The Art o Placing Your Beach Towel in the Sand

If you've been to the beach, you know there is an art to placing your towel successfully in the sand. There are those who toss their towels haphazardly to the ground in the way of somebody driven solely by the desire to feel their toes in the sea. There are those who entreaty the unobliging wind and hold their towels out, slowly bringing them sandward, hoping that their flapping flags of towels will alight neatly. There are those who enlist the help of their friends and, taking a corner in each hand, attempt to keep the towel taut and sandless as they lower it simultaneously down between them. There are those who, failing all other methods, resort to acrobatics - bringing one end to the ground and kneeling on it before suddenly grabbing the far corners and flinging themselves in a stretched out belly flop onto the sand. Some place shoes, bags or books on corners, others overlap with neighboring towels.

I myself prefer the wind method. Holding out my sarong to flap and twirl in the wind until exactly the right moment when a small gust blows underneath, straightening it - followed by a moment of calm for it to float serenely to the ground. As this has happened exactly zero times, the art to my towel placement comes in surrendering to the universe and allowing that I am, after all, sitting in the sand.

Au Pair Adventure

Me, Frey and Willem at Cedar Creek Falls

"Count to 100," says Willem. He rapidly begins changing from his pajamas into his school uniform, getting tangled briefly. His worried expression as he realizes he's done up his buttons wrong prompts me to slow my count. "Ninety eight....ninety eight and a half....ninety nine....ninety nine and a half..." He grins triumphantly as he finishes. "Tah-dah!" I convince him to brush his teeth by promising a dance party in the bathroom to his One Direction musical toothbrush.

Freya joins us in the bathroom, combing out her wavy hair and holding the elastics out to me - her way of asking for braids. All dressed and ready to go, we hop in the car, wait for Willem to buckle (his method is to pull the seat-belt out all the way before clipping himself in and letting the slack slide back in), and head to school. We slow as we pass the "guinea pig house" to press noses against the back windows in hopes of spotting the critters in their front yard cage.

This was how the routine of Brisbane Au Pair job melted days into weeks, weeks into months and suddenly the time was gone. Somehow in those two months, I had found another home. Freya and Willem filled most of my time with their antics, finicky eating habits, theatrical performances, stories and games. The rest of my time I spent going for runs in the "lemongrass park," a place I so named for its amazing smell - or exploring with my two German au pair friends. We took trips into the city and up and down the coasts. We hiked the Glass House Mountains, rode waves at Coolum, Noosa and Byron Bay beaches, wandered along the esplanade by the river in the city and had sleepovers with movies, wine and chocolate when one of us had to stay at home and watch the kids.

As we moved toward summer in Queensland and the mornings got too hot for me to go running, it was my time to leave. Not without struggle, I paired my belongings back down to backpack volume. How things mysteriously accumulate when I stay in one place for too long, I will never understand. With a few clothing items less and a few kid-drawn-masterpieces more, I donned my hiking boots (too heavy to pack) and headed to the airport.

At Byron Bay Lighthouse with Anne and Annika

Aussie, Germans, Brit, American, Brit #2 - What a crew!

Anne, me and Annika at the top of Mt Coolum

Me, Freya and Willem at the Koala Sanctuary

The kiddos at Southbank

Me and Willem at Cedar Creek Falls

The Mango Orchard Month - Noonamah, Northern Territory

The first time I heard the curlews, they kept me awake in the nervous, spooked, troubled-sleep sort of way that you have when overnighting in a new place for the first time. They sound almost like a pack of coyotes in the way that their wailing starts out as a solo and crescendos into a cacophony of high-pitched chaos. My wakeful night also found me wondering about the hospitality of the 30+ spiders who’s ceiling home I have recently moved in beneath.  Are these the sort of spiders who you can count on to be in their corner every time you look? Or are they the ones who stealthily disappear and leave you contemplating whether you’ve swallowed them in your sleep, if they’ve taken up residence in your sheets or if they’ve simply gone out for a bit and will return to their corner soon. In any case, they take care of most of the mozzies. Also in residence, helping with the mozzy situation is a tail-less gecko who spends most of his time on Aubrey’s wall and on one occasion, decided to launch himself onto my thigh causing a startled outburst and fits of giggles.

