French Island

Mon Oct 31 18:47:17 EDT 2005

WWOOFing, it seems, is a very different way to see a country. While it would be rash of me to draw general conclusions about WWOOFing from our single experience, I'll just relate how it went for us, and you can draw your own conclusions.

It all began with an article Francie saw about McLeod Eco farm on French Island, near Melbourne. It sounded interesting; biodynamic farming, a restuarant and rooms on a retired prison site. All natural, away from the city, lots of wildlife, hiking and stuff. She struck up an email conversation with the proprietor, which went well. They settled on an extended visit in exchange for some work from us. Since we bring skills seldom seen in the WWOOF world we made assumptions about how we would be treated and what we would be doing.

Apparently these assumptions weren't shared by all of our hosts. After the first day they made it clear we would each work 6 hours a day, 7 days a week, on a their schedule. Unless we wanted time away from the place, in which case we were expected to work an additional 2 hours (per day) for absences. Oh, and Francie was assigned domestic work, changing sheets, doing laundry, vacuuming, in addition to assisting the chef. Evidentally the chef's idea of an assistant was dishwasher. Since Francie is a chef and business owner in her own right, this didn't go over too well with her. We did finally get it straightened out so she was doing the chef work, but it was clear we weren't going to see much of Australia from here.

It was better for me. I let Mark know that I was feeling every bit of my half century + and by the way, I know how to fix things. Most anything. He promptly showed me the shop, and a number of things that needed fixing, and I was freed from weeding garlic or floor mopping.

So I fixed things, Francie changed sheets and laundered old grimy sheets in a tiny little washing machine and attempted to dry them on lines under a gum tree. And the chef came on a weekend and Francie did dishes for him and chefed the rest of the week (to much better effect than his efforts, I might add), and the kids went to school during the day and vegged out in front of the host's TV the rest of the time.

This went on for most of a week, then Francie said she could take no more. She and the host had words, then worked it out and she got left with cooking. I just kept finding things to fix: the car, the bikes, the pig chute, the doors...





On our meager off hours we got a few walks in, some bike rides - and lots of mosquito slapping. You could not go outside without DEET all over you, and that didn't seem to deter them much. Connor was a mass of mosquito bites (he's such a sweet little guy, "mossies" just love him). Then there were the flys. The famous Australian, human specific flys. They buzz your face, looking for
whatever it is they look for, then land on your nose, in your eyes, in your ears, in your mouth. No amount of waving, slapping, DEET or other deterrents have any effect at all. They just keep coming. Right around the Eco farm buildings there were a LOT of swallows. They helped keep the population down in the immediate area of the buildings, but as soon as you ventured out to a field or down a track (generic Aussie for trail or road) they'd be all over you.

I have a theory about the flys. Humans have been on the Australian continent, living outside, for as long as 60,000 years. That's a lot of fly generations (a million or so, actually). I think these flys co-evolved with the humans here in a way they couldn't in other locales because humans elsewhere started to put up mechanical defenses against flys quite awhile ago. But not Australians. They learned to live with them, perhaps even regarding them as a necessary part of their hygiene (see _Mutant Message Down Under_ for more on that), so flys here like humans, and know how to get what they want from you, despite your best efforts.

On the other hand, the kids went to the little school for a week, Josie got on famously with Gracie, Connor and Alex hit it off, and they both seemed to be having a very good time. Of course there was a fair amount of TV and video game time involved...

Pictures. Didn't you take any pictures?

Of course we took pictures. Hundreds of them. Unfortunately our internet connectivity is somewhat meager at this point, so I'm not posting as many as I would like. I'll back fill photos (and probalby more posts) when I can.

-robertw

Sydney Australia

Sydney Oct 17 (Oct 16 disappeared over the Pacific somewhere)

We are booked into the "Old Rectory" in Tempe, near the Sydney airport - very near as it turns out. Lots of traffic, both air and surface in this declining part of Sydney. Nothing to recommend this B&B at all, other than quick airport pickup service (one way anyway).

