Life on the Gold Coast

We have a room in the old house on the property of the Permaculture Gold Coast demonstration site. The house itself is in pretty bad shape-- missing glass in the windows, no hot water, and electricity only from a line run in from the neighbors. It is used as a teaching space, and several students rent (hopefully the nicer) rooms. I remind myself that it's luxurious compared to some places we could go...and maybe will go before too long!

Our room

The site itself is covered in fertile garden beds, made with compost prepared from local inputs. The beds curve around on the contour of the property, and grow a variety of greens, veggies and vines. There are a couple of large shade trees, under which are chairs and benches. Bamboo trellises poke up from  the greenery.

Bees and plants

Charles and Justin come in most mornings, and direct the garden work as well as the teaching that goes on. Shawn and I try our best to help and learn while the experts are onsite.But mostly the guys talk Permaculture and I don't really feel like I can join in those higher-level talks. One day I got to help spread apart/transplant some "rocket", an arugula like green. But most of the garden work is directed by Charles, and done by his "volunteers."

The first Saturday is a big Workshop Day. It's a bit chaotic and I don't know what to do to help, or what is expected to me. Shawn is busy setting up for the compost part of the workshop, and I am feeling a little lost. I find it difficult sometimes, to be so far "out of my element"-- and at one point everything seemed a little overwhelming. But I got my shit together and joined in the "growing seedlings" workshop, being given by Sara, a lovely, soft-spoken woman with a delightful, calming manner about her. After that, Shawn gets to help Justin teach the Composting section of the workshop. It ended up being a busy but fun day.

During the week, we were lucky enough to get most afternoons to ourselves- and we took full advantage of being so close to beautiful beaches. It's about a 20 minute walk to the beach at Surfer's Paradise, which is breathtaking. Vast expanses of light, fine sand and blue-green waves crashing in. I have never "swam" in such waves! The ocean in Miami and San Diego was not like this. We had such fun playing, diving over and under the waves, and trying to "body-surf" them. It was exhausting but exhilarating.

We stopped for dinner on the way home from the beach a few times-- our favorite place was a little Seafood restaurant on the main drag on Chevron Island. We also enjoyed a wonderful pizza on our last night at GCP. Dinners cooked at home were a bit rustic-- the propane burner was in the outdoor kitchen, and cooking utensils were primitive. But I managed to put together a few nice meals using greens, herbs, and okra from the garden, along with beans and cous-cous and a few things we picked up at the store. We were able to enjoy fresh eggs a couple times from the "house chickens" as well.

On the last day, Shawn and I helped Dan and Oliver (a WOOFer) build a "shade house" or nursery for starting plants. Unlike in WI, where we need greenhouses to provide warmth in the winter, the tropical climate requires shaded places to protect baby plants from the harsher sun and heat. Using materials found on site, and after endless-seeming discussions about it's design, we ended up with a very lovely nursery. Shawn's visions, ideas and leadership were appreciated by all. (Dan asked me jokingly whether the sound of Shawn's brain humming kept me awake at night!)

We thoroughly enjoyed our 10 day stay at Permaculture Gold Coast. We met some lovely people, and were impressed with the efforts and knowledge of Charles, Justin and everyone involved. There are a lot of opportunities for this sort of thing in urban settings all over the world. Hopefully this is just the beginning.

Arrival at Permaculture Gold Coast

The primary reason for our trip is the study of Permaculture. Shawn's involvement with this 'movement' (for lack of a better term) has been ongoing for several years; he spent 3 months in Australia in late 2010 at a Permaculture internship. Permaculture as an entity is pretty new to me, but many of the basic principles are quite familiar. It is basically a way of living that attempts to work with natural systems in order to produce food, goods and other needs of humans. It is about community, low-impact technology and working with nature instead of against it. (I will no doubt be including much more on Permaculture as this blog develops; in the meantime, do a google search and see what comes up.)

Our "plan," so much as there is one, is to visit and work on several renowned Permaculture demonstration sites across Australia (where the movement was born), New Zealand and possibly elsewhere in the world as opportunities present themselves. As a start, we are visiting a relatively new site, Permaculture Gold Coast, which was co-founded by an Aussie friend of Shawn's, and who invited us here. It is a site focused on Urban Permaculture, and has made some interesting inroads into community involvement. For example, a great deal of the garden work is done using unemployed people who are on the "work for the dole" program. They also receive many compost inputs from the community including wood chips from municipal maintenance, lake weeds removed form the local river/canal system, and coffee grounds from coffee shops. These materials are then used for compost to grow food, thus staying out of the waste stream. Win-win.

