Prelude 3 - Life was wonderful

So it turns out my commitment to writing every week does not necessarily mean finishing a piece of the story every week. But I have been making some progress, every week. And so finally I am managing to recount the difficult story of those light and dark days, when so much so wonderful came to me, and before my eyes everything I thought I knew and loved crumbled away… A story that has existed 9 months now as two sentences in a draft blog post, three years as an empty document on my computer with only a title, a story waiting to be told; and a story in existence some more years before that as memories perhaps as yet not quite completely processed, absorbed, dissolved...

In some ways it was definitely the worst of times, as I definitely hit rock bottom along the way. But in many ways it was also the best of times. One way or another it was certainly a time of my life with many experiences that I will never forget… It was a time of endings, and also beginnings… It was a time of learning, a time of sensing, a time of knowing, a time of questioning, and a time of denying. A time of living life to the full, a time of opening, unfolding, connecting, and also a time of closing down, escaping, and emptiness… Life is never all black or all white really is it... It's more stripey like a dazzle of zebras, each with their own beautiful and unique patterns of black and white... with a herd of elephants in shades of grey in between...

I moved to The Wild to be with the young man who was then my love, and to join his dream of living on the land, and building a little hut. This had long been a dream of mine too; a patch of bush to call home, and building with my own hands, shelter making - as Peter Cowman describes it - one of our deepest instincts, and also something I had grown up dreaming of, sitting as a child in my architect father's office, drawing all manner of floor plans, up to my ultimate - multiple tree houses with walk ways adjoining. So it was all like a dream come true really. Love, living on the land, life at its fullest for sure. I was so happy to have found a love who wanted to live the same way of life that I did, light footed and grounded, sustainable and settling down to a future together. Or so I thought.

My man had already begun work, along with some help from his friends, preparing a site, and raising the supporting posts and beams of what was to be a small hut, built from the exposed stone of that ravaged land, against a rock slab with a beautiful quartz seam that the previous work had uncovered. I liked this idea and was happy to become a part of it.

My sister and I down at the hut

The hut frame camouflaged but peeking in its bush setting

Imagining the space with walls and doors in different positions

When I joined my man there on the land I moved in with him into a caravan he had lived in a little while previously there on the block, thinking that living there would help him make progress with the building. The caravan had been given to him by a family friend; it was functional, though old, and had a canvas annex attached, groovy with its orange, brown, green and white stripes. We had a campfire cooking station outside, and before long we built a sink on a stand of bush poles, into which we poured the water we collected by bicycle from our kind neighbours' tank, 500 metres or so up the road, to wash our dishes, and scrub our vegetables.

It was a simple life, with all the accompanying pleasures of that simplicity, and also the challenges…

As it happened, I had broken my ankle about a month or two before moving in, and though I was officially allowed to start load bearing a couple of days after my official move in date of 1/1/11 - on which we drove in an old Stout truck loaded with my belongings, as a double rainbow beamed across the sky and brought me thoughts of omens of good tidings - I was to discover that it would be considerably longer until I was truly fully 'back on my feet'. Moving into a caravan while still on crutches and with reduced physical capacity was possibly more of a challenge than I needed to set myself, particularly as for the first while we still had to dig holes and squat every time we needed to relieve ourselves, a challenge with a bung ankle for sure. Luckily it wasn't too long until we upgraded our facilities to a larger hole and even made a seat to go on top!

That summer was also the 'summer of rain'. Such deluges rarely seen. Wonderful in such a parched landscape, to see the long dry creek flowing - overflowing! - and all the dams of the area full. Though somewhat strange and bewildering for it to happen in the middle of summer… And in some ways upsetting to the natural flow of things I'm sure. But for us, it was mostly amazing and exciting. And somewhat wet. We rigged up a funnel to catch the drops that would have fallen on our caravan bed and channelled them outside instead; later on, during a dry spell, covering the caravan with a tarp. We wore jackets and enjoyed life in the weather, digging drainage channels to reduce puddles in our immediate living environment, and collecting our own rain water from the sagging annex roof… And we swam and enjoyed the rare abundance of water.

