I am still at Crystal Waters. I will probably be here until April when we were planning to go to Sydney. So whatever return address I put on the back will probably get to me. At CW, they have all the mailboxes in one place so it wouldn't be very hard for email to get to me. Because... tomorrow, I am still going to John & Val's. That is only for a few days. Then I go to Barry O'Connell's until Sunday, then I go to Kathryn Blackburn's. And I thought it would be hard to find somewhere to go. It seems like WWOOFers are a a well utilised resource here.
I am sitting at the common land a the base of the slope of Barb's property. There is a dam, mosquitoes and an island with bamboo on it. But I can't see how to get onto the island, if there is a way, without walking all the way around the dam. Without walking further up the creek to the lantana. Walking through blady grass nearly as tall as me, is only fun for the first five minutes. Trying not to walk in any water. Maybe I could get onto the island with Barb's galoshes, which go up to my knees. There's lots of frogs in this dam. Now I can hear a kookaburra. Yesterday morning, I woke up to the sound of bellbirds. And now I can hear those parrots, that sound like rainbow lorrikeets. Maybe they are lorrikeets. There's also a frog in this pond that sounds like a duck.
Today I went to the working bee. It is at the visitor's area (VA). There is a sand pit. It is round. I've never seen a round one before. It was going to be a dome, until some bright spark said that the kids would climb on it, and then fall off and hurt themselves.
Tell Jon that Barb knows Hakim Bey, and when she goes to New York, she will be staying with him. Hakim Bey wrote Temporary Autonomous Zone.
So the sand pit looks like this looks something like a snail shell, and you walk around in a circle to the sand pit part inside the shell. Or you can go through these holes in the shell to ge to the inside and then out or you follow the outer shell to get to the inside. It would certainly be a challenge for me to draw a schematic of it properly.
I weeded the sand and raked it. Then I met Ella who was weeding a garden bed, and I started to do that too, and she told me her life story. She is now working with dreams. I told her the dream I had this morning:
I am with a small group of friends, and they seem to be from high school or first year uni, judging by the way we were acting, and we seemed to be on a tour of CW, looking at different people's gardens, specifically we were looking at food forests. I felt really happy and free to be able to wander through the forests eating stuff. In the clearest moment, I knew that there was another forest to go to, and it made me equisitely happy. ENDE
I think my dream about the food forest is incubated by my thinking about doing a permaculture course.
Something like a lizard or a turtle or a snake has just jumped into the dam. I can just see its little head. I am going to rename CW, "Mosquito Land".
Every day so far, I've seen at least one kangaroo.
Ella started to ask me about my dream. She wanted to know what was the most thing that I liked about it. I thought about that, listened to Ella, and pulled out more weeds, and then I told her that it was because the food came from the trees. And then she said it was something she had never really considered. The significance of the trees, as trees themselves. She likes the other ideals of permaculture, sharing, organic food, probably other things as well. But she had never considered just trees.
Now I see a duck. It's brown with a striped face. The lorrikeets have flown away. I can hear crows and other birds I don't know.
My job for this afternoon is to mow the lawn. Yesterday was the first day I had ever driven a petrol driven lawn mower. For it to be here that I lose my mower virginity, I find supremely ironic.
I went to dinner at the community area last night. And met lots of new people. Kathryn talked about her trip to Czechoslovakia, and I was made aware again of how little I know about the place. Kathryn had been there in 1992. I see that duck again. It is quacking softly now. A "here-I-am" quacking.
Everyone is friendly here, so far.
I played my flute last night too. Then Barb took me to Gordon's place. He lives with his wife, Brenda, and their children, and he is a real Scotsman and says, "Och, aye" a lot. Which would sound affected if it didn't sound so natural. He makes bellows and bodhrans. I talked to other peple too. There were about twenty people there, for the Scottish Country dancing. It is hilarious to watch people learning dances, and when they are always in the wrong place. I found out that Brenda has been to Findhorn, and that Max would know where to find other communities that are similar to Findhorn.
Last night, I decided that the next place I would like to go to is the Permaculture Institute because they always need WWOOFers, and because they have a FOOD FOREST! By food forest, I mean a garden or forest that is self-mulching, and there is always food on, at any time of the year. And because I had that thought I had the dream. Now I am more keen to go WWOOFing around the world. And I dream that somewhere in the middle of Australia, in a very isolated spot, there is a power spot like at Findhorn. And I dream that I will go to that spot and build a permaculture community there. Where co-creation experiments take place with the other Kingdoms. I also imagine it surrounded by a carefully maintained hedge of lantana, to disguise it.
There is a party on tonight somewhere too.
Crystal Waters is an amazing place.
Yesterday evening I walked from Barb's place to the Community Area, as the sun had just gone down, and I watched the colours changing in the clouds and in the sky, and it was beautiful. And I thought it doesn't get any better than this. Tell Gaye that when I wake up in the morning and look out of the caravan, I watch rivers of mist falling out of the mountains, and she would love it here where there are mountains, all the way around us, and we are in the bottom.
I have played my flute to the bamboo and the mountains, and it's nice to hear the mountains right with it.
And now it's time to mow the lawn :)