Troy Archie – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

So here I am, just me and the dog for the next 4 days, basically out in the middle of nowhere. William was to come by and feed the animals so that was taken care of and down the road is this “retreat” which is just basically a bunch of 5 star guest houses. Kate works there as a side thing, so does William and so does Jess. It seems like pretty much everyone I’ve met out here hold a couple little odd jobs to keep their main dreams doing. At this retreat they’ve also started taking in backpackers to do a sort of wwoofing so I’ve got to meet some cool people down there including a couple from Toronto.

The Cafe was closed while Kate was gone and I was left with a list of things to work away at. Things went pretty smoothly the first couple day’s, had a surprise visit from some guy that said he owned most of the art in Kate’s gallery who came by with his drinking buddies. Was also taken to a beach to look for penguins with William and the backpackers from the retreat but had no luck finding any. Things were going pretty good up until the last when the power went out. Now power outages are a very common occurrence in rural Australia since the entire power infrastructure has been privatised. There were a couple blackouts when I was at the West’s fish farm so I wasn’t too worried but there were a couple things that confused me. Ends up that the power was just down over at Kate’s place because some safety switch went off. Other then that no worries.

Work

So far works been pretty good, I’ve done a mainly farm work thus far and little odd jobs here and there. Some of the stuff that I’ve done includes tearing down these old fences that are around the property so kangaroos don’t get tangled on them, made an enclosure for the ducks, cleaned up all the dead branches and brush that was laying around the cafe/gallery, help with cleaning the cafe and the racking up and collecting of hay for compost.

Torren and I have also been making a compost bin the last couple days. You’d be proud Brad, the help that I gave you before I left laying in those posts left me with a bit of knowledge and came in very handy as we had to dig holes and bury these 3.5m long posts into the ground for the compost bin. It’s a dam big bin measuring 2m X 2m X 3m high; that’s a lot of compost. It’s a pretty cool project and good learning experience. It was a bit of a gong show with me and Torren trying figure out how to get the posts perpendicular and evenly 2m apart from one another. I can now see from the perspective of all those welders who came to me at Mastco asking how they were suppose to build something with the measurements that I had given them. I really enjoy doing a project like this because I know that bin will be there after I’ve gone and something that they can use. I also spent a good couple racking up one of the paddocks and collecting all the horse manure that dotted it for the compost bin. Now again, you think what a shitty job that must have been but with the view that I had right next to me I really couldn’t complain, plus while doing this job and not really minding it I realized some a couple other things about myself.

When I grow up

I am, to a degree a farmer. I really enjoy doing work like this and as I’ve mentioned before, I really enjoy growing my own foods. As I find these things out about myself I realize that someday I will have my own plot of land, maybe only 25 acres or so, and have my own little hobby farm on it. A couple chickens for eggs and a couple others for the odd roast, some turkeys for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, breed rabbits for their meat, maybe even a cow for my own beef, a nice little orchard of fruit trees and of course the most important thing, the veggie garden. A green house for year round fresh food would be great to. Yeah it’s just a dream and it probably sounds pretty insane and odd that a 24 year old guy would be wanting to do something like that but someday it’ll happen, who knows where and when though. I find it interesting that I came down to Australia for a new experience and to find some stuff about myself and it ends up I find out that I want to be a farmer.

The Hardest Part About Travelling

I’ve realized that the hardest part about travelling is trying to figure out what you want out of it and from there, how to get it. Once you get those two things figured out, travelling is great. When I got to Adelaide I was pretty much ready to leave Australia and head to another country, someplace different and unusual where I could “discover myself” better and have a more wordily experience. I’m now realizing that I’ve found how to accomplish what I want out of this trip and I’m having a blast doing it.

Getting Away from it all

Another great thing about wwoofing is how it allows you to get off of the tourist trail. The other night Kate, Torren and I went to a BBQ with a bunch of people that Torren works with and I got to say it was dam fun. It was a really cool mix of people and I had a blast plus I got to see what a real Aussie BBQ is like and it beats the pants off of what we’ve got going. Pretty much what happens is everyone brings their own food to the BBQ, meat, salad, dessert, veggies, whatever you want to bring plus enough to feed 10 others. It all gets cooked up, thrown out on a table and everyone digs in, it’s dam good. All the people at the BBQ were in the Koala catching program with Torren as their job was basically catching Koalas. Now Torren doesn’t do any catching himself as he needs a bit more training, he just does the spotting and recon work, the other people do all the catching which is basically them, climbing up a tree with one of those animals catching poles that have a rope attached to it and grabbing the koala. Now at first I thought, “Man that job has got to suck, there’s no way you’d catch me climbing up a tree to capture some animals that’s biting and clawing at you.” but everyone there seemed to love the job and told me how much fun it was. They showed me some of the bite and scratch marks they got and they were nothing compared to the cuts and scratches that I get from a couples day’s of farm work. So yeah, Aussie BBQs are dam rad and I’m definitely going to have to have a BBQ like the when I get home.

