If you don't eat, you don't shit and if you don't shit, you die!

After the last leg of our trip where we had travelled across the country and back in just a few weeks we needed some rest. The morning after we got back we awoke to heavy rain on the window and winds so heavy you could hear them well before they hit the house. Our plans to do laundry were definitely delayed (you can't dry your clothes on a hills hoist when it's pouring rain) and we spent the first half of the day relaxing inside listening to the radio about a town close by getting snowed on and the roads in the Blue Mountains being awful. Early afternoon the black skies disappeared and suddenly the sky was blue and the birds were chirping! So we set out for the store with Nancy and Hedley when Nancy said she wanted to go to the lighthouse to see the rough waves. Since the winds were so heavy the ocean looked like a bunch of giant white capped waves that would come crashing into shore when they would reach. Just walking around out there I swear it felt like any second we would be blown away! Nancy said it was the strongest wind she has ever been in and we all agreed. We did see some sort of whale or black sea creature out in the ocean while we were up there and spent a good 5 minutes trying to keep our eyes open in the strong winds long enough to figure out what it was. Link to news article on the crazy weather day

That night we went to Trivia night out in Dapto (a town that may be where all the weirdos live) with Nancy and Hedley, John and Sophie, and Carolyn and Jen where we ended up spending 5 hours and 8 rounds competing with 27 other teams for the win. There were group dances, lots of drinks, nibbles, random awkward lap dancing as we all tried not to make eye contact in fear of her coming for our table, and eventually before naming off the big prizes they went through about 500 raffle prizes (one-by-one) as we all started to laugh at the ridiculousness of the moment. But surprisingly we won! Each of us got $60 gift certificates to a nice restaurant which will be great to go to together.

The night before we were to set off for Bega we were invited over to Carolyn and Jen's house for dinner: homemade lasagna (best we had ever had) and delicious tart for dessert. The lasagna is Guy Grossi's recipe who owns the restaurant Grossi Florentino in Melbourne and the Tarts were a recipe from Jamie Oliver. Somewhere in our break I ended up getting my first Aussie cold unfortunately. Since it was the beginning stages I wasn't so sure how bad it would get and when Nancy and Jeff both suggested maybe delaying our trip to Bega by a few days I said I'd be fine (true to my stubborn Aries ways). I was too excited!

Carolyn and Jen's AWESOME patio

Fantastic Sun Room

A few lines are missing but I love this

Nancy and Hedley

Carolyn and cat

Lulu!

Best Lasagna EVER

A while back Nancy sent us a link through email to the blog Pearl and Elspeth. It is her granddaughter Annie's blog with her partner Genevieve that follows their adventure in building a self sustainable life on their 7 acres of land and the beginning of their Strawbale house. Since the first entry I read back in January in Boise, Idaho about them happily picking plums I have read every entry. From the sewing projects to the canning and bottling and the most anticipated posts regarding their plans to build a house out of bales of straw I was all about this blog and I'd never even met them! It had the perfect blend of humor yet still being informative and definitely unique.Plus there was a post about dancing around to the Decemberists and it being Annie's favorite band-- I knew we'd get along well.

Annie told me that they would have plenty of projects going on and that if we were looking for WWOOFing opportunities we were more than welcome to come stay on their land! I continued following their blog to see the progress as it went along and specifically remember driving to work the morning of their workshop where many of their friends and family had gone out to Bega to help put up the Strawbale house.

Skip forward 5 months and it was time to head out there ourselves and contribute and give their land some more love!

We arrived just after dark by bus and Annie was generous enough to come pick us up in town. On the drive up to the property we saw our first wombat as it slowly (very slowly) crossed the road in the headlights.Click here if you want to see an adorable Wombat! When we got to the property Annie and Genevieve allowed us to sleep in the couch area of their house for the night as we didn't want to set up the tent in the dark on a hill.. We stayed up with Genevieve and her father, John aka Peps, and had a few beers before getting some sleep. In the morning we woke up with the sunrise and what a beautiful sunrise it was!

Sunrise Glow 

Sunrise reflection on window

Jeff loves the sunrise

We searched for a "flat" spot to set up our tent, Dumbledore, and after a while settled on the closest-to-flat spot we could find. At least it was on top of longer grass so it created some padding underneath us! Little Olive came out and showed us where all of her "Fairy Gardens" are around the property which was the coolest thing ever. She pretty much creates these little landscapes out of twigs and rocks and places characters in them.

Dumbledore and our view

Olive showing me a Fairy Garden

See it? 

