Noggerup: It's a Real Place, I Promise

I have had a morning ritual every day that I have been on a farm. Before I put my shoes on, I knock them together with varying degrees of violence in order to jar any potential interlopers from their hiding spots before I poke them with my dainty toes. This ritual tends to be more pronounced (aka, I throw my shoes across the room and then beat them with a rock) at the beginning of a stay, when I’m still unsure as to the nature and quantity of the interlopers, and pretty lax by the end, when I’ve realized that it seems unlikely that I’m going to be the victim of a sneak attack. So imagine my complete and utter surprise when, on one of the last mornings at my current farm, I half-heartedly smacked my shoes together and something fell out. Not just any something, a something with 8 legs, that seemed very perturbed by suddenly finding itself on the ground, ironically very close to my naked feet that I had been trying to protect by smacking my shoes together. To my credit I did not scream (I swear!), but I did jump back roughly 10 feet and then lean over to stare at it to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.  I wasn’t. It ran away into the bushes, and I never trusted those bushes again. 

Luckily, all of my other wildlife encounters while in Noggerup (really, that is the name of the town; next door is Mumballup, they both sound like solid drinking games to me) were simply exceptional. On the domestic side of things, I made friends with a chicken, who deigned to let me hold her, and didn’t even poop on me. I learned to tolerate 2 cats, - a sweet old fur ball named Oscar who didn’t understand why I wouldn’t pet him, and a young hotshot named Blackie who had to wear a little bib that slowed him down and made him move a bit like a bowling ball learning to walk, which allegedly prevented him from sneaking up on birds - and by tolerate I mean exist with one hand on my inhaler and one hand on my nasal spray. Denny, my gracious host, had a bit of a Dr Doolittle streak in him, so in addition to the cats and chooks, I was also introduced to a string of wild animals. There was Limpy the Magpie, who had been in some kind of fight and couldn’t use one of his legs, so he would hop along the ground in front of the veranda and chitter away plaintively and incessantly until you took pity on him and brought him bread. There was a little goanna (an Australian lizard) that Denny rescued and eventually released after feeding it bits of cat food, apparently a goanna delicacy. There was Bendy the Bandicoot, so named because of a little kink in his tail, and his more elusive brother, Bandit the Bandicoot. Bendy was my favorite - Denny would put out bread and peanut butter every night for the bandicoots, and Bendy had become so accustomed to this, and was so comfortable with Denny, that he would show up at the door if his dinner was not presented on time. He had no problem just waltzing into the house and pawing at Denny’s pant leg, and he would even tolerate a gentle pat or two, as long as he was kept in peanut butter, which he would smear in gleeful abandon all over his paws and pointy little nose.

To give some context to this cornucopia of wildlife, let me explain that I was staying on something of a permaculture installation. I feel like ‘farm’ is not an evocative enough word for the Noggerup Homestay. The land was originally the heart of the town of Noggerup, which existed along railway tracks leading into coal country. The tracks, and the town, have long since been abandoned, and Denny has built his kingdom on what used to be Main Street. After being there for 10 days, I believe the best way to imagine Noggerup is to picture a commune that has lost its community. It is a dizzying maze of gardens and buildings and caravans and sheds and trees, with an internal logic all of its own. Every day I would find areas that I didn’t know existed before. And everywhere you turned, there was food. Apple trees and citrus, pecans and pistachios, gardens strewn with greens and celery and potatoes and herbs, and tomatoes peeping out from behind every corner. Chickens made that strange happy-chicken moaning sound in three different pens, roosters crowed night and day (because no one had ever told these roosters that they were only supposed to crow at dawn), and magpies fought with each other over pine nuts. The buildings nestled amongst all these trees and gardens took a variety of shapes, from an old repurposed railway workers’ bunk house, to a caravan painted in psychedelic patterns, to the straw bale home that Denny lived in. I was lucky enough to have an entire house to myself, a beautiful 1-story + sleeping loft house built of repurposed lumber and salvaged windows and doors. 