Fishing

The last couple days Torren’s taken me out fishing. The first night we went out all I caught was these little crap fish that taste like…crap so we just threw them back. Torren caught some nice ones that we had for dinner, a Sweep, a Flathead and a couple King George Whiting if I’m not mistaken. Now from here I was thinking about writing up a big “The big one that got away story,” and see how many people would believe me or call bullshit. Well the next day we went out again and it turned out to be a dam good day, so good that I don’t have to lie about it. We walked out from Kate’s place down this steep ass hills and cliffs to a fishing spot that Torren said was alright. It was on these rocks and I guess because of the full moon the water higher than he had remembered it and we’d get the odd large swell and get our feet soaked. My first cast out I caught a little crap fish and I thought for sure it was going to be that type of day. Things were pretty dry for a good while and all we were pulling up was seaweed for the longest time, not even crap fish. Things started to bite then with me pulling in my first edible fish, a good sized Sweep. Torren then started to have some success and pulled in a King George Whiting, another sweep, a Red Mullet and to top it off a decent Trevally (sp?). By then it was getting late, we were running low on bait and Torren started to clean the fish up as I finished what was the last of our bait. I’d had cast out once and when I pulled it back one of the baits (we were using two hooks) was gone, which isn’t usual. Being lazy by that point I decided not to rebait the empty hook and recast out that’s when I got the big one. It put up a pretty good fight and at thought at first it was seaweed or a really big crap fish like I had caught earlier but it wasn’t, instead it was dam good sized Trevally. The thing sprayed shit and blood all over me when I pulled in; it was great. Torren got a good picture of me with it and I’ll eventually get that posted up. It probably only weighted about 1-2kg but Torren was saying that that was a big one for that type of fish and he hadn’t seen one that big in a long time, in fact he was saying that I showed the picture he took to someone on the mainland they wouldn’t believe it was caught out here. Plus they taste dam good, which is the most important thing to me. So it was a dam successful day, with a good meal to finish it off and enough fish for a couple others. For the longest time I never really “got” fishing but now I do. It’s definitely nice those moments of just sitting there and enjoying the view but when you catch something the adrenaline gets going and you get pumped up. Fishing is something that I definitely want to give more a go of while travelling and when I get back home. I’d also really like to go hunting…maybe I could get Mike’s dad to take me out when I get back home…

Edit: Dinner

One Big Circle

I’m realizing that my interests all go in one big circle. My main interests are in health and fitness which, I want to be stronger, faster, better…basically higher performance. To achieve this I need to master nutrition. Since nutrition is all about food and I love eating food so I might as well eat good tasting food I have an interest in cooking. That interest has spurred my interest in growing/raising my own foods, having my own farm and now has spurred my interest in fishing and perhaps even hunting to provide myself with my own food. Food that you grow yourself, fish/hunt/raise yourself tastes so much better than the crap you buy in the grocery store plus I imagine it’s got more nutrients and such in it. That higher yielding and fresher food is good for my health and a healthier me has a better chance to perform and increase my performance level…

Acclimatization

The weather here on Kangaroo Island is pretty dam extreme and even on the mainland in Adelaide it was pretty wonky. On the Saturday when I was in Adelaide, it was around 38 above with no wind. I was staying in the hostel that I was in before which has no a/c and seems to absorb the heat and hold onto it. I swear it was cooler 15 feet bellow on the street than it was in that building. I don’t know why I went back to that place and while I’ll probably go back again, oh yeah, I keep meeting cool people there. Where was I? So on Saturday it was around 38 outside and like 42 inside the hostel. 3 day’s later the temperature drops and it’s down to the low 20’s. Sounds pretty nice right? I froze my ass off. It’s amazing how acclimatized to a temperature you can get and how a quick change to a seemingly more reasonable one seem pretty extreme.

