In less than three weeks my faithful travel compadre and I will be stepping foot back on US soil. I want to try and reserve any judgments regarding how I’ll be feeling when this monumental day comes, but, that’s hard to do; most likely it’ll be a mixed bag of happy/sad/bitter/excitement/merriment/sorrow and heaps of contemplation, kind of how I’ve already been feeling at this stage, as the days tick off, one by one…..
I’m currently writing this from our new WWOOF host’s home outside of a very small town called Bellingen, only a few hours north of Sydney, our final destination in this sunburned country. The bus dropped us off at the info center, just outside the village, where our super cool host, Louise Cranny, picked us up in her truck. She had to grab a few groceries in order to feed us for the week, so we stopped in the town center and Dave and I wandered a bit while Louise shopped.
We’d heard that Bellingen was a cute, little hippie joint full of culture, cafes and second hand stores, which is right up our alley. The majority of the east coast is overflowing with Subway, tourists, and 20 year old backpackers that aren’t like our pals Dan and Alicia (HI KIDS!) but more like Snookie and every drunken frat boy you’ve ever been slobbered on by. We only had about a half an hour before we had to be back on the road to Louise’s, but we wandered enough to discover that Bellingen indeed lives up to its cool, laid back reputation, thankfully.
18K’s and one long and winding, semi-dirt road later (trips to town only happen once or twice a week, as we are in the middle of nowhere again; hooray!) we arrive in a stunningly beautiful valley, where chateau de Cranny stands (a cozy, 4 ½ room home), where a river meets a stream which runs alongside the house, and where we are surrounded by hundreds of acres of temperate rainforest! The neighbors in the valley, mostly garlic farmers and donkey farms, are a tight knit group, so it’s somewhat reminiscent of Golden Bay in New Zealand; this makes me happy, and even more so when I see the bungalow Dave and I will call home for the next five days.
Since we left Magnetic Island, where we snorkeled the GBR (which was spectacular!) Australia hasn’t felt very, well, Australian; for me anyway. That is, until now. Personally, when I travel, I don’t want to feel like I am anywhere close to home, or that my environment is too familiar for that matter. What I mean is this; traveling, for me, is about re-learning how to see, speak, taste, touch and smell; I want to leap out of my comfort zone and into a whole new way of experiencing the five senses. This is probably why I loved China as much as I did when I visited my Uncle Tom on business in Shanghai; I felt that the only thing I had in common with the Chinese was that I was a human and so were they. I really appreciate the exotic factor when I travel, and love learning about how and what the rest of the world eats, breathes, thinks, hangs on their walls, and whether they have indoor plumbing or not (here=no.)
So, when I’m living 18k from the nearest traffic light, in a temperate rainforest, surrounded by garlic and donkey farms, living in a one room cabin on a hill that has 2 beds, a fireplace, a Huntsman in the cupboard, a banana tree outside the door, and smells musty like a cabin should, and a 3 meter carpet snake (a type of python) lives under the front step of the house (which we have seen and pet), and I’ve already been used as a juice box by three leeches, and a glance out the kitchen window leads to seeing a wallaby hopping by, and we can step outside on the patio to a lovely pink and orange sunset laced with fog rising over the rainforest valley, complete with kookaburras laughing in the distance and exotic, unidentifiable birds soaring over the treetops during the sunset, and our toilet is either the longdrop (outhouse) or the lawn (and if you’re going to use the lawn, then watch out for the leeches) and there is only dial up that doesn’t always connect, and Vegemite is ever present at the breakfast table, and we stop for tea and biscuits midday; it is then, that I am in my travel bliss.
Now don’t get me wrong; living on the vineyard for ten days with two of the sweetest people in the world who treated us like their children was heavenly. I got to mow an entire vineyard for hours on end (mowing is my zen), and we were incredibly fortunate to have an Aussie bush guide take us hiking up two mountains, connected by a saddleback, on a perfect, sunny, fall day. We pruned, planted and fertilized beautiful gardens in gorgeous weather with cappuccino breaks that were accompanied by scones and fresh cream and jams, we drank homemade lemonade with freshly picked lemons and mint, ate incredible meals and desserts every day and night, attended the county fair and ate cotton candy, watched fireworks, and gawked at locals, we poured wine at a catered event where we listened to live music, looked at art, and ate cheeses and olives and spreads and breads, went kangaroo spotting and saw roos-a-plenty, we ate fish and chips and drank wine by the sea, and at the end of each relaxing day filled with sunshiney breezes and great conversation and laughter with both our hosts and the Canadian wwoofers they took in (that would be the “kids” I referenced earlier, Dan and Alicia) we would lay our full bellies and happy hearts on our cozy beds at night, and sleep heavily and fitfully, only to awaken to yet another day of living in paradise.
Sure, we had toilets that flushed, didn’t see marsupial mice darting in and out of corners like we do here, and never thought twice about deadly snakes and spiders, and the same went for where we just left, Byron Bay, a surf town we spent the last week in, living with a very sweet family with righteous teens (I’m old), in a rather beautiful and architecturally eclectic home designed and built by the owners, where at the end of each day we’d either take a hike on a trail through the woods, along the ocean, to a lighthouse, and out along a rocky outcropping where we would watch the sun turn the sky and the clouds into a Monet painting, hear the power of the ocean smash into the rocks below, and see dolphins swimming in the distance, or, ride the family bikes for a 20 minute pedal into town and end up lying on the beach ogling surfers, and digging our toes into the squeaky, soft, warm, white sand. Not too shabby….where was I going with all of this?? Oh, right; it’s been a good life as of late.
Sidenote: It hasn’t always been dolphins and rainbows; there was that four day stint with “the hoarders” (see Facebook pics for the wretched details.) Yet, I even found my moment of travel zen there as well when I took a long walk with The Hoarder’s two, exceptionally cute dogs, Jack and Lucy, down a dusty, country road lined with sugar cane fields, on a spectacularly warm and sunny day. For two, glorious, serene hours I traipsed along by myself, in what some might call “God’s country,” soaking up the sun and warm breeze, pausing now and again for the dogs to finish their swim in the creek or a run in the sugar cane, and whistling Waltzing Matilda all along the way (and always watching out for deadly snakes.) When I was a kid my mom used to sing that song to me, and throughout my adult life I have sung it to many children I’ve cared for; so when I found myself whistling the “unofficial national anthem of Australia,” a song I’ve been singing all my life, but this time on a country road IN Australia, it sort of resonated with me how cool that actually was.
So anyway, there you have it; we’re still happily adventuring along, anticipating our Upstate NY summer, as today was the first day of winter, which means it’s 70F instead of 90F, which is AOK with me.
Sleep is calling me; nature calls as well; but, I don’t want to squat in the dark for fear of leeches or spiders crawling on my bum. I also want to slip into sweet dreams and pretend I didn’t just hear the squeaks and squeals of what might be a white tailed rat; earlier we recognized a rat trap under the sink, and I definitely flicked some sort of rodent poo off my blankets before I crawled into bed this evening. It’s not that I’m ecstatic about living with vermin or Huntsman, or enjoy picking leeches off of my body; it’s merely the adaptation and adventure of having to do so, and the story that goes along with it.
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