The Coolah Creek Newsletter: August 2024
These chilly winter months offer us space to reflect and reassess, so before we get into what we’ve been cooking up by the warmth of the Aga in the Coolah Creek kitchen, lets reflect on the wonderful start to the year we’ve had.
We are so grateful to Barbara Sweeney for bringing her Food Memoir Writing Workshop to Coolah Creek. The two-day workshop was packed with productivity, witnessing the passionate group of women full of encouragement for each other and now all firm friends supporting each other in their writing journey. We can’t wait to have you all back and welcome all new budding writers.
Participants of the Moore Nourishing Life Wellness Weekend gathered for a mindful
reset and left feeling re-energised thanks to our guru Monica Moore. We love
having Monica at Coolah Creek, she is always so calming and the energy is amazing. If
you haven’t been a part of one of these retreats I highly recommend you put it on
your to do list.
We then wound up our May Workshops with the beautiful, talented Gillian Hook, returning to Coolah Creek for her annual Watercolour Workshop. We saw the group of 15 students build on their skill and passion, all made joyful by Gillian’s gentle, calm and encouraging teaching style.
I’m sure I am not alone in finding it hard to believe we are in August. Those winter months I talked about in my previous newsletter are now two thirds gone (eeek), and there are still plenty of jobs on the winter ‘to do’ list - so best get my head down and get into it.
For those of you who follow Coolah Creek on socials you may have noticed that I jumped on a flight to the US in June. It was an opportunity that far surpassed my long-held dreams of ranching in the US and I feel so incredibly lucky to have experienced this very special three weeks with my girls and the Ranchlands crew in Colorado and Wyoming. I am hoping to take a group back with me to explore the magnificent Big Horn mountains in Wyoming at the Ranchlands Paintrock Ranch in the near future, so if you’re up for some breath-taking trail riding and walking or experiencing ranching at its best, please reach out and I will add you to the growing ‘interested list’.
I’ve included a visual feast from our camera roll below to spark inspiration!
So now back to our world here at ‘Coolah Creek’.
As I sit here and look out the window, we have the most enormous frost on the ground. We have frozen troughs, puddles and there is a blanket of white ice everywhere. Big frosts are most often followed by stunning clear days, so that means gloves on and out we go. Weeding will be on the agenda, then replanting the gaps in the garden beds and lightly mulching ready for the spring. As we work our way around the garden beds there is always a dilemma about mulching. There are many seeds from long planted Forget Me Nots and other annuals that self-seed and they will not be able to germinate if the mulch is too thick, but we will have many weeds if it’s too light - hopefully we can get it right, but it might require a bit of patch work.
We have been blessed with some wonderful rain in the last few weeks which will only make our Spring workshop all the more magical.
We hope you can find something that tickles your fancy!
Julianne Ross Allcorn’s Watercolour Workshop
Friday 18th to Sunday 20th October
Julianne has an incredible way of teaching, always sharing her knowledge and tricks of the trade generously. If you have always wanted to draw, sketch, journal or paint, this workshop with Julianne is a brilliant starting point, or a development tool for those more experienced artists. Take a look at Julianne’s beautiful sketches and journals recorded on her social media for a stroke of inspiration, portraying her current journey through central Australia.
Make it a staycation? Sculptures in the Garden at Rosby Gallery (Mudgee) will be on at this time, so if you are travelling make sure you make time to explore some of what Mudgee has to offer.
Blue Sky Cheese Making with Debbie Kiem
Friday 25th October
With the option for an additional workshop date
Our inaugural cheese making workshop will be a fun day learning to make your own cheeses. Although our October event is fully booked, if this this is something you would like to try, please let me now so I can work with the marvellous Debbie Kiem from Blue Sky Cheese to offer another date this year.
We’re just crackers about cheese!
The annual Coolah Creek Melbourne Cup Lunch
Tuesday 5th November
With the launch of this inaugural event last year, we are very excited to frock up again in 2024 and raise some money for our annual charity of choice. Start gathering your friends and get a group together, book a table and let’s take this opportunity to dress up and have a girl’s day out for a great cause. This year the fabulous Angela Palermo will be coming to help me in the kitchen. Her Italian style of cooking promises to be absolutely delicious, and I am very excited to have her here at ‘Coolah Creek’ again.
Please keep in mind, tickets will be limited.
Charity to be confirmed.
There are many more ideas in the pipeline, but some of these will have to wait untill 2025. I am so incredibly fortunate to have some wonderfully talented friends (many of you reading this right now) and I am always looking for more wonderful ways to create space to share our knowledge with each other, so please if you have any suggestions feel free to get in touch and we will try and make it happen.
In the meantime, I hope this has given you a little bit of insight into our world here at Coolah Creek and we look forward to welcoming you sometime soon.