Monday, March 17, 2008

WWOOF



Mt Burrell, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Last monday I started my first wwoof experience. My hosts Rico and Tomo live on a beautiful piece of land with superb views of Mt Warning, Mt Burrell and the Border Ranges. On this big pice of land they have a house and 2 separate dwellings, a vegetable garden, a lush subtropical garden, a large piece of rain forrest and a few meadows for cows and horses. I stayed in one of the separate dwellings, 'the studio' and had my own balcony and hammock with ever changing views of Mt Burrell. As a wwoofer I was expected to work 4-5 hours a day and my work there was mainly pulling out weeds. Weeding here is on a totally different level from weeding at home though. It seems that almost every single plant that was introduced by the white man in Australia, like morning glory and blackberry bushes, has adjusted to this climate so well that it is growing like some kind of monster plant. Many of these plants look beautiful but threaten the survival of local plants. But I have to admit, working in a garden like this, even for only 4-5 hours a day is quite exhausting.
And as enchanting as this place may look, it is obviously not easy to live here. The area around here is known as a place with lots of alternative communities, many of them professing right livelihood, love and peace, but according to my hosts in reality it is more like a war zone. Apparently under the surface a lot of power games are being played. And it has disappointed my hosts so much they are considering to sell everything and move somewhere else.
The centre of the whole area is Nimbin, and that's where I am right now. Nimbin is a small village, a few hundred people live here. After Byron Bay, which used to be the alternative capital of Australia, turned more and more mainstream, commercial and touristy, a lot of the alternative people moved into the hinterland and some declared Nimbin to be the real alternative capital. My wwoof hosts called Nimbin the centre of the circus and compared it to a wild west town, and I can understand why. Nimbin is a very colorful little town, all the facades of the shops have these flower power murals and many of the people here are freaks and low lives (I'm sure there are some really nice people here too, but it seems that these communities with lots of freedom and no rules attract a lot of weird people) . They look like they are stuck in the 60's with their rainbow colored clothes and bare feet and for some reason it's very fashionable not to wash your hair for at least 2 months. It only takes 3 minutes to walk through the town, but you'll definitely be offered to buy weed at least 4 times. When the receptionist of the hostel I'm staying at showed me around the property he told me that 'off course people are going to smoke weed here, but we have a little space in the back where non-smokers can sit', which somehow sounded so surreal and completely wrong to me.
Anyway I'll be out of here as soon as possible as this is not really my scene. I was kind of stuck in Nimbin for 2 days because there was no public transport to Murwillumbah in the weekend, but tomorrow I'll be heading back to normality. It was interesting seeing Nimbin, but it has left me wondering if it is impossible to have an alternative community that is not stuck in the 60's or 70's, but lives in the now.




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