Now, on the surface, having a house to myself sounds like heaven. In reality, I discovered that I am an incurable and irredeemable wuss. I don’t know how I managed to live alone for a year in college, because I am, I have now learned, capable of turning every creak into an ominous footstep, every shadow into a creature from a Japanese horror movie. This house was perfectly designed to feed my overwrought imagination - not that it wasn’t beautiful, but it was just so horror-movie perfect. There weren’t locks on any of the doors, the bed faced the staircase of the loft and the yawning abyss of the pitch dark lower floor, there was a balcony to one side, perfect for the murderer to steal on to, and a big wardrobe on the other, perfect for a lurking phantasm to hide in. None of this was helped by the fact that I had to walk back through the winding paths from Denny’s house with only the weak and decidedly skeletal-looking light of my flashlight to guide me (never mind that it was only about 500 feet), or by the fact that this was one of the most talkative houses I have ever been in. The roof creaked and rattled, the walls settled so often that it seems a miracle that they haven’t caved in, and the floorboards protested under real and imagined weight. One night, walking back, I heard the distinct sound of footsteps walking through the trees to my left. Not just any footsteps, but the ponderous tread of someone wearing heavy work boots. I froze, the footsteps wandered off, and I ran the last 100 feet to the house. It was only through a sheer force of will that I didn't know I was capable of that I managed to turn out the light and lay in the dark waiting for spooky sounds. When I ran this by Denny the next day (because I was not murdered in the night, obviously), I found out that kangaroos hopping sound exactly like a man in boots walking. So, on the one hand, I was really close to a kangaroo, which is awesome, but on the other hand, screw you kangaroo for making me think the Scream mask was going to appear in my window at any moment. 

Me and my new friend, sun-dried raisins

This apple was harmed in the making of this blog

When I was not busy jumping at imaginary serial killers, I actually got to do some pretty farm-y stuff. I cracked open pine nuts and macadamia nuts with my bare hands (kidding, I used a hammer and a log, which still made me feel pretty awesome). I planted garlic. I dug for potatoes, which is exactly as much fun as a scavenger hunt in the dirt, and may be my new favorite pastime; I’m hoping the city of New York won’t mind if I plant potatoes in Central Park next spring and spend the autumn burrowing through the dirt like a human mole. I learned how to make yogurt, and olives (if anyone ever offers you a raw olive, refuse. Trust me.). I discovered that corn seeds are actually just the kernels on an ear of corn, and then felt like the biggest city slicker that had ever been admitted to a farm. I basically, to quote Denny “lived like a peasant”, and discovered that I didn’t mind it. As someone that has spent so much of my life in cities, disconnected from the means of food production, there was something magical about picking my dinner out of the garden. I adored selecting greens and tomatoes for a salad, or cutting a squash off the vine to use in soup, or pulling an apple off the tree and eating it. It all felt vital and sumptuous, almost decadent, to have so much food at my fingertips. Living off the land requires an unbelievable amount of work, but, if the land is willing, the rewards are bountiful. 

I didn’t get off the farm very often, but on one of my last days, we took a little day trip around the area. We visited a beautiful national park, with a lovely meandering stream and big overhanging trees. And on the way home, we visited Gnomesville. I wish a picture could do this justice. Gnomesville is a lonely stretch of land that is populated entirely with garden gnomes. There are thousands. Some have little houses, some have clever signs, some have lost an arm or a leg or a breast or a head, some are wearing very little clothing, some are in very compromising positions. I have never before seen or guessed at such a width and breadth within garden gnome culture. I am so pleased that I saw one of these weird slices of Australian roadside shtick, and I am so pleased that I saw it during the day. Because had I seen it at night, I think the creaking floorboards of my home would have taken on a very different quality, and I refuse to have nightmares about gnomes. Serial killer spiders wearing scream masks, sure, but I draw the line at garden gnomes. 

Gnomes as far as the eye can see

Naughty gnomes