One morning, we woke up before sunrise to beat the heat and finish some mulching. Equipped with head lamps and ipods, we begin the meditation of spreading hay below each mango tree. We had placed the bales the previous day, using the “ninja” technique we perfected during our month on the farm. One of us would carefully navigate the hay filled ute through the orchard, swerving around low hanging branches so as not to clothesline the other – who was perched atop the stack of bales, tossing, kicking or hip checking the bales off the moving ute towards the tree trunks. That done, all that was left for the morning was to pop the twine from each bale, peel apart the flakes and squat beneath the branches, fluffing each flake out in overlapping patterns to encircle the trunk and reach out towards the tips of the branches. We get into our rhythm and barely notice the highways of feisty green ants running up and down the trunks. Or maybe they’re just less feisty when the sun’s not up yet. As we work our way down the rows, the sun rises through the leaves of the mango trees, illuminating the tiny, grape-sized mangoes and reminding us to finish up quickly so as to get on the road towards our weekend adventure in Kakadu National Park.

Michael the mango farmer is a tall, lanky, bespectacled man who would rather be strolling through his orchard with Madam, his dog, than doing anything else. He works for a branch of the government that does things like implement water saving strategies throughout public spaces in the city of Darwin. He has lent us his old ute for adventuring around the Northern Territory so when we’re not loading up the bed with hay or fertilizer, we’re coaxing it along the dry, open road. The ute is old. It has wires dangling beneath the steering wheel. The radio sometimes works. Loading it up with camping supplies and several liters of frozen mango puree, we’re ready to hit the road. We point ourselves towards Kakadu and we’re off.

That night, we walk up a rocky hill at Ubirr – a place where ancient aboriginal paintings dance across the rock. We see the rainbow serpent arching in orange and red across the rock wall and learn of its power and significance as a deity in dreamtime stories of creation. The rainbow serpent replenishes water, the all important life source in this cracked, dry country. At the top of the rock, we look out over the floodplains below while the sun slowly sinks, turning everything to gold. I wonder what this scene would have looked like before it was filled with tourists. Back when the rock art was being painted. I imagine children clambering around the rocks, parents calling them over to the fire for dinner. I imagine families preparing meals, chatting and sending laughter echoing across the plateau.

But the sun has now all but disappeared leaving only a liquid line of molten gold on the horizon. We head back to our ute, park it under a branch and hang our mosquito netting, draping it around the ute bed. With my sleeping mat unrolled, I drift off to sleep thinking of how glad I am that I took time to appreciate a sunrise and a sunset in the same day. 

Curlew

St. Andrews Spider

Stimsons Python - he lived next to the sink

Planting Pinapples

Mango Oatmeal Mmmm

Fertilizing the trees

Break Time!

Baby Mangoes

Tail-less Gecko Friend

Green Butt Ants - nastiest little guys

Ute ready for ninja-ing the hay

Pouring Mango Puree

The top of Ubirr

Aboriginal rock art - a barramundi!

The Rainbow Serpent

Sunset over the floodplains

In Arnhem Land - Sacred Aboriginal Land

Scraping about 10 layers of paint and mold

Weeks later - finally finished scraping and painted the first coat! Success!!

The Mango Orchard

At Douglas Hotsprings

Litchfield National Park

Florence Falls - Litchfield

Bushfire!

The beach in Darwin - too many jellies and crocs to swim

Mr Croc

Me and Aubrey in Litchfield

Camping in Style

Penguins Plus Package

The Nobbies - Phillip Island

It is cold. We're on the beach. As the sun sets, only the small lights placed in intervals light up the sand dimly. And the penguins begin to waddle up. I can barely see the dark figures as they tumble out of the surf. So when they appear much closer, illuminated by the glow cast from the lights,  it is almost magical. And they just keep coming! Some determined to get home, others stopping to shake water from their feathers. Some stop, dawdle, looking for a mate. And the sounds of their success fill the night.

