my 3kg sweet potato find

After an exciting lift to the Fraser Island busstop with the hostel worker Genevieve (she forgot to close the boot and Nik's bagtook a brief flying lesson in the driveway), we caught the bus to Cooroy, to be picked up by our new wwoof hosts, from a permaculture property in KinKin. We spent the five hours between the bus arrival and being picked-up in... guess where! A park!

When our host Zaia arrived, driving a kombi-van complete with scrap-yard salvaged bits inside, and curtains, our first surprise was that she was combining the trip to Cooroy to fetch us with picking up her son. It turned out that she had two kids, aged 10 and 15, which was a surprise and a little disconcerting as we were trying to avoid wwoof hosts with children, for various reasons.

After driving (the style best described as kamikaze... we nearly veered off the road at one point!) the half an hour or so from Cooroy, we arrived at the property located down an unselaed road, just outside the village of Kin Kin, in a secluded and beautiful valley. Our accomodation was a caravan close to the house, containing bed, table, chest of drawers and HUGE hairy tarantula-type spider, described by our host as a 'visitor'. Thankfully Nik encouoraged it out of the door using his uke or I think I'd have attempted to sleepin the kombivan instead!

We met Zaia's partner Tom, a permaculture teacher, when we went into the house for dinner (soup-with-meat-in-it for Nik and the others, and, in a comedy vegetarian-cliche moment, a pile of salad leaves from the garden for me), and found out some more about how wwoofing at the property worked. Due to both the couple's desire to live as self-sufficiently as possible, and for income-reasons, Wwoofers were expected to feed themselves entirely from the garden for their dinner and lunch, as far as was possible, with use of spices, butter etc from the kitchen. This was a) another surprise, as nothing had been mentioned in the wwoof book or our email communications and b) a concern, as neither one of us are great cooks! We ended up eating a lot of root veggies (sweet potato, yakon, taro), chokos and an absolute ton of various 'greens' from the garden. While it was pretty ace to be able to go out to the garden and gather the means to make a meal, food/meals became a bit of an issue, particularly in our first week, as the lack of carbs and iron/protein took their toll slightly.

The garden was great: the word 'abundance' comes up a lot in discussion of permaculture(which is 'permanent agriculture'; everything interlinked and multipurpose - from the chooks scratchign at weeds, providing manure and supplying eggs, to cuttings and weeds being placed round plants as mulch in a method called 'chop and drop' - with nothing wasted or leaving the property. Plants are grown in intermixed beds, with lettuce alongside strawberries alongside herbs. The garden grew everything from lettuces to basil to choko vines, dandelion plants (the leaves of which they ate), medicinal herbs, taro, sweet potatos, strawberries, turnips, radishes, brocolli and mint, with fruit trees interspersed between - mandarines, bananas, mangos, and Tom was trying out new plants all the time. There were three chook pens, with two sets of chooks running free in the paddocks everyday; three goats, two cows (one of their cows would be killed for meat each year) and one market-bought calf (and a 'surprise' calf that was born unexpectedly during our stay), and three dogs. The toilet was an outdoor composting one, situated in a little moveable shed, to be re-located when the pit below it came too full. However we were encouraged to do #1's anywhere in the garden that we felt comfortable! The shower too was outdoors, inside a rather raggedy tent, and solar-heated, with controls that had to be operated by another person outside, as Tom was trying to construct a stone-built bathroom/laundry building but kept being distracted by his seemingly endless amount of tasks and projects. One day they hope to get bees, and to milk their cows and goats to make cheese.

the compost loo!

