The travels of Canada Tom :
Moley Hey guys,
Sorry this is so long, but I haven't had much access to the internet over the past few weeks. Long story short: I got out of the city in mid-November and have been gradually working my way north, staying with interesting locals and trading volunteer work in exchange for food and shelter. I'll be spending most of the holiday season in deep contemplation/silent meditation. If you want more detail, see below. If not, fair enough. I hope all is well in your world ~ and I'm grateful that you're a part of my world.
all the best,
love tom
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Wow, it’s hard to believe that another month (or two?) in Australia has passed already! Oz continues to feel like another world – some kind of alternate reality or parallel universe, simultaneously familiar yet subtly foreign – and my everyday life here has a rather dreamlike quality, characterized by sudden and dramatic shifts in setting and characters. Along the way I've met a range of interesting people, from various diplomats and high-powered corporate professionals to Anti-scientology protesters and eccentric Australian yogis.
Although originally I only intended to stay in Sydney for a week or two, I discovered so many interesting people and intriguing opportunities that I ended up staying in the city for a month and a half! At the beginning of November I was still heavily involved in various activities with the local Rotary clubs – including a few more presentations, a fundraising event at an art gallery, and a fundraising regatta (i.e. sailboat race). Many of the boats were top of the line (i.e. ridiculously expensive) racing boats donated for the day by their owners and various (fee-paying) corporate teams had great fun racing up and down the harbour from Sydney to Manley and back (twice). All the volunteers had the opportunity to participate in the race as well, so I ended up on a boat with another Canadian ambassadorial scholar (Brandy) and a bunch of youth exchange students from various countries. Since I’d never been on a sailboat before it was a pretty exhilarating experience!
My new friend Brandy also happened to be going down to Tasmania for a week so she generously offered me the use of her flat while she was away. After more than a month in a posh pad overlooking the harbour I moved to a cute little studio apartment on a quiet tree-lined street at the edge of the red-light district (near King’s Cross/Darlinghurst). It was a great change of scene and I really appreciated having my own space for a week. Also, since Brandy is Canadian and lived in Banff before coming to Oz, I instantly felt 'at home' in her place ~ shared culture is a funny and subtle thing. I baked another batch of muffins and continued exploring the city and beaches by bus and train. At one point I almost got recruited into a self-development cult targetting successful but unsatisfied professionals – fascinating experience, but freaky. The 'introduction' was a three-hour hard sell that employed every linguistic, emotional, and psychological tactic in the book to get people to sign up for an intense 3-day $500 brainwashing session... I also discovered a few secrets to surviving in the city on a limited budget, including $1 sushi rolls at Wynard station between 5:30-6:30pm, yum!
One of the main reasons I chose to stay in Sydney until mid-November was so I could help out with a youth project organized by members of the Sydney Rotary club called “Your City†where they bring a group of young people (around 15 years old) from low-income families in various remote rural communities down to Sydney for an inspiring and empowering week of workshops and activities. Some of these kids had never been to the city before, never seen the beach, and never been in an elevator – so the point of the program is basically to broaden their horizons a bit and expose them to new ideas and opportunities they wouldn’t necessarily hear about at home. I was asked to give a 50 minute presentation about some of my experiences, what inspired me, and what I’d learned from them, etc.
Later that evening I went to another massive Rotary fundraising event, this time for Nathan’s Bequest – a charity set up to increase public awareness and support research into youth depression and mental illness. (It was established after Nathan, the popular, intelligent, and successful son of a local Rotarian chose to step off the side of the Harbour Bridge and end his own life). The fundraiser was a formal dinner ($175/person) with a performance by the Sydney Street Choir (made up entirely of homeless people) and a presentation by a professor from the Brain and Mind Research Institute associated with Sydney University. I was at the District Governor’s table, so I had the opportunity to meet the former Speaker of the House for the New South Wales parliament and I had a very nice chat with the former Consul General of Fiji and his wife. I also learned a lot more about depression and mental illness. They sold raffle tickets ($50 for 10) all night as a way to raise more money and gave away a number of great prizes, but it was the live auction at the end that really amazed me ~ somehow the auctioneer was able to get $2300 for a PEN. Yes, a pen, used by a well-known and respected Supreme Court justice (Michael Kirby), but still ~ a pen?! Almost every item went for over $2000, from designer sunglasses to a painting by an aboriginal artist, to a fully-stocked wine cooler… I’ve never seen anything like it. The next day I went to another Rotary meeting in order to hear a presentation by the current Consul General of the USA and learn a bit more about what a career diplomat actually does, and I enjoyed seeing how she handled a few particularly tricky/challenging questions from the audience.