Olive's note to Fairies, "Dear Fairys, I love you, This  Fairy garden's for you, xoxo"

Slight slope

For brekky we had decious Muesli with yogurt and milk and cups of coffee, very delicious! We browsed through the list Annie had made of possible projects we could work on and decided we would start on a series of steps up the little hillside behind the house to their Orchard/duck/bee/top dam precinct. Since Peps has all the knowledge and seems to know how to do everything without admitting it we wanted to see how he would start and get his advice first. Jeff helped him with a small few steps going from the driveway to the composting toilet so we could get an idea where to start while I went up and started the measuring and putting up guidelines for digging.

Jeff and John

Ducks

Bees and area steps lead to

The beginning

While we were starting this project Bruno, the electrician, showed up to get started on installing their off grid solar system! So the four of us all busily worked on our projects to the noise of hammering, drilling, shoveling and Oscar playing while Genevieve calmly prepared lunch and dinner for us and looked after the wild and crazy Osky. After a while Annie returned from work with Olive and they had found a turtle crossing the road! Jeff and I hopped into the car and drove down to the lower dam with Annie, Olive, Oscar and turtle so we could get some water for the plants, food for the ducks and free the turtle into the water.

the rough draft of our steps

Fire bath below 

Composting toilet

Property across the road

Who wouldn't want a view like this when taking care of their business?

Add caption

Turtle!

Jeff with the buckets

Annie and Oscar

Olive and Oscar

Oscar testing out our steps

Delicious Dinner!

Throughout the next 2 days Jeff, Peps and myself continued to work on the bloody stairs and a little chicken house while Bruno worked on installing the Solar Panels. Genevieve is an amazing cook and was always preparing the best homemade meals for us to recharge at the end of each day along with some beer/wine and great conversation. It was during these breakfast and dinner conversations that we talked about things like American Politics, future plans, self sustainable life and that if you don't eat you dont shit and if you dont shit you die. The neighbor's dog, Ollie, would prance around the dinner table waiting for scraps to fall or mainly Oscar to start slipping him whatever he was eating. They also have a firepit going out of an old recycled washer drum we would sit in front of each night and drink beer/wine/tea before heading to bed. Unfortunately for me the cold that had started to develop back in Wollongong was starting to get worse each night (camping doesn't exactly give you the best quality rest, especially the kind you need if you're trying to fend off sickness).

Those bloody steps were quite the "head scratcher". When your high school Algebra teacher tells you that you'll someday use that information and you laugh at him because "yeah, right... when will I ever need to know how to calculate the long side of the triangle is or use words like Obtuse?" listen to him/her. There will be a day where you're doing something like digging steps out of a clay wall and you have so much distance to work with and a certain rise so you need to know how far apart and how deep each step needs to be... We did pretty well at guessing how far apart the steps would be and how deep to make them but forgot to look at the materials we had as far as putting stoppers in front of the steps. The boards we had were not as tall as the steps were deep so after hammering posts into the ground we found out we would have to pull them back out and use different materials. We all decided railway sleepers would be the way to go. Those steps would be the death of us! All along the way John was there to give us a lot of tips or show us efficient ways to get things done but always in the most humble way. He reminded me a lot of my dad and it made me miss him.

When Bruno finished putting up the Solar Panels we got to witness the lightbulb being turned on for the first time in their little strawbs! It was actually quite bright! They said that they felt as if their strawbs had lost its virginity.

The next morning we had planned to go with Annie to a little old whaling town called Eden to walk around the coast and explore what it had to offer while she did a workshop at the Primary school that involved kids making sea creatures out of recycled materials! Since I had started to feel pretty awful we also decided that we would stay in a hotel in Bega that night so we could get a proper nights rest. I had started to get a pretty bad fever but we did enjoy sitting on the beach watching the waves for a bit. Since we would be going to the blue mountains right when we'd get back to Wollongong and then off for a month up north after that we decided that we would head back to Wollongong early so I could get a few days of rest and hopefully get better before leaving. I was not keen on the idea at first because even though I was sick I really was having a fantastic time in Bega and didn't want to leave!

So we packed up our things and went to The Commercial Hotel where we were booked into a room right above the bar where a live band would be playing that night. Annie, John and Oscar came by to say goodbye to us and then we slept the rest of the afternoon. We woke up to go get some dinner for about an hour and even though you could feel the bed shaking from the music we were both tired enough to pass right back out that night and slept soundly. In the morning we were walking to the bus area when John and Genevieve pulled up so we were able to say goodbye to them and right before getting on the bus as I was standing on the corner waving to John, Annie drives through town and honks her horn and waves too! It was a nice little moment where we all just kind of ended up right there in the middle of Bega at the same time.

Riding away from Bega that morning while listening to my ipod and thinking of the great time we had I actually shed a little tear. We can't wait to go back and help some more!