Wet Days and Wwoofer Whinges...But Life is still Wonderful...

It's been such a long time since my last blog ...life has felt rather mundane, didn't know if anyone else would want to know about it…an endless series of wet days with millions of leeches and too many wwoofers has been the most recent saga.

Taking in strangers can be a perilous business at times, it’s easy to feel invaded and abused. I have decided to set a few rules about who I take in as wwoofers, having had some very bad experiences recently with some spoilt brats from America and a trouble-making young woman from England – wwoofers ganging up on me in my own home is the last thing I want or need! They can always leave, I don’t have that option. Now I have finally managed to clean up, get the chewing gum off the sheets and had a bit of space to myself, I realise where I went wrong. I should have realised that a teenage couple was likely to bicker constantly…and help themselves to whatever was in the cupboard …(but how could I know that they’d be too scared to venture off the verandah except to visit my neighbour and I’d have them totally in my space all the time?) So there I was, feeling like I had committed myself to looking after someone else’s kids for a month and trying to get them to work to pay for their bed and board. While they were charming and interesting young people, happy to talk for hours on end, they were not suited to working as wwoofers. Everything had to be done over at least twice, although the boy did try to do good work. They ended up appearing to expect me to follow the example of their family and friends in financing their travels by allowing them to stay for free. Because they hadn’t bothered to confirm their arrival, I’d taken on other woofers …so then I was running around trying to supervise three or four jobs at once – nearly went crackers! Next time I just say NO to anyone under 21, no matter how cute they look - and only allow people to stay for a few days until I know how its likely to work out! It’s just too exhausting – and after all that, they left with no notice, snuck off on a whim when the sun finally came out, leaving a very bad feeling (and a kitchen without a sink – yet another unfinished job …and now the bush turkey is having fun breaking my crockery out there in the bathroom where I have to wash the dishes now.) I have to ask myself how I allowed this to happen …and how to avoid a repetition…

Fortunately not all wwoofers leave me feeling so bad, I have had hundreds over the years and most manage to enjoy their stay in this beautiful valley, and to leave pleasant memories and a few less weeds – some have done some amazing work here. Stevie, who stayed with her daughter Tiff while the young Americans were here, has done the most beautiful tiled wall in the bathroom – it is absolutely delightful and I think of her with gratitude every time I see it. And there are countless other people who have stayed and whose memories warm my heart.

As well as looking after teenage humans I have had a teenage bird to care for – a baby currawong whose nest fell down along with the branch it was on. Having done the Wildlife Rescue course recently means I am now allowed to care for wild critters, although I only want to take on birds, because they at least sleep at night. Hannah had an orphan currawong years ago called Wong. He never flew - his feathers never grew properly because we didn’t know they need extra calcium, so this one is Wing – and s/he can fly! It’s been a learning curve and so far Wing has grown well, which makes me proud. S/he spend daytimes up in the trees now, coming back for feeds and then locked up in the cage overnight to stay warm, dry and out of reach of the carpet snake who lives in the roof. The aviary Margaret and I picked up blew down the hill in the last big storm so now I have to figure out how to get it back in place…it weighs a ton… and Ewen, my neighbour, has been a bit grumpy lately so I don’t know if I should ask for his help…maybe I’ll wait till he comes over with his washing…

Tara had some truly professional pieces in the latest Nimbin Fashion Show – I was so proud and smiling so much that I neglected to press the start button on the video camera – but here’s a photo…She is doing so well in everything these days…

There’s been a few big storms lately, quite exciting to watch - but I am glad that Xav is coming to cut down some trees. There has been another death in the family as Brian, Xav’s dad, passed away last week after a long struggle with cancer. I am glad that I am here for Xav at this time and have decided to stay on next year – this means I can spend more time with Murayah and Aidan who are getting to a good age for me to granny - and they are so lovely. I will also keep fixing this place up and do the Masters of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development by correspondence from ANU – it is probably the only opportunity I will get to do a masters degree and they will give me some credit for the units I have done for the native title stuff I have been studying this year. I hope to be involved in some local native title projects too.