The magic is there  - not quite spoiled by the scene I'm taking part in. We sit on bleachers. We've purchased the "Penguins Plus" Package, which means a ranger (Ranger Andy) is presiding over the group of spectators. He has a microphone. He answers questions, but mostly just corrals the crowd. "No sitting on the stairs. Camera's away. Back to your seats..." The hushed excitement of the crowd is huge at the start. Necks crane to spot the first penguins. Everyone waits expectantly. But after about 20 minutes of the parade, people begin to drift away to buy coffees or head home. The giant tour buses in the parking lot begin to fill up and roll back towards the city.

We've already been to the gift shop. One of two in the giant, fancy visitor's center entirely devoted to these little penguins. It is full of every variety of stuffed toy, sweatshirt, jewelry, key chains... all be-penguined. There is a cafe, a learning area, a small movie theater playing a film about the penguins on a loop. Staff members with walkie-talkies gaurd the big glass doors. Nobody outside on the boardwalk until it's time!

All of this just so that we can watch these little, less than 1-foot-tall, birds come home from a day of fishing and wander up the cliff to their holes. It all seems rather ridiculous when I consider it. Bleachers on a beach, people munching popcorn. A spectator sport? Or maybe it really isn't so absurd. Maybe this is what we should be paying to watch instead of cars racing around in circles or people in layers of padding bashing into each other. I know I'm happier here with the penguins.

Little Penguins Under the Boardwalk - Phillip Island

Photo Credit - Sam Dilliway

Birthday Reflections on Uncertainty

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It has been about 2 years since I finished college. Turning 24 reminded me of that fact in a big way.  So I’ve been feeling very reflective  - as birthdays tend to do to me. I know someone who’s birthday tradition is to be on the peak of a different mountain each year, to remind himself to stay humble but strong. Another friend takes a long birthday bath each year to wash away negativity and to get her mind and body set for whatever is to come with the next year. So my birthday tradition (however unintentional) is to spend some days or weeks before and after my day looking inward. And really, if there is any time of year when you are allowed to be a bit selfish and spend heaps of time thinking about yourself, it’s your birthday, right? Don’t answer that, cause I’m probably going to continue doing it either way :)

So here I am, 2 years out from college and I’ve been asking myself these questions.

Where are you right now?

What have you accomplished since then?

How are you different?

How are you the same?

Are you where you thought you’d be?

Are you happy?

Have you figured out what to do next?

But mostly….What should I do with my life??

The theme of these years has been uncertainty. Nobody tells you that you’ll feel this way. In fact, after college nobody really told me how anything would be. I’ve been lucky enough to have really outstanding mentors in my life – parents, teachers, friend’s parents, supervisors, parents of kiddos I babysat, community members, aunts and uncles and grandparents and coworkers. I was surrounded by encouragement, stories, and advice that guided me through growing up and helped me set expectations. But after the graduating from college part of those expectations came to fruition, I was left with this giant realization that I was suddenly (and for the first time EVER) free from basically all expectations. It was hugely exciting and incredibly daunting. What now? Start a career? Jump into grad school? Join the Peace Corps? For some reason, I felt like everyone I knew was choosing one of those three options. But I didn’t like any of them. So I decided to take a few years of just living my life in whatever way I felt was right at that exact moment. This would be the first time I was ever just living my own life un-prescribed. And I just needed it. To find my limits and my passions, to practice strong self reliance but to learn when to ask for help without it being offered and how to accept it when it was.  I just needed to live that life until one of those three options felt right or another option presented itself.

So you go with the flow- following whatever opportunities throw themselves at your feet. You avoid making plans at all costs for fear of missing out on a spur of the moment opportunity.  And in this spontaneous, open minded mantra the past two years went with alarming speed.  Travel, meet interesting people –young and old, experience things you thought you never would, challenge yourself, feel scared, love and be loved, find your passion, decide which paths to pursue, feel lonely, learn to confront yourself, be a young twenty-something and stay out too late dancing, climb mountains, find yourself down to your last $20 and ration your chickpeas and rice until the next paycheck, practice making a home wherever you are, work random jobs that you never thought you would, talk to strangers, try saying “yes” to everything for awhile…..or don’t do any of these things. Just do you.

