd say, Oh, you're acting like a bloody girl. And I'd just go, I am a bloody girl. And off I'd go and do whatever I want to do. So, so having grown up then is where, you know, you were. Um, and so you now have this, which sounds like this extraordinary, and I've been hearing about this property for years, this beautiful property, but what you've done is really different with this particular, you know, let's call it 10 acres, this garden in the middle of the, did you say 13, 000 acres? This piece that you're doing. I have to include the whole property really. Because when I first went there, you know, my father kept telling me what he thought I should be doing and I just said, listen, Dad, this is my opportunity. I want to do it my way. And it had been all about clearing the Brigolo scrub and it just, You know, I just don't like seeing landscapes without trees. They just look bare, they're biological deserts, basically. You know. Ah, and the creation of a biological desert by removing the trees. Yeah, or just becoming a plain desert. By removing the trees. Um, so I was, I wanted to bring the trees back into my landscape. on the 13, 000 acres. Um, and there's a process of blade plowing because, acacia comes back really thick because it's a pioneering species. Once you clear it, it comes back like hairs on a cat's back. It's just thick as. So, and then that's absolutely useless for anything. So there's a process called blade plowing where you put a plough in and it's got this, um, about nine inches under the surface. It just cuts the roots off the trees. So I would do this in strips, leaving strips of trees. I probably would have two runs of the blade plough, which would be probably about five meters wide, two runs down, then leave two runs of trees and then two runs down. So that, On the runs, the trees would grow back, and then the grass would grow in between. Um, So you're creating, you know, just to create the visual of it. Strips, strips of trees. So, so rows of trees. So, so and, and. There's, um, what would I say? They're parallel to each other. Yes. And so then you're encouraging them for, to create this canopy. Well, not so much in the paddocks. Right. When I, when I first went there, I realized how little I knew about the area that I was in. And I joined the land care movement. And I also went and did a permaculture course with And he was the one that got me back into the importance of getting trees back into the landscape. And so I would leave, often I'd leave the strips, if it was on flat land, I'd leave them perpendicular to prevailing winds. Or if they're on the slopes, I'd leave them, you know, on the contours going down. So I was always leaving trees depending on where on the landscape. Um, and, you know, initially it, it just looked untidy and everything, but I just breathed out and surrendered to the universe and lived with it and, um, Went with it. And over time, it's just created amazing parkland over the property. So what was your vision for it? Bring life back into the landscape. Yes. Yeah. Because you'd seen, because you'd seen this clearing of the land. Yes. And you'd seen the land lose its vitality essentially. Exactly. Exactly. Um what I wanted to create was a sustainable ecological system that could also be a sustainable business. You know, I wanted both. Oh, that's exactly the work that I do. And I wanted to go organic, chemical free. Initially I was in partnership with the property up at Concurry. They would breed the cattle and they'd send them to me to fatten. And I tried to get them to go organic and it was just too hard for them. So eventually I got out of the family partnership and I became certified organic. Um, which then poses a lot of new challenges on how you deal with pest factors and things like that. So then I got involved in biodynamics, which was a way of making organics work for you. Um, but things like, I remember the DNR, two fellas came from the Department of Natural Resources one day and they said, Oh, you know, we can see that there's a locust plague happening and they've all hatched on your property, um, and we want to come and spray it before they get on the wing. And I was going, Oh, I don't want this, I don't want this, I'm certified organic and anyway. They came a couple of days later in a helicopter and we could see that the ground was just moving with these things. Anyway, when they came later, a few days later, there was not one in sight. And Jeff, the manager that I had helping me, we went for a ride and here they were in all these rows of trees with the golden orb spiders that have such a strong net. Had caught all these locusts when they went on the wing and the birds were there having a feast on them and Putting guano basically back into the soil to fertilize it so it was a really good example of how the natural cycles can work with you So you don't have to spray it. You don't spray have to spray anything You know, you've got everything working for you in the system. And, it was just fantastic. I loved it. You know, I thought, wow, this is really working. That's when I really understood what I was doing was, was such the right thing to do. Oh wow, what a beautiful, sign from the universe. And also just Seeing You know, the birds, the spiders, the trees, and the land, it all in communion, essentially. Well, you can't have anything without the trees, you know. You've got to have the trees to start with. Because they're the beginning of a whole biodiversity. Yeah. So talk more about that. Uh, well my, I guess my mantra is biodiversity is biosecurity. So the more, um, diversity you have, the more protection you have against things. Once you start creating monocultures, then it's just open for disaster. You know, something will come in, just wipe it all out. And also, it's the same with the soils. I've done a lot of Well, it's like perebrate, the most fragile. You know, like it's, they haven't built in the, people hate the word resilience, but they haven't What that's what I want to create is a resilient landscape. Um, yeah, and even with soils, you know, um, the microbes in the soil need a diversity of roots because every plant is bringing something different into the soil. So if you only have one plant, you have very limited, diversity of bacteria. But once you have a diversity of plants, bringing a diversity of different sugars and things into soil, you have a diversity of bacteria. And then you've got really good, rich soils. But you have to also have, um, you have to have the trees there as well, because pastures are basically bacterial landscapes, but fungi needs trees. It needs lignin to grow. to build on. So to get that mycoselium into it you have to have the trees in the landscape as well. So then you have the diversity of bacteria and diversity of fungi as well. So yeah, it's just fascinating. I find the whole thing very Very fascinating and I was determined and it's in a it's been such a monstrous experiment and it must be I just been a humongous Anyway, learning curve and I just keep learning more and more and more. Um And so when the locusts and when the spiders and the birds what year was that? That would have been about 2002 or three and so you had been creating this or trying to do this since you got this property in 1987. So at this stage you had about 15 years under your belt and you really began to see, Oh my God, I'm onto something here. And so then that gave you the confidence for what happened next? I'm just trying to put it in a timeline. So people have a concept a timeline because we live in a world where. Instant gratification takes too long. And what we're constantly learning, and I think this is, you know, the power of astrology, is the study of time and light, and it's a language of cycles and rhythms. You know, I'm an Aries son, so, Aries is out the gate where, you know, the Libra person is going, anybody want to swim, whereas the Aries is just gone. And so there's a lack of patience and I've really had to learn about patience. And, going back to that conversation that we were having earlier before we started recording was to become a master in something you always have to go through the apprentice. Yeah, you begin to learn and, you know, you're the journeyman for a time and then mastery, you still are practicing. You know, there's a quote of the lineage that I follow in yoga, and they said, but you're a master, why do you still do your daily practice? And the response was, to remain a master. And so, you're in the space where you've done your apprentice, you can see. That what you're doing is working, but you're still continuing to learn. And so that was 15 years in, and we're now, I think, 38 years in at this point. When I joined the Landcare movement, I thought this was a young person's movement. And I was surprised how old they were. And I remember one fellow saying to me, It takes a lifetime to see the consequences of your action. Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, it. The consequences. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, because they could see the consequences of all the clearing that they had to do. Or that they had done. And that was like 50 years in. Yes, yeah, yes. Yes, nature teaches. It can teach quickly, which we see, you know, with all of these disasters like at the moment, this cyclone Alfred and all of this stuff. But what we don't realize is that something that was done 50 years ago is what's creating these. And and we need to be regenerative, not extractive. So it takes time. Everything in, in nature takes time. When anything worthwhile takes time. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So you have to, you just have to learn patience. And I guess being a Taoist, and I really am. I was a Taoist then, and then I sort of got into hard work, thinking I just didn't want any responsibility and suddenly ended up with 13, 000 acres of responsibility. Which is so interesting because when you look at your chart, right, you've got a Pisces rising, and Pisces is the dreamer. Yeah. You know, it's the mystical and, the mystical and the material, you know, it's like, will I go into the mystical world completely? Oh, will I come back to the material world? You know, so. It's very much the artist and the dreamer and it's the most compassionate of all the signs. So as a consequence of that, it can really feel, it's really sensitive. So it's integrated all of the other 11 signs, you know, it's a final sign. And so as part of that, it can see both sides of the story. Um, and so that's your rising sign, which, you know, would be the projection out into the world. Oh, she's a dreamer. And of course, being a woman in a man's world. Oh, Jesus. Why would we be even listening to her? Because she's just a dreamer. But you have sat and write conjunct your MC. And your MC is your, what you're known for in your public reputation. And you have that in Sagittarius. And Sagittarius. is, you know, the philosopher, it's religion, it's academia, it's travel, it's exploration, you know, so it's the higher octave of Gemini. And so what it's going is, is like, okay, so what does all this stuff that I know mean? So it wants to bring a philosophy into being and having sat in there brings this discipline. You know, cause Saturn is, the master teacher, you know, Saturn is patience pays, Saturn is right thought, right feeling, right action. And it says, you know, our, this is my interpretation of it, there are no shortcuts, you know, and you know, and, and every action has a consequence, and having that. In your 10th house, you know, it just is so perfect for what you're doing. I'm glad to know I'm following my destiny. Yeah, well, of course you're following your destiny. Well, I mean, I think it's fate. your birth chart is your fate. And then it's your free will, how you live it. But I say it's fate. And this goes perfectly with the Sagittarian Tenth House of choose your adventure. Yeah. Because everything's an experiment. Yeah. And life is a great experiment. Yeah. I, I truly believe you can do anything you want to do if you want to do it. Yes. And, and at one stage I thought, well, I just want to do, I want to be able to do everything. And when I drew the property, I lived 80 kilometers from the closest town, which is tiny. A hundred people on a good day. What's the name of the town? Rolston. Oh, I've heard of it. Strange name. And then it would be a hundred and fifty from Springshaw, which had a hospital and a hardware shop. And then two hundred and twenty kilometres from Emerald, which is where I had my bank and things, so. so I was a long way away from anywhere and I couldn't just ask for help. I just. to do it myself. Um, and I learned very quickly that there's no shortcuts. You have to do it properly or else it'll just fall apart and you'll have to do it again. So, um, yeah, so I, I just started I built my own house and I really enjoyed that. Ah, getting, getting onto my, it's not 10 acres, but my garden. I always felt that I needed to become more self sustainable in everything. Because I lived 80 k's from a little town and, and there wasn't much food available, especially fresh food. You know, anything there probably would have been picked two weeks ago or a month ago or whatever. So, I've always been interested in growing my own food. I've actually always been a cook, you know, I've, my first job was cooking on a property, a big company property next door to where I spent, in school holidays. And I love cooking. I think it was because my mother didn't, that I, um, I took. That was your rebellion. Well, I loved, I loved eating. That was no problem. And she was such a boring cook because she hated it. So I just sort of tried to get a little bit more exciting about cooking. Um. The boys would have appreciated that. Yeah. And then when I left school, you know, we were always primed to do tertiary education. And, I started doing physiotherapy. I had no idea what a physiotherapist did, except it was a good thing for a girl to do. And I lasted about a year. So this is Australia in the 70s? Yes. Yeah. In the late 70s. Um, anyway, I did, all I wanted to do when I left school was go out west, out to the territory, out to, yeah, The complete outback. And cook on a property. Um, anyway, so after I'd failed at university for two years running, I finally went out there. And it was fabulous. And so I became this. And what was the response in your family when you were announced doing well at Drury Physiotherapy? My father was very disappointed because We've been going through the cattle depression so they'd been paying for my education and I'd probably been squandering it a little but when you've been locked up in a boarding school for six years you know and you get released it's hard. And released so let's put this in context because context trumps everything and So the context is, is that it's a country boarding school an hour from Sydney and it's a snobby boarding school basically. Have you seen Mona Lisa's smile with Julia Roberts and that sort of very uptight, and that's the American equivalent of friendship essentially. You know it would be, girls are, you know, brought up to be good wives And then you get released into Sydney, which is a city, which has got freedom and fun and play and, oh, and we're well out of the 60s, but we still have, you know, everyone's running around topless and on Bondi Beach really in the 70s. Now they've all got their tops back on now because we've shamed the sun so badly. Yeah. Yeah. So it would have been. A very liberating experience. Which uni did you go to? Sydney Uni. Also one of the kind of, you know, nicer unis, traditional unis. Yeah, it was very traditional. And in halls? I did. I stayed at women's college. Mum had been there, you know. There you go. Just followed the tradition. Um, but not for long. So after, so after two years of doing what I should be doing. You went West. I went West. Yeah. I spent a year. All good adventures begin. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, no, it was fantastic. I loved it. And I love traveling out West. I travel on my own. I had an all green Toyota Land Cruiser with a cabin on the back and I just roll my swag out and the sides of. Just go down to tables so I could cook on the camp oven outside and I had all my art gear So you were always a painter. So I wasn't always a painter After my mother died, I sort of inherited all her Supplies and things and it was a way of keeping her close to me. So what age were you when your mum passed? I was 28 so much just to bring it into the astrological context. We have our first Saturn return around 28 to 31. And Saturn is the master teacher, so it's saying to you, and I do think this is the period of where you realize, oh my god, I'm an adult, like, which you really realize is like, fuck, I'm an adult, you know, I need to, take care of myself or stand on my own two feet, and so that would have been a really big Saturn return to lose your mom. Um, I'd gone traveling, I'd traveled around the world, um, Where had I gone? I'd gone over to Europe and then I went to Doing an overseas experience? No, haven't. I, no, I went to, I was gonna, I was, first of all I went to L. A. I was gonna meet a friend and we were gonna go down to Mexico. Anyway, she'd sort of gone home because she was broke. What age were you then? 28. Oh. Uh, 27 maybe. And I had this big argument with my father and I thought, Well, I'm not going home. I'm just going to keep on my path and I'm going to go down to Mexico. And, um, anyway, there was this bunch of Canadians going down, so I shared the car with them down the Baja Peninsula, and then we caught the boat over to Pura Vallarta. And I can just remember them saying to me, Oh, you're going to have a lot of problems travelling on your own. You know, they just said negativity to me and negativity to me, and I just started to get less confident. And after a few days there, I thought, bugger this, I've just got to get there, you know, I've got to keep going, I've got to keep going, and um, uh, there was one fellow who I'd sort of befriended, John, and we went out to dinner the night before I left, and he still said to me, the opposite to fear is trust, and it was just such an epiphany for me. I got on that bus and I nearly shook hands with every Mexican man there and you know, they only came up to my shoulder so I really didn't have that much to worry about them. And I got to Mexico City and was heading towards the backpackers and on the other side of the road there was this tall, gorgeous blonde going the same way, Christina. Anyway. Christina and I ended up traveling together. We just became great mates. She was totally fearless. And she was also at the end of her trip and was trying to go as far as she could. And where was Christina from? Germany. Oh right. And, um, So we travelled together, we hitchhiked, we camped in her tent, we got harassed by men. The men just idolised her, she was a goddess to them. And it just opened doors for us. My job was just catching the poor men as they got swiped aside, but she was just this goddess of a woman. And she really taught me how to travel. And so you have your son in cancer, which is in the fourth house, which is, um, that self security, and having your son in that fourth house, the fourth house is all about, the lineage of how we're brought up and all of that. But it's interesting to have the son there because the son is our essence and it is that trust. And I think this is the, deepest thing that's missing in the world, isn't it, is trusting ourselves, because when we trust ourselves, that no matter what happens, we'll be okay. Then we can belong in the world, number one, and also we can show up at any table and belong there and be able to be curious and be able to be open and be able to be whatever we need to be in that moment. without bringing the projection of fear, without bringing the projection of suspicion, without anything. I've traveled a lot as well, and a lot alone, and I think that's what it is, is that, you know, if you can bring that trust, wow, what