Couchwarming Party!

Theme Song for the Day:

1. "Wonky Donkey", by Craig Smith

THE ARTS CENTER ARTS & CRAFTS MARKET

The mist in the streets of Christchurch today was a superfine drizzle that you could barely see swirling gently down from the grey skies above.  It sits on my hair and clothes like dew drops in the morning. 

We tour the Arts Center Market early in the afternoon and wander through stalls of hand-made merino wool clothing, carved greenstone jewellery, and beautiful photography of wild Kiwi landscapes.  Lunch is a spicy Lebanese Lamb Wrap from a street vendor, while my hosts and tourguides munch on a Czech Potato Pancake with Beef and Sauerkraut [I’ve never seen a Czech Food street vendor before!].

NOTICE THE DR SEUSS TUFTS GROWING ALONG THE RIVER BANKS

Hagley Park is 400+ acres of lush greenery that we walk through to go home.  A crowd is cheering on a rugby match as joggers bounce past us along the river, which is lined with willow trees and other Seussian water plants.  Ducks paddle and dive and waddle their way along the fast-flowing water, which is crystal clear and looks no more than thigh-deep.

It's a laid-back Saturday afternoon in misty Christchurch, and we spend it preparing for the party tonight; Marina is making chocolate truffles! Turns out last night that we missed the CouchSurfMeet by a day - it was on Thursday, not Friday - so Matt and I commiserated by sampling a couple rounds of the bubbly drink specials before Marina joined up with us an hour later after her work event.  When life gives you lemons, make ...sparkling wine!

After-drinking food is good here: the souvlaki joint was unexpectedly closed so we found a good Chinese take-out place right across the City Square.  This one even sold fish & chips ...apparently, not uncommon in these parts!

The festivities tonight are over at award-winning local musician Craig Smith's new diggs.  His new song, Wonky Donkey, won the 2009 APRA NZ Children's Song of the Year Award, and I am lucky enough to sneak a peek at the children's book version which is released in October.  

Craig is an easy conversationalist with a warm smile and a welcoming aura.  We swap stories about our respective journeys and find that we have walked similar paths: a few years ago, he closed up shop - after running his own business in sales and marketing for ten years or so - to feed his soul and pursue his music, and hasn't been happier ever since.

Craig also happens to be the Couchsurfing Ambassador for Christchurch which means that tonight I meet more locals, as well as fellow Couchsurfers from France, Germany, Canada, and LA... and, believe it or not, met someone whose Mum may have worked with my Mum in the Dole Pineapple Cannery in Hawaii... !  

I *HEART* Couchsurfing.

The world lies in the hands of those who have the courage to dream and to take the risk of living out their dreams - each according to his or her own talent."

-Paulo Coellho-

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Tasmania: Day 6 - Wild Beauty

Theme Songs of the Day:

1. "First Dy of My Life", by Bright Eyes
2. "Burn One Down", by Ben Harper
3. "Are We Different?", by Priscilla Ahn
   

CAMPING ON THE RIVER FLATS

The morning dawns achingly cold on the flood plains of Taylor Flats.

Blue smoke bellows from the still-damp campfire while I stand on the bank of a river, casting into the flow and hoping for a rainbow or a brown trout to strike. The air is still, and my breath hangs around my shoudlers in a puffy veil.

Kookaburras guffaw in the distance while other birds chatter and chirp and whistle all around me. An industrious little fellow tap tap taps at the skeletal tree standing behind me, pulling out grubs and other goodies from the dead wood.

Poplar trees grow thick along the banks to the water’s edge, and I pick my way upstream searching for breaks in the undergrowth large enough for me to cast from. Back at the campfire, butter and home-made raspberry jam bubbles away on the gridle, while bread smokes itself into toast for our breakfast.

Last night we met Roslyn and Oscar, Peter’s wife and youngest son. I spoke with Roslyn on the phone when we landed in Tassie, or rather she spoke to me through the crackling connection: “Is that you Matt??” She is tough as nails, all sinew and no nonsense, with a warm smile and a heart of gold.

