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...