naughty nimbin
a cacophony of feeding beasts wails in the descending darkness: frogs, crickets, birds, bats, and unknown nocturnal creatures make themselves heard as the day recedes and they assume their territories. i am walking up the short path from my studio bedroom to the main house, hair wet, cool in the fresh air, skin scrubbed clean from a glorious post-work shower. today was the dirtiest yet.
we are in nimbin, pot capital of australia, where the grass is green, my friends, and the hippies abound. what began as an age of aquarius festival in 1973 continued as a settlement and remains today a full-fledged community; some are drawn here by the alternative lifestyle, while others simply never left the good-time party. so we are here, not for the special “nimbin cookies” (which i hear are seriously good), but to take a good long break from the mainstream commercial bullshit of the tourist traps. we are wwoofing for a family with two kids, the youngest being a little bean of 3 who floats around proclaiming herself to be cinderellatinkerbell and tacking ‘naughty’ onto the end of her sentences, as in: “i want a glass of milk naughty” and “where’s my undies naughty”–the kids run around half-naked, come on, it’s hot here and they’re hippies-in-training. the house lies 5 minutes out of town (“town” being the main street with its cornerstone Emporium health foods, Hemp Cafe, and Bringabong, to name a few), surrounded by lush mountains and tropical trees, with a brand new lap pool we are helping to make nice-nice. it’s a gorgeous place, and in full process of being made gorgeouser (with the help of our willing hands, thank you). it’s been 2 weeks so far and we’re thinkin’, let’s stretch this till christmas shall we?
the heat has been turned up a few notches so what was a passably warm morning to work through last week has become a swelterfest by 10 am and we’re just not up to it. so today we just hung our hats and waited for the heat to burn off by reading in the hammocks and dozing. by 5 pm we had our work gloves back on and shovels at the ready. picture this scene: i am standing ankle-deep and barefoot in a huge pile of sun-warmed soil, heaving shovelful after shovelful into the reverse “wheelbarrow-of-plenty”–dom is so fast running them up the hill, as soon as i fill one up, he’s back with an empty one. so i focus on bending my knees, and the sweat is trickling down my back, and i’m humming some beatles tune when suddenly my thoughts drift to the accounting office i worked at in montreal, and i wonder if it’s business as usual over there under those cold fluorescent lights. probably. and nobody is covered in dirt breaking their back trying to lift another heavy load and bend your knees dammit oh god this is getting tiring–but then the sun is setting and something is keeping dom up there so i take a break and turn around to face that tell-tale sunset glow on the cliffs and green slopes, and i breathe deeply in, and out–yep. just another day at the office.
the promise of food is making my stomach growl in anticipation, and what do you know, “one more shovel” actually becomes “ok last one!” and that’s it, wipe the sweat from my brow, plant the shovel deep in the mud-mound, and hightail it to the house where a delicious shower and meal await. we’ve joked about staying for our whole year, but we both know we’ll tire of manual labour and want something else–the beaches, mostly–but for now we’ve got muscle to offer and it’s a fair trade…so we don’t think about the campervan, and we don’t make too many plans–we’ll just sit tight in our little pocket of paradise and hang on until the winds change and, like mary poppins, sail away to other adventures in the clouds.
ps. i know “gorgeouser” is not a real word, but i’m instituting it now, dammit.