Now as for the weather here out on Kangaroo Island. Someone told me, “If you don’t like the weather on Kangaroo Island, wait 5 minutes.” I’ve heard that one like a million times back home but back home has got nothing on this place. When I got here Tuesday it was in the low 20’s and dam windy and again I froze my ass off. During the night I reckon that it dropped down to about 10 and I ended up using 4 blankets, my silk sleeping bag and using a space heater, for a short period, in the caravan I’m staying in. What a wuss huh? 2 day’s later it heats up to about 36 and I end up using the fan that’s on the heater to cool down my caravan and sleep with just a sheet. Even the day’s are pretty extreme with one moment you thinking that you need a jacket and jeans to wanting to put on shorts to wondering where your rain jacket is. Needless to say it’s pretty extreme and pretty cool, in an interesting sort of way that is.

Millipedes

Again , the weather’s pretty extreme and the other day it rained pretty dam good, which brought out these hundreds, if not thousands little millipedes averaging about an inch in length. They are Spanish millipedes and since they were introduced to the island, they have no predators so they’re basically everywhere. These things were everywhere the first day after the rain and seemed to get worse as the day’s progressed. They were covering the floor and walls inside Kate’s place and were all over the outside walls of the house that Jess lives in. I’ve had to sweep out the entire cafe of these little things a couple times each day, it’s an on going battle, you turn around after sweeping an area and thing, “Didn’t I just do that area?”. There’s also a couple dozen in the bath tub when I go to use the shower in the morning. A more timid person would be grossed out by all this but I just consider it part of life in Australia.

Xmas List

– A good how-to book on being self-sufficient, like how to make a veggie garden, how to slaughter a rabbit/chook, how to set-up a greenhouse…Something that really pertains to Canadian/Albertan weather

– A Palaeolithic eating cookbook. Palaeolithic eating is basically eating like our ancestors and keeping things basic, unrefined and natural.

Note: I’m added this Xmas list idea not so much expecting others to buy them for me but as a reminder to myself of what’s currently going through my mind in regards to what I’d like to buy for myself or get as a present.

Maslin Memories

A couple other little things that I remembered that happened at Maslin house that I thought I’d throw in for shits and giggles. Also, I think I got the amount they spent on the conference messed up. I can’t remember it was $1350 or $3500, yeah big difference I know but for some reason I’m thinking it was $3500 as it’s more of a shocking number.

– Just about every night for dinner they got Peter to demean himself by going out wearing a little hat and blow a toy trumpet as each of them entered the room to a round of applause and the announcement of their titles.

– As I mentioned before Darren is supposedly a self made millionaire. He and the organizers signed a contract to pay certain amounts of money by certain dates with the last payment happening in the middle of the conference. Unfortunately he kept on backing out of the initial contract and keep on putting off paying the bill until Peter threatened to shut it all down the next day unless he kept with the initial agreement and pay. Needless to say he paid, albeit late.

– During a lot of the speeches that Darren gave out the people attending would give out rounds of applause. Now theses weren’t just a regular applauses but where standing ovations with whistling, hooting and hollering, like as it was 1989 all over again and Gretzky passed the puck back to Lemuiex who fired it past the Russian goalie in the dying seconds of the third to put Canada up 5-4.

So yeah, this is just a quick update to let you all know where I’m at and what’s happening. I’m having a great stay out here so I’m staying until probably the months end. Next week, on the 20th, there’s suppose to be another wwoofer coming out so that should be cool. Unfortunately it’s an other “G-word” but I’m sure we’ll get along. Also coming out is Kate’s parent’s all the way from Georgia, so that too should be interesting. Other then that, pics will come up when I get back to civilization which will be at the end of March/beginning of April. From there I’m planning on hitting up the great ocean road and going towards Melbourne, potentially stopping somewhere in between for a stay. The other day Kate gave me an interesting proposition for me to think about and I’m sure for her to think about to. Her and Torren are going to South Africa in May to visit and travel with his sister and she has asked me if I’d be interested in coming back out to the island to house sit and take care of the animals. She said she’d pay my way back onto the island, as it costs $70 to get out here, and right now I’m thinking that I’ll probably do it but only on a couple conditions, Torren leaves me a fishing rod and someone periodically drops me off some bait. So that’s what I’m up to lately and what’s new. I’m in good health and having a real hoot out here. Kate’s got some good rocks for working out and a wicked spot to do pull-ups so I’m a happy boy, plus she buys me pumpkin so it can’t get much better. Her and Torren have been great and we’re getting along really well. You can just cut the sarcasm out of the air with a knife it’s so think.

Safe Travels

Troy