Sine we don't have a phone on this trip, Shawn's only method to contact our host, Charles, is via email or facebook. So we are not entirely confident that he is aware of our impending arrival. Fortunately there is free wi fi on the train. We also chatted with a helpful local who gave us some advice on ground transportation to where we need to get to from  the train station. (And his advice was spot-on: the timing and cost of the cab ride was as he told us.)

Permaculture Gold Coast is on a busy road. There is a Toyota dealer across the street. There is a large front fence, painted a cheery red, with hand lettered signs and graphics. We drag our bags into the yard, and are faced with a veritable jungle, along with 3 "chicken tractors" and numerous large piles of gravel and broken asphalt. There is no clear pathway to the main building, so we leave our bags near the chickens and wind our way between rich-looking raised garden beds, around trees and through a vine-covered arbor. We can see people in the "house" as we approach-- it looks like a small class is going on. Charles catches sight of Shawn through the doorway and pauses his teaching to greet us warmly.

Charles shows us around, bags are fetched and put into the room in which we will be staying. The house itself is a bit ramshackle; bare concrete floors, glass missing in many windows. Our room is bare with one large half-glassed window in the front, and a higher half-glassed window on one side. The walls are painted blue and the floor a cheery pink. Ants march along the walls from the wormwood bush that is poking in through the front window. There is indoor plumbing, but no hot water. I admit, I am freaking out a little bit at this point, though I knew we would be living 'rough.'

Our window on the lower left 

Me at the front gate

We met Cam and Mel, two Uni students who rent rooms here. They are warm and friendly, and very helpful in procuring some things that we will need in order to make our stay more comfortable. By evening, we have a boxspring and mattress scavenged from the "store room", and I have found a broom to sweep the floor. Cam took us to a couple of local stores in search of a mosquito net for the bed, and we get the last one at Anaconda, a big camp-store. Our lodgings are looking very cozy by bedtime.

Madison, WI to Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

I meant to fill in some more background, about how I got here, but for now I will just pick up where we are. The past couple of weeks have been somewhat of a blur. After a brief visit with a friend in Mesa, who put us up with such grace, style and love (thank you again, Christina), we spent a lovely relaxing week in Roosevelt, Arizona, with Shawn's parents, including a visit from his oldest sister and her husband. The trip from Phoenix to Roosevelt in our intrepid little rental car was a bit more "exciting" than we anticipated. Pro Tip: When the lady from Alaska tells you that the road you are taking is a bit rough and maybe best not traveled after dark, believe her. ;) Almost 40 miles of narrow mountain roads with hairpin turns, including 22 miles of single-lane gravel "washboard" road complete with multiple one-lane bridges later, we arrived safely at the RV park and were greeted with love and a spaghetti dinner. Our "honeymoon cabin" was the camper on the back of the truck, and it was quite blissful. We saw the sights of the desert, seguaro cactus, cliff dwellings and red rock canyons, between eating, drinking and merry socializing. We definitely plan on spending more time in that area when we can.

Me and my sister-in-law Raeanna

Right before hitting the Apache Trail...beware dotted-line "roads" on maps.

Being one with the Seguaro

On 11 March, we set off from the Phoenix airport, en route to Brisbane, Australia, via Los Angeles, Fiji, and Sydney. About 40 hours from start to finish. Fortunately, Air Pacific and Qantas take much better care of their passengers than modern U.S. domestic airlines currently do. We met some interesting people on the flights, including a lovely Canadian woman who home-schools, and an Englishwoman who lives in Germany and who is the author of a book entitled "Cooking Weeds." International travelers do seem quite different from the Americans I am used to seeing on domestic flights in the states. It might just be my own observational bias, but people seemed more calmly friendly, less wealthy (in general) and, in the relatively small sample we had more than passing contact with, more liberal in their view of society and the world.