Sydney has superlative train service which we used to go down to the Government center and botanical gardens. The gardens are lovely with an amazing collection of birds and exotic flora. The kids really enjoyed the big white cockatoos with their yellow crests.

Unfortunately the botanical gardens in Australia are responsible for much of the alien species invasions that characterized white folks entry to this oldest of continents. Bill Bryson writes about this in _In A Sunburned Country_.

After lunch in the AMP building (big insurance/investment scam in Australia) We took the ferry to Manly beach. (No kidding, that's the name.) Great place to watch surfing, go hiking in some pretty wild looking country right in the city, or shop. The ferry ride was interseting too. It went past the the entrance to Sydney harbor, where the seas were rolling in. A lot of rock and roll for a 3 story tall ferry boat. Yahoo!!

Once again the Australian public transport shown. The ferry terminal and the train terminal are the same building. Apparently the train goes right to the airport as well, not to mention that the the interstate train we take to Melbourne leaves the same station the city trains use. What a concept! Usable public transportation.

International flying

The airlines continue to tighten the rules for luggage. They brought the 50lb rule to international flights too. This happened Oct 10, just a couple days before our flight to Sydney. Once again the human at the check in counter (thank god for humans) lets us through becuase the rule was so new. But it'll be harder next time.

Air Canada treated us reasonably well, the ticketing agent even went downstairs and retrieved a piece of luggage so I could check my jackknife, which I (once again) forgot and put in my pocket.

Hilo on Hawaii (the big island)

But then, I wasn't there for most of the week. I got to go to Hilo to visit our long time friends, Mac and Lisa. Mac works at the Hahvard radio telescope on Moana Kea. He's also an avid natural phenomonen watcher, so we had to go hike on the the new volcano in search of some hot lava. Alas, we didn't get to burn a stick on hot lava, but we did see some amazing fireworks where it's falling into the ocean. I wore out my knees hiking across a black lava field under a half moon. Ah well, my poor trashed knees are keeping me from weeding garlic at the moment, so all's well that ends.

The trip up to the observatory was another amazing adventure. At 13000 and some odd feet, it's the highest I've ever been without a pressurized cabin. It's also about as high as you can go for any length of time without oxygen. It's generally considered to be the top of the troposphere, with only 6/10 of the oxygen we have at sea level. There isn't very much left above you at 13000 feet, which is, of course, the point of being there. The radio telescope measures "tau" in mm of water in the column above them. A low measurement is in microns of water. Typically it's in the mm to cm range. That low water content is only partially due to the altitude. The mountain itself, being largely volcanic cinders doesnm't hold moisture or heat very well. As it cools, it tends to suck the stratosphere down to it's level. It's very windy and cold at night up there, typical temps near 0 even in summer. In fact it looks prety much like Mars from about 11000 feet up. Watching the sunset, it's pretty obvious most of the atmosphere is below you. Truly an awesome and alien place.

Then there's the observatory. They have 7 or 8 radio scopes, each weighing 60000 lb. They get placed on pads around their part of the mountain, enabling different types of research. The antenna's placement on the pads is accurate to several microns. They then run alignment programs that use the synchronous fiber optic cables to discern positions down to a micron or two. There's lots more. Mac took me on a techie tour but I'm afraid I didn't retain very much. Must have been the lack of O2. It's big, it's expensive, and they can see things way out on the edge of space in the 900 -2GhZ range. Needless to say, no WAPS are allowed on the peak. In fact, Mac had heard a rumor of somebody running a WAP in another building, so we took a sniffer and went for a little tour. Didn't find anything, but he's considering mounting the sniffer (a little battery powered wardriving device) in the focal point of one of their antenna's and looking a little harder. Oh, one other thing - the receiver element is a chip made in Bell labs, who manage to turn out about 100 of these chips year. They run at 4 deg K.

Yes, this is silversword, one of only a few hundred such plants. They only grow on the upper reaches of the big island.