After that I chose to take a break from Rotary for a bit, and at the end of the week I took a four-hour train journey out of the city and gradually began WWOOFing my way North. For anyone who has never heard of it, WWOOF = Willing Workers on Organic Farms, and for a small membership fee ($55 here in Oz) you get a book full of contacts all over the country where you can do volunteer work in exchange for room and board. They’re not all farms, and the first place that caught my eye was the “Association for Yoga in Daily Life,†which has several urban centres throughout Australia and also a large patch of pristine bushland that they are planning to develop into a retreat centre. So after corresponding with them by email I decided to take the train to the tiny rural town of Dungog (pop. 2000), where I was met by their wonderful caretaker ~ Sukhdev, an Aussie bloke in his early 40’s with a huge bushy gray beard and smiley eyes who was waiting barefoot on the platform when I arrived. He promptly took me for a swim in the local creek, in clear water dyed dark brown by the surrounding Eucalypt forest, and then drove me home through a neighbour’s cattle farm and up a steep (almost non-existent) 4WD track onto their property, which is where I spent the next seven days.
The facilities were very basic, but it felt soooo good to finally get out of the city! There was just a simple covered cooking area with three walls and one side that opened onto a little deck. Other than that we were basically living outside in a grassy clearing surrounded by 640 acres of dense forest on top of a mountain! Rainwater was captured from the roof and stored in three large tanks for drinking, cooking, cleaning, etc; the 'composting' toilet was just a wooden seat over a hole in the ground; and the shower was a canvas bag full of rainwater hanging from a tree. Sukhdev had been living up there on his own for the past five months in a little caravan (trailer), so he was pretty happy to have some company, and he was able to provide a tent and sleeping bag for me. It was pretty cold and windy up there, so I was pleased I packed my toque and gloves, and later in the week we had some incredible thunderstorms that made it seem as if the entire kitchen structure was being put through a car-wash. But it was hot and sunny most days, and as we sat around the fire on a clear evening I was mesmerized by the sight of a billion unfamiliar stars overhead…
I arrived on a Saturday, so Sukhdev and I were together for the first day and a half, but during the week he went down into town to work (as a school-bus driver/ mechanic), so I was left on my own, alone in the bush, from 6:45am – 6pm every day! I generally woke up around 6:30am because the crazy chorus of mysterious sounds from the forest was impossible to ignore, and after Sukhdev left for the day I would spend the first few hours stretching or doing a bit of yoga and meditation before breakfast. Sometimes I read one of Sukhdev’s yoga/meditation books or wrote in my journal, and at some point during the day I’d do 4-5 hours of work, which could be anything from clearing overhanging brush from one of the old roads to hauling chopped timber into big slash piles for burning, or expanding the veggie patch, mowing the grass, and sanding old shelving in preparation for varnishing. It was absolutely wonderful to be outside in the sunshine (or rain) and fresh air all day, and I found the work itself tremendously satisfying because I was using my body more than my mind and engaged in a simple task with a clear goal and obvious visible results. (Essentially, all the things I’d missed and wished for towards the end of my PhD!)
That week in the woods was also the most spiritual and introspective part of my journey so far, and it felt like exactly what I needed. Being alone in the bush all day, everyday, was like being on my own private retreat – no people, no cars, no roads, no walls… just the wind, wildlife, and plenty of time/space for personal reflection, yoga, and meditation (+ tasty and wholesome vegetarian food). It was a tremendous opportunity to calm my mind, reconnect with my physical body, and pay more attention to the natural environment and the present moment. One morning while I was stretching a wallaby came bounding out of the bush straight at me – fast! It came within 10 feet of me before veering off sharply to the left. Later in the week I also saw a nice big goanna (4-5 feet long), which was also pretty cool..