I have decided to resign from the Board, too much petty provincial personality politics, and instead put my energy into organising Bush Dances and café sessions here to bring people together – we had a brilliant café last Friday night after the young woofers left, lots of people turned up, the night was balmy and a small group of musos had a great time playing irish tunes. Stephanie, George, Sophia and Nicolette worked hard cooking and serving and I did a bit of cooking too and the PR – I enjoyed it thoroughly and so did everyone else - it was a great success and we’ll do it again every month.

There was also a huge fundraising gig for Ted Cox, who is about to go off for a bone marrow transplant for leukemia,. At the Hall last weekend hundreds of people raised $14,000 having a lot of fun – an amazing, inspiring effort. Last night was the Nimbin Women's Dinner where I played ukulele and did some incredibly silly things on stage whilst dressed up in dozens of breasts ... but there's no photos yet...it was a lot of fun though...

Our Lisa is now in Tasmania - and we miss her! Still, it's another place to visit when I can afford to ...

Launching into Winter

I went to Sydney for a week, had a great time, saw lots of people and did lots of knitting and reading on the train ...Lenore and I walked round the Glebe foreshore to see Chez Ritz restored to its original glory...when we lived there in 1972 we paid $5 a week for this glorious mansion, without electricity but with wild graffiti and equally wild company. Blackwattle Bay was a great place to live, I learnt to play the flute on the rocks there while the massive old cargo ships glided by...the photo of me at 19 in the previous post was taken in the loungeroom at Chez Ritz - now known as Bellevue. We named it for the home of Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy (thanks to David George, our rr look-alike...)


Lenore's book launch was a massive success, Marie Bashir opened it and it all went off perfectly in the old Mosman methodist church which is now a community centre and gallery. Here are Lenore and her brother Leo with the governor and me and Nor and Angie Michaelis whom I haven't seen for years. We had fun reminiscing about the wacky tricks we used to get up to as 13 year-olds - I almost wanted to squeeze her back into being the funky little kid she once was ...we are all so staid now...




Now I am glad to be back home where the sun does indeed shine brighter and warmer and I have my wonderful gourmet woodstove loaded up with bloodwood to get me throught the chilly times. Sydney people don't seem to understand the need for heating.

My new career as Treasurer of the Co-op has just begun. Not that it is much of a position - last time I had anything to do with the treasury it was a massive job - now I share it with someone else who makes all the payments out and I just have to chase up money owing and bank it when it comes in - AND there's a book-keeper. Piece of cake really. So I will have the time and energy perhaps to get some more exciting projects happening. Tuntable shop has almost faded away which means we have lost our community hub ... However, Tribal Meetings are well-attended and the beautiful school had a fantastic winter solstice event and ritual which was so affirming and heartwarming - it is wonderful to know that the school continues so strong and creative after almost 30 years. Here are the little kids class, Ember on recorder.

...and our gorgeous Tara ...

Harvest Home

It's been a while since I last put up a blog, and I've been feeling stuck and sorry for myself for much of that time. Now my spirits are beginning to rise again and the self-pity is on the wane. As usual, some amazing things have happened ... an old friend and lover from 35 years ago contacted me and that has been quite an email journey backwards and forwards in time reconnecting with our past and present selves... here we are - as we were ...

It is harvest time here, the valley is overflowing with produce - citrus of all kinds, avocadoes, macadamias and pecan nuts, kiwi fruit, bananas - and the vege garden is pumping. It's a job to keep up with it and I have been brewing up chutneys and pickles and marmalades for barter and gifts.

This is Margaret - she is moving into the little house as I write and I am looking forward to her company and energy, she is smart and fun and eccentric enough to enjoy Tuntable (and she is very practical and even has her own brushcutter and ute ...need I say more...)

The winter is finally coming in - weeks of rain seem to have cleared for the moment and the day is crisp and sunny. Here is Melanie, mother of my nieces Nell and Bridie, giving the talk on birdcare at the Wildlife Rescue WIRES course I did last weekend. I look forward to becoming a birdwoman myslef but need to build an aviary first and am working on a chookpen as well.

