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Published: July 13th 2009
....I haven't done a great job writing on this blog and giving news lately but i will try to share a little bit what went on for the past 3 months in Australia, I got so many things to say that i find myself at a loss for words & a bit spaced out when i try to write about these things that i saw, experienced and felt at different moments thru this last journey......
......to begin with, i have to say Melbourne is an incredible vibrant city, absolutely artistic & alternative, full of beautiful luscious parks, street art, hidden bars & cafes in some of the city's famous laneways, some neighborhoods carry funny chic names such as Windsor, Preston, Carlton, etc...There's an evident difference between Northern & Southern neighborhoods in Melbourne, In the north, there's Fitzroy & Collingwood - the bohemian quarter filled with interesing places & characters, which sudenly became my favourite hang out place...Carlton is the traditional home of Melbourne's Italians and the University of Melbourne where i visited few times to ask for jobs at the restaurants, also i visited few times the juggling club at the university where i met & hung out with some
nice people....then the city centre, which is a business district with the typical rushing without falling into madness, i spent most of my time at the national library where i could check the internet for free and enjoy this beautiful place with green gardens where lots of people sit outside to enjoy the sun, eat a snack & mingle, a fantastic lounge with many interesting magazines photography, traveling, art, world news, etc...There was also the southern neighborhoods, South Yarra a well-to-do place clean & tidy & St Kilda which i read was supposed to be the closest thing to a red light district, but to be honest, never gave me that impression, some people hanging out in the streets on a permanent basis, and few dodgy scenes but nothing alarming or worth calling red-light district...
....I stayed with my friend Emily who i met while living at "the Sunshine House" in Greece, then to my surprise i found myself going to Australia after a long inner debate and ended up sharing & living with her for about a month. Emily was incredibly special, opened the doors of her home, helped me out to get started with a bar job
during the weekends, made sure everything was running smoothly, & touched me with so much kindness & care....The feeling of living in a house & knowing that i was probably going to stick around for a while in one place was so encouraging. It only took me couple of days to fall in love with Melbourne, even though it is a city, it has a nice healthy vibe about it, so many beautiful parks, people cycling & walking everywhere, i felt general friendliness & happiness around as opposed to other cities....
....I used to wake up early every day, grab my bag with a bunch of printing resumes, and hit the streets, walked for hours & hours, all over the place, from the southern to the northern neighborhoods asking for jobs, did many different trials in restaurants but never ended up having something stable, i figured i couldn't just spend my days looking for jobs, that i had the energy and the desire to actually work, so i started volunteering at "lentil as anything",
which is a vegetarian non-profit restaurant ran mainly by volunteers, refugees & new immigrants with a donation system. I became a volunteer "on call" between the one in St.Kilda (South) & the one at the convent in Collingwood (North), I met great people, learnt to make coffees & chai tea, and felt i had a place where i could always stop to help, hang out with friends and have a warm meal cooked with love.....I also carried my massage mat with me and was fortunate enough to give some massages upon donation....
....I loved spending time at the library, sitting in the gardens, watching people busking in the streets from guitar players, bands releasing new albums, magicians, violinist, artists in general....I also met James who's also part of couchsurfing project, i ended up staying few times on and off at his couch, he introduced me to really good friends of his, and took me to few very interesting alternative parties & get togethers, i was introduced to this world of freedom and anti-typical gay parties at a place called the "old bar" in Fitzroy decorated with old bottles, furniture and vintage games, people were definetely not shy about being different, from the way they dressed to the way they behaved, a very diverse night with a live band playing music i can't even
describe, this was a genre absolutely unknown to me up to this day, i felt this excitement tingling all over my body and this incredible freedom, for the first time in my life i walked into a total different place without the usual "look-downs" & sterotypes, what can i say, i felt free to exist & be whomever i wanted to be or just myself....Another day, James & I went walking in the street without major expectations and ran into a series of galleries that were opening up, providing refreshments and a glimpse of very interesting art, everyday was a different experience & a different unexpected reward walking around this neighborhood.....James became a very good friend, we spent good times together and i thank him for showing me a different side of the world....