Our day began at 6.45-7am with a 'Coo-ee' call from the house to breakfast; a cooked meal with eggs and normally some kind of greens or potato-dish. It was pretty hard to stomach such a heavy meal some mornings, but we sort of got used it towards the end of our time there. Then one of us would wash up, and work would begin. In our first week we built a corrugated-tin fence around on of the four chook-pens, whick took a ridiculously long time. As well as this we weeded up many clumps of invasive nut-grass. We also spent a period of time most mornings harvesting from the garden; filling up the salad bowl with the variety of leaves and herbs; collecting strawberries and tomatos, and, in my case, hunting out and digging up red and purple sweet potatoes (including a giant 3kg monster!) which grew voraciously over the swales (water-retaining ditches constructed on contours to collect and distribute rainwater). Then lunch, which we either cooked or helped out with preparing, was at around 1pm, with washing-up afterwards. Work was done and the day was free after lunch.

to be cont'd :-)

written by  LizIsHere on August 28, 2010 from Cooroy, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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It worked pretty well. The setting was beautiful; we would walk along the unsealed road out of the valley, up to KinKin to get our fix of chocolate milkshakes and yoghurt from the tiny general store, and a couple of times we followed sections of the Noosa Trail. On the longest of those walks we spotted a long, fat, red-bellied blacksnake slithering across the path. The forests surrounding us were so like English ones that the sudden sight of a large, poisonous snakes left us pretty unnerved as we walked gingerly along the trail through the long grass!
Nik and I would also go up to the beautiful dam area at the top of the property during some of our afternoons off, where there were mango-trees, birdsong and the forest stretching up to sky. In the paddocks you could also relax with a book in the sunshine, while the cattle and calves dozed on the other side of the fence, chickens clucked and pecked about, and the goats bleeted from where they were tethered.

One day us three WWOOFers went with Tom to an open house-garden organised by a member of the Noosa permaculture group. The man had built his house to be as energy efficient as possible; it was only one-room deep to minimise heat loss, and was angled perfectly to have the sun shine through the windows in winter, when the heat would be needed, and pass over the top in the harsh summer. He also had full solar-power, grey-water recycling, a permaculture garden (naturally), ducks, and goats for milk and making cheese. It seemed a fantastically sustainable way to live - and to us he seemed to be having more fun doing it (it wasn't just the fact that his compost toilet was indoors that swayed us, honest) than our hosts. Then again it helped that he seemed to be fairly well-off, still working as a house-designer and solar-panel sales contractor, and therefore was able to build his dream eco-home and design everything down to his converted-from-a-chestfreezer-fridge (freezers have better insulation). I was really impressed with it all. During our time WWOOFing we've been living and interacting with people to whom solar panels, growing your own food, compost-toilets and 'reduce, reuse, recycle' are a reality - not just concepts or nice slogans, and that man's ingenuity, and enthusiasm, was really inspiring.

written by  LizIsHere on September 5, 2010 from Cooroy, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Our destination, one that couldn't be more different to Kin Kin, was Brisbane, capital of Queensland, for a city fix before we travelled onwards to the area around Byron Bay to WWOOF again.

written by  LizIsHere on September 7, 2010 from Brisbane, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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We didn't do anything too crazy in Brisbane; plans to go out were slightly stumped by Nik not having any 'proper' shoes (they're big on 'proper' shoes here), and it being mid-week. Still it was good to be back in a city for a while, in the buzz and the noise and with so many options of things to do. Our few days there went past very fast, and then we found ourselves back on the greyhound on our way to the hippie-mecca of Byron Bay.

written by  LizIsHere on September 10, 2010 from Brisbane, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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internet ran out... to be cont'd, as always...

written by  LizIsHere on September 12, 2010 from Byron Bay, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Jude was friendly, and although a little 'airy-fairy' about some stuff, was very straightforward about telling us about what she wanted us to do, when she wanted to be left alone, and how we should make ourselves at home because she already had one child (almost 3-year-old Sam), and didn't need two more! The result of this was that we became pretty comfortable in her large, old Queenslander home (moved from Lismore on the back of truck... they do that in this country! Like the house but no the location? Solution: move the house); sorting ourselves cups of tea etc. whenever we felt like it.
Our own residence was in a comfy caravan across the grass clearing from the main house; under cover, with it's own covered decking area, it was perfect for sitting outisde in the morning or evening, with cups of tea, listening to the birdsong (including the ever-present whip-birds, with their distinctive male-female call and response) and spotting the adorable plump wallabies which grazed near by, and the stalking bushturkeys with their bright yellow-and-red ruffs. The windows of the caravan were surrounded by trees, so we woke up faced with greenery and green-tinged light every morning.
Jude shared her piece of land with Russel, who live in a studio across the clearing, and Steve and Petra, who live in an old bus in a clearing reached through the trees. She also had chooks, who peck about free-range during the day, and two horses who belonged to her neighbours grazing in the paddock next to her house. Across the large clearing from the house was a fire-area, where we sat a few times to eat dinner or drink chai in the evenings. When the sky was clear you could see thousand of stars scattered across the segment of sky trapped between the walls of the valley; it was really a beautiful and peaceful place.

