Last Day Down Under

So I’ve finally caught up to the present day with my blog, but it’s on my last day in Australia.  Last night I took the overnight train from Byron Bay all the way down to Sydney.  Left at 5:17 PM and arrived bright and early at 6:52 AM.  It was nice to walk around the city so early in the day, when everyone was sleeping in on Sunday morning.  After checking into a hostel I headed over to the National Maritime Museum and found some interesting exhibits.

Now that's my kind of boat.

Entry to the museum was free but there was an extra charge to board the floating exhibits.  I couldn’t resist the urge to set foot on the newly built replica of Captain Cook’s vessel the HMS Endeavour so I ponied up the $9 and stepped on board.  It was worth it.

I learned some interesting tidbits of information.  The Endeavour is a pretty small ship—it takes less than 20 men to sail it—but Cook had a crew of over 90 on his first voyage to Australia.  They had to add in an extra deck to house the extra passengers, so the boat was fit more for hobbits than men.  Captain Cook was also one of the first to prevent scurvy on a long ocean voyage by having everyone eat sauerkraut.  He got his crew to eat it by having all the officers get the sole “privilege” at first.  When the crew demanded to be fed sauerkraut too he was more than happy to oblige.

Avast me hearties! It's the bilge-master!

After leaving the museum I walked through downtown Sydney towards Hyde Park.  It’s an impressive park with massive trees throughout.  At the other end I came upon a massive stone building and one of its huge wooden doors was ajar so I decided to check it out.  The building turned out to be St. Mary’s Cathedral.  Had I known I was stumbling into a Cathedral I probably wouldn’t have been impressed, but because it was not what I was expecting (I was looking for the state library) it was a pretty awe-inspiring.  Photography was not allowed so I drew a quick sketch instead.

A little messy, but you get the idea.

I eventually made it to the State Library of New South Wales, where I sit now.  Might stay here for some time; public wireless and air conditioning is a great combination.  Tomorrow around noon I bid farewell to Australia and fly out of Sydney International Airport, just about six months from my arrival.  It’s been a while and I am certainly ready to get back to the States.

More Tales of Wwoofing

My three weeks as a wwoofer have been very eventful.  For one there were the holidays in the middle, which were pretty strange for me.  I am used to a white Christmas in cold New England, and a traditional Polish Wigilia Christmas Eve dinner with my family.  We start after the first star comes out, put hay under the tablecloth, break off pieces of the Christmas wafer and wish each other good fortune, and pass around the traditional herring dish that only mom eats.

This year the French guys and I grilled up some juicy steaks.  With shorts on no less, because it was warm (probably high 70s) and raining outside.  The steaks came out real well, though, after Julien and I whipped up a quick marinade with what we could find in the cupboard (soy sauce, olive oil, lots of chopped garlic, salt and pepper, dried basil, lemon juice, and Dijon mustard).  And earlier in the evening Pierre and I rolled up a ton of sushi for our Christmas dinner, after a quick lesson from Catherine (she went to her brother’s for dinner).

Our Christmas feast of... Sushi!

Christmas morning we spent with the neighbors and had a little Secret Santa gift exchange.  That was nice, but it still felt weird to spend Christmas a world away from my home.  In the evening the French guys and I drove their van to a little party at the coastal house of one of Catherine’s mates.  It had rained all day so on the way back we encountered some water over the road.  We strayed a little too close to the edge of the road and in the deeper water the van stalled out.  Pierre and I jumped out and had to push the van out the rest of the way out of the water.  Then we waited 15 minutes before “Herbie” would start again.  A strange end to Christmas day.

New Years Eve was no different.  I spent the night on the veranda of a neighbor and some of their friends.  I was the only one under 50.  The next day they asked me if I had fun, and I answered, “Yeah, for sure.  I got a different perspective.”  Which was true.  And not just because of the age gap.  I was so used to watching the Times Square ball drop on TV to usher in the New Year, but we were 14 hours ahead of New York, so we only had the clock to go by and once it struck midnight we celebrated with a toast of sambuca (all the champagne was gone by then).

Since it’s been the holidays Catherine has had a lot of time off to show me around the area.  One day she took me to Minyon Falls in one of the nearby National Parks.  The falls were absolutely gushing because we had just had six straight days of rain.  It was an impressive sight.  We were on a viewing platform on the edge of the cliff, 100 meters up from the forest floor.  I know that because there was a sign that said, “Danger: 100 Metre Fall over cliff.” 

At one point we shared the platform with a modern-day Kokopelli, who chose to sit up on the railing at the very edge.  Keep in mind that 100 meter fall over the cliff.  It was a very gusty day too, so I applaud the man’s courage.  If he was a man…

The spirit-figure's reincarnation.

A few days later we took advantage of a perfect beach day.  With a few of her mates (and their kids), Catherine took me to Whites beach, a hidden gem along the now-touristy coast around Byron Bay.  There was a steep path no longer than a kilometer down to the beach.  Coming up from the sand were rock formations that Catherine referred to as “pirate caves.”  I am more than happy to believe that tale.