Many thank you's and aloha's to Mac and Lisa for their hospitality and guided tours of truly unique territory.

Maui somoa

Stayed in Haiku, on the weather (north) side of Maui for 6 days at Bill and Bonnie's house. Diann's too. It's a rain forest there. It rained every night and a little bit most every day, except for the last night. Then we got to enjoy a full moon over the mountain (Haleakala, 10000 ft). Also a rainbow every day, sometimes several.

While we were staying in Haiku, Diann, the denizen of the downstairs offered us a good deal on the tour boat she's worked on for the last 14(!) years, the Alii Nui. This was entirely too much fun. We sailed out of Maalaea, around the corner towward Lahaina. Somewhere along there, in a secret cove (I'm sure) we snorkeled over the most amazing corals. There were fish of every description and color. And green turtles - there must have been a dozen of them. The crew of the Alii Nui gave guided tours, including hands on demonstraions of what a sea urchin is. We all loved it. Many thanks to the captain and crew of the Alii Nui, and Diann in particular.

Tuesday Lynn and Morris arrived to take over caring for the the house and it's collection of cats and dog, and we moved out to a Best Western on the Kihei beach. Not as bad as it sounds, we had a cabana style 4-plex right on the beach, next to a fancy resort who's pool and bar we (surreptiously) got to use. The beach was perfect for the kids, with some coral to snorkel over and waves not quite big enough to boogie board on.

Maui

We're sunning our selves in rainy Maui.  It's really interesting, so
varied in such a small space.  Over on the Kihei side it's dry and
windy, in Haiku, where the house is it's windy, rainy and hot.
Yesterday we drove up to Olinda, about 4000 ft straight up from Haiku.
We went through a eucalyptas forest and a ponderosa pine stand.  It was
like driving from Costa Rica to San Francisco to Bend in 10 minutes.

Westbound and rolling

At long last we are departed - from Oregon I mean. We actually moved out of our house Sept 15, and I said that should really mark the beginning of our trip. But I must admit that it didn't really feel like it until we got on the plane for Honolulu this morning.

Having slightly weird one way tickets, we were singled out for a thorough search at the airport. Keep that in mind. It took about 20 more minutes.

It is very hard to get your stuff pared down to a reasonable amount, especially for such a long and varied itinerary. We are currently schlepping around 4 22 inch tall rolling carry-ons, 4 day packs, including one big enough to hold my computer, and 2 duffels, one large enough to crawl into. Unfortunately it's also large enough to weigh well over the new 50lb weight limit for domestic flights. After a some shuffling on the floor of the Portland airport, we got it down to 70lb and were able to finesse the international flight thing. But it's going to get harder when we're trying to fly on the cheap or into less traveled areas.

The whole idea was for everybody to have one roll-around that could be carried on or checked, depending on how we felt, and one big duffel that held the overflow, stuff we aren't using at the time, and of course the items prohibited on commercial airplanes, but which no sane person would live without. You know, a pocket knife, a fingernail scissors, a chef's knife... Well the overflow overflowed into the emergency duffel and made the main one too heavy for a Boeing 747 to get off the ground, so we shuffled and trimmed and pared. Then we mailed the smaller duffel back home with 25lb of stuff we should have no trouble doing without. Now if I can only get the rest of the family to give up their electric
toothbrushes!

We're officially outta here

It's been a long haul, with not a few little bumps and detours along the way, but we're headed out today. Well, we're only going to Portland to catch an early morning flight to Honolulu, but still, that means we're now disconnected from our support group/family. To say nothing of cell phones, internet connections, cars, my beloved Keith Lippy road bike, and of course, our critters Katie, Althea and Homer.

But they and the house are in good hands with 2 old friends and one new one renting the house and caring for it's residents for the next nine months.

One of the bumps along the way was the Corvallis Fall Festival.
Francie managed the food vendors and I was the facilities manager. This kept us busy and out of the house for most of Sept 23-26. It was a fun way to say good bye to Corvallis.

And now we'll see how this "on the road" thing works.