Then it came the time of my first Festival in Australia:
CONFEST Down-to-Earth,
a bush camp-out alternative life-style festival that also works as a social experiment bringing people together for about 25 years. This was a 5 day healing festival in a town callend Delinquin about 6 hrs from Melbourne, Victoria right past the border into New South Wales. This was definetely a melting pot of diverse worldviews, this festival was more about workshops held on all aspects of well-being such as: massage, meditation, yoga, tantric exercises, past lives regressions, dreams, heart circles, building true communities, self-sufficiency, tarot, astrology, paganism, vegetarianism and music. all these great workshops were run on a self-organising do-it-yourself basis with a big white board on the information site where you could right down the name of the village and the time the workshop was going to take place. There was also an open-stage with some psy-music during one of the nights, an experimental silent disco with psy-trance music blasting from people's headphones, drum circles went on every evening along Fire twirling. There were different villages depending on the interest: Bisexual village, Bliss Village, the Art Village which had a communal hot tub, steam room, body painting and a massage area....It was great to see how many families and kids were hanging out and enjoying themselves specially because Confest does not tolerate abuse of drugs and alcohol encouraging instead a very healthy living type of vibe. Of course, there was some of it around but it wasn't focused on it....absolute freedom was on the menu every day, people were free
to go naked if they wanted and just "be".....
....This was by far the best festival i have ever experienced, the time went fast & soon enough i was heading back to Melbourne with my friend Zelda to keep on trying my luck and see if i could get a stable job to stay in this place. Few days after, my brother Denis met a french couple that previously picked beans & peas in Melbourne & shared with him the phone number of this Philipino guy who i met in Gippsland and later on started working with, without giving it much thought i packed up again, took the train to this town about 2 hrs from Melbourne and ended up living with this Philipine family that worked as contractors for a farm that cultivated beans, peas, & corn. I had nothing to lose, let go of any expectations and ended up sleeping in the family's couch and working with them for 2 weeks, the days were long and a bit boring because i could not understand their language and i missed out on many jokes and laughing moments (which are my favorites!!!), staying on my knees for so many
hours wasn't a good idea until i just couldn't do it anymore, my knees were yielling at me to stop it, the family was great though, they fed me, took care of me, and drove me to the farm along few other Philipine guys, i was rewarded with beautiful landscapes and fresh air, after 2 weeks i decided i couldn't do it anymore but before that, a very kind and gently Philippine lady friend of this family suddenly took me out of their house to hers where i spent a wonderful weekend, she provided an abundance of nourishing food, a warm cozy bed and many great conversations, she was married to a gentle english man who rushed off to show me pictures of this European tour he did on his bicycle when he was my age & shared this excitement of traveling together through his pictures....for the end of my short visit, they took us for a pic-nic and riding this amazing Puffing billy railway through a luscious forest
.....Ohhh this was truly an unexpected event & to my surprise my brother Denis calls me and tells me he just got me a job planting trees with him & Lacky up in north Queensland......!!!!!
PART II - PLANTING TREES IN QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA ....So i went up to meet them on May 4th, i was really excited with the idea of seeing them both again, we met in Pai, Thailand while i was volunteering at the organic farm: Tacomepai, they left in December to go to Australia to pick melons, then Lacky left the melons for his 2nd season of planting and Denis followed up. Denis call was a huge relief, i had just decided not to pick more peas & had no idea what to do. Fortunately, it seemed that everything was arranged for me in a way that i could work with them so i went back to Emily's place, told her the news and packed up again to the North of Australia....I was picked at the airport by Henry, the district manager of the contractor company that does the planting and ferting of a bigger tree company, he was an incredible man, we drove 2 hours to a little town called Tally where the camp base was, during the trip he told me so many stories about his many travels hitch-hiking from Canada to Brasil
with $125 in his pocket, all the adventures he lived during this time, places he lived, jobs he worked, and just crazy crazy stories that kept me hooked and very attentive, he is a good, hardworking man, free-spirit brother with an amazing flexibility, he had previously visited Costa Rica and many other Latin countries and perfectly understood what i was living at the moment....The next day i met Lacky & Denis at the camp site, we celebrated Lacky's birthday, then my birthday the next day with banana pancakes & a delicious vegetalble/Kanguroo curry all cooked by the bom fire, which later on became our hang out spot at the site. We were living in a big farm house, some people slept in the rooms and some other people camp out in the property. Spending the birthday with my brothers and knowing that i had a job for the rest of my stay in Australia was such a blessing, we had a wonderful time together, although it took me about 2 weeks to land & get into rythm....