a great thing to be told. It was wonderful. Yeah, trust over fear. And it just worked. You know, if you smile at someone, they smile back. If you trust someone, they, you trust back, well, you're extending, and what you're actually doing is, is you're extending their responsibility to them in a sense, because you're, you're extending respect. Yes. You know, and it's well, I'm. Extending this trust. Yeah. Towards you and then people generally will raise to meet it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's super interesting. Um, yeah, I, when I was 17 I hitchhiked from Greece to the south of France. Yeah. On my own and You know, and I was super innocent, like, coming out of Ireland would have been like coming out of Australia in a way, you know. Like, in Catholic Ireland at that time, you know, was very Catholic. And your parents biggest fear was that you'd get pregnant before you were married, and I took off traveling. And so I would sleep in the back of these trucks with these men. And it was hilarious. And like, they never daunted me that they'd want sex. Like, I'm so kind of, like, so super innocent. And they'd wake me up in the middle of the night. And this happened repeatedly, you know, because I think it was probably a week of traveling. And they'd suggest that now would be the day that we'd have sex. And like in every single one of them, I would just kind of go, Oh, don't be ridiculous. I'm sleeping. And like none of them challenged me on it. Yeah. Yeah. And like, and that's when you realize, you know, that innocence protects you. Like I really sincerely believe that. And, and obviously, you know, my angels were really working. I know. That's what I feel. I feel that there's someone up there that just Yeah. Looks after me. Yeah. The being super blessed. Yes. Yeah. Being super blessed. Yeah. That's amazing. So, so from Mexico, I'm just looking where you're moon and your natal chart. It's in the eighth house in Libra. So one-to-one relationships and Yeah. So, eighth house is shared resources so that ballot block, 13, 000 acres in the most beautiful part of Queensland. And having the moon in the eighth house, you know, I would suggest that, it allows you to be okay with the, um, the mysteries of life, shall we say, I've always been fascinated by the mysteries of life. Yeah, um, the whole biodynamic thing of, you know, how that all sort of works. Well, it's the integration, isn't it? I mean, that's where I've come to, is that, you know, the world, like, if we speak of young, you know, we come out and we are on a, journey of individuation, but it's by arriving at the, our individuation that we then realize that we belong to the oneness and so the individuation leads to the union it leads to the integration and, you know, whereas I think that our society very much goes, well, you're an accountant, you know, you're a doctor, you're this or you're that. And we're not, we're, we're multidimensional. We're multi, we're multi, multi Um, and it's, and that's the thing that biodynamic the ecosystem. We really realize we're so much better when we're all together. Like, you know, as you're realizing with, you know, just going back to the. Spiders and the birds and the trees. The trees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So from wandering around Mexico, what came next? I spent the year traveling the world and when I came home I just felt that I could move mountains. I felt so empowered by, and that's why I feel that everyone. Um, every kid should be given a one way ticket to the other side of the world because you just learn so much about yourself and how you survive in the world. But when I came home, I can remember my mother, she was just so worried about me the whole time. I can see her there grasping onto the wire knitting as I got off the plane. She was so happy to see me home and alive. And I was there for two weeks and I was just, yeah, like. Revving and then she died very suddenly. Oh my gosh. And it was just like, crash right down. And yeah, that was in 85, so it must have been 84 that I went traveling 85, it was at the end of 85. It was Christmas just before Christmas. And that just floored me. Absolutely floored me. I spent the year at home with Dad, filling in her shoes, you know. Just, both of us were, we were recuperating from it. So grieving basically. Yeah. I was with her when she died. Um. We were coming home from a carol service that she'd helped organize at the local pub, um, there were storms coming in and she used to get asthma from the humidity in the air. And we were halfway home, we were nearly home, and she just couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe. Pulled up, got out of the car, she just got into the fetal position to try to breathe and the next she collapsed. Anyway, we took her to the closest house, which was our neighbor's house, and rang the doctor. And he just kept saying, I think she's dead. I think she's dead. I said, no, no, no. What can I do? What can I do to revive her? I think she's dead. Anyway, I just lay with her on the floor that night and yeah, it was, it was very sad. It was tragic. It's the most tragic time of my life because she was like my best friend, my mother, you know. We were, we lived isolated, we had all the boys around us and so she and I had this really special bond, um. So yeah, it was a tough, a tough call. And that's when I started taking up painting more seriously. Also, I'd been to Europe and seen all the Impressionists and I just got so inspired by the Impressionists that I wanted to just come home and paint the West like Vincent van Gogh. And everyone else. So, yeah, so after she died I just took all her paints and it was sort of a way of keeping it close to me. And just started painting, yeah, quite seriously. Wow, and was that when you then went out west? No, you would have been older. I had. No, I'd been out west before. You'd been out west before. Yeah. So, right. That's when I had my green Toyota and I just, yeah, went. And so after she passed, then, so that was 85. And you moved to Sydney because of 86, I spent the year with Dad, and at the end of the year I just said, Dad, sorry, you're just going to have to look after yourself. Um, and ended up, I'm a young woman with a future Yes. And that's when I ended up in Sydney studying Daoism. Um, and I guess that was a way of sort of looking for, at my spirit, another spiritual, well, this, it's your, it's your, um, 10th house and your Mc and Sagittarius looking for meaning. Exactly. You know, if your mom could be pulled away from you that quickly and Yeah. Yeah. And, so it was that year that I was with Dad that the two ballot blocks got drawn. But it was that year down in Sydney when we applied to go back into them. And this time, instead of being nine people, there were 2, 000 people in the ballot. And my name came out. Yeah, that was just like, yeah, life change. So yeah, my Saturn return was pretty pretty, I just learned so much and then I ended up, yeah, exactly where, exactly where I, I needed to be, where I wanted to be, without me probably even realizing where I wanted to be. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, absolutely none. Um, and most people don't. No. I mean, there's very few people who come out and think, okay, this is what I'm going to do. But what I realize, and from doing the work that I do, is that if you go back into people's childhood, there's something that happens, and usually it's, you know, before the age of seven, I mean, some people would say it's before the age of two, that they sort of see in the world and they think, okay, I want to. change that they see a problem or there's an experience and they think I want to do it differently and Simon Sinek this guy in marketing talks that people don't buy your they don't buy what you're selling or what you're doing but they buy why you're doing it and I say no no and he says start with why and I've always thought There's a who behind every why. Start with who. So if you've got to understand yourself, or to even know what your why is. Exactly. And you've got to understand yourself to be able to create yourself. Because until such a time as you've got some sense of your strengths and weaknesses, or your proclivities, or what drives you, what motivates you, and what fires you up. How are you gonna have any idea of how to direct that energy exactly and Your natal Mars is in, um, your fifth house in cancer. And so Mars doesn't really like being in cancer. But, you know, but the fifth house is the house of creativity. It's the house Where the love affairs happen is the house where things begin. So you know, it could do well in the fifth house. Mm-hmm. So, and Mars is around how are you going to use your ambition and your will and your desire. Mm-hmm. And in Vedic astrology, the fifth house is the first house is our purpose. So yours is to realize the dream, the Piscean, and we use the fifth house to go, well, what's my unique way of doing it? Mm-hmm. You know, and, and this is the four poor satra, which is, you know, the first of them is purpose. The second one is prosperity. Because if we want to create any dream, we need to organize resources for, to fund it and create it. And then of course,'cause work is not just our life is. It's all work and no play makes Jack, Jill or Blossom a very dull person. So the third, houses are about pleasure, which is around relationship and community and creating that kind of, you know, ecosystem that we need for to. nurture and expand us because it's in relationship and in communication, but really we do that. And then the fourth, the eighth, and the twelfth house are about liberation, which is about where the real challenges happen and that's the enlightenment, so bringing you back to your Taoism. Um, so when you realized in 2002, we'll say more or less that, oh wow I'm on to something here, and then So we've got the trees back on the property, the 13, 000 acres, which sounds like sweet Divine Mother of God. I'm sure that's bigger than London, is