My knee is a lot better so I can walk when I need to free myself from old ghosts and that is great. Winiata came to stay for a few days and we shared ghost stories and felt much better too! Poverty is forcing me out of the house to do a few massages and that always makes me feel better - and the writing , drawing and ukulele lessons at the comskool every Wednesday have been my spiritual mainstay - I love it. Here is a self-portrait I did last week, I really enjoyed this - it was an illuminating exercise in self-acceptance. It is also a record of my long hair - just had a haircut and now its short, gray and curly. I am off to Sydney this week for Lenore's book launch and given that the governor of NSW Marie Bashir will be there, i thought it time to give the fuzzy-haired old hippie look a miss. Tara says I should wait until it goes white to grow it long again...may not be long.

Our Diana played at the Nimbin pub on Friday night, the beauty of that incredible voice was a bit lost on some of the more inebriated punters (what musicians have to do to make a living, it's bad) but it was great to see her and I even really like some of her new songs!

Next week I will be in Sydney catching up with old friends and attending the book launch. Lenore's grandmother was a poet and this is her autobiography. She was a beautiful soul who lived most of her life flat on her back, having been paralysed by rheumatic fever as a young woman. She wrote under the name of Rickety Kate and was a part of the Sydney literary scene. To us she was Lenore's granny that we used to visit after school, a gentle kind and intelligent woman with the whitest skin I have ever seen. We would play our piano pieces over the phone for her to hear, and pick the mulberries from the huge tree in the backyard that she probably had not seen for many many years. She lived in the one room but her mind travelled far. It's wonderful that Lenore's years of research and hard work are finally bearing fruit and I will be glad to be there.

Some Wonders of my Little World

Please click on the title above and read the story from the Australian - these are people that I know and stayed with - and I tried so hard to get them a phone out there. There is still so much to be done. Lobby Telstra, lobby the govt.

HERE IN PARADISE = THESE ARE THE LATEST PHOTOS OF JESS'S GREAT WORK: THE DANCE STUDIO NOW HAS A ROOF!


AND HERE IS ONE OF THE OTHER GREAT WONDERS OF TUNTABLE - MAX'S CAVE - DUG BY HAND FROM THE RHYOLITE CLIFF TO MAKE A MAGICAL SACRED SPACE...














THIS LITTLE LEAF-TAIL GECKO, ONE OF THE WONDERS OF MY WORLD














THE NIMBIN MARDI GRASS PARADE ... AND THE AQUARIAN ANNIVERSARY - ITS A WONDER, BUT OLD HIPPIES NEVER CHANGE ...








AND MY LITTLE HOUSE ...AND MY BIG KIDS (AND NIECE)!

Travelling at Home ...Can be Dangerous...

I went bushwalking up in the hills behind Mullumbimby last Sunday and happily danced up the creek rocks - until! I put my weight on a log which rolled, and the effort of keeping myself from falling in the crevass below wrenched my knee rather painfully. Not enough to keep me from walking then.... ..it was a great bushwalk - climbing up a rainforest creek bed to the most magical cave by a waterfall - some hippies had been up there looking for crystals in the side creeks down below and they have left these big quartz crystals in all the niches and ledges in the cave - just for an extra bit of magic. The waterfall is quite high, just out in the bush on the other side of the mountains here - there must be many more the same as I remember years ago stumbling across one quite by accident ... Anyway it was a lovely day and my knee coped until we got back to the road when it promptly swelled up and refused to work any more . I drove back to Nimbin in excruciating agony and called Hannah and Tara who were just lovely and took me to the hospital where one of the lovely male nurses gave me some wonderful painkillers and some crutches! Even had visitors - Heidi and Aunty Agnes who is parked there in the old people's wing and not very happy about it. And now I am back home in bed and doing my readings for my course in applied anthropology and native title - it's a great opportunity to begin study again. But it has kept me in the slow lane for a while. Been starting to hop around again today, we have a great wwoofa, Kory, who has been doing lots of gardening work.