The 45 acre block we lived on, owned by my 'out of law' parents, was adjacent to a community they had developed and were part of, though they did not live there. Over time, as the months passed, I loved joining in and becoming more and more a part of that community, despite some awkward feelings about the arrangements of access and participation, and vague or absent communications about all this, that I was not officially really able to participate in as I was not an owner, or a resident actually within the community… 

Informally, being part of the community meant board games, cups of tea, shared meals, coffee mornings, craft afternoons, and chats down the road in the village. It also meant sharing of resources, as our kind neighbours provided us over time with access to water, electricity, internet, a washing machine when our hand washing machine wasn't quite up to capacity, and the occasional hot shower when a bucket and flannel wash didn't quite cut it… And I did some maths tutoring for a few of the village kids. More formally it meant meetings, emails, discussions about agreements, working bees (once I was physically capable) and shifts driving the community bus, dropping the high school kids to the nearest school bus stop, and the primary kids to their school gates.

Tuesday crafternoons - a temporary tradition, started by me

Firewood working bee

They were happy times. Living on the land, so immersed in nature; working with my hands; and feeling the warm glow of community, and the taste of the 'village as family' sharing care of the beautiful children who roamed free and talked of broad beans on the bus; as well as the comforts and joys of love. 

Over time, my partner's plans for the stone hut got sidetracked, as his idea for a shelter over our caravan home and the adjacent shipping container storage grew larger and larger, and along the way somehow turned into a 2 story 'shed' of grandiose proportions, big enough to include space for a tractor, and space above for storage and multiple functions. (In my mind, I dreamed of space for craft, music, and dancing…)

Massive bush poles, sourced locally, were raised and set in gravel, tamped solid. Huge beams and giant salvaged trusses, bound together with plywood and clouts, were installed with the help of a crane. A team of builder friends, my partner, and his dad, worked on the roof, while I was assumed to be in the role of caterer. 

Local poles

Salvaged trusses

I continued to be excited about the process of planning and building, and shared with my partner my ideas and inspirations about the ongoing building on the block - the hut foremost, and also my ideas for the shed, and beyond. But my ideas were most often just rejected immediately, with all the reasons they were not good ideas given. Though sometimes they proved good ideas after all and in some cases were even later implemented… At the time I didn't yet quite fully understand what was happening, as I still thought my partner and I were a team, indeed a partnership, and so I continued to try to share ideas, to have inspired conversations about our hopes, dreams and plans for the future together. Then over time this just became a struggle to find a way for my voice to be heard… And then in the end perhaps I tried all the wrong ways, and only made it all worse…

Much later I realised the reality was that this had never been my project. It was not my land. I was not there to be part of any of the choices. In hindsight this was a bigger part of my struggles of those days than I then realised…

Meanwhile, at that time, the struggle foremost in my awareness, was the ongoing pain and restrictions from my too slowly recovering ankle. I have always been a fit and active person and in the years before this time my main mode of transport had almost entirely been my beloved electric bicycle Bumblebee. I lived out of town and worked far from home and so I rode hundreds of kilometres each week. But with an injured ankle I couldn't. And while I loved our life on the land, collecting wood from our property to cook on the fire, building stone walls and compost to expand the garden, collecting our water from our neighbours, working on the building, the background of pain restricted my capacity, and wore my spirits down.

Building soil - compost!

I loved that our way of life meant a much reduced ecological footprint. Living this way helps me hold hope for the future of humanity, and the ecology of our planet Earth. Our water and electricity use were extremely low; our food was sourced as locally as possible, including home grown, in bulk to reduce packaging or without packaging at all; we rarely bought any new thing, preferring to reuse, mend, make our own, buy secondhand, make do or go without; and we accumulated very little household waste destined for landfill, and not much for recycling either. But this did also mean things were not always as easy as they could be, and this was particularly noticeable for me with the limitations of my injury and the added stress of the pain.

