Beautiful Bruny

On the monday morning, March 26th, I met Michael for my first proper WWOOF experience, outside the church round the corner from my hostel. I was going to spend the rest of the week with Michael and his son seven year old son Brody in at their home on the beautiful Bruny Island.

His home was a small self build in the middle of a clearing in the middle of his acres and acres of land which included his own creek. The house itself was a little blue box painted blue mostly inside too. The whole feel of the place reminded me rather of my uncle Alastair's house in the countryside in the north east of Scotland.

After meeting Micheal in Hobart we spent the rest of the morning running errands in the city, taking tools for repair buying things for the house and choosing some paint for the eves.
We looked at the paints for a while trying to choose something that would match the blue that he described his home to be.

We decided that we quite fancied an aqua marine colour- our logic was "If you have the feeling that you want to do something, just go for it," so we went ahead and bought it.  As it turned out though, the green paint we thought we'd bought was almost exactly the same as the colour of the house. After running a few more errands we stopped off at his mum's house in a place called Kingston were I met her and his ex-partner.

Ruth needed him to take her to the city to take her to a meeting, so Michael dropped me off in a cafe where I spent a fair few hours doing some writing. He said he would be back in a couple of hours, but his time keeping was as good as Polina had warned me it was going to be and he didn't return for a good four hours just as the cafe was closing.

We caught the ferry to Bruny just as the sun was starting to set, and the skies looked stunning.

Michael bumped into some people he knew on the ferry who had just been at the rainbow festival and they all headed back with us to his house, stopping on the way at the spilt that divided the north and south side of the island to admire the sun setting in the sky.

That evening for dinner we had a bit of a strange concoption of rice and sweet potato, carrot, beetroot salad and sweetcorn for dinner.

It was a bit of a strange start to my WWOOFing experience, not at all what I expected. He didn't seem to live much on a farm or have much of an organic plantation but i guessed i'd just see how it went.
The next day it was one of the Rainbow crew's birthday's- Shiva- a very expressive gay Italian man with eye lashes that fluttered as he spoke gesticulating with both hands. He was an adorable guy and I loved him instantly. The whole lot of us- Mitzy, Clint and their three children, Shiva, Virgina and Bea and their friends Erin and Joseph, and Michael, his brother Paul that was also staying with him, Brody and me all head to the beach and spent the day there. We played frisbee, swam, fished and chilled out all day.

For lunch Mitzy woked up some amazing sweetcorn fritters in her campervan for everyone, a recipe I have memorised as they were delicious!

As I'd never been fishing before Paul was determinded to take me out to catch my first fish. The brothers hacd their own fishing boat that we took a fair way off sure and Paul showed me how to cast a fishing rod and off we went. Their wasn't many fish about- apparently the fish move with the tides-but I still managed to catch one although it turned out to be a baby and we tossed it back in.   Paul managed to get a couple of decent sized fish though against the odds and we took them back to the beach and cooked them on a fire we made.

As the evening drew to a close we ll headed back to the house and made a huge feast for everyone with vegetables from Mikes garden and we all sat down to eat together on whatever piece of furniture was avaliable. It was a great evening sitting around and chatting about all kinds of things. Mitzy threw together a birthday cake for Shiva with whatever ingrediants she could find which was delicous. Shiva did this incredible almost theatrical interpretation of Mitzy with his eyes squinted and pouting his lips. , "The amazing Mitzy!.. Her children behind her, her man by her side , hand held up high looking towards the sky, holding a cake! I am the amazing Mitzy!"

When I couldnt keep my eyes open anymore I headed to bed. Looking at the time on my phone, when I got into bed it said 9:15; god i was getting old!

Talking to Michael the next day he assured me I didn't go to bed until about 4, so maybe i'm not that old afterall!

I spent the rest of Tuesday painting Michael's house with the paint we'd bought, and discovered that there was almost no difference at all in the colours. Oh well!

That evening we went fishing again. This time just me Mitzy and Paul. There was always different people to talk to and hang out with at Michael's. I liked this a lot. We even saw a pop of dolphins swimming though the bay.

On wedneday we got up pretty early and as the waves were good Micahel wanted to get out as soon as possible and head to Cloudy Bay to go surfing and asked if I wanted to come too. Of course I said yes. When we got there however the waves were pretty big so Micahel went ahead and surfed while I watched and waited for him to return to help me, but by the time he was finished we had to head back as a friend of his which was also surfing was going to come back with us. I did some yoga while I waited for him though. It was a lovely calming place to do some yoga. So on a platform built for the surfers, I relaxed and did some yoga to the sound of the waves. Sounds pretty new-age hippie of me, ay!

The last day I spent with Michael I finally did some "gardening." In fact I planted a tray of Brocolli. Not the organic gardening experience I had expected but an experience all the same. The rest of the day, trying hopelessly to do something for him, I did some cleaning and then spent the rest of the day reading and playing some ping-pong.

That evening just before the sun went down we took the boat out fishing and all those of us that were left at Michael's (Joseph, Shiva, Virginia, Michael, Paul and Me) took a rod each and tried for the final time to catch some fish in the lagoon as the sunset drinking a few beers. We caught a few fish and headed back to the shore where we sat round a fire and watched a seal as it played in the moonlight that reflected on the water.

We headed back as we were getting cold and Joseph decided that he was going to make 'chocolate creme;' it wasn't the success he'd hoped for but was pretty good regardless.

Friday came and as Michael worked back somewhere near the city over the weekends he dropped me off at a place called Margate, where I caught a bus back to Hobart. It was nice spending a few days with Michael, even it wasn't the experience I had expected. I loved beautiful Bruny Island, but it was nice to get back to civilisation too and back to the homely Central City Hostel.