Where's the buried treasure???

There were also plenty of palm/mangrove trees on a beach around the rock outcropping.  They were great to climb up and sit in, and close enough together that I could swing from one to the next.  There was hardly anyone else on the beach either and we had a nice picnic to finish the day off.

On Cudgerie Hill

After three more nights of hostel living in the beach town of Byron Bay, I moved 30 minutes inland to the tiny village of Clunes, where I have been wwoofing since December 19^th.  WWOOF stands for “willing workers on organic farms” and the deal is I work four hours a day (with one rest day) for food and a place to stay.  This is my first time wwoofing, but I think I have a pretty good situation.  It’s not exactly working on a farm, but I fill the role of resident gardener/help around the house.

I have a great bedroom to myself in my host’s mud brick home and three nutritious meals a day.  My host (Catherine) has spent most of her working life as a documentary filmmaker and she lives in a small community (four houses) of other artists, including another filmmaker, a composer, and a graphic designer.  They call this place “Cudgerie Hill.”  I haven’t asked why.  I dig the neighborly feel that exists here, though; they share tools and supplies and often have dinners together.

Complete with sweet as mosquito net.

That being said, this place would be a great setting for a murder mystery novel.  A small, remote, rural community with international wwoofers coming in and out—when I arrived there were two French guys also staying—where tensions could easily flare.  They don’t lock doors either (if they even have the keys).  And if the floodwaters rise then the area can quickly become isolated: water can cover all the main roads when they dip down into the surrounding valleys.  Everyone would be stuck here for a few days, plenty of time to solve a mystery.  I’ll have to give it some thought.

The view a hundred meters down the road.

Anyway, I’ve really enjoyed living and working here in the subtropical rainforest.  The French guys—Julien and Pierre—and I overlapped for a week and it was fun having other wwoofers here.  It certainly made the work easier, especially when we had to do forest weeding, which is real soulless work.  A lot of invasive species have flourished in this area, so to re-establish the rainforest we have to rip out all the forest undergrowth and then plant indigenous trees.  It’s especially hard to motivate yourself when the forest extends as far as you can see down the hill.

Forest weeding's a bitch.

Pierre and Julien with their freshly painted van, Herbie.

This post is starting to get long so I’ll have to continue in the next one with all the activities I’ve been doing and perhaps my daily schedule.  For now I’ll list some of the tasks I’ve done:

• weeding
• planting hydrangeas
• pruning guava trees
• more weeding
• picking and pruning lemon trees
• banana bagging
• painting outside, staining inside
• a little more weeding
• leaf blowing

A Week on the Road

I had the desire to go on a road trip for some time—ever since I read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road a couple summers ago—and I got the chance at the beginning of December.  For a little over week Tommy, Tina, Richie, and I made our way up the coast from Sydney to Brisbane, in style.  We rented a campervan to make the trip and stayed in caravan parks at night.  We spent nights at Port Macquarie, Byron Bay, and Coolangatta on the Gold Coast.

Our house on wheels, taken by Tommy.

The road trip was a good first attempt.  There are some things I will do differently the next time, like for one not spend so much money.  On top of the campervan rental we had to buy a lot of gas, pay for the surprising expensive nights in the caravan parks, buy food and groceries (a necessity I guess), and pony up for attractions along the way.  It was also difficult because everyone on the trip was working from a different budget.  I ended up spending way more than I intended, but I had a great time so I can’t really complain.

During the day we spent a lot of our time at gorgeous beaches.  We also went to two World Heritage-listed rain forests.  I think they were both Gondwanan so the vegetation was the same as it was hundreds of millions of years ago.  I’ll get photos from one of my friends soon.  At the second one, Mt. Cougal National Park, there was a rain forest stream that we drank from and as we were standing in the water Tina noticed a large object moving around next to us.  It was dark red and about a meter long with arms and legs, so I think it was a huge salamander or something of the kind.  Definitely up there for coolest animal I’ve seen in the wild.  It didn’t stick around long though, and just after we caught a glimpse it quickly swam away.

The nights in Byron Bay were fun.  We saw a lot of live music both in bars and on the street corners.  But the first caravan park we stayed at there—Tourist Village—was awful.  To me it seemed like a maximum-security prison: barbed wire fences around the perimeter and you had to enter a code to just walk out of the park.  We moved to a better spot (First Sun Caravan Park) the next night and didn’t look back.

The last day we were on the Gold Coast, which is renowned for its theme parks so we spent the afternoon at Wet ‘N’ Wild water park.  It was worth it.  The day was cloudy and a little drizzly so #1 I didn’t get sunburnt and #2 the crowds really thinned out towards the end of the day.  We went on the best ride three times in a row.  Overall, for the first attempt at a road trip it was successful.  Next time, though, I'll try to channel more of the frugality and spontaneity of Kerouac and Cassady.