aloha, we’re not in australia anymore

February 8, 2014 2 Comments

waianae-oahu-hawaii-tropical-fruit-trees

[mm-insert-title]

6 MONTHS OF ADVENTURE BEGINS HERE

A sprawling city, highways and that sweet damp heat, Honolulu was both a stranger and an old friend. My mind quickly calling up a flood of childhood memories of Jakarta to quiet nerves in a new place. A place where beauty and desperation are entwined in a lover’s embrace. The tide of homelessness after the GFC washes around the towers of affluence, both starkly alien and disquieting. The ubiquitous Starbucks is our first port of call, the traveller’s bastion of free wi-fi. We hear someone order a tall 5 shot, caramel, frapuccino extra sugar, we’re not in Melbourne anymore.

Then out on the bus to the leeward coast, out the window resorts give way to ramshackle housing, many half built and then locked up with tarps and pieces of plywood. Roosters, dogs, chainlink fences, rusted cars and behind them the most glorious craggy hillsides moss green and rich red earth. Ocean to the front, hills to the back, but people are struggling. We go a stop too far, no one is on the street. We walk past houses and see everyone gathered around TVs drinking beer, there are even people watching TV in the park. What is going on? Then it clicks, it’s Superbowl Sunday, Americans on couches everywhere unite under one love. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so eerily quiet anymore.

We don’t realise we have been holding our middle class breaths until we reach our accommodation, a simple but lovely double storey weatherboard with a lush garden. No one is there yet so we explore, there are at least six cats sprawled around, which is oddly comforting, and a garden full of ripening papayas, bananas and star fruit, a temperate dwellers dream. There is a dark pool and we peer in and are met with the sleepy gaze of one, then two tortoises, all long nails and shimmering neck, scrambling to reach us, they are disappointed when we don’t have any food to offer them. After our enthusiasm blanches when we try a “gathered” mallow meal from the garden, we venture out, jet lagged and lazy, we get as far as a 7Eleven to cobble together a meal. On the way back, locals smile and greet us as we wander along the highway, we are getting the feeling that Hawaiians might just be the friendliest people in the world.

Travel

Puppy Presence

January 7, 2014 3 Comments

[mm-insert-title]

An Australian Christmas by the beach

stuffed-mushroom-hashbrown-breakfast-tray

Travel

blue mountains, black earth

December 28, 2013 6 Comments

As we descended the beast of the Blue Mountains growled, calling lighting from slate skies. The fluorescent green of regrowth jarred against charred trunks and the orange of crisp leaves. Despite the devastation, life continued, but there were no birds, no animals, no sound but the roaring of thunder echoing through the valley.

Dry, heat rose from rocks that suddenly became slippery with hot sticky rain. Then, the hail began. It melted instantly in the hot air filling the valley with steaming fog, perhaps we were not welcome.

We clattered down past rainforest tree ferns and damp cliffs and stumbled into intense sunshine, the growling stopped, had we passed the test?

Dylan jumped backward with a yelp. A black shining snake coiled itself lazily by the path. If this was the Blue Mountain beast he was not so scary, but we took a wide detour around the snoozing fellow so as not to offend. Then up, up again to the campsite at the top of the hill where tourists were regaled with stories of the infamous drop bear.

Garden

MAKING CONNECTIONS

December 2, 2013 3 Comments

building community in the suburbs

Our little seedlings are tasting their first summer morning in the Farnham street park. After some toddler tramping, dog watering and the first furnace of hot days everything is firmly rooted and getting lusher.

Pip from the neighbourhood house has reported that the trees have never looked so good. Heavy with fruit, the apples are swelling and blushing with every sunny day. They were our inspiration, alternatively choked with grass or risking ring barking with every careless contractor’s whipper-snipper cut – there was a better way.

Time and money saved for the council in maintenance, an abundant garden for the community and wildlife.

After years of architectural training, I’ll never be able to shake my drive towards creating beautiful (and practical) edens, but the Flemington Food Forest is not just for the eyes and stomach as community is what feeds the soul. In our world of work and stuff, we need people more than ever. Sometimes I forget how much, but since its creation and everyday I tend it I remember; falling into easy conversations with strangers.

The other week Dylan and I found ourselves giving an impromptu children’s gardening workshop when planting some seeds. First one then two and then three under 5s marched up asking what we were up to. the first pronounced that she was wearing her special sparkly birthday shoes and wanted to help.

Their joy was my joy, the design had children in mind, with a curving “fairy path” interlaced with the more practical, direct “adult path”, little “tea party” circles dotted along the way that would eventually become secret food forest glades as the garden grows taller, wilder.

It was lovely that they, and hopefully more children, will be part of the creation of this space. Like links in a chain, the garden provided not only a conduit to them, but through them to their parents who animatedly spoke about gardening trials and offered the neighbourhood house their spare compost bin.

There are so many opportunities for workshops, and not just ones run by us or other permies, but elders with their experience in preserving fruit and olives, migrants with their knowledge of edible weeds and anyone who wants to share a recipe and harvest from the garden.

I want to thank everyone who contributed their time to the permablitz again. I had such a warm feeling of community at the end of the day, we accomplished so much in a short time and I hope you all return in the new year to watch the garden grow with me.