Simply being there was the great satisfaction for me about Dondingalong , but I am not one to simply sit and stare at scenery. As a way to pass the odd restful hour it had its place at various times of day , and sitting on the verandah with beer or wineglass in hand , watching the light change , watching and listening to the multitude of birds , was idyllic . So was simply wandering down through the bush , walking the boundaries to check that no trees had fallen across the fences , crisscrossing the many small gullies to find new aspects of the bush opening up , finding new kinds of trees , birds and animals .

Australian native wild flowers are often tiny and strangely inconspicuous , yet individually quite beautiful . The most amazing one for me at least was the Hyacinth Orchid , a thirty centimeter stem that rose nakedly straight upwards out of the grass , purple in colour and with purple bell shaped flowers .

But these were added delights .

My major interest over the years was the development of a small orchard in the northeast corner of the block . This area had a reasonable slope for drainage , the water table was easily determined , and though the soil had never been cultivated in all its history , unfortunately it was not a fully fertile kind one could ask for . That was no deterrent however , as the nutrients that it did contain would , I thought , be enough to keep any trees going until I improved the soil by various means . And so indeed , it proved .

Each tree to be planted would have an area of worked soil around it , fully fertilised , and dug to a sufficient depth to give good purchase for the roots above the heavy clay . The topsoil was easy enough to work , and except for one small outcrop , not rocky or stone laden . It was not very deep however , and the clay base underneath took a lot of breaking up with the mattock . When treated with gypsum however , it broke up into good friable soil . As the years went by , and more and more manures and compost were added , it became quite rich , certainly rich enough to sustain my plantings and allow them to produce good crops .

There was never any thought of making the orchard , or even the whole block for that matter , into anything like a commercial proposition. What was grown was to be grown for use by our family , and any excess could be given away .

The first trees to go in were citrus. I looked on them as a necessity, though it was my intention to vary the plantings as much as possible , to include any of the less usual species of tree that could be grown in the climate . Citrus fruits flourished there . and for some reason , probably over-enthusiasm , I finished up with four different kinds of lemon. The commonest of them , the old fashioned Lisbon , grew to become a magnificent tree , with a perpetual crop . The Eureka lemon and the Meyer lemon were kept cut back , but they fruited well too.

People kept mentioning to me the lemonade tree , a sweet lemon , so it also went in later . The crop from that did indeed make a pleasant and refreshing fruit drink . Two different kinds of oranges were planted , a Valencia for juicing , and a navel orange for ordinary consumption . The last orange planted was a blood orange, but I never got to harvest it much before we left the area. The next kind of citrus was a Marsh grapefruit , and near it I set a Ruby grapefruit variety.

Once , driving up to the block via my parents' place at Tanilba Bay , I dropped into a citrus orchard , and there bought a Chinese Pummelo or Shaddock ( spelt in different ways ) a kind of grapefruit with fruit as big as one's head . At the same place I picked out two kinds of cumquat -- Nagami , the egg shaped ones and Meiwa , the round ones . One Calamondin tree also bought there fruited prolifically , and though I personally used them in marmalade , I hear they pickle well in gin ! The Calamondin is a relative of the mandarin , of which I planted two varieties , one a loose skinned mandarin and one a smaller tighter skinned type . My mother insisted on buying me a Tangelo as a present and I grew to be very fond of them as a fruit . I found that one of the most prolific of my citrus trees was a Tahitian lime.

I made marmalades of various kinds with the combinations of the citrus , and when that got to be a trifle excessive to store , I finally began to bring bottled juices back to Sydney . I once carried down sixty four litres of different juice in one batch .

Citrus took up only part of the orchard , but I will write about the other trees another time.