Our work, howver, was not quite so peaceful! Since Jude and her husband both worked part-time as a counsellor and a pyschologist, respectively, one of her main aims when getting WWOOOFers and helpxchange-rs was to have help looking after Sam (not that we were told this on application, which grated a little bit to start off with!). So we took alternate days, one of us looking after Sam, playing with and entertaining him, and the other doing whatever chores or work Jude had lined up for us. We started late, which was nice, around 9am at the earliest, but it was a full-on day after that, particularly for whoever was looking after Sam, who was fairly 'easy' to look after but, like an 2 year old, noisy and full of energy. The key seemed to be to get a firm grasp of all the Cars movie characters, Thomas the Tank Engine trains, and Dora the Explorer Songs (not hard once we'd watched the same show segment about twnety times... we're still singing them now!). Neither of us are exactly used to children, but we did ok, I think - the fact that Sam would latch onto us (Nik more than me!), eager to play, the minute we came in for breakfast was some indication!
Our work was mostly house-related chores - cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, clearing cobwebs, putting cardboard on the veggie garden, helping Jude sort out her bedroom for when her friend came to stay, clearing out under the house. Though it was a bit stressful at times, mainly because of the normal chaos of the house and the energy required to look after Sam, it was fun, and Jude was so nice and happy to have us there that it was a good experience overall. One night she and her husband even went out for a meal at a restaurant five minutes away, leaving us to mind Sam for an hour. We were pretty terrified, but the level of trust they demonstrated in us was amazing. (though Jude left the phone number of her neighbour in case we couldn't deal with nappy-changing... luckily it didn't come up).

We went off to Byron for a few days holiday early on in our WWOOFing with Jude, but when we came back it was full-on again. Towards the end of our week her friend came to stay - brining with her not one, but two children - a 3 yeard old and an 8 year old. Needless to say, the house didn't get any calmer or less chaotic - the sound of two children crying in tandem while the older one tried to tell us endless stories over the din was quite something. At that point we were very happy to be leaving in just two days!

written by  LizIsHere on September 14, 2010 from Mullumbimby, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Satya’s house, built 36years ago by her and her ex-husband with little or no building knowledge, and no way of transporting materials up the slopes and through the vegetation except by foot - is on three levels of separate small buildings. The main and most-recently built one was reached by going past the stand-alone purple-painted compost toilet and up a wooden staircase to the verandah, looking out over the opposite thickly-forested slop. This housed the large kitchen-cum-dining room-cum-office. Through the back door of this building and up a little rocky slope was our cave room - her son’s old room - a small, dark little room, with most of one wall incorporating part of a gigantic boulder which also formed part of it’s support on the hillside. Hard to describe, but I have a picture somewhere! Anyway, it was perfect to sleep in due to lack of sunlight, and the view through the window was simply trees. The final building, the oldest one, was reached up a steep wooden staircase, now Satya’s bedroom but once the tiny house where she, her husband and daughter once lived before the other buildings where constructed.

