Site of Strawbale studio and middle dam, looking southish – the courtyard will be on this side, along with a few prize deciduous trees.

One of the things that always gets me is seeing old photos of how a place used to be. I have a photo of what the headland at Kiama looked like when it was still a windswept farm – before my parents (and everyone else) put up their brick-veneer houses in the 60’s and turned it into prime-real estate, densely packed suburb it is today….

So in light of this, and because we like to document things (incase you hadn’t noticed) , Nick and I have committed to a very long-term project: Milkwood Timelapses. Every morning before sunrise, we will walk the boundary of Milkwood, taking photos from 7 different points. We will do this each morning, every morning that we are here, until such a time as we can walk no more… and by then we will have trained monkeys to do it for us. Or some future solar-powered zero-footprint adsl whizz-bang gadget which requires no maintainence and also makes cheese as a byproduct.

Every so often we will compile the daily shots and produce a timelapse movie for each position on Milkwood, and post it here.

Things will grow, things will be built, seasons will pass. The finger on the camera shutter will get gradually older. So will the camera, for that matter. But 40 years from now, I hope to still be getting up before the dawn and shuffling off on my daily timelapse circuit, treading a well-worn path around Milkwood… to both record, and appreciate, the passing of yet another day…

And we started yesterday. Here are some of the views-to-be:

Panorama of creekflat, looking North. Recently slashed to create mulch to help with moisture retention throughout summer. Eventual main crop with bottom dam on right, at the base of the ridge. Bridge and entry on far right.