Oscar and his brother grew up on the “luxury campgrounds” and were homeschooled by their parents. He is a confident, well-mannered 16-year old, also tough as nails, all sinew, and no-nonsense. He does have his father’s cheeky grin, and the twinkle in in his eye that suggests he may or may not be about to play a practical joke on you…

On the day that the Board of Education came to interview the children to find out how effective [or not] their homeschooling had been, Roslyn was nervous that they might deem their progress sub-par, and take her children away. Instead, the lady that came out was so impressed that she asked if the boys would come and speak to other homeschool families as an example of possibility.

Roslyn explains to me later that their approach was simple: keep the boys engaged and having fun, and they would learn something without even realizing it. For example, to teach them about mathematics and geometry, they built a shed and had them do all the calculations on site that were necessary to complete the project. They learned the theory and application of the concepts being studied, and gained the practical construction skills while swinging their hammers. At 23 years old, Wilbur now travels the world as a freelance adventure guide; he is currently away in Europe leading whitewater kyak adventure tours in Norway over the summer season.

We get to see more of the benefits of this kind of education first hand when we get back to camp and Oscar invites us to join him and his best mate Alex [who is 3 years older] on the downhill Moutain Bike Track that he and his brother Wilbur have built on the other side of the waterfall.

The track is impressive; a narrow trail winds its way down the mountain, earthen embankments allow you to throw the bikes around the switchbacks, and a fallen log provides a massive railslide that drops back onto the track on a steep, twisting ramp. The see-saw feature they fly over freaks me out and sends me careening off into the bush, mowing down a couple of baby eucalypts along the way.

I opt to take the side route on the final stretch, which drops off a rocky outcrop before slipping through a narrow gap in the trees. It took us twenty minutes to hike up to the start, and maybe three minutes to barrell down, hooting and crashing and laughing all the way down. I am thankful that the 15-foot jump they are still building mid-way down is incomplete… and that despite falling off twice, I survived my first downhill mountain biking experience with barely a scratch!

The adrenaline is still coursing when we return to “camp”, and we are still wild-eyed when Peter shows us the yield of hazlenuts that he and Aoba have gathered that morning. The Canadian has asked that we do a bonfire that night, so Roslyn announces that ice cream, molten chocolate, and home-made raspberry sauce will compliment campfire-roasted hazlenuts perfectly for desert.

Before we head out to gather wood for the bonfire, however, Peter invites us on a bushwalk with him to Levyn Canyon. The 45-minute trek up to the lookout point takes about 25 minutes with the pace that he sets for us, and our breath is taken away when we reach the end of the trail. Wooded valleys stretch to the horizon as a river winds its way through. We are ants perched precariously on the edge of this precipice, dwarfed by the massive spectacle of nature engulfing us. The platform and we stand on and polished trail signs behind us are the only sign of human presence; the work of a single park ranger who has carved the trail out with his own two hands, and the occasional help of a laborer or two.

THE RIVER WINDS THROUGH...

Once we regain our breath, we head back to the car which Peter guides deftly around the gravel roads twice as fast as I would be comfortable driving, to bring us to another trailhead. This one descends into the canyon and crosses the river, where we pass a sign reading EXPERIENCED BUSHWALKERS ONLY, and our motley crew - The Moustachioued One, The Canadian, The GreenBackpack, and the Tokyo Girl - pick our way along the steep trail until we round a bend and stop at a natural stone bench which overlooks dark tea-colored pools that eddy and swirl below.

It dawns on me how foreign an experience this must be for Aoba, who has probably only known the bright lights and ceasless racket of big city life... now we are surrounded by a natural symphony, the water rushing below, the breeze whispering through the treetops in waves, birds cackling and whistling and chirping all around.

