Happy happy 12th birthday to our favourite baker of the Flinders Ranges and green thumb garden fairy, Moggsie. xxx

The Christmas community market will a be stocked with handcrafted  goodies including these felted and beaded dowry bags, tooth fairy keepers, treasure pouches and dyed faerie’s fabric made by the nimble fingered Maynards Well guild.

Watch this space for market dates. 

Bring on the springtime colour! The community market in Copley this Saturday afternoon will have plenty of colour, handmade goodies, spring seedlings, original artworks and plenty more surprises. Head over after the Scouts’ car boot sale in Leigh Creek on Saturday morning.

Community Market:

Saturday 25th October, 1-6pm

33 Railway Terrace East, Copley

Stallholders invited, $10 donation

Yo kids, tell us about the gymkhana!

Last night the garden bed of a residence on Brown St, Copley, was soiled with a mystery human stool excreted in situ by a trespasser.

A medical professional who was eye witness to footprints and the healthy foot-long specimen strongly suspected the perpetrator to be a well fed, medium to large caucasian male with a high fibre diet. The victim is at a loss to explain why no toilet paper was found at the scene of the crime.

Closer inspection of the evidence will be required in order to reveal whether the offending defecation was an act of territorial behaviour, the bizarre perversion of koprolagnia by proxy, an act of vengeance or merely the result of benign confusion as to which orifice is best put to use as a form of communication.

The matter has now been placed in the hands of the police and forensic investigators who have indicated that they wish to get to the bottom of it.

Back to Beltana is happening this weekend, September 27 -28th in the historic Beltana township. Come along for a game of bocce, camel rides, stalls, competitions, costume parade and general Beltana style cosmic fun! There will be a dance on Saturday night, ladies, frock up and bring a plate. On Sunday morning there will be a church service at the Smith of Dunesk Mission.

The Adnyamathanha Women’s Choir will be taking the Yarnballa Festival stage at sunset, and look who else is in the mix - the irrepressible Ken McKenzie. 

Musicians and songwriters taking part in the Yarnballa Festival Music Workshops in Port Augusta are writing a song to capture the spirit of Yarnballa that will be performed at the Festival’s opening ceremony on the shores of the Spencer Gulf.

Under the guidance of acclaimed singer/songwriter Sonny Keeler, who is conducting songwriting classes as part of the six-week workshop, the local muso’s are developing an anthem for South Australia’s first Indigenous Arts and Culture Festival.
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The Oodnaminta Reef discovery is being outlined at the Geological Society of Australia’s (Victoria Division) Selwyn Symposium 2008, at the University of Melbourne, Thursday 25 September. Details of the Symposium follow the media release.

In what is a major international discovery, three Australian scientists have located the upturned remnants of what was once a giant underwater reef – with an escarpment ten times higher than the Great Barrier Reef – in the Northern Flinders Ranges in outback South Australia.

The reef is about 650 million years old and is the only known reef complex of this age anywhere in the world. The next closest aged series of reefs found to-date are around 800 million years old and located in Arctic Canada.

And while they are yet to confirm it scientifically, the scientists – Mr Jonathan Giddings, Associate Professor Malcolm Wallace and Ms Estee Woon from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne – believe that peculiar fossils of possible multi-cellular organisms found in the reef could be the earliest examples of primitive animal life discovered to-date.
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General information about The Food Forest

www.foodforest.com.au

“Sometimes you encounter new ideas that dramatically change the way you see the world around you.”

Our courses bring together people keen to explore new ideas, skills, foods and information in an environment of diversity, abundance and sharing; they are designed to be experiences rather than classes. For some people they are the beginning of a new direction in life and for others they are an opportunity to hone well practiced skills of designing, food growing and self reliance. Our aim is to give people some of the skills needed to design sustainable ways of living for themselves and their families.

At The Food Forest a heritage-listed stone barn has been transformed into a well-equipped Learning Centre but many practical activities also take you out into the orchards, gardens and bushlands of the property. You can also enjoy our loo-with-a-view, a unique composting toilet and reedbed system which transforms human by-products into reeds for mulching, rich compost for fertiliser and golden bamboo for furniture and for structural work. You will see environmentally designed buildings which demonstrate passive and active solar technologies: the ‘Studio’ and it’s curved garden wall, the “Eco-Gazebo”, the drive-in coolroom, an extension to the over 160 year old homestead and a small gallery, all of which are built using strawbales. A photovoltaic system of thin film amorphous panels provides electricity to the house and grid; the sun also provides water heating for both the house and the on-farm processing facility.

The Food Forest today is the result of the vision of owners Graham & Annemarie Brookman and functions as a remarkable 15 hectare Permaculture farm and learning centre. From its buzzing biodiversity come over 150 organically grown varieties of fruit and nuts, wheat and vegetables, free range eggs, honey, carob beans, Australian native foods and timber. The Food Forest sells produce at the Adelaide Showground Farmers Market every fortnight. The collections of tree crop varieties represent a unique genetic resource; willingly shared with others wishing to establish sustainable plantings.

More on Spring events:

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See the site for details.