Within the span of these years I have felt incredibly confident in myself, and then a short few months later, plummeted into self doubt. I appreciate every minute of these years (even if I didn’t’ enjoy all of them) and the fact that I have the freedom of mind, body, spirit and finances to follow whatever paths presented themselves to me.

So within all of that uncertainty, a thought…

You can let it paralyze you (as I’ve definitely done more than a few times since college) or you can search out the hope and potential within it and follow those rays into your joy. A lovely lady (one of those people who’s light and wisdom just shine through them into everybody around them) reminded me recently of a favorite poem of mine “Desiderata” which ends with these words. I’m finding them extremely relevant and comforting these days.

“Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” If you haven't read this poem, you owe it to yourself to check it out! http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gongsu/desiderata_textonly.html

That same friend said that it is important to honor ourselves by exploring and expressing our emotions rather than simply acknowledging them and then pushing them away in an effort to move on. So I will remain in this realm of uncertainty. I’ll get to know it. I’ll learn its ins and outs until perhaps it becomes so known to me that it disappears.

Meanwhile, my big birthday gift was this little furball entering my life!

Photo shoot of Hannah and Bean...

Ruth, Malcolm and Kangaroo Poo

Malcolm takes two steps for each of mine but he’s quick and he’s setting the pace for our long afternoon walk. He is a foot or so shorter than me but if the length of his straight white beard could be added to his height, I’d be looking up at him. We walk along Doctor’s Gully where there is lots of evidence of the gold mining industry that populated the town – and so many others in Australia. Malcolm points to a mound covered in overgrowth and tells me to scramble up and have a look. When I get up there, I can see an old tunnel leading into the side of the hill! I want to explore more, but Malcolm and his trusty pup are waiting for me to continue our walk.

Ruth gives me a tour of her garden. She is growing all sorts of fruits veggies, flowers and herbs. As we walk down the sloping hill she takes me over to a bending tree. “Just so you can see how crazy I am…I’ll show you this” she says. She puts her ear to the tree and listens. I’m not quite sure what for until I give it a try. I can hear the sap running inside the tree. Gurgling almost like a brook. I don’t know why I’ve never heard this sound before since, crazily I suppose, I’ve definitely put my ear up to a tree or two in my time as well. My environmental science/forest ecology side began asking why it was that I could hear this sound but there was something so magical about it that I decided I don’t really need to know.

Ruth is a talker. She is a story-teller. Her stories are creative but loopy and tangential. I’m often left wondering what exactly she is talking about. But her kindness and generosity outweigh the cluttered airspace. Ruth has an old ukulele that some other wwoofers left when they didn’t want to lug it around any longer. When she saw the enthusiasm Kat and I had for the instruments strewn around, she decided it was time the Ukulele moved on and she gave it to Kat. She simply saw it as an obvious gesture and Kat – my uke playing, hat knitting, traveling, German librarian friend – was thrilled!

We filled our days in Hepburn Springs with little bits of work (collecting firewood, painting, weeding, collecting kangaroo and goat poo for fertilizer, weed-whacking) a lot of eating (I felt like a hobbit eating breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and late-night snacks) and wandering about the town. 

As my last wwoof hosts (At least for now) I couldn’t have asked for better people. Ruth taught me lots about permaculture, lent me more books than I ever could have read in 1 week, and truly appreciated our company. Every wwoof host is different and many of them keep journals or photos to remember each of their wwoofers. Ruth and Malcolm have a giant tool collection. Each wwoofer paints the handle of a tool. While we’re working, Ruth tells us the stories of each of the tools and the wwoofers who painted them. 

Kat and my tools

They had Vermont maple syrup in their cupboard! They didn't know what to do with it, so I made pancakes :)

Ruth gardens by the moon cycles. We collected some wood that had been cut on March 1st but her moon calendar says that wood cut on this date won't burn. We'll have to wait and see!

"Thank you to the bushwalking biker...

...and the storytelling gardener."

Ruth's Garden

The house

While spending hours picking snails out of the soil we were preparing, we hatched a plan. Snail race! It had to happen.

...and the winner is!!! Um, I don't even know, they just all kept going in circles.

The tool collection

Veranda

View from the Veranda

Kat with her uke

Afternoon at Daylesford Lake