the blue-cave-room

It was an amazing house - the verandah being the best part. The view was all trees and sky, the only noises birdsong, the rustle of bush turkeys and the hums of bees and flies; at night its crickets, the unbelievably loud and continuous croak of frogs and the odd owl. In the morning’s a local kookaburra, trained by Satya’s son, would often come and perch on the edge of the verandah to be fed tidbits of cheese. A basically harmless snake was residing on the roof while we there, while others of perhaps more or less venom darted away in front of us as we walked about the gardens. Pademelons (wallaby-type creatures, who were so numerous that I was quite disappointed the one day that I didn‘t see at least one) hop and bush turkeys strut through the extensive, rambling gardens, including a veggie garden reach by passing through a gap in a towering clump of bamboo. The solar-heated shower and bath was situated through here too, in another 36-year-old hand-constructed building - while it was slightly like showering in a garden shed, the views through the windows were unbeatable. The intimacy with nature was incredible, the silence, which wasn’t silence at all, but a more soothing noise than the city hubbub, the utter peace of being able to sit on the verandah and stare across in greenery, was fantastic. We could see why Satya was such a peaceful, low-key person (we had been worried, because of the Nimbin thing and our experience in Kin Kin that she’d be a little too wacky for us) - she was by far the least intense host we’ve had; silences didn’t feel awkward, and we felt very free and unrushed. To be honest we didn’t seem to get round to much work, either!

tamed kookaburra

Our first night Satya was going to an art opening for the Spring Exhibition at the hall back in Nimbin where a few of her daughter’s pieces were being exhibited, and we were invited along. One thing I didn’t expect to be doing - in Nimbin of all places - was to be wandering around a small art exhibition with everything from screenprints and etchings to carving and weaving, clutching a glass of wine on a Friday night.

Then again I didn’t expect to spent my Saturday first at a country show and then at a weaving festival! Satya again seemed less-than-concerned about our WWOOFing hours, and instead too us back to Nimbin in the faithful van - me in the back this time - to the Nimbin Show, a quaintly small country show with a frankly unsettling folk group, best cake/scone/jam and largest/most obscenely shaped vegetable competitions, dressage events, an exhibition of alpacas and - of course - a dog and duck show. It diverted our attention for about an hour, but after that we explored the erm, one main street of Nimbin a little more, stepping into the eccentric Nimbin Museum (where a kombivan still resides where it crashed - in the front wall), with random history tidbits and lots of pro-marijuana literature. Then we went along to school grounds to meet Satya at the miniscule - three tipis, one chai tent, about twenty women and their assorted barefoot children - Weave’n’Mend festival. It was slightly surreal, but also very cool - it was a tiny little festival, a glorified weaving circle, offering workshops for $5, but it definitely counts as Festival Number 1 of 2010 for me. We didn’t venture to weave anything, but sitting in the cushions in the chai tent watching the women work was interesting enough. This is Nimbin, the cool, independent, alternative side, rather than the ratty dealers on the mainstreet and the backpackers who flock to the area to get high in relative legal safety. And there’s no way we’d ever have seen it if we hadn’t been Woofing (or, more precisely, if we hadn’t been WWOOFing with Satya).
Sunday was a designated day off for WWOOFers, according to Satya, but since we weren’t exactly overworked we helped unload some building supplies from her friend’s van - supplies to repalce the room on her bedroom, the main project for which we there, but which wouldn’t end up getting underway until Wednesday. Then we went on an exploratory walk (where we ran into several stocky black lizards known as ‘land mullets‘, which had just come out of hibernation), checking out the Tuntable hub and reading notices on the communal board which revealed some of the problems and debates happening in the community, one being that residents don’t own their own homes, only the materials they’re made of. Residents pay rates, which they can halve by foing work in the community, from sorting mail to train clearing; only ratepayers in the black can vote, at the monthly ‘tribal meetings’, and there is a voluntary board each year which holds it’s own meetings and oversees the running of the place, approve new residents etc. There are no political or religious requirements for being a member of Tuntable, but an alternative/greenie bent definitely helps.

Our first real work came four days after we arrived, with the painting of the concrete roofing sheets for Satya’s new roof. This took us the best part of a day and a half, with 5 sheets all needing two coats on both sides. Paint Paint Paint. Then the rain started - a downpour with clouds and thunder rolling into the valley and lighting flashing intermittently. Not great for roof-replacing and sure enough the builder cancelled, but the next day we still managed the not exactly easy task of wrestling the concrete sheets and roof struts up the steep, slippery slope from the shed to Satya’s bedroom. Then as a reward we all packed up a picnic and went down to the creek to sit on the rocks in the sunshine with out feet in the water. This is the life!