it? Probably. You know? Might be. Yeah, like I mean that's, 13 kilometers is, it's a lot. About ten by eight. Ten by eight miles. Are we on miles now? Kilometers. kilometers. So that, that's a, it's a huge area of land. And so you have this garden then that you've been developing which is this biodiversity and vertical,? Okay, I'll start with the garden. It took me a long time to start with the garden because I had a whole property to develop. Yeah. So, and I had tried to grow veggies and things. to sustain me. And I had planted a few fruit trees, but struggled. It wasn't really until, probably I got married, um, that I started and the property had been developed enough to start. And it was sustaining itself. To start sustaining myself. No, no, no, it was sustaining itself. Oh, the property was. It was viable. Oh, it was very viable. Yeah. Yeah. Financially, so. I had a brother that was always forecasting doom and gloom so I was always conscious, you know, that something was gonna happen, whether it be 2000 or 2012 when the main thing Oh God, yes. Everybody thought 2000 was going to be the end of the world, didn't they? So I was always stocking up on food and growing things and I thought, no, I'm very, I'm So, I started my garden, there's absolutely no plan or design to it, it just happened here and a bit more there and a bit more there and it grew, um, and then I started putting in swales. Um. What are swales? Swales are like contour banks. Um, but just around my house, because my house was on top of a hill, so I'd have these swales going around and planting trees on them, fruit trees and things. And over time, I had a lot of wolfers. Wolfers are Yeah, they're, um, workers. Willing workers on organic farms. And a lot, um, a lot from overseas, the backpackers. Um, and then I had one Kel who was an Australian girl and she'd studied horticulture. So I said to her, you know, if you want to stay for a while, I'll put you on the payroll and you can help me and teach me. So she stayed for a couple of years and it expanded and we did good things. And then she left and I thought, oh wow, the garden's getting a bit big for me to look after on my own. Um, This is how the universe just, I always feel like the universe is on my side, you know. The right people turn up at the right time. Just like I feel like you have almost. Um, and then, out of the blue, this fella rings me up and he's a friend of a friend of a friend. And says, you know, so I said, I could come and, yeah, yeah, sure, come on. And Rowan, his name was Rowan, um, had been a Boilermaker in Sydney. And it's quite a toxic job, you know, welding all these metals together. And he got quite sick. So he just wanted out. And he didn't want to be a debt slave. And he bought a house and he sold it all. And he went up to, um, the Permaculture Institute in northern New South Wales. And lived there for two years. He came with so much knowledge. and contacts and things, and he stayed for four years. Um, and in that time I've had, so did you have workers' cottages? Yes. I had a little, I had a little cottage for him Yeah. To stay in and, and I celebrate the equinoxes. And I used to always invite a guest speaker and it'd be open for anyone to come along. And so we had all these really interesting people that were all Rowan's contacts from down there. Um, so my knowledge evolved and grew over this whole growing your own food sustainably. And then, um, and then one equinox we had a fella that was involved in syntropic farming. which is about growing a food forest and growing all the different layers. There's, there's all sorts, there's a time element, um, and there's a layer element. And it was, it was coined, some people say it's like permaculture, but it's just a little bit different from permaculture. It was evolved by this fellow called Ernst Gosch, who was a Swiss geneticist who, His job was always to find new species of grains, wheat, whatever, um, by getting all the best, um, genetics from different breeds to put together to put something supersonic, hybrid, bigger. Um, but after three years, that grain would sort of lose its resilience and its strength. So he got a bit disenchanted by, by the job and gave it up and went to Brazil, bought a block of very degraded land and started evolving his new concept of just growing guilds of things together that work together to create layers of sustainable food systems. And he just has the most beautiful saying that every plant just wants to see how it can benefit the whole. Oh, so how, so I think how you put it before was that it wants to know how it can contribute. Yeah, contribute to the benefit of the whole. Which is what I believe we are here to do. Exactly. I think that's an innate human quality. We've just lost the track a bit or something. Picasso speaks of it, he says, the work of life, I'm going to paraphrase, because the work of life is to find your, are the, the challenge of life is to find your gift and then the work is to give it away. You know? And I think that's exactly what it is, is to find what you're uniquely, yeah. What's your unique genius and then to gift it to the world? Yes. That's nice. Share it. Um, yeah, so I, I had Rowan for four years and, and I learned so much and the, and meanwhile the gardens evolved and just continues to get bigger and stronger. And, you know, initially I started growing trees and I live in a, it's, it's what? Um. Alan Savory would describe as a brittle environment. It's, we have very hot summers. We have 650 mils of rain a year. Um, we can have very long dry periods. We have dry winters. I'm on top of a hill so I don't get frosted that easily. Even the trees that I thought would do well, citrus, you know, they struggled along and struggled along. But once I got into the syntropic and started growing support species, fast support species, like tipuanas, like acacias, They started to create a canopy, and shade, and Things just started to grow so much better underneath them. So they were protecting and possibly even feeding. Cause you know, the way that water works and root systems, you know, so they're distributing moisture as much as they're distributing shade, So they're supporting each other. Yes. But then in the summertime when the sun would be so hot, you know, these plants would be protected by, in the shade. And also because the support species tend to be leguminous, they're, they're feeding nitrogen in. But then come the autumn time, you do a serious chop and drop on all your support species. So you know, bring them right down and you put all of that. All those cuttings on the ground you spread it all around so that all that um, woody matter stays there and breaks down so that you get a lot more fungal, um, diversity within the soil. And it gives the winter time for your fruit trees and things to grow, in the sunlight. They need more sun and less shade in the winter time. And then in the springtime it supports species all sort of. Get up and flower and leaf again. More shade in the summertime. So your support species, your support species are deciduous. So they're create, they're not deciduous. They're not necessarily deciduous. You are chopping and dropping inau time. So to create the opening, yes. Down. so that the sunshine can come in. Now I understand, yeah. And then in the summertime, you know, in the springtime they all start to grow again. Yes, of course. So they create more shade. So over time, and once again, it's a time thing and you have to be patient because the trees all your fruit trees and things are taking a while to grow. because of where I live, it's just, it's just what happens in a brittle situation. But now that they're starting to get bigger, the whole system's starting to work so much more. So now I can start growing more sensitive, tropical fruits that probably would not grow in my brittle, Landscape? Yeah. So, I'm creating a system that, you know, is just life giving. Well, that's what Centropic is. It's about energies creating. Entropic's the opposite about decaying, but Centropic is life forces just growing. And it's amazing to see. So, yeah, Centropic is about, um, and you can feel it in forests, you know. You can feel it in forests, just that energy and, and things. I haven't even got on to my art exhibition at this stage, but in the summertime nobody comes to visit and it's really lovely because that's when I can do something, my creatives starts to happen and I don't have anyone around to look after or be intercepted by or whatever. And, I just get so upset by the men graziers in my district who cannot see the benefit of having trees in the landscape. So I decided, this particular year that I was going to put together an exhibition on the wisdom of the trees. Um, I had the six meter long canvas. It's about, um, I guess about a meter and a half tall. And I was going to present it at, Beef Week in 2021. So I guess COVID, you know, that was during COVID. So that gave me all this more time, but I did so much study into trees. Um, read every book I could find on, on the trees. And I listened to Diana Beresford Kruger probably about five times. She has so much information. And just realised, How powerful, not just from an ecological situation, but from an energetic situation. You know, they bring in all those cosmic forces from the universe, their toroidal energy fields, and they bring up all the energy. Explain toroidal? Toroidal, a toroid is a um, it's like a doughnut of energy, and it goes both ways, but there's a center point. Right in the center and from, for a human, it's your heart. So you have this meditation where you're bringing, I have this meditation where I just stand under a tree because that's really where all the energy is, and I just imagine that I'm a tree and I bring the energy in from the, the cosmos and down into my center and then breathe it out into the earth and just visualize it, splashing up. And then bring the Earth's energy back into my center and then breathe it out, visualizing it spilling over. So you're creating this energy field all around