NATURE'S SKYSCRAPERS

We sit and munch on the chocolates I have brought, drinking in the view from the canyon floor. The cliff face stretches up 100+ stories above, and you can almost hear the cracking and rumbling of the massive rock stratas which lie at a 45 degree angle from the horizontal rocks which are the adjacent cliff. The river does a huge switchback here, and Peter tells us that at some time in the distant geological past, this entire canyon was formed by the collapse of the massive rockforms towering above. If we were ants standing on the top of the canyon, we are gnats as we look up from within.

We return to "camp" with a new sense of quiet satisfaction, our glimpse of the awesome power of Wild Tasmania lingering in our auras. This is Peter's backyard, and I find myself longing to keep exploring, to discover yet more wild spectacles that few privelleged humans will get to experience in their lifetimes. The wild places of the world don't want to be discovered, preferring instead to reveal their secrets only to those intrepid enough to seek and discover...

Dinner is the vegeterian green Japanese curry that I have had bubbling away all afternoon. The homegrown baby yams added at the last minute are pink and translucent and no bigger than my thumb, and lend just the perfect earthy-sweet flavour to this Asian-Australian bush tucker meal we have just invented.

HYPNOTIC

We take turns simmering in the woodfired bath; house rules are that whoever is in the hot tub gets waited upon hand-and-foot, “As you wish…” Everyone outside of the bath house sits and stares into the fire, talking about past and future planned adventures [and misadventures], and even start to sketch out a vague plan to hike in to Cradle Mountain and back from Loongana when I return to Tasmania.

Aoba entertains herself by slicing cross-sections of the bonfire smoke rising into the night sky with her bright green laser beam, whistling Super Mario Brothers to herself and munching on potatoes roasted in the glowing embers. I can only imagine what her internal dialogue would be, 18-years old girl raised in the Tokyo metropolis in the middle of the Tasmanian bush and only enough grasp of English to understand fleeting glimpses in our conversations..

Roslyn and The Canadian have convinced Peter to break out a bottle of homebrew honey mead which has been “cellared” for a couple years. The amber liquid has a velvety texture, not quite as viscous as scotch, yet smooth enough to coat the sides of the glass when swirled. It smells sweet like honey, not the sickly sweet of desert wines, or the artificial sweet of soda pop, but a subtle, delicate sweetness imbued with a hint of citrus… and the taste? Divine. Almost spiritual. If one were lucky enough to sip from the nectar of the gods, than surely this would be it.

Maximus curls up in my lap and drifts off to sleep, twitching and eyelids fluttering as he starts to dream of chasing birds and sticks and severed wallaby heads. The conversation fades and becomes more intermittent, each of us losing ourselves in the hypnotic glow and crackly of the bonfire, connecting with some deep part of ourselves from eons past, when ape-like men huddled around campfires in caves.

Glowing embers float up and away into the milky way yawning above us. I realize that have discovered a formula for inner peace:

Homebrew Honey Mead
+
Vegetarian Japanese Curry
featuring Home-grown Baby Yams
+
Fire-Roasted Hazlenuts on IceCream with Molten Chocolate
and Home-made Raspberry Sauce
+
Woodfired Bath-house
+
Bonfire
+
Awesome People
+
Amazing Conversation
=
Bliss

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BEDFORD'S BACKYARD

RIVER CROSSING

THE CANADIAN


CHILLIN' ON THE STONE BENCH


AOBA [TOKYO GIRL] CONTEMPLATES NATURE


ROASTING HAZLENUTS


BLISS

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Tasmania: Day 4 - "Here: Loonagana"

THEME SONGS FOR THE DAY:

1. "Society", by Eddie Vedder, from the Into The Wild soundtrack
2. "Indifference", by Ben Harper and Eddie Vedder

PETER BEDFORD:
THE MYTH, THE MAN, THE BLOODY LEGEND

Urgh. After 10 hours on the road yesterday I'm not sure it was a good idea to stay up until 5am drinking wine with our Couchsurfing host and new friend, Peter Bedford... but geeeez his wine is good!

Home-made from blueberries, raspberries, and loganberries grown organically in the garden patches right outside the main house, there are jugs of new batches bubbling away in the kitchen. We made a pretty good dent in their supply getting to know each other last night...