....Everyday we usually woke up at 4:30am, made tea, had some solid breakfast, dressed for the outdoors and warmed up by the
fire until the crew boss called for everybody to pick the planting or ferting belts, with planting we usually carried 1 trey of 40 trees in each side and with ferting 1 bag of 7.5 Kilos in each side, then we all got into one of the cars and gone for the day to whatever paddic he took us, one thing i learned very well in this job is that everything chances, every day, every minute, every second, nothing was never for certain, the paddics, the job, the hours, the state of the ground, everything changed, even when i was planting some times we would have a really nice creamy ground, walked 100 meters and everything changed drastically for a hard clumpy one.....Every day we pretty much had to cope with extreme outdoor situations, the first two weeks was cold, raining and many times i saw myself sinking in huge puddles of mud specially when carrying the fertilizer bags which weighted about 15 kilos, it was soul-breaking, the first two weeks were exhausting, i couldn't believe the job was so hardcore and my mind started playing big tricks on me, fortunately i had Lacky & Denis who gave me strength
every day & all their support, they made me laugh and encourage me not to give up, to use this experience as a mind test & end up the day with the satisfaction that i made it through, my first two weeks was pretty much like this working to survive the day, after a while, things starting changing, i started picking up a bit and having a constant rythm, more energy and motivation, every day was a big challenge, we never knew what we were going to run into, most of the time worked till 2:30pm and barely took breaks, maybe to eat an apple or energy bar, drinking lots of water, and cooking big meals only when we got back home....
....The crew boss Suenje was a really fun Australian/German guy, he used to crack jokes all the time & Lacky was his perfect partner in crime,the crew was about 10-12 people everyone with a very unique personality, which made it really fun, i became good friend with John, a British guy who seemed really shy at the beginning but then let loose and cracked us up with his funny morbid humor, we used to play jokes in
the paddics, throw balls of mud to each other, dead-trees fights, and all kinds of games, we became totally child-like, i guess this was our way to have fun and forget a little bit the details of the job hehehehehe....The truth is every day was exhausting, but sharing this incredible brotherhood with these special friends was everyday's reward, cooking together, telling each other stories, sitting by the fire, opening up & sharing our little words, listening to music, feeling the breeze in the paddics, being amazed by the different landscapes, etc. was priceless.....
...There's so many stories & emotions that went on in the paddic that i can't seem to convey with words, i guess they will just remain deep inside. After planting approximately 25,208 trees, i will definetely remember this job as one of the hardest things i have ever done in my life and the one that has taught me great lessons about patience, defeating my mind, and finding peace, contentment & happiness whatever my circumstances are in a particular time...
...We pretty much ended up this chapter at "Winter Solstice Festival" in Queensland, 4 day bush festival, with great people, lots of dancing, playing, swimming,
sharing and tripping ;-)
This is a long update, but really wanted to share it and make you all part of it, now i am in Thailand for the last 10 days, i will be visiting some markets and hopefully buying some merchandise to take back to Europe on July 21st, ideally, i will be able to become part of a little street market, I will be going to France to spend some time with a couple of friends, then leaving everything to the unexpected, keeping it fresh, young & alive..........
UN ENORME ABRAZO BIEN APRETADO Y CARGADO CON MUCHA ENERGIA, siempre pensandolos mucho, extranandoles, esperando que la vida les traiga sorpresas cada dia y feliz de tener noticias y saber que todos van bien, pa'lante y fuertes fuertes!!!!
......Hasta muy muy pronto!!!!
Andres ;-)
PS: There's 5 pages of pictures at the very bottom of the journal :-)
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