you that's going both ways. And you're drawing in, every time you come in, you know, you bring it in from It's the Vesica Piscis. You know, the, the two The two symbols that over intersect at that heart center. It's the masculine and the feminine energy. And it's, yeah, it's bringing, that, grounding and centering and when we're centered and grounded, anything is possible. Yeah, it's the absolute integration of the energies. And it's so powerful. Yeah. I have a meditation, which I must share with you, that I created. years ago, um, I went on this, um, retreat and they told us to find a tree and to sit at each, you know, the north, the south east, and the west of the tree. And you were supposed to look outwards, but I hadn't heard that part. So I looked inwards to the tree and I was extraordinary. It was the first time I'd ever looked at trees and saw that the north of the tree had a completely different experience than the southeast and the west. Yeah. And so I created this meditation post that which I will share with you. Yeah. Which was, I, I often do the tree meditation now, but it's made me sort of see just how powerful the trees are. Um, just not from an ecological point of view, but also from an energetical point of view. When I look at graziers in Queensland that have cleared all their trees, and this is including my husband, they're all medicated for depression. And I just think They just don't have that energy around them anymore, too. Oh, wow. That's so interesting. Cause we spoke about it and this is before we started recording. Um, I read the signature of all things, which is that book by Elizabeth Gilbert. And I'd read the constant gardener, which is also about the pharmaceutical industry. And it, and it. You know, the way there's this moment of you go like, Oh my God! You know, just a major kind of sort of gap in your education drops in. And where I realized that, you know, all that 19th century exploration around the world was about bringing back plants and all the botanicals and, you know, the quinine tonic which, which, you know, they used to have in India which was to keep away malaria. And that tree came from South America. And what they did was in Kew Gardens and all the botanical gardens. I never made the connection that it was about the medicinal qualities. And then of course the most, it was the birth of the pharmaceutical industry, which they synthesized and created all those drugs. And I would, you know, I mean, I don't take drugs. I've never liked taking drugs. I had dreadful allergies as a child. And it was suggested that I take, you know, an antihistamine every day for the rest of my life. And at the age of 15, and I was brought up to really respect doctors and I, and I said, well, what's the side effect if I do this? Because I had two or three hours every day that I would be just streaming, you know, eyes streaming, nose, so really interfering. Mm. And um. And he said, Oh, a bit drowsy? And I said, No! I was just like, No! You know? Um, and we see now the pharmaceutical industries have created sick people in many ways. And you were then extrapolating. And I love Western medicine when I need it. I mean, I broke my wrist a few years ago and I think it's absolutely amazing. But, you know, daily medication I don't believe in there's a place for it. There's a time and a place Yeah, but we were you were then extrapolating out into that. We've created this kind of industrial Agricultural complex. Yeah. Another one of my mantra is let food be the medicine. Yes, and And I really believe that And that is another reason why I love my food garden. And there's prana in that food and the food that's grown with love. Yeah. Like in the tradition Oh, for sure. Have you ever read Anastasia books? Yes, I have. And like in the tradition of the yoga that I followed, there was another guy who stayed in India and again, a completely degraded area of land. Yeah. And they planted it and they used to sing mantra to it. You know, and so bringing that love and bringing that, you know, and obviously that wasn't the only thing that they brought into it, but you know, but now complete flourishing garden. Yeah. Well, yeah, just gardening with your bare feet, you know, and, and that energy going into the soil. And I think Anastasia talks about putting the seeds in your mouth so that they pick up all the DNA from your mouth and your sweat and your underarms and then you plant it. So then that plant grows the food. Exactly for you, what, for your knees. It, that's fascinating. It is fascinating. I find all that thing really amazing. Um, but yeah, I, I don't go to doctors. And I'm not, I'm not very good pill popper at all. If I, I don't think I've ever completed a, a thing of um, antibiotics in my life. I just like, feel better, forget it, and away I go. But I do believe in the value of our food. You know, the leafy greens, within an hour, they've lost most of their nutritional value. So if you can just pick them fresh, then you are getting all the nutrition that you need really out of fresh food. Um, and now I'm into growing medicinal gardens as well so that I have, as much as the medicinal things, but that's where my learning curve's going. Yes, I can. So you're learning about herbs and the value of herbs, different value of herbs and things. Yeah, I've been studying that. It's a whole other area. Honestly, you never stop learning. And one thing just leads to another and leads to another and leads to another. And COVID really woke me and a lot of other people up as to How valuable it was to, for food security, food safety, and being responsible for your own health, basically. And vitality. And vitality, definitely. I think it really brought it back to that whole thing of that, okay, so, What is the energy that number one you're putting out into the world because there was so much fear Yes in that time. Yeah, and also what's the energy that you're taking from the world? You know, what are you allowing? into your own Ecosystem mind body spirit, you know, are you absorbing all that news? Are you absorbing all that fear? Are you absorbing, and again, coming back to what we spoke about earlier, like once you trust yourself, then you trust, you can trust your health. You know, I'm a real believer in that. We've got to move our bodies every day. You know, we've got to have a contemplative practice. I'm not for a moment saying, my way is the only way, but I sincerely believe that, living. In rhythm with the cycle of the day and the rhythm of the cycle of the year, it brings you back to the space of where you realize that less is more and quality over quantity. And there's a space of peace in that, isn't there? So Seen as this is called the discipline of freedom. What would you say has been the disciplines and the devotion to those disciplines that have served you in creating your dream or the vision that you had? This is not just, I'm evolving good with self discipline. Discipline is something you're following. We all grew up with discipline as, you know, I went to a Catholic school. I'm sure you did. Well, yeah, and then if you're any way rebellious, you're kind of going like, I remember being in a church around the age of seven and because I've always loved architecture. Going like, oh my god, this is so beautiful. And, you know, and churches are generally built on ley lines. So they're, there's this gorgeous energetic portal that you're in. And thinking, why all the rules? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I've never seen myself as a disciplined person. And yet I know that other people see me as disciplined. So it takes a tremendous amount of discipline to follow your own path and for it to go against what are the norms of what your family are saying, the norms of what your parents are saying, what your society is saying, you know, you are married to the same man for what, 28 years and you live in different houses and see each other for three days of the weekend, but you know, and so, there is a discipline and there's a devotion to your own vision or a devotion to your own path. Definitely. I trust my intuition. I really trust my intuition and if a thought comes to me, I just trust it. I trust. My thoughts. Um. Hmm. And I will work on those, and I have visions, and I'm very dedicated to creating what I believe is the right sort of thing. And I can make things happen. I can make anything I want happen when I have my focus. And I seem to find the energy to do it and, and I find the support and the people to help me. It's just amazing how things come to be. Um, Um, well that's extraordinary self belief which, I would suggest is a Discipline. Yeah, I mean it's a devotion. It's a devotion to the dream and it's the devotion because it's, you know, coming back to what was valued, which is no dream is realized by being moo woo, you know, by going like, oh, you know, and we, and we all go through this, I think, when we first maybe connect with this spirituality, we think, the Lord will provide, you know, but as I say, The Lord wants to see you moving in the direction so he can meet you halfway or, you know, and whatever you want to call it. The Lord or the universe or the cosmos. I always say that the universe sees you actually putting energy towards something it goes, Oh, so you're serious about this now? Yeah. Okay, I'll send you some more help. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And if you're. If you are serious about it, it will provide in that way, but it's providing as you're also contributing. You can't just sit back and wait for things to happen. Uh, you've got to be proactive in making things work. And once you do, it is, it's amazing. I'm always amazed how the universe just hops on board and helps me get there. And it does. The people who work for me are just fantastic and I always have wonderful workers, uh, helpers, I should say. If I really need someone then they just turn up. Last summer I had two French Ag students. I have this lovely connection with the Agricultural College in France and get the most wonderful Whereabouts in France? In Angers, in Normandy. And a lot of the time they're the women who are just so into food, good clean food, processing food. Anyway, I had two of these students came back to visit me this summer. Usually I have summers on my own, because it just gets too hot for visitors. So what is the temperature in the summer? Well, it got up to 45 degrees, and that is in the shade. It's always measured in the shade. Wow, so it's like this, I spent a summer in, um, in Granada, in the south of Spain. I married a Spanish man. When I got there first I wondered why the cars would be on one side of the street. You know, and the people would be dashing in and out of the cars, duh. Um, and then you realize after a few days, it's like, Oh my God, everything is about seeking shade. Like, for the first month I was there, I never bought anything because of the fact that, I always got the siesta wrong, because I thought it was, siesta was between 12 and 3, which is what you grew up with. But it really was based on the temperature. And it would only start cooling down at nine o'clock at night from the 45 degrees. Well, I always try and work them as long as we can. Start early in the morning, work as long as we can, have the latest possible lunch we can bear and then maybe come back at four or five just to do little finish on off jobs or whatever. Um, but these girls came over and we, um, always have a little project. So we built this shower down in the. In the campground. I have a bit of a campground below my new big kitchen. And, Last time Fanny was at home, which was ten years prior, she organised my dump and put all the wine bottles and things to one side and said, next time I come back we're going to build a wall with the bottles in them. Anyway, she and Camille came back this summer. And they're amazing, they just went for it, even though it was hot. But we worked in a routine and we built this beautiful bathroom down amongst the trees, with the wine bottles in them. And, and the Bujamala, or Mundagata, the snake winding its way through the wall. I can't remember why I started that way. Um, you were talking, we were talking about, um, the discipline to realize your vision, and you were speaking about how, you know, the universe has your back, and that it delivers. I know, aye. We're doing this beautiful bathroom, and Fanny's boyfriend comes over from Paris. He just happens to be a plumber. So between all my old fittings, Mark's old fittings and Rodney's old fittings, he managed to plumb up this fantastic bathroom. I mean, you know, yeah, that's what, I mean, the universe provides. They always bring the right people you need. Just happened to have a Parisian plumber turn up. to finish my bathroom off. Oh, perfect. I know it was fantastic. That's amazing. And so looking at your human design, you've got the same profile lines as I do, which is the six two, which is the role model. Um, and the role model is that you live life in sort of three phases. The first 30 years are all about experimentation and running around the world and having, experiences and, discovering what, um, how to stay out of danger or get yourself out of danger might be more appropriate. Um, and then the next 30 years are really applying what you've learned and then. There comes to a point after 50, which is sharing that and sharing those experiences, which is why we're recording this podcast today. And, and I think it's, you know, deeply inspiring to speak with you and to speak about like, because I know what it's like in Australia and how patriarchal it was. Like I was so shocked when I came here and I still find it kind of horrifying how. Men are, you know, there's an arrogance, you know, and it's deeper here, you know, it's deep, it's definitely deeper in Ireland. I mean, I mean, I grew up in a very blessed environment. My father had a strong, you know, deep emotional intelligence and my grandfather lived with us and he was a very gentle, loving man who used to, you know, Wash up as my mother cooked and if my mother was sick, he was the one who cooked for us, you know, so beautiful caring, you know, masculine role models and my brother a Cancerian man is the same. So, you know, really gorgeous men and, you know, and lots of other good men around And as a woman in Spain once said to me, it's not the culture, it's the character. You know, and obviously there's beautiful men here, you've married one. Um, but stereotypes exist for a reason. You know, and we can talk about stereotypes, I always think that if you start talking to an Australian man and I can be Irish, you know, I just chat to anybody and, and they kind of think, why are you talking to me? What do you want from me? Hmm. You know, which I think is deep in the psychic of them. Yeah. It's deep in the psychic. They don't know. They don't know how to talk to you. Yeah. They really don't know how to converse with you that they can only converse on their own. on their topic with other men who are also on that topic. On that topic, yeah. So so that's an interesting So, so sport is something that people are completely passionate about here. Because I still, I still find the culture a complete mystery. And then there's obviously living in the country, you know, there's, people are super passionate about beef. Yeah. And super passionate about the land, you know, they love the land and I do see that. The farmers that I know, they really take care of their animals and they love their animals and have deep respect for their animals. When you think in terms of that relational, connection or even that kind of sexual energy or that kind of, you know, um, flirtation, there's such an inability to play and banter. Yes. Yeah. Which is so difficult for me. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's so natural for me. That's why I love European women. They're just so, they say it as they see it and it's fantastic. I have trouble with the Australian men, because I suddenly landed in this property and had completely different ideas. And I started the Landcare Movement hoping everything that I learnt, I could share with them. And I started this little newspaper called the Rolston Rag. Every time I learnt something new, I'd put it in there and everything. So you were just so deeply passionate about sharing. Sharing all the information. Which is the role model well it's the wisdom. So the six two in human design is the role model I've spoken about. And then the two is the, it's the hermit. So it's what you go off and you do your thing and you learn. And then you kind of go, yes, look what I learned. So it's the teacher in a sense, you know. I used to get so excited about what I had learned that I would just want to share it with everybody. And I guess they took it on board and I would have field days and things on different topics. Um, but it was in fact the thing that made me so different from them that in a way they just sort of went, Oh, I dunno if I can talk to her. I dunno what I'd talk to her about. I don't really believe that. I don't like that or whatever. That I found myself quite isolated in that situation. Among the men and among the women and the women because the women were the mothers. I could never have a conversation with the mother.'cause she's always like looking after looking at the kid, I found it very hard to have conversations and also because I was. Working the land and they were never given the privilege of having, being able to choose or decide. Yeah. Any or the responsibility, any contribution to, to how the land was managed. It was, that was the, oh wow. Boys, that was their, that was their domain. That was their domain. And the women were within the garden fence and that was their domain. And it's pretty much true'cause the men inherit the land, so therefore it's their place, and the women are brought in and they can be within the garden fence. And that's their land. Mind you, unless the boy needs a bit of a hand out here or there or wherever. But you're not given the privilege of having any authority or any credibility? No. No. Um, I saw that with my own parents, even though it was a lot of my mother's money went into buying the property, my father just held the reins. So my mother put all her energy into educating her children and, and within the garden fence as well. Um, but yeah, I found it quite isolating, for years. And also, if I did go and talk to the men, because they were the ones I was desperate to talk to, to learn Because they're decision makers and they also were the wisdom keepers. Well, they were, working the land and that was where I wanted to know. But women would get so jealous if I was talking to the men so that made another hard situation as well. Yeah, yeah. My, my, experience of it is, is that if you talk to a man Within 30 seconds a woman appears and puts her hand over to show you. I own him! He's mine. And you're there thinking. And my joke is, you know, is, I often think is that, What makes you think I'd want to wash, cook and clean for you for the rest of your life? I've only known you about three minutes. Back off! Yeah. So, there is a real divide between men and women in Australia and you notice that even last night you know the boys ended up going over there to talk and the girls end up over here to talk. That can happen in all cultures Yeah probably, um, but I do find now I love being with the women, you know, I love their conversations, they go places that the men Um, I wonder, and I've been wondering about this recently. Is it because men are so focused on being the providers and they've got such a singularity and, you know, I've studied tantric, um, and I use tantric in all of the work that I do. We all have masculine and feminine energies in us. And the male has more of the masculine and the women have more of the feminine. But, there's only about 10 percent difference. But, I'm bringing it back to the land, you know, a friend of mine describes it as that, you know, the masculine is the landscape and the feminine is the weather and