The North Hamlet Garden

Kirra is the joining of two smaller hamlets. The North and the South Hamlets. These are separated with the Civic Centre as the jewel in the crown of the Kirra Community space.

The Kirra hamlets and civic centre create the shape of a boomerang, which is one of the meanings of Kirra to our first nations people. It is this garden that forms the top half of our boomerang.

The North Hamlet Garden is a focus point for the community as it is not only a produce centre, it also has a large pond for water storage (about 90,000 litres), 2 x 22,700 litre water tanks and a 540m2 rain catchment, and the E-NE-N-NW-W solar panel array of some 68 solar panels delivering a maximum of 85kW of energy per day.

The North Hamlet Garden referred to as the NHG also has our first community building, the NHG Amenites Block. A community project that delivers more than a toilet or a bathroom, it delivers a dog/animal wash station on the right hand side, and a veggie wash station on the left hand side. It is made completely out of recycled shipping container pallets, and some other upcycled bits and pieces. The main attraction are the two heavy doors that were lovingly restored by our community friends Mike and Elyse. They are beautiful. Check out the NHG Amenities block.

The NHG Pond

Starting as some rough Austrlian scrub land and thick bush, this space was eventually cleared to reveal a lovely flat area of more than 3000 square metres. With a gentle slope towards the lower south west corner, which is now where the 90,000 litre pond is situated. This pond is the primary water source for the veggie gardens that will find their new home in the NHG.

The catchment for the pond is nearly the entire NHG area. Which is channeled from a shallow excavation on the western side, the low side of the garden, and directly into this pond. The pond filled in one recent rain event, from bone dry brand new to full and ready to give life, all in less than 30 minutes.

The Excavator Forks

With the pond now complete, it was time to start reorganising all the stuff we had stored in the space that was already cleared at the top of the NHG. We'd since cleared the rest of the space, so now it was just a matter of shifting the stuff around. To make this job much easier, I built a set of digger forks, they work well and support any load the digger can lift stretched out, which is about 150 - 200 Kg. These were welded up and fitted in just a couple of mornings. They certainly made the job of moving all this stuff much quicker and easier. A real game changer.

With the area now cleared for the new Rain Water Catchment and the new Solar Panel Array. There is just the matter of creating the flat gentle slopping area for the 540m2 catchment tarp. This is be updated once it is happening.

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