Fiji airport

We arrived in Brisbane late on Tuesday afternoon, 13 March. We had decided to get a hotel in the city, and  to have a nice dinner and a good night's sleep before striking out for Gold Coast on Wednesday. Using the various resources available at the airport, we found a place, made a call from the courtesy phone and took the train to the city center.

The hotel was a small B & B type place; we had requested the "en suite" room-- having our own bathroom was really important at this stop, since it was a luxury we would not be enjoying again for some time. Shawn had managed to sleep a bit more in the air than I had, but both of us were quite sleep deprived, not to mention time-zone-scrambled. Our hotel was walking distance to a major shopping and entertainment district, so we got to see some of Brisbane night life (for a Tuesday night anyway) and had dinner in an outdoor cafe. Seafood reigns on the coast, so we had calamari and a seafood pizza. The food was ok, and the service marginal, but we enjoyed the ambiance and were pretty hungry, so it seemed wonderful to our dazed selves.

We took full advantage of all that our hotel offered us-- a firm and comfy bed, air conditioning, a beautiful new bathroom and shower, and electricity to charge all the electronics up fully. After a solid sleep, we had breakfast in our room, consisting of toast, cereal ("Rice Bubbles" complete with Snap, Crackle and Pop on the box), orange juice, tea and instant coffee. Check-out time was 9:30, so we packed up and stowed our bags in a storage room at the hotel, so we could go back downtown to the Telestra store to get a mobile WiFi hotspot device, that will serve as our connection to the world wherever we can get cell signal. Then, back to the train station with our 150 pounds of luggage (downhill this time, thankfully) to catch the train from Brisbane to Gold Coast.

New Beginnings, background part 3

We met on the day his divorce was final. He was still wearing the clothes he wore into court that afternoon. We knew immediately that we would not be "just friends."

He had many plans already put into place when we met. Closing his Adult Family Home business and moving the two special-needs adults he cared for ("the ladies") to a new home, selling almost everything at an estate auction, selling the farm property. I drove up every weekend (aside from the original planned first-meeting weekend when he stopped in Madison on his way to visit a friend in Indiana) and we spent every minute we could together, caring for the Ladies and preparing for the auction. It was a beautiful time of year, and we managed to enjoy it despite having so much to do. Time went by very quickly.

His plan had been to go to Australia, via Alaska (where his parents live) as soon as the farm was sold. In mid-September, after the auction, he came to stay with me in my little apartment in Madison. We decided to take the Alaska road-trip anyway-- we would drive out, leave/sell the car as had been his original plan, I would fly back and he would return to Wisconsin with his parents who would begin their southern roamings at the end of October. We spent the first 3 weeks in October on the road and in Fairbanks and had an incredible time. We drove and camped along the way with no real itinerary. It was a wonderful time.

Back in WI the farm sale was having some unexpected twists. We spent a couple weekends up there, tying up loose ends. It finally sold at the end of November. Meanwhile we were just enjoying our little routine in Madison-- he walked me to work each morning, picked me up in the afternoon. In between he worked on various projects, did some housekeeping and went running or biking. He accompanied me to the stable to ride, and helped tack and groom my horse. Life was pleasant and very comfortable.

I don't remember when we began talking about me going to Australia with him-- it just evolved. I had five months of sabbatical leave accumulated, and I put in a request to use it starting February 1. We tried to figure out a plan for the trip and returning-- whether or not to sublet the apartment or keep it, who could take my elderly cat. When the sabbatical request was denied, there really wasn't much question of whether I would go to Australia or not. I turned in my resignation on Feb 1, and gave 4 weeks' notice.

So here I sit, in the office I have had for 10 years, in a building I have worked in since 1988. It is my last day here. I have been saying a lot of good-byes, turning over projects and responsibilities and still tying up a few loose ends in my life. This weekend will be spent packing and moving everything into storage. Monday we fly out of Madison. I do not know when I will be back.

New Beginnings, background continued.

The first message I received from this man who lived 4 hours away, way way "up north" was friendly. He complimented my user name, told me about his daughter's horses. I responded, a day or two later, mostly because he had a nice smile. He was relatively new to this rather bizarre world of online dating, and I wanted to give him some encouragement. (Despite my mixed experiences.) We exchanged a few messages, but even now, looking back at them and the emails that followed, I can't really pinpoint the moment when things changed from a lighthearted conversation with someone I was unlikely to meet, to Something Much More Important.