the weather shapes the landscape. The feminine determines how the conversation's going to go. I always joke you put your hand on a man's arm and you say, Darling, that's the best cup of tea I ever had. And they look at you and they go, Can I build you a castle? And then when they build you the castle, you go, Oh my God, darling, it's so gorgeous. How amazing are you? But it just needs a turret. And that's how the world develops, and you know, the turret, then you go, But darling, the turret needs to look out to the spa. You know, and men, you know, the masculine needs direction, and they want direction, And move from behind in a way. Yeah, completely and absolutely, and it's like the weather, you've got to trust the weather. I say, bunking jobs. Um, but men, if they're so singular in their focus and they're so singular in, you know, the, where they direct their energy, They're not in those conversations, you know, David White talks about it, like that men avoid conversations until they're about 50, which is our current return, which is, you know, when we kind of integrate our wound, everybody has a wound. And he says, and then they realize that, Oh my God, life is the conversation. So suddenly they become interested in the conversation, but they're so out of practice and they've got such. Fear of the conversation, you know, and, and so there's, they're much less multidimensional than the female in a way. Well, they, they get very tunnel visioned, you know, and workaholics. My husband is a workaholic and he's a bit bipolar, that when he does get. Um, low work is his cure. You know, he just goes out and throws himself. Well, movement. And it'll take his mind off whatever's troubling him. Um, and he just loves it. He loves working and he has a vision. I, I think when it comes to the land, most men are really driven by commerce. Those with the most toys win. Yeah, true. And there, there certainly that ego and that, you know, to suffer. Well we are the ego that competition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And things. Um, but yeah, but it's the dollar that drives them, you know? Where for me, just the dollar just doesn't exist for me. I am so well looked after by the universe. I don't. Think that I need any more than what I've got. I'm very happy with what I've got. I just want to make my patch better And as a consequence, so then the universe will deliver The finances and as you say the entire farm is thriving. Mm hmm. Financially Ecologically and vitally. Vitally, resilience, you know, and that's been my And that's working with nature. Is, yeah, making my property just the jewel Whereas Rodney, my husband, has bought one neighbor, then another neighbor, and then another neighbor, another neighbor. He's building an empire. He's continually complaining that there's too much happening and he can't get his head around it all. He just wants a simple life, but It never gets any more simple because he's just The relentless pursuit of more. He's on growth. Everything's about growth and, you know, prosperity. But no, it's probably around growth and legacy. And legacy. Oh, true. Legacy's a big thing for him. He's wonderful. He's helped three different men onto the land. By going in partnership with something with them and then and then just keep sort of Helping them propping it up to let that properties become until they're sustainable sustainable and sustaining and then another one will come and say Oh, I'll call Rodney. He could help me and they're okay. Where do you want? Oh, you sure you want to go there? It's terrible. Oh, no, you know what? I'm used to you and he just puts up with it all and helps them until Which is very generous. Oh, he is a very generous man. You know, I guess the family farm is a diminishing thing in Australia. You know, land keeps getting sold and superannuation companies keep buying it and all big companies and it's so hard for the family to buy a farm anymore. Um, and if they have too big a family and they all want to be a part of it then It gets split up and then it becomes uneconomical for anybody, um, and then eventually it's lost superannuation company in builds it. So he really believes in the family farm and he loves helping these young men get onto the land. Nice. And yeah, it's a wonderful trait. He's fantastic. Honestly, he's lovely. Yeah. Yeah. But he's always increasing his territory though and employing more people and everyone loves working for him because he's a very generous man and yeah, he, he has a, he has a great aura about him and a great following, uh, devotees that just love him. And, and how about your devotees? So you talked about, you had this exhibition and you put these bonnets of cars hanging from trees, advertising it. Well I just got so upset by the fact that no one can ever see the value of the trees. And it also became very political in Queensland when, um. The state government put a moratorium on clearing trees. And suddenly there was this war going on between landholders and the government. And the government kept changing the rules, which made landholders very Oh, which it made them very suspicious of anything. And people would just suddenly clear fell everything for the fear of Not being able to touch it in the future. Oh wow. And so there's just been a lot of fence to fence clearing without anybody understanding the value of having the trees in the landscape. So And they don't take up that much space. No, and they're just for real life. Like if you plant trees in a considered way, you know, it's not like they're going to It's a lot harder to plant trees Once they've all gone, it's so easy just to leave corridors. Yes, absolutely. Around the place. So easy to do it. But they have this fear that they'll never be able to control their property if they leave the trees. So there's this huge thing in Queensland where they just clear fell and it's horrible. I just get so upset. They've also got this thing called grassland pellets, which is a little pellet that they apply from aeroplanes and it has a three year residual, um, and you don't even know it until suddenly you see the life force start to go out of these trees and you realize that they're all about to die because they've all been poisoned and suddenly they haven't left a thing. You know, they've just put pellets in this whole area. I just get so upset. I thought, I've just got to get the message out about the value of trees in the landscape. So, Beef Week was coming up and I decided I'm going to put this little, booth in the pavilion and had it all worked out I had this beautiful six meter canvas that I painted about the water cycles, the carbon cycles, the biological cycles, and how trees were so important to get the coastal moisture into the inland. I did a lot of study on it and I just put everything together in this huge painting. And I had fridge magnets that I was hanging, handing out and, a little one, forest bathing and how good that was for you. Um, anyway, honestly, it was just like throwing myself into the walls. A few people, people that were already on my side, you know, loved it. Well, with some friends of mine, we built this tree and we had this tree that just, the trunk came up and all the branches just filled over the top of our little booth. And we had nests and I had a little speaker somewhere up in the trees and on my phone I could play any bird call I wanted to and, you know, throughout the day we'd have all different bird calls just floating through the, the pavilion., I didn't get a very good reception from a lot of them. I'd hand out my fridge magnets and they'd take one look at them and they'd just hand them back. They didn't want them, you know. Trees are a very sensitive issue in Queensland. So after Beef Week, I thought, oh, okay, got to go a bit further than this. So I thought I would put together an exhibition and take it to different galleries around rural Queensland. And it was called The Wisdom of Trees. And I had other people had their paintings as well. And they all had a little thing about, you know, a wisdom of a tree. So the first one was at Mitchell. down on the Warrago Highway, west of Roma. And I thought, well, my target audience, probably not going to go to the art shows, but, I will paint bonnets, car bonnets, and hang them along the highway with little tree wisdoms. So the first one was, um, you know, how do trees make it rain? Because rain is such a Um, and I probably have a few ducks going around that one. And the next one was, well, trees made up of carbon and water. Um, and then the next one would be, um, trees move moisture inland. I had about a series of six of them. And then the next series would be, how do trees make fertile land? And then I'd have things on that one, and how do trees take the toxin out of water? I have a few on that one. I had, I probably had nearly 20 carbonates by the end of it. So we put them up along the Warrago Highway, and we put half of them on the eastern side, and then half of them on the western side, so that people would, and we also had, the Wisdom of Trees at the Mitchell Gallery, and on the back, we've made this little sign, these are protected by the Divine Mother Earth, DME. Hoping it looked a bit official. Um, anyway, within a week they were all cut down and half of them on the eastern side completely disappeared. And I was just so upset. It really got to me. It's just such a sensitive issue, the trees, and yet they're so vital and so important in our landscape. And I just can't get the message through to them. I cannot get the message through how vital these trees are. Well, it's going back, and I think we probably should wrap up, but I think it's going back to What you said about the land care, association, that they were saying that it takes 50 years for it to see the consequences of the actions. And, we've had the Industrial Revolution, which is, you know, coming up for nearly 200 years now. And, there's that thing of that, nothing changes and everything changes. And, you know, And, the Industrial Revolution and