Page 6 - C.A.L.L. #27 - Summer 2006

We at the desk have made contact with Jindibah Communtiy in New South Wales, Australia.
These are excerpts from their last newsletter:

Welcome to the annual newsletter from the residents and non-residents of Jindibah intentional community. The
events of the past 12 months at and around Jindibah have been – to us at least - eventful.

Our community is growing: this year we add another new member to our cast: Pippa Markham, who will arrive from Lon-
don to take up residence in Harry Fowler’s old wooden farmhouse.

Christobel and Christopher – who have been living in the classic century old Australian farmhouse – are building a
brick and tile home on the ‘mezzanine’ level of the community (next to the old water tank on the hill), and plan to
move when the house is completed, possibly in January. Living for a decade in the Sleepy Creek valley, C+C’s house
has been a kind of ‘gate-house’ to the community. Moving away from this key cosy creekside position to face the
windy hills will be a radical change for them, as will January temperatures in the 30s for Pippa (after London’s win-
ter!) As a community, we are keen to make sure there are special places on our property where individuals can relax
and enjoy our rural environment. In 2004, we restored the roof of the community shed in the property’s south-
western corner to make it more usable. In this past year, our major community project has been to restore the old
swimming hole located next to it.

You probably know by now that at Jindibah, we are an eclectic lot, into a
diverse range of activities, with some fascinating past-times.
• This year, for instance, Stephan and Bettina Kahlert decided to
join 2,000 other Harley Davidson motorbike riders in a ride to Uluru and
Alice Springs. Taking time out from their “normal” life, teaching yoga and
meditation, the pair drove 9,000km in three weeks. The highlight was
participating in a procession of thousands of Harley Davidson bikes from
Australia and NZ riding round Uluru at dawn.
• Tania Evers, Jindibah’s not quite resident barrister (currently in
Sydney) was a speaker at a seminar in Paris, France, mid-2005. (Her talk,
based on a specific case she’d handled, traced the connection between a prescribed antidepressant and a homicide.)
• Keira Dott, our horserider extraordinaire, celebrated her 10th birthday on 1 August (she’s a Leo) with a gym-
khana on the property, organized by her tireless mother Penny Cooke.
• It must have been a fertile year for Jindibytes. Our Melbourne partners, Danny and Vikki Lee, had their first
baby in September 05. Christobel’s daughter Sasha gave birth to a son, Harrison, in December (causing this newslet-
ter to be postponed by a few weeks), while Maggie Mulham and partner Paul Donovan are expecting their first baby
on 17 January.
• Resident novelist and freelance writer Jesse Blackadder, launched her book AFTER THE PARTY, in Sydney and
Byron Bay this year, then promptly turned her skills in other directions, taking to ballroom dancing like a duck to
water. We often find Jesse and friends hot-footing it in the ‘Building once known as the Dance Hall’.

To keep it all together and in good repair, a community needs ongoing, diligent maintenance of all its assets. Our
assets include a paved internal road of 1.523km. Alas the enormous July 05 floods channelled huge quantities of
flood water from a neighbouring property across our internal road, causing the bitumen to buckle like orange peel at
one point. Again we called on Mark Hajjar from Mullum Pools, who brought in his team to upgrade the drainage of
the rock wall along our western border, then we patched up the damaged road.
With more houses being built, we decided it was time to widen our internal road at a certain point, to make it safer
for two cars to pass.

Thought you might like to hear how our various planting projects have been getting on. Well, we are pleased to be
able to report the very high survival rate of all our buffer and screening plantings, planted both to “enhance the vis-
ual amenity of the landscape” and to “reduce the impact of the community on neighbouring properties”. You may -
or may not - recall that Jindibah is a primary producing farm, with 24 cows, one contented bull and their offspring.
This means our beef cattle (who provide us with an income to pay for property maintenance) need access to fresh
pasture. To protect our plantings while allowing the cattle to graze, we use solar powered electric fencing around our
plantings until trees are mature.

Jindibah Community, Sleepy Creek, Bangalow, NSW 2479 is a 12-house site Multiple Occupancy intentional commu-
nity located on a 46 hectare farm in Fowlers Lane, Bangalow. For more information, see www.jindibah-
community.org, or email DIY@jindibah-community.org

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