At first I was pretty paranoid about snakes and spiders – and fair enough, because there were definitely brown snakes, red-bellied black snakes, and red-back spiders on the property – but Sukhdev was quite happy to tromp around through the long grass barefoot and assured me that snakes were more or less like bears: if they sense you coming they’ll disappear before you even see them, and the people who get bitten are usually trying to catch or kill them. However, some people are also unlucky enough to step on one before it has a chance to move, which is no good either. (Once we got the snakes and spiders out of the way he told me about the leeches, ticks, scorpions, giant centipedes, and stinging plants in the forest…)
I found that walking alone through a forest with potentially deadly snakes around is an incredibly effective mindfulness practice ~ definitely helps keep you focussed on the present moment! However, I also discovered that paranoia is ultimately unsustainable and sooner or later you just have to relax into cautious awareness and get on with things. It was interesting to repeatedly witness the emergence of fear within me – sometimes it was a cury stick on the forest floor, a swarm of flies that suddenly sounded like bees, or just an unexpected rustle in the grass – an intense little surge of adrenaline, but always caused by my own imagination or the momentary misinterpretation of my senses. Every time I did encounter one of the 'scary' creatures for real, whether it was leeches in my shoes or a tick crawling up my leg, I dealt with it calmly and easily. I saw a few big spiders, but nothing deadly, and no snakes.
After a week in the bush I felt much more centred, more grounded in my body and on the earth, more alive and awake. My mind is still cluttered and noisy, but I could finally sense it beginning to clear. It was weird to come down off the mountain – strange see cars and houses and people again – but it also felt right to keep moving North.
From Dungog I took the train an hour North to another tiny town called Gloucester (pop. 2500), where I spent just over a week WWOOFing at the Barrington Outdoor Adventure Centre, which runs guided mountain-biking and whitewater kayaking trips in the Barrington Tops (national park). Being with them reminded me a lot of my experience with Camp Outlook in Canada and I met a lot of lovely, laid-back people with a stong connection to the land. The accomodation was a bit like a hostel dorm, so I also got to spend some time with their staff and some other young travellers – including a girl from Manchester who went to university in Bangor at the same time I was there! I actually went to a party in her house once, but we'd never met before ~ small world.
The weather was hot and sunny (+35) – so it feels like summer-holidays for me! I was able to borrow a mountain-bike to explore the area every afternoon, and once again I felt right at home because I found the landscape very similar to the area around Marysville/Wasa in the East Kootenays (southeastern BC, Canada) – densly forested mountains with rolling grassland in the valleys and small sleepy towns. After a week of mowing and mulching in the organic veggie gardens I was finally able to get out on one of their day-trips down the Barrington river and do a bit of whitewater paddling on my last day there. We saw a big diamond python while paddling down the river as well.
After that I took a train/bus up to a place called McLean (pop. 15,000-ish?). More or less a random selection from the WWOOF book, but it turned out great. My hosts are a lovely couple (Rachel and Carl) who have a strawbale home, a big garden, and a lot of animals, including chickens, ducks, geese, peacocks, a pig, a goat, and a dog! Carl broke his neck in a motorcycle accident and is more or less a quadriplegic, but he is serious about permaculture and sustainable design and hasn't let that hold him back from creating the kind of life he wants to live. We've had some great educational/ inspirational conversations around the kitchen table, and as I'm out there weeding and whipper-snipping on his behalf I've become more aware of how amazing (and incredibly useful) it is that I can move my fingers, bend, twist, stretch, crawl, jump, etc., which has led to a deeper appreciation for my body. I've been living in a little caravan out back for the past five days – falling asleep to a crazy chorus of frogs and toads, and waking up each morning to the rooster, turkey, geese, and cockatoos. This afternoon I took the puppy for a walk and saw at least a dozen kangaroos bounding through a grassy clearing, which is pretty cool.
Tomorrow I'm heading off to WWOOF at a Hare Krishna farm up until the 25th – a spiritual community where I hope to get back into a bit more yoga. That will be followed by a 10-day (silent) Vipassana meditation retreat from Dec. 26th – Jan. 6th, and then I'll be WWOOFing some more at a place called the “Universal Peace Centre,†which is also a yoga/meditation centre (websites below if you're curious).
It's super hot and sunny down here, so it doesn't feel much like Christmas, but I'd like to wish you all a very happy holiday season and all the best in 2009. I won't be online much over the next few weeks, but I'd still love to hear from you so feel free to fill up my inbox while I'm off seeking inner peace.
love tom
Ps ~ in case you're curious
WWOOF info:http://www.wwoof.org
Yoga in Daily Life:
http://www.yogaindailylife.org.au/ Barrington Outdoor Adventure Centre:
http://www.verlorenzoon.nl/boac/Hare Krishna Farm:
http://www.newgovardhana.net/ Vipassana Meditation:
http://www.dhamma.orgUniversal Peace Centre:
http://www.upc.com.au