the beginning when they brought people into the land and they were, uh, from the land and they went into factories. They couldn't handle being indoors all day long, so there was gin carts in those factories in, uh, And they used to pass out gin, which is, you know, getting pissed as they were doing whatever they were doing in the factories, but to keep them sane. And then schools were created to train people to sit from a young age, which is our industrial, education system, so that by the time you got to sit in a factory you were conditioned to be able to sit in a space for a very long time. Um, and it is the death of a thousand You, you know, the boiling of the, the lobster, whatever, metaphor we want to use for it. But people don't realize that they are being conditioned and that there are consequences to the conditioning. You know, it's the advent of mortgages, then. Credit cards and and so becomes all becomes normal and what we see with the environment and with the earth I grew up knowing about that you know there was a four year cycle of you had a You had your best crop, and then there was one that needed slightly lower quality, then lower quality, and then the fourth year it was laid fallow. So it could replenish and heal itself. And, I think that's what we're finally beginning to learn. I don't know if you follow Jack Bush, or there's so many people who are speaking on this. Same subject right now. Joel Sullivan, do you know him? No, no. He's amazing, he's American. Right, and you know, and about how, and in the US, it's, you know, I love the fact that the acronym, which is the Standard American Diet, is SAD. It's S A D, it's SAD. And they're realising that it's making people sick. It's not actually even maintaining a status quo, and you know, it's the chemicals, and the food, and the lethargy, and the depression, and you know, then you have the opioid crisis, you know, and we can go on and on about how, one thing leads to another leads to another, and If people are conditioned to just accept the status quo, and I think most people do, they're doing what they've always done, or it's like the story that I told about, why do you always cut the meat, you know, oh my mother did that, why did she, oh my grandmother did it, you know, my great grandmother did it, then they realize that the oven was too small to take the full piece, and they realize, well our oven can take it, well, okay. You know, and, and so this legacy things that are in place and it's breaking through a certain type of thinking, a certain type of doing, and it's like, well, it's always worked that way. It hasn't. It's just been slowly, slowly we've been indoctrinated into other things like. Industrial agriculture is just growing food. They think that all they need is MPK, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. So they will just put MPK under the thing and grow food from dirt, not soil, but dirt that's just been fed MPK to grow food that Has no life force in it. Has no prana. Yeah, yeah. No life force whatsoever. No nutrients. So we're eating food that's just, has no nutrients value. So then we get sick. And it's the same companies that are selling all the industrial chemicals and fertilizers that are also investing in the pharmaceuticals to make us well. So for them, that's a very sustainable industry. Make us sick, make us well. I don't even think they make us well, really, but. No, and also, you know, what I see in, you know, there's even health and wellness, because, you know, that's not pure either. The supplements. I mean, I don't know how many people I know who are taking, you know, five, ten, twenty supplements a day because they're believing that they're not getting it from their food or they don't believe. Yeah. And yet they're buying organic and in Australia organic is much more expensive. In Ireland it's pretty much the same, you know, all my farming friends in Ireland say well it's organic. It's kind of like organic farming in Ireland, whether you're, it's certified or not. Yeah. Cause they're small, you know, they're, you know, they're bigger farms than they were when I was a kid. Like when I was a kid, if you had a hundred acres, you could take care of your family and educate your children. Now they're saying this a thousand acres, you know, but it's the same industries that are, they've got their ecosystem down really well. But it's all about profit. It is. And I'm not against profit, but I have to be able to make a money to sustain their business, don't they? Yeah, I just tend to be driven by their money more. That's where the problem is, is that if it's profit, they look after their animals and they do look after their animals, but they don't look after their land. You know, if it doesn't rain, they don't move their animals away, they'll just bring in food to feed them. So the land gets more and more tortured by having all the animals still there. But they're looking after the animals, because they want the animals, the animals are their income. But what they should be doing is looking after their land first, and then that will look after the animals. So again, going back to that thing of that, You've got to look after the foundational principles. And like, and this is true for, you know, in business and in anything. Like every industry, every activity has foundational principles. And they do not change. Yes. And they will not change because they're kind of like universal laws. And then, you know, there'll always be other animals. You know what I mean? And you know, so if you're looking after the land, it will look after whether it's cows or it's sheep or whatever you're breeding, or if you decide to crop. So it comes back to the core principles. Yes. Look after your land. Look after your land. And that includes having a lot of trees on it. I think that's a great place to end. Thank you. It's been a delight. Oh, it's been fabulous. It's such a great conversation. Is there anything that you'd like to say before we do? I think I've covered nearly everything. Well, we certainly did cover a lot, and I know a lot more about Australia than I did before this conversation, even though I've been here on and off since 92. thank you Bloss. That was wonderful. Um, and thank you for listening and I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And if you did, please be sure to follow and share it and it really just shows that power of, of vision, of really believing in what you do and believing in who you are and who you need to become for, to realize it. Amazing. So in awe of loss and her boundless energy. Just beautiful. Um. thank you And so there's two ways to work with me or there's three ways to work with me. I've started this new thing where I'm doing a brand new day, and these are VIP days where you can come and work with me in Caama in my beautiful house here among the treetops are, we can do it in Bondi Junction in Sydney, or we can of course do it on Zoom as well. And what I want to do is to do these intensive days so we can really just get into the nitty gritty of what it is that you want to create. We'll use, design thinking, we'll use brand strategy of course, and human design and astrology, and I'm sure I'll set you away with something from continuity yoga, because I really believe in the mind follows the breath, and you know, it's the embodied confidence that we all need no matter how great our visuals are, no matter how great our brand is, it's really who we are being as we deliver our work and as we talk about our work. So the three different packages, we'll be a brand strategy, one, of course creative strategy. The other one will be two quick visuals. And the third one is going to be brand messaging. I really, really passionately believe that you're gonna find your own voice and find your own world of words it's the most creative thing we do is how we speak, how we put words together. You know, we all have particular words that we use again and again. I know that delight is one of mine. And going beyond yourself is another one. And I really want to make creatives commercially clever. Why can I not say the word commercially today? But anyway, and it's messaging like that feels like you. That sounds like you, and makes. Your people, your dream clients say like, oh my God, she's reading my mind. She knows exactly how I'm thinking, fearing, what I'm feeling, and also what I want to create. Um, this is about positioning and messaging. You know, and we need it clarified and distilled because with attention spans these days, so, so short, people have to get it immediately. So it's about creating resonance and that's very much about vibration. And you know, I want to create your visuals so they vibrate. I want your voice to vibrate. I want your strategy to vibrate and all of it is carrying this unique energy that is you. All right. I want your brand to be seen. I want it to be felt, and I want to create a structure that holds you so you can flow. You know, it's the fire and the flow. The fire is the spark that gets us moving that we feel like, oh my God, yes, this is so me. And then what we want is flow. So we need some automation and systems that are set up. So that we're not repeatedly doing the same thing again and again. You know, we've got such extraordinary technology now. So let's use it, these days, and you can choose which one, or you can integrate them. You can collapse them together. We can do them together. We'll be five hours, we'll do three hours in one session, and then we'll have a break to breathe, and then there'll be a two hour session. So there's more information on my website, email me or DM me on Instagram and I'll tell you more and we can have a conversation and see which one you need at this particular time. So thank you for being here. Thank you for listening and please share. And more than anything, have a wonderful day and let all those words of loss just kind of, wander around in your mind for a little while because. And the music taking you out is. Uh, GTE a J E T that you can find on Spotify.