Within a couple of weeks we exchanged phone numbers. The first time we talked, the conversation lasted 3 hours, that felt like five minutes. We talked about everything and anything. Science, politics, religeon, funny childhood stories, what we were cooking for dinner. Somewhere around this time, the possibility of a meeting came up. He was planning a long weekend trip that would bring him near Madison...we could meet for dinner. He would need a place to stay the night in town. I gave it 24 hours of thought and offered my sofa. He accepted. The trip was 3 or 4 weeks away. Three hour phone calls became a daily occurance, and evolved into nightly Skype "dates." We kept in touch throughout the days via text and Google chat. There was so much to share and talk about! Within a week of planning our first meeting, we decided that we could  manage a get together at his farm a week sooner.

All this while we kept reminding ourselves that we could not be falling in love until we met in person...that there might not be any chemistry, that we might just end up being good friends. Also, that the whole distance issue was about to be complicated by his planned move halfway around the world. But the pull was becoming so strong, we decided to just see what would happen...

Now I realize, at this point, this might sound a bit crazy. I know it did to me. But I have a fair bit of experience with the online thing, and had recent opportunities to further hone my bullshit-detector. No alarms were going off whatsoever. Google-stalking produced nothing concerning, and everything I found matched up with what I had been told. He had met and chatted with several of my friends on Facebook, and everyone knew where I was going for the weekend. I had every intention of not sticking around if my 'gut' told me that soemthing did not feel right when I got there, or at any time during my stay.

So after several more weeks of phone, text and Skype, I hit the road one lovely summer Thursday evening after work and drove four hours north. We kept in touch during my drive, and he met me out on the road in front of his tree-lined rural property. I parked my car, stepped out and we embraced, locking eyes then lips. Chemistry: check.

New Beginnings: Background 1

I have been meaning to get started with this blog for a while now. But things in my life have been happening so fast these past few months, time has gotten away from me. So here I sit, in my newly-nearly-empty office, on my second-to-last day of work (after a 23+ year career in the same place) trying to figure out what I could possibly say that anyone could find interesting! I guess I should start with a little background...

I am 45 years old and have led a fairly 'conventional' life, or at least it seemed so to me. I had not married and had kids like most of my peers; I took the 'career' path, starting with a job in my chosen field (microbiology) right out of college. But my day-to-day life was fairly typical. I worked in a Public Health laboratory on a major University campus, regular hours, Monday-Friday. I rode public transportation or walked to work. Much of my non-work time was spent pursuing my avocation, horses, specifically dressage riding. I spent time with friends, and had several monogamous relationships of varying lengths, with men of varying degrees of unsuitability. Though I had my ups and downs, I was mostly happy. Comfortable. Fairly resigned to staying at my job for the dozen or so more years necessary to earn my retirement.

Late fall 2010, my relationship of 3 or so years was tanking, badly. "On-again-off-again" was mostly Off. After trying my heart out for so long, I was done, really, but something (boredom? laziness?) kept letting me get sucked back in. So, initially as a diversion to keep me from the one who was clearly not the one, I joined a free online dating site. Over the next six months or so I met quite a few interesting people, and a few lying assholes. The information available on the site I was using allowed me to fairly easily weed out most people I would be totally incompatible with, and I was approaching things with an open mind. There were very few guys I would not have had a second (or third) date with, but vanishingly few who felt the same about me. (And the ones that did usually had a predictable agenda.) So overall it was fun, if at times a bit frustrating, with a few minor heartaches thrown in.

In mid July, after being blown off by someone I had thought was a "nice guy" and getting rejected for a second date by one I had some hope for, I was feeling a bit blue. I was staying with some friends who had AC during a bit of a heatwave, and declared that I was pretty close to giving up. Or some such hyperbole. There was one guy I had exchanged a couple of messages with, but since he lived 4 hours away, and was planning a move halfway around the world soon, I had not given him much thought as a possibility. He also did not score as high on the "match percentage" as most of the guys I had met, and declared himself a "christian" in several of the questions, which is usually a red flag for me. But....the more we talked, and as the website messaging went to regular email, then to the phone and later to Skype, I started to look at things a little differently... T.B.C.