Surprisingly, I'm not hungover, just tired from being on the road and then staying awake for so long. Guess that's what happens when you drink wine that is made from organic fruits, with no preservatives or additives - the wines taste clean, crisp, and fresh, like we are nuzzling from the bosom of the earth.

Aside from sharing our stories and drinking copious amounts of wine, last night - or rather, this morning - we learnt how to find due south by lining up the stars of the Southern Cross with the Pointer Sisters [with Peter's bright green laser pointer which seemed to touch the stars], and were given a tour of the place in near-total darkness. When I finally rise at around 10am, I jump out of bed eager to explore the place in the daylight.

FROST ON THE GROUND IN THE MORNING

The sun has cleared the mountains and the temperature hovers near 4 degrees C, only one degree warmer than last night. I walk down to the dam to get a better look at the "luxury camping" compound that Peter has built for his family over the years. A builder by trade, the building have all been constructed of materials reclaimed from old tear-down houses in the area, or timber milled on-site from the few trees they felled to create the clearing in which the houses sit.

BEDFORD LUXURY CAMPGROUNDS

For the first 18 months or so, the Bedfords would hike in from the main entrance and camp around the fire pit seen in the middle of the photo. The fire's embers were kept glowing 24 hours/day to give the family warmth and cooking capacity until a double wood-fired oven, barbeque grill, and covered dining table were all added later to finish out the heart of the compound. The original structure, which can be seen to the right, was built; then the family moved their tents into this shelter.

THE ORIGINAL HOUSE

This structure was later expanded into what it is today: carpets cover the original earth floors on one side, and a wood-fired stove sitting on carpet-covered brick floors warms the cottage from the other. It feels like a writer's cabin in the woods, complete with a corner desk that overlooks the dam and is bathed in sunlight each morning.

INSIDE THE BATHOUSE

The bath-house can be seen to the left of the photo above: inspired by the bathtub cauldrons used to skin slaughtered
pigs, Peter has built a wood-fired hot-tub out of brick and a reclaimed cast-iron bathtub. Fresh dam water is used, the color of weak herbal tea from being seeped with eucaplytus tannins. A chimney pipes out all the smoke from the fire, and a very high-tech system of pulling the plug to drain water while turning the tap to let in more cold water is used by the bather to regulate the temperature and prevent themselves from becoming boiled soup.

The veggie gardens sit above this area, well fenced to keep out unwelcome guests. The growbeds are raised, sitting on the north-facing aspect of the gentle slope everything is built on, and are a combination of worm castings and compost that has been cultivated on-site over the years. Most of the veggies have been harvested, though a few heads of lettuce and other yummy munchies can be seen growing; the seasons are shifting and the winter veggies will be grown in the two hothouses that have been built.

Peter uses what he calls "organic worms", which live in worm baths that sit in the shadows of a grove of eucalyptus at the edge of the compound. These worms are happiest munching on a combination of kitchen scraps and horse manure, and differ from regular earthworms in the quality of worm casting they produce. Buckets sit at the bottom ends of the worm baths collecting "worm tea", which is a nutrient-rich liquid fertilizer that is used throughout the gardens.

THE KIDS' HOUSE

The "main house" that we pulled up to last night is the most recently built structure on the premises: also built almost entirely from reclaimed building materials and timbers milled on-site, it features heated floors. A concrete slab was poured with copper pipes laid throughout that connect to a modified wood-fired stove in the middle of the house. Water fills a chamber surrounding the fire chamber, and a small pump helps circulate the water to keep the house warm in the cold winter nights.

The north-facing wall is almost entirely glass, bought for $100 from windows reclaimed from another tear-down house in the area. Growbeds line this wall, about three 1/2 feet off the ground so that tomatos and other veggies can be grown inside the house throughout winter. It's also a handy feature to be able to throw your dry scraps right onto the garden to be composted. Originallly intended to be the "kid's house", this structure has become the main living area, with a large kitchen bench to hang out around, and plenty of room to hang out wet gear.