Spot the mended holes

One year's waste in the green bin, about a third of the year's recycling in the crates, hand washing machine, waste-reducing reusable pads on the line

My transport footprint was variable, which bothered me, as it was important to me to keep it as low as I could, along with the rest of my footprint, and so I had, despite having for some years lived some tens of kilometres away from town, work, shops, friends, with the help of Bumblebee. At least until more recent times, when I had first injured one knee and then the other in bicycle crashes, my own carelessness rounding a corner, and then a drunk driver, at fault respectively, leading to 6 weeks off riding each time with just 6 weeks in between. And then my foray into motorcycle riding ending in my broken ankle, which had then proved a much slower healing injury… And then just as I felt I was finding my feet again, I was rushing on my bicycle to deliver some cheese I had brought from town to a neighbour, and I slid in a patch of sand and managed to break my wrist…

Going for a ride on my beloved Bumblebee

During that time I was working part time for my then partner's parents, in their home based publishing and education business. I had been riding there from my previous home, around 10km each way, sometimes hitching after my knee injuries; but then for a time after my broken ankle, and then moving to my new, more distant home with my partner, I had to go in my partner's car. Once I was capable of riding again, I then rode the 40 or so kilometres from our home in The Wild, stayed overnight to work the next day, and rode home again. But then this proved too much for my still recovering ankle, and my slowly returning fitness, and endurance, and so I rode instead to the station 15 kilometres away to take the bus early in the morning, again staying and returning the next day as the bus options were limited…

Meanwhile, back home in The Wild, once the shed roof had gone up, we rearranged our living quarters and built a platform floor on top of the shipping container, which became our bedroom and main living space, 'inside', despite a significant lack of walls. Our kitchen set up was expanded to include more benches for preparation and cupboards for storage. The caravan was moved out from under the shelter originally conceived to protect it, and it became our guest bedroom. Eventually we built a step ladder to replace the rung ladder we climbed to our bed, which was hard on my aching foot, though I didn't so much realise it at the time. Perhaps the longest extension cord in the world gave us access, with thanks to our closest neighbours, to an electricity supply and the internet; and we set up our office inside the shipping container. We installed a tank to catch the rain from our giant roof and secure our own water supply; and we even added a privacy and weather shelter to our toilet!

Inside Outside

Above from Below

Above

Below from Above

Below

Outside Inside

Upstairs Downstairs

Keeping warm in our shipping container office

Collecting our own water

Privacy on the privy

I undertook a Permaculture Design Certificate, and enjoyed the course, the learning, and the likeminded people also taking part. My classmates came to visit our block, and the community, and I was keen to share how we were doing things.

I loved our outdoor life, surrounded by the trees and the birds, and without escape from all kinds of weather. It is all too easy to huddle inside in climate controlled comfort, oblivious to the cold, the heat, the rain, the wind… But it is more wonderful by far to embrace the elements; more enlivening to be immersed in the weather, to feel it, to know it, to live it, to breathe it, to be part of it, to accept it in your very bones.

I changed my phone ring from the frog call it had been so that I could distinguish it from the songs coming from our dam. I discovered for the first time the frightening midnight sound of a male kangaroo, leading his thumping mob through the bush. I spotted a sugar glider hanging out in our kitchen. We watched booms in populations come and go - one species of caterpillar; orb spiders and their magnificent webs; a kind of beetles that left us in no doubt as to why there were so many of them; and cup moth larvae who brutalised the surrounding eucalypts…

And I came to know the birds of our land, the mixed species group of small birds that came past mid morning, roughly the same amount of time after sunrise each day, and the other, less regular kinds of visitors. A pair of grey thrushes occasionally sang us morning serenades. The tree creepers crept up nearby trees as fantails wove figure eights, and a curious cloud of tiny grey birds showed interest in what these creatures were doing here, as they flew high in the canopy seeking food. Their more wary red breasted friends, a pair of robins, kept their distance; but over the course of more than a year of seasons passing, their trust grew; and over time they ventured closer. First the brightly contrasted black, white and red male, and following, his more shy, muted brown and orange female, who would pop up from behind a rock as he turned to look after her, pointing her out as I asked after her whereabouts.

And as my ups and downs continued - physically, mentally, emotionally - this home, my nest amongst the trees and the birds, became my place of retreat, as I slowly withdrew…

I eventually stopped trying to be part of decisions, and lost interest in the building process, as discussions became more and more often arguments. 

My partner spent more time away, and I didn't so often seek the company of others. 

