Captions: From the top - the shower and toilet block arrive; a peak at the bathroom and our vege garden, the Old Homestead campsite; looking down to the road from the Old Homestead site, plenty of room for groups.
15 December 2023
Dear city cousin,
Christmas is so close I can glimpse the prawns and smell the roast pork. The day could be a stinker so our campers might find the extended Brosnan family duck diving in the pump water hole.
There hasn’t been much rain, but at least the little we’ve had has greened the place up so the grass isn’t crunchy underfoot. And while the river is shallow, there’s enough water to float about, trailing hands and feet, to cool off. There’s talk of rain over the next few days, so all power to Huey.
The vegetable garden is prolific again, with cucumbers for days, and when the tomatoes ripen, the frantic search for simple and tasty cherry tomato chutney recipes will reach a fever pitch.
The cucumber vine has escaped its boxed boundary and is reaching into the paddock and across the lawn. After bemoaning to a food-savvy friend that Bernie and I can’t eat our body weight in cucumbers each day, and Bernie is resisting my threats to start chopping it back, he directed me to the Cornersmith kitchen book called Food Saver’s A – Z, which is now on order.
I don’t want to give the impression that I’m good at cooking, or even enjoy it, but I do hate waste and I like eating preserves, so I’ll be sterilising jars to make bread and butter pickles later today.
Our campsites are booked out for Christmas so campers might also find themselves with straight-off-the-vine cucumbers and tomatoes for their salads.
Enough about Christmas, I have exciting news! A couple of years ago we sold the old Brosnan home to a family who had been searching for a removal home built to the original Queenslander designs, and they found ours. Their dream was to locate it on top of a hill on their lush Mary River property and restore it to its former beauty, It was a lovely outcome for the old home which was seasoned by years of Brosnan occupation, including Bernie and his seven siblings whose bedrooms were allocations within the enclosed verandas.
When the house departed, we planned to retain the garden, the timber car shed, the stable and horse yard, the concrete slab and the existing service infrastructure to create a spot for groups to gather and camp with power, water and facilities on their site. But I needed to find a toilet and shower that would suit the site’s homestead vibe.
And I did! Or at least my daughter found it on Marketplace, and we bought it. It’s now on site, ready to be plumbed, maybe tomorrow. We are in the midst of our approval process to locate some accommodation on site as well, but in the meantime, it’s our first powered site with facilities, perfect for school groups, scouts, bushwalkers, paragliders, horse groups – or just friends looking for a country getaway.
It's time to head inside and get pickling, so wishing you all a safe and fun festive season and we look forward to your visits in 2024.
Much love, your Wynola Country Cousin
Top: Paragliders at Sunday Plain, Above: Platypus spotting Below: Aerial of the Junction campsite
5th October 2023
Jo and Bernie Brosnan, “Wynola Country Cousins” Killarney SE Queensland
Hello!
I won’t tell you we’ve been busy; everyone is busy, and it’s an overused word. But life has been pleasantly hectic! The long weekend just gone we were fully booked with campers! Our eight campsites were abuzz with the distant sound of ‘howzat!’, the thwack of badminton rackets and kids’ laughter.
Back when we started Wynola Country Cousins Bush Camping three years ago, our goal was to generate so much return visitation that regular campers would become part of the Wynola family; they’d jealously guard their favourite site, book a long weekend a year in advance and know the way to their campsite when they arrive. Guess what! Seven of our eight campsites last long weekend were returns. And they brought new friends and family with them. Love it.
Sunday was hot, but the river was cold, and while the water levels are getting low because there’s been no rain, there was plenty for campers to cool down in. Our Cave site campers loved sharing the river with the platypus they spotted.
Speaking of no rain, we desperately need some. Cattle prices are terrible; we are just about giving them away, but we are caught in the squeeze of diminishing feed and very high grain prices. The perfect storm for agriculture and one that gives you little choice but to sell.
We’ve been busy putting out supplementary feed and planning to put up some electric fences on the mountain to keep them grazing up high where there’s more grass. Without that fencing, they prefer hanging by the river flats, chewing the short, sweeter grass and going hungry. Frustrating. Luckily, we have campers, and I have off-farm work for times like these.
We are preparing two lovely stock horse mares for the Dalby sales. I’m hoping they find beautiful homes. They are the sweetest, most talented mares, but we don’t have enough feed or time to keep them. We have younger horses that need work and grass.
You might have heard that the Council has upgraded Long Crossing and the gully near our driveway. Long Crossing is now a concrete bed-level crossing with a bitumen entry and exit. A concrete bridge with box culverts with a fore and aft bitumen strip spans the gully. Family visiting us for the long weekend were very excited about the ease of access to our property.
To escape the heat, we drove the family to Sunday Plain to watch the paragliders launch. They’ve been using that launch site for years and let us know when they will take off because they need permission to ‘bomb out’ in our paddocks. We like helping them; they are fun to watch, but we need to direct them away from the horse paddocks. I sometimes wonder what our campers think when they see one floating into a nearby field.
With visitors and campers gone for the week, we’ve cast our minds back to how best to bring our Wynola Country Cousins eco-tourism and glamping visions to life. Onwards and upwards, until next time, enjoy life and don’t take it for granted.
Jo and Bernie Brosnan, your Wynola Country Cousins xx
The Power of Unplugging
I’m not a killjoy or a technophobe. I'm a big fan of videos on iPad to keep the kids entertained as the miles roll by. But I do have grandkids growing up in a world where scrolling through social feeds and gaming is reshaping their brains, literally. And it worries me.Science has demonstrated that streaming devices have created a culture of distraction. Excessive screen time means our kids will likely have reduced attention spans and struggle to maintain thoughtful, face-to-face conversations - remember those?It's unrealistic and undesirable to quarantine children completely from social platforms; without online skills, they'd struggle at school to get a job and connect with their community, but we need to build respite periods into their annual calendars. So how do you disconnect their devices without turning your home into a battlefield? Easy – schedule time away in a private, secluded, signal-free, river-side campsite at Wynola Country Cousins this school holidays. It's not your fault they are out of range, right? The simplicity of life on the farm stimulates kids' imaginations. Maybe you were lucky enough to have country cousins back in the day. Do you remember visiting their farm and Building the best and fastest 'stick boat', launched from the creek bank, screaming encouragement as it rockets down the rapids to the tree that marks the finish line?Trudging along bush tracks inventing epic journeys of discovery?Learning the best way to stack the kindling for an awesome campfire?Being mesmerized by the campfire flames as you toast, not burn, your marshmallows?Finding the zodiac shapes in the sky on a clear, starlit night?Sitting patiently and quietly waiting for platypus to appear?
These experiences and memories enrich children's minds, giving their rapidly evolving little brains a chance to recalibrate and reconnect with nature and their families.