(thanks to Rog for rainforest photos)

Before the bushwalking I did a 5-day retreat at Bodhi Tree Forest monastery which has been at Tullera for three years now - they do regular retreats and it was very healing and good discipline to encourage me to become more mindful (and meditate more often. Their website is http://www.buddhanet.com.au and it is very worth checking out.

It's been great to be at home and to have Hannah here, always lots of fun and she has been looking after me really well all week. This house does well to have a few people in it, it's been great to have an excellent hotwater system after all these years and its pretty comfortable now. Sunny and Daimon enjoyed it too and it was lovely to spend time with them here.

Peace on the old SouthWestern Front

Here are some pics of our trip to Strahan where we camped at Ocean Beach (see all the happy campers poring over the archives of their glory days) before heading off on a free cruise down the Gordon River. There was a dozen old blockaders quite ecstatic to be there again and me quite ecstatic to be there for the first time.

Strahan is so beautiful - peaceful old town now depending on the tourist flow for their jobs and the tourists are flowing in.

The Ocean Beach is so wild and beautiful, beyond Hell's Gates is the wild Southern Ocean and while we were blessed with sunshine and mild winds I can imagine how forbidding and cruel the sea could be to those sent here against their will. The isolation and hopelessness of the convicts was embedded in the ruins of Sarah Island which we visited on the cruise - a tiny island in Macquarie Harbour where all the trees were chopped down to make room for 500 people to suffer such extreme cruelty that many preferred the almost certain death of trying to escape. Made to suffer for their poverty, petty thieves and soldiers alike endured and died here. The swans of the harbour (source fo eggs for the local people) also suffered and died as victims fo the soldiers need for even more sport than tormenting convicts. This is our history past and present - the frontier is a cruel place and there was lots that reminded me of Papunya, including the fact that the adminisitrators rarely stayed more than a year or two. I found it a very sombre and depressing place even tho it is now treed and touristed and I found and ate heaps of delicious native red currants.

There are magnificent mountains rising to the sky, salmon farms and lighthouses...

And then the huge still peace of the river as we slowed down to an effortless glide in this mammoth cruise boat built to the specifications of the owners so that it makes no wash. The Morrisons have made their living from the river for generations, love it and wanted to see it preserved so much that they went against their fellow Strahanites in 1983 - and of course now their business has boomed and they wanted to honour the greenies who helped them. As Alice said, they thought we were helping them and we thought they were helping us .

So here is the free Gordon River and the World Heritage Wilderness. We met Sebastien up there with his teensy rubber ducky that he'd just been rafting down the river for fifteen days...

I am now at Bridport staying with my bro Tim and his partner Gaby in a pise house. There is a magnificent view out over the bay and on a clear day you can see Flinders Island. Life is very laidback, they have an excellent vege garden but don't seem to do too much else - Gaby is an artist and Tim is studying and works part of the year but right now it feels like I've joined in on an endless holiday. We're going off camping at Waterhouse today.

I am also on the edge of Kenn-country here. I am visiting some of Kenn’s family, feels strange after so long but good to make contact. I went to Scottsdale yesterday which brought back lots of memories. Took photos of the honour board at the North Eastern Soldiers Memorial Hospital – and remembered how when I came here all those 22 long years ago I suddenly began to understand why Kenn felt so compelled to join the army. There seems to be a new tradition of carving soldiers out of heritage trees that have to be cut down but prior to that there were, and still are, memorials to war everywhere.

Tasmania has progressed in lots of ways since I was last here - and it still has the charm and beauty I remember. It's also much better to be here at this time of year, raiding apple and plum trees and gathering blackberries in the summer sun... here's Penguin meals-on-wheels...

Here's Alice and her daughter Rinchen, bundled up like Babushkas - and there really is a little one inside Rinchen (as there was for me last time I was here!)
I'll be home next Sunday, and so will Hannah - yippeeeeeeeee!!!!!