Lismore

Life in Lismore is swell. I have been hanging out with Margaret, with the 3 other girls living in town, and going to school. Saturday, our first day, Margaret took Michelle and I (Michelle stayed until Monday) to see the bats at Rotary Park and to see koalas. Every night at 7:30pm, the hundreds of bats migrate over her house towards another area of forest. It is incredible and I took a great video and it will just not upload anywhere.

Sunday we went to The Channon where there was a huge market -1st Sunday of every month-. We saw a lot of the people from the group there, got some Nimbin ice cream and sugar cane juice, and it was a great day. Afterwards we went to Margaret's friend Jula's house (it was almost a treehouse...) at Bodhi Farms, a nearby intentional community.


Tuesday was our first day back at school. We meet here at the Lismore Workers Club. We were warned that they have intense air conditioning and to bring warm clothing, but really it was fine. School was 10-4:30, and we basically talked about all the work we have to do the next 2 weeks. Most of it involves almost completely putting together our ISP projects. I have been emailing lots of people from all sorts of Transition Towns, hoping to be pointed in some sort of direction. So far I am most excited by the response from people from this town Bega on the south coast, and the Sunshine Coast (north of Brisbane). I also want to go to Katoomba, because it is in the Blue Mts near Sydney, but I have not heard from them yet.

And that's really it I think. I am very comfortable and happy here at this house, and basically just hoping my ISP will come together over the next few days. That would be so nice.........

We are also starting to organize our New Zealand plans for after the program. Me, Epps, and Michelle will be heading to the South Island May 21 -the day the program ends- until about June 14, for a last couple days in Brisbane before I start out on the long journey back. Everything costs so much money though, it takes the fun out of it a little, but hopefully that will all come together too. So yes, everything is good, talk to you soon!

And these are roots of a tree, growing all over the place at the bat forest.

Life with Margaret

I am sitting in my room on 31 Pound St in Lismore. I have Internet and cell reception, and I then there's Margaret. Homestay is going to be one of the best and most well-timed/ necessary parts of this program! I won't write too much, I just wanted to post some pictures of the house that I took earlier this afternoon. Margaret is an ex-pat who has lived in Australia 22 years now. Her son is at Sydney uni now, so it's just the two of us these next 2 weeks! My friend Michelle from the program is staying over the next 2 nights, because her homestay people are out of town this weekend. So the future looks very bright, and here are some pictures of my new, short-term life:














my room

the buddha that covers the TV




















my new pets, 2 of the 7 chickens, and Michelle in the back yard








this is a loofa grown off of Margaret's loofa plant....I did not know these grew on trees!!























the view out my window

Short stay in Byron

Hello everyone. I just wanted to update because --through an actual miracle-- we have wireless in our apartments and now everything related to the Internet is convenient and easy and great and......short-lived! Tomorrow morning we drive to Lismore at 9am for the homestay reception, where we get picked up by some people and go live in their house for 2 weeks!

But first, here are some pictures of our beautiful Byron apartments. Too bad we were only here 3 nights this time, but it was a great 3 nights, with Michelle and Sara in this house to the right.

This one is taken from the stairs. We'll be back to Byron...in late March, after homestay, and after the Aboriginal camping trip....for another 4 nights.

The last few days have been very very nice. After we finally were freed from the train, we took a last hour-long bus ride to Byron. Sara, Michelle and I moved into our room, made tea, watched Katy Perry's new song on MTV, and life was good. Thursday was a beautiful day and we had class discussion from 1-4 at the Byron Community Center. Me and the Michelle's planned a group BBQ for that night, so in the morning we went food shopping at the amazing Byron farmers marker --I have never seen a farmers market like it--. After class Michelle BBQ-ed and it turned out to be a perfect group pre-Shabbat dinner at the apartments.



Then today we had an all day fieldtrip -it was a very Field Semester day- to an organic farm, a permaculture intentional community, and a solar power energy company in Nimbin (this picture at the bottom...) We had dinner at Peter (our director's house and got back to the apartments...recently.





So that is it. Homestay tomorrow. And one last picture of our room in the apartment.

Bushwalking in Tasmania

Wow, I can't believe the trip is over and done with. I am back in Melbourne for the day before we board the train at 8pm tonight for our 24hr ride -part 2- back to Byron.

But the trip was excellent. Last Wednesday morning, we got in the van with our guide -Geoff Mosely, here on the right- and drove to Maydena. This was about an hour or so northwest of Hobart. It is a small logging town on the border of the huge southwest conservation lands that are a huge chunk of the entire state. It is the last town before the forests. we stayed at these nice houses for 2 nights, (this is a picture of them) and spent the days hiking in the national parks.
After Maydena, we drove to Lake St. Clair where we stayed in cabins for the night (this is friday night now) and did a big hike that morning in Mt. Field National Park. Saturday we where in Strahan, a port town in the southwest where we had a wallaby dinner, and the next day going on a boat trip down the Macquerie Harbor to the old convict islands in that area.

Sunday night we stayed in Cradle Mountain national park, hiking around Dove Lake in the morning and driving back to Devonport for our ride back on the Spirit of Tasmania last night.

Here is a picture of one of the 'tree sits' we saw at a protestors camp near Maydena. They are protecting the last remaining eucalypts in this area. The road that is bening built to bring logging trucks in has literally stopped maybe 20 feet from this area. This was one of the most interesting and craziest things we had seen on the trip.