A flat screen TV and impressive collection of dvds and video games look like any other suburban kid's living room, though these kids are hardly what you'd call any other suburban kid. Wilbur is 23 years old and is currently in Norway leading whitewater kyaking expeditions, while 16-year old Oscar is away with Mum whitewater kyaking somewhere near the Walls of Jerusalem national park in the middle of Tasmania.

We strike out towards the waterfall that can be heard in the background, and follow a large trek leading away from the ompound. The stream at the top of the waterfall is narrow enough to jump across, and seems harldy capable of producing the roar of falling water humming in our chests. There are a couple eucalyptus trees here that would take four men holding hands to span its circumference, and soar majestically 30 stories above the forest floor.

At the bottom of the falls, we are humbled by the sight which greets us. Only a handful of humans have ever born witness to this place, Peter tells us later that the locals didn't even know it existed until he moved in and discovered it himself.

We are standing at the bottom of a small canyon, whitewater falling in slow motion over glistening black boulders that are almost perfect squares, tempting me to climb this beautiful natural staircase. Massive tree ferns lining the canyon walls create perfect acoustics for the water to gently echo around this room, and we stand in silence for quite some time in awe and gratitude of this discovery. It feels wrong to cheapen the moment by snapping photos, so we quietly say our thanks and move on back up to the house.

Electricity for the entire compound is generated from one turbine at the base of the falls, and is pumped into a converter and battery store room where power levels can be easily monitored. Sitting around under one light bulb in the middle of the night no longer seems creepy once we've walked down to the turbine and followed the power cables all the way back up to the house.

They don’t get many visitors this far out into the bush, as Peter explains, “those who are meant to find us, eventually do…” This afternoon he is picking up 18-year old Aoba [pronounced “Oh-bah”], whose Couchsurfing sister has arranged for a two-week stay to get her out of the city and broaden her horizons.

She barely speaks English, and I am lounging naked in the hot-tub when she arrives late in the afternoon and is given the tour. “Can I take photo?” she says, and I nod vaguely through the clouds of eucalyptus steam.

Who woulda thought that I would be snapped nude by a Japanese tourist out in the wilderness of Tasmania?

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"KIDS' HOUSE"
AND VEGGIE GARDENS


STORAGE SHED, CUBBY HOUSE AND FLYING FOX


MAXIMUS PLAYING AROUND THE DAM


WOOD-FIRED OVEN


OUTDOOR DINING TABLE


BUNKHOUSE




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Duelling With Devils

Theme Songs of the Day:

1. "Paper Aeroplanes", by Angus & Julia Stone
2. "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", by Neil Young
3. "Neopolitan Dreams", by Lisa Mitchell
   

MAP OF TASMANIA, CIRCA 1916
APPROX 240KM SOUTH OF MELBOURNE

I'm going to Tassie. Tasmania, that is.

When I share that with the locals in Melbourne, I get one of two responses:

1. "Why??"
2. "Aw, yeahhhh, Tassie is BEAUTIFUL!"
   

I've heard that Tasmanian Devils really do spin around like in the Loony Tune cartoons. I've heard that Tasmanian Tigers aren't really extinct, if you know where to look for them. I've heard that some of the wildest places on earth are still pristine and hiding in this little corner or the world that most of mainland Australia has forgotten.

My travel companion for this leg of my journeys is Jill Rushton, the lovely Canadian that I met in Maui earlier this year at a pivotal time in my life:

After Christmas 2008, I sank rapidly into a fairly deep depression in which I did not make it out the front door of my house for most of January. I would lie awake at night waiting for sleep to arrive, listening to my inner monologue loop endlessly around thoughts of "Why did/didn't I do this; Why am I so far away from where I should be; How in the hell did I get myself into this mess; How the hell am I going to ever get myself out of this mess; Who do I think I am [bloody useless fool]; yadda-ydadda-yadda-doom-and-gloom-ever-downward-spiraling-blah-blah-blah......"