Some days I just didn't go to work. I didn't call, didn't text, didn't email. I just didn't turn up. And I didn't answer calls asking after my whereabouts. 

My partner's mother, before, during, and thankfully after, and still, a dear friend to me, called some neighbours from the village and they came to look for me, to make sure I hadn't fallen down an old mine shaft. Perhaps I hadn't literally, but maybe by this point I had figuratively…

I eventually stopped working for the family business, and then after some time I found a job closer by, in town 15 kilometres away, and hoped that might help. A friend gave me a car. It was a funny old Nissan Prairie, a long discontinued neat little 7 seater station wagon with non-aerodynamic extra height and van-like sliding doors, in a beautiful early 80s brown, grass growing amongst the carpet on the floor. I was fond of that car, despite its fossil fuel driven car-ness. I sometimes drove and sometimes rode, still beating myself up for the increase in my footprint despite the continuing difficulty and pain of riding. I also had my bus run and I tied in my work hours with that, for the sake of efficiency.

Almost organic

I was initially rejuvenated, inspired and excited by my new job, as coordinator of a local after school care service, at a sweet little primary school with a lovely gardening program I volunteered with alongside my work. I was happy to be working with children again, back in my field of education, with plenty of time to dedicate to working with them on the important areas of personal and social development, or so I thought. I enjoyed their little smiles lighting up my afternoons; and helping them work through the daily ups and downs, tears and joys of being a child, was giving my work meaning. And I was having fun, playing and creating alongside them while guiding them in their growing.

The school garden

At some point around then I even had a moment where I felt so good about everything that I wrote a 6000 word group email to all my friends about all the wonderful things happening in my life: the joys of simple natural low impact living; working through the healing process with my ankle and discovering the world of self care; living in community; the courses I'd been doing - permaculture, geomancy…; singing in a local choir; dancing too; my new ukulele and the song I wrote when I first got it; and my new meaningful job...

But then eventually the bureaucracy overwhelmed it all. The after school care service was underfunded, as usual for a service of its size and nature. The committee of management, parent volunteers, did what they could, but that wasn't relatively that much, and not nearly enough. A previous coordinator, who had continued on as a dedicated hardworking volunteer after she was deemed under qualified despite years of running the service, had single handedly been holding up the service. Not long after I started she took stress leave, leaving me to deal, in my 14 paid admin hours, with the full load of the day to day management of the service. This meant organising the daily program, rostering and supervising the 9 staff members, managing all the requirements for the 55 children currently enrolled, organising the food for afternoon tea, and all the equipment and materials for the program, sorting out any maintenance required for the building housing the service, and also the service bus which collected kids from other local schools, organising payment of invoices and chasing up payments too long overdue, and the attempted and failed untangling of the firmly knotted Centrelink snarl of red tape… Before long I discovered all my paid hours, including the 9 hours I was supposed to be spending with the children, were engulfed by all these requirements… 

The burden of paperwork for each child attending was huge. Some attended for just a couple of hours each week, but they still required all the same forms filled, invoices sent, fully developed education plans written and observations recorded. And then there was the massive load of policy and procedures requiring review and updates following a new set of regulations brought in months before I came on the scene, that had barely at all been dealt with… And then they came to check that we had done it all already, rather than being at all supportive of the transition or providing resources for the process, instead just telling us all the areas where we weren't yet making the grade… 

And that broke me. 

I decided to quit despite pleas from my staff to stay. I agreed to continue some months to finish the year, on request by the committee of management. But this stretched me beyond my limits...

And then, at the same time, my relationship with my partner finally broke too. And I was dumped, hard, for the first time in my life.

We tried counselling. But that basically just helped us communicate well enough for me to realise that we weren't both wanting to head in the same direction at that point in our lives, which for me was towards building a little home together, in which to settle down and start a family in the near future. And I finally realised that my position was considered less a partner in the household, on the land, making decisions and working together towards shared goals, and more someone who should be working for board, for the privilege of staying there. That hurt. A lot. And that was the end.

This is me, as it happens, at the very moment it was finally sinking in that we were not heading the same way.

And so it all fell completely apart.

And so, after all these years, and the last couple of weeks, it is written.