So I guess that's it from here. I've been hanging around Melbourne all day, and have a few more hours until I need to head back to the train station. We get to Byron tomorrow night, and then Saturday morning we start our homestays. Should be interesting!

For a few more pictures: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32404383&l=98bb2&id=9803563

Tassie!

I am writing from Hobart, Tasmania on our day of freedom, which is -as usual- rainy. But I have so much (not that much) to update since Melbourne! Well, the most exciting thing that happened to us lately was our "ferry" ride across to Devonport, Tasmania. It was not a ferry! It was almost a cruise ship! It was very fun, we had dinner on the boat, it was not particularly rough sailing at all, and woke up to beautiful skies and the Tassie coastline.

We spent the day --Monday--driving down the length of the island towards Hobart. We stopped at the Great Lake....and some other places, attempted and failed to climb Mt. Wellington in our van, and finally made it to the hostel. The hostel was an interesting situation in itself-- it was the day before their opening day-- we were the first to stay there! So it had no sign, and was still in construction more or less. But it all worked out. And I spent yesterday afternoon and all day today walking around Hobart. Tasmania is at the ends of the earth, and I can't believe people just live here, like that is normal.

Here is a picture of driving through Tassie that I took from the van ride. It is a very beautiful place, but heavily heavily logged. We heard that the logging industry basically runs the country, and in an article we read they referred to it as "Gunnsmania"- Gunn being the big logging company. But....I'm sure we'll hear all about that on our trip. We leave tomorrow and we are making our way to the west, going through Cradle/ Lake St. Clair national parks, old prisons, taking a boat trip up a river, camping....seeing the land. We get back to Devonport Monday night to take the ferry back over to Melbourne, have Tuesday free in Melbourne, and then start the journey back up to Byron Bay.

This last picture is Hobart at 6pm yesterday... completely empty! Seriously, where is everyone? This is a main road.

Well, I think that's it from here. I put up a few more pictures on Facebook, here is the link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2071894&id=9803563&l=ef1a1

Hope everyone is doing well and talk to you soon!

The Train Ride

We made it to Melbourne! It was a long trip, which started at Casino-- beef capital of Australia. We took a 12-hour overnight train to Sydney, and then about 30 min after getting to Sydney got on an identical 12-hour ride to Melbourne. Long trip. But Melbourne is very beautiful and trendy and warm and nice and full of bikes and trams. We are staying at the Nunnery Hostel and today spent the afternoon at that sustainability festival -after having 3 hours of class at the central library. The festival was great and I had an inspiration for my ISP project which I spent 2 hours hearing about at the festival. They are called transition towns, and they are started to be worked on over here. I would look into how they work, how they are set up, what are the challenges... maybe go stay for a week or so talking to people. Here is a website: http://www.transitiontowns.org/ Anyway I am very excited about this idea and I think I could make it work! And the movement in Australia is just trying to get going so I think they will be excited by anyone doing research on them and will be happy to help out. So that is the new goal.

Tonight the plan is for me, Epps, and Michelle to try and locate the Melbourne Synagogue for Shabbat to experience some Australian Judaism. I hope it works out! Judaism failed in Byron Bay, turns out they don't hold regular srevices or anything, just not enough people. And we are free to roam all day tomorrow and Sunday, when we get on the 'Spirit of Tasmania' ferry for our overnight trip at around 8pm. We heard the ride over is on one of the 'roughest stretches of water in the world'! Should be interesting. So that's about it from here! I am trying to add a few photos now on Facebook, I will add the link here verrrrry sooooon

ALSO! The Orion's Belt constellation is definitely upside down from here! That's how I know that I am in Australia. And this is who I sat next to on the train: http://www.odt.co.nz/your-town/dunedin/35710/rotary-award-city039s-039pen-man039, he even gave me two pens!

Ok, these pictures are taking forever to upload. Hope this works: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2071894&id=9803563&l=ef1a1

Life in Byron

Hello again. We've been in Byron a week now and all is well. The pictures I'm about to add are a little deceiving though, they are from our one day of beautiful weather. Since then it has been gray and raining here. But this is the Byron beach that is just a few minutes walk from our Byron Central Apartments.

The last two days we spent back at our orientation site doing a sustainability workshop- 9 to 5 both days. And today we have the day off in Byron-- but it is more like we are wandering the streets until 5pm, because we had to check out of our rooms earlier. But at 5 we catch a bus to Casino where we get our overnight train to Sydney where we switch to our day long train to Melbourne. We finally get there about 7pm tomorrow. This is the festival we are going to in Melbin: http://www.slf.org.au/festival/ looks good right?

And then I think Sunday night we take the overnight ferry to Tassie and drive around the island to Hobart, where we will be for 2 days before we go into the bush camping. So life is picking up again and looks to be very exciting but hectic.

We are also now starting to think about what we want to do for our ISP's (Oy -S-P's in Australian) This is our big independent project for the last 5 weeks of the program. I don't feel tooooo strongly about any of my ideas-- my most developed one is maybe doing something with A Better Place's electric car idea, because their plan is to hook up Melbourne- Sydney-Brisbane which is kind of my area. But I don't know, I basically hope to be inspired and find ideas at this festival.




And so I guess that's it! Life is good here, the group is great and I have met some very wonderful friends, and basically, don't worry about me!

We make it back to Byron on the night of March 4 -daffyyyyy- so I will be in and out of contact until then. 2 weeks from today that is. Ok, I have run out of updates, talk to everyone soon or later!