In the morning I would awake and lie catatonic, staring at the wall for an hour or so before mustering up the courage to get up and have a shower to face the sunlight. Being surrounded by so much natural beauty didn't help at all; it only heightened the contrast between how I felt within and the cheery surroundings without. I kept the blinds over the window to wallow in as much darkness as I could and found solace by distracting my mind with hours of mindless sessions on YouTube watching conspiracy theory movies, alien encounter clips, and other random obscurities.

My brother was a great support to me in this period, holding a safe space for me to move through this process, giving me room and permission to wallow without judging me, as if he knew all along that I wouldn't allow myself to linger for too long in this place of self-pity.

"I don't feel like doing anything, or seeing anyone today," I would announce gloomily. "Then don't!" was his cheerful reply.

I've never understood people who have had challenges with "depression", rather heartlessly writing the condition off as a sign of a weak and undisciplined mind. It's not. It is very real, and can be very scary - even to the most self-aware individuals. Depression is a very elusive, seductive creature: it beckons silently to you, lulling you into a sense of security and then drowning you in your own heavy thoughts. I can see now how the weight of it all could quickly add up and become unbearable, especially without the love and support of family and friends around you.

After a week or two of moping around the house all day and feeling lousy, I forced myself to get out into the sunshine, into nature, and do something, anything I could find joy in. This is when I started blogging, volunteering, hiking, sailing, swimming, surfing....anything to get me out of the house and having fun.

This was also a time to make peace with some lingering open wounds upon my heart, and move on into the next phase of relationship where you allow yourself to enjoy a person for who they are, wherever they are at, warts, old hurts, and all. After a two-year absence, I returned to Maui for Chinese New Year's Celebrations, which had become such a big part of my previous life, and was welcomed back with open arms, as if I had never left.

So it was there that I met The Canadian, her travel companion Kristen, and their chaperone [the perpetually hungover] Knuckles Tulio while stealing away to the hot-tub to relax muscles sore from a day's worth of Lion Dance and Kung-Fu performances. After two years fighting tooth-and-nail against brain cancer, Jill has recently lost the most important person in her life , and has embarked upon a journey to "rediscover both what's important to me and what makes me who I am." You can read her blog by clicking here.

Here I am, after moping around for the last month or so about losing everything, reawakened and finally enjoying all the beauty of life surrounding me... my breath is knocked out of me and silent tears stream down my face as I discover her story and see Facebook photos of good times....recent good times....shared with a loved one who has only recently left us. And again, I am reminded of what is truly important, and how lucky I really am. And of how beautiful, cruel, and beautiful life can be.

That experience has humbled me, and deepened my appreciation for the beauty of people and places surrounding me. I hope I never lose this perspective.

We're never really alone, are we? Our experiences may feel like we are the only ones going through this, indeed who has ever and will ever go through whatever it is that we are going through at that time... but the fact is that we are all more similar than we are diferent. We can find more that we relate to in others, than we can often find in ourselves. There is comfort and solace in the bond that exists between those who have had a shared, or shared a similar exerience. And we are all sharing a very similar experience - it's called the human experience.

"Are we human beings having a spiritual experience?
Or are we spiritual beings having a human experience?"
-overheard at a cafe, a long time ago-

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The Canadian has been traveling throughout Australia spending time with friends across the continent, blogging about her journeys here. The plan is to meet up in Melbourne, and head down to Tassie to share the cost of a campervan to explore the island for a week.

I've organized a stay with Peter Bedford, whose CouchSurfing profile says that he lives on 60 acres of wild bush in the mountains of Tasmania where "he and his family and working towards creating a self-sufficient lifestyle." Sounds wild.

The Guidebook to Hiking in Tasmania that I bought describes some amazingly beautiful multi-day treks, which I hope to somehow accomplish despite our lack of cold-weather gear. There is no agenda other than to explore, experience, and explore some more.

I am really looking forward to getting on the road again with new friends, and to making even more new friends, and to learning whatever lessons Tasmania has in store.

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