The day of the roof replacement was a long, hectic one, but we were hardly complaining since we'd barely worked the rest of the week! The builder came and we were at his disposal, dragging the concrete sheets about, passing them up to him (a tricky job) on the roof, banging in nails, and carrying/dragging wooden struts up the slippery slope. Nik and Satya both got up on the roof to help bang in sheets, but to be honest it looked kind of crowded and... well, I think it's obvious that I would have somehow managed to fall off, isn't it? It was all finished in one day, impressively - just in time for the rain to recommence with a vengeance the following day.

During our time with Satya we also hiked up into the forest on the slopes of Tuntable valley to the annual forest camp, where volunteers from the community help clear trails etc., in return for the rates-work levy. There were a few people actually camped up there, and after a leechy walk (for nik anyway, who collected one of the way up and a grand total of 3 on the way down!), we arrived in their camp to sit under their tarp-sheltered cooking area, drink tea, and check out the mobile sawmill and millers at work down one of the tracks. We had expected to help in some way, either by wielding machetes or helping drag logs about, but for some reason we didn't, and no one seemed to care too much! Satya also took us to the Murwillumbah Unity Festival, a more modern, music-orientated event than Nimbin's, but still small with only one outdoor stage and a makeshift dance tent inside a cattle shelter! It rained (as it should, at festivals, as every Brit knows) most of the day, but this didn't stop a lot of barefoot dancing in the mud (not us, I'm afraid, we left that to the ageing and not-so ageing hippier types) and wandering from chai tent to foodstall. It was unexpectedly fun - and we also got to experience the long-tressed western-tribal songstress Deya Dova in full performance mode. She headlined, and drew a mixed crowd of teeange guys (for obvious reasons), ageing hippies, and the unlabelled - all equally enthralled by her. It wasn't really my cup of tea, but an experience none the less!

the forestry camp

We left Satya's after ten days, dropping in on the Community Tribal Meeting she was attending on our way into Nimbin. That too was an experience - we could see how things could get done pretty slowly on the community! Then a quick cup of chai with Satya at the Nimbin Cafe, and we were back on the bus heading to Byron and beyond...

Nimbin. Tut

the fairweather farm crew

Definitely. I bet she never saw herself living in a wood cabin with her future husband on his 450hectare property when she left home with her backpack a few years back! Fairweather Farm (not so fair-weather, judging by the near-constant rain we had during our ten-day visit!) was a pretty amazing place to visit, let alone live. Mostly forested, with creeks and wild bush, kangaroos and numerous birdlife, snakes (I know for a rather-to-close-for-comfort fact that there were snakes, read on...), and many oddly shaped and hued mushrooms, the farm's business, run almost single-handedly by Hayden and Eleanor, is growing veggies and herbs for sale to restaurants, box schemes, pubs etc. Bought by Hayden - previously a town-boy - about 7 years ago, he transformed the large paddock (very large!) where the three dams, large vege/herb gardens, bunkhouse, 'main cabin' and our private eco-cabin are now situated from nothing, and built up his business by simply learning by doing and probably learning from making mistakes, too. It was all wonderfully laid-back (apart from pickin' and packin' days before a big order had to be delivered, normally a Tuesday), none of the hard-nosed commercial drive I'd expected from a commercial property. Plus, the area was beautiful, and remote.

