A wombat, a spring and why the source of Elderflower Mist means so much to us
We have been working with our designer on a new indoor backwall for Handmade Canberra which will no doubt be useful for the other indoor markets we do. We already have a backwall for the gazebo we use at outdoor markets, and the new version follows much the same Widden Brook Farm landscape: flowers, bottles, cattle, water, wildlife and the other small details that say something about the place Elderflower Mist comes from.
Our designer came up with a few options, but there was one thing we knew had to remain; the wombat had to be there beside the spring.
We call him Wally, all wombats are called Wally even if they they have a joey in tow, and he is not there because a wombat happens to look at home in a farm illustration. He is there because, during one of the hardest periods we have faced at Widden Brook Farm, a wombat digging in dry ground showed us where to find the spring that helped us stay on the farm. It is also the same spring that provides the pure water we now use to make Elderflower Mist Sparkling.
That is why Wally is part of our story, and why leaving him off the new wall was never an option.
Five weeks of waiting for the fire
During the Black Summer of 2019, the Gospers Mountain fire was moving towards us. Widden Brook Farm sits on Nullo Mountain in the north-west corner of the Wollemi National Park, so the fire was not something happening somewhere else; for about five weeks we watched it creep closer while doing everything we could to prepare the property.
Those weeks were long and difficult. We checked pumps, hoses and access, cleared what we could, moved things that could be moved and thought constantly about the animals, buildings, machinery and everything else we had spent the previous ten years creating from what had essentially been a bare cow paddock. The fire kept moving and, as it did, the drought was stripping away one of the things we would need most if we were going to stay and defend the farm: water.
Our farm dams were dry, we had already turned off the irrigation to the hazelnut orchard, our household tank had 20,000 or so litres in it but we had calculated that would be enough to run our sprinkler system for a bit over half an hour while leaving us with some left over for spot fires. Even the spring-fed water-supply dam at the head of our domestic supply was close to running dry. There was still a large puddle of water in the bottom but the syphon running down to our house couldn't pull the water that was left over the dam wall.
We were reaching the point where the lack of water was going to make the decision for us. We could prepare the farm as carefully as possible, but if we did not have enough water on which to live and fight the fire when it arrived, we would have to leave rather than stay and defend what we had built. It was a bleak place to find ourselves after weeks of watching the fire get closer.
A patch of mud
One day Shireen was up near the top of the property, close to the drying out water-supply dam, when she noticed something that seemed completely out of place in those conditions: a tiny patch of mud where a wombat had been digging.
On our basalt soils, springs are common, so the idea of water moving underground was not unusual in itself. What was extraordinary was seeing any sign of water there at all when the dams were dry and the country around us had been baked by drought.
Shireen stopped to look more closely and found a tiny trickle of water seeping out from underground. She excavated a small depression and lined it with rocks so we could see what the seep was doing, and over time it became clear that the spring was still producing well over 1,000 litres of water a day.
In normal farm terms that is not an enormous volume, but at that point it changed everything. We set up a water line into a tank near the spring and then plumbed that water into our domestic supply line which ran 500 or so metres down the hill into the shed. The tank at the spring overflowed, which meant the wombat and other wildlife still had access to water, while we once again had enough for our household needs and enough confidence in the basics to stay.
A couple of weeks later, when the fire finally moved through, we were still on the farm to defend it.
The spring that became our life source
What we found that day was not simply an emergency source of water that mattered for a few weeks in 2019.
It is the spring.
The same spring that helped us stay during Black Summer is the spring that provides the pure water we have used to make every batch of Elderflower Mist Sparkling we have ever made.
That connection is difficult to overstate for us because the spring sits at the centre of two parts of our story that might otherwise look separate from the outside. In 2019 it gave us what we needed to remain on the farm at a time when we were preparing for the possibility of losing everything. Today its water goes into the drink we grow and make here, alongside our elderflowers, citrus and time.
We sometimes describe that spring as a life source for Widden Brook Farm, and in this case the words are not being used loosely. The water supported us when the farm was under threat, it continues to support life on the property, and it is now part of what leaves the farm in every bottle of Elderflower Mist.
The farm, the spring, the wildlife and the drink are all connected by something very real.
Why Wally stays on the wall
We have always tried to make the visual world of Widden Brook Farm mean something rather than simply decorate the business. The market backwall is not a literal map of the property, but the things in it have been chosen because they belong to the story: the flowers we grow, the cattle we manage, the bottles we make, the water that sustains us and the wildlife that shares the place with us.
Wally and the spring have earned their place in that picture
If the wombat had not been digging there, we may not have noticed the mud. If Shireen had not stopped to investigate something so small in the middle of such a large crisis, we may not have found the spring when we needed it most. That is one of those farm moments that stays with you, because it is a reminder that paying attention to the land and the other lives around us is not an abstract idea; sometimes it changes what happens next.
So when the new indoor backwall for Handmade Canberra was being developed this year and we looked through the design options, Wally had to stay beside the spring. The story came first; the symbol came later, and after that there was never much question that the two belonged together.
If you see us at Handmade Canberra this month, have a look at the wall behind us. You will see the farm, the flowers, the water and a small wombat standing beside the spring. Now you know his name, why he is there, and why that spring means so much to everything we do.