Fairweather is reached from the mainroad outside Nymboida via 7km of bumpy logging tracks through the state forest - four-wheel driving conditions handled admirably by Eleanor in her decidely 2WD car. It's a long way from, well, anywhere. You have to really, really want that bar of chocolate to simply 'nip to shops' when you live there.

our cabin

There were 2 other WWOOFers there when we arrived, Austrians Patrick and Max, who were staying in the bunkhouse. The property also had 6 fairly new young pigs, some goats who kept themsleves to themselves, the dogs, and the odd couple - the goose and the Muscovy duck, Daphne, who had a wonky leg from being attacked by a goanna.

the beloved muscovy, daff

In addition to poo missions and planting, there were also SNAKES. Many of them. Our first day of work was pretty hot and sunny, and Hayden discovered two giant red-bellied black snakes under a pile of tin at the end of one of the gardens. These he, erm, encouraged away, with the help of the whippersnipper... they writhed off across the grass, towards the dam wall we had to cross every day to our cabin! I ventured to ask whether snakes were active at night, but luckily got an answer in the negative. Hayden also had to kill a snake which wouldn't leave the garden, because it would pose too much of a risk to everyone working in there.
But our best/most exciting/terrifying (take your pick) snake encounter happened after work. Nik and I had just taken our generator-powered showers at the bunkhouse, and he'd left before me to head back to cabin. As I came down the slope towards the dam he was standing there on the dam wall, waving slightly at me. Not understanding I approached close, only to spot what he was transfixed by - two blacksnakes (the ones from earlier) coiled round each other in a hynoptic mating dance (we only found this out later after descrbing it to Hayden - we half-thought they were fighting). It was amazing but creepy... and I crept around them, giving them a very wide berth, to join Nik at a safe distance on the dam wall. We watched them for a while - then suddenly they uncoiled and shot with that surprising speed snakes have in a direction that looked worryingly like 'towards us'. I, being the level-headed and calm person that I am, promptly broke away to run across the dam wall to our cabin - only to be pulled up short by the sight of ANOTHER blacksnake, right in front of me - less than a metre away! Luckily for me it jerked in fear as I pulled up in horror, and shot off away from me, into the dam. I'd nearly stepped on a red-bellied blacksnake, and the other snakes hadn't even come towards us in the end! ...The adrenaline kept pumping for a while after that, I'll say.

And then Hayden, after being told excitedly by us that at least two of the snakes had gone for a swim (yes, they swim) in the dam, promptly stripped to his swimmers and dived in for his planned afternoon swim. "The ripples I cause'll scare them off" ... Aussies.

written by  LizIsHere on October 10, 2010 from Grafton, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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There was also a lot of land to explore - 450 ha of it - though we only saw a teeny fraction of it. One day after work, with the sun finally peeking through the clouds, Nik and I took the took the dogs on a creek safari - less of walk, more of a clamber, crawl, bash and climb through, round, and over bushes, trees, and rocks alongside the creek in the forest below the main cabin. We also went on a more organised bush-bashing expedition to clear a walking track along the main, wider creek, armed with secatuers, small axes, and a tempermental chainsaw. The day was warm, the creek was full (and COLD when I scrambled across it from rock-to-rock - the only casualty to the crossing was my absolute backpackers waterbottle which I'd had since mission beach, carried away by the creek), the scenery was pretty, and we also got a chance to hack at any undergrowth blocking the path, which mostly followed cattle trails. We were even lucky enough to find a carpet python, curled up circularly in rest on a sunny, grassy patch beside the water. As our last piece of official WWOOF 'work' at Fairweather, it was pretty hard to beat!

Dingo puppy with farm dog, Brandy

But one of the best and most unexpected happenings at the farm occurred on our second to last night, when I, walking up to the main cabin in the darkness guided by torchlight, spotted a strange-looking dog playing with Brandy. It turned out to be a dingo puppy! A dingo! The same animal that they wouldn't even let us get out of the tourbus near on Fraser Island! One of Hayden's friends had rescued two of them from a hollow log when he and his kids had found their mum dead on a bushwalk, they'd been raised domesticated; though they retained all the dingo mannerisms (including no bark - the muscovy duck of the dog world!), they were as happy curled up on John's lap as out hunting bandicoots in the forest. It was amazing to see - particularly to watch Brandy play with the two puppies, while Jasper stood by, eyeing them suspiciously. These are the kind of things we'd never have got to see without going WWOOFing.

written by  LizIsHere on October 14, 2010 from Grafton, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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