Woofers and probably Tweeters too

WOOFERS in Glen Innes

I met some Woofers last year near Glen Innes, along the New England Highway in New South Wales, at an organic farm and working ranch that also hosts tourists who want to fossick for sapphires.  Both of the Woofers were Irish, she quite blond and he a shaggy red-head — a “ranga”, as the Prime Minister likes to call herself.  They were working their way around Australia, helping on farms and properties that needed willing workers.  Australia has a long history of encouraging workers to come to the Antipodes, willing to put muscle to the plow, the brewery, the factory.

Woofers are Willing Workers on Organic Farms, an international movement, started in the UK in the 1970’s. These young people may be working their way around the world, but they are also sharing their expertise with those with whom they work as well as bringing innovative organic farming practices back to their home country. Since this ranch had been productive for a century, they had a history to document and new practices to employ.

Homestead at Glen Innes

The two Irish Woofers were enthusiastic and full of information, donning their gumboots to take two kids out to dig though pea gravel found in a stream bed for tiny saphires less than 1/2 the size of your little fingernail.  In fact, my two 10-year-old charges were happy to don old gumboots from the muddy pile under the porch, dig through the gravel for 3 hours (checking each other for leaches from time to time), and finally shower off the grit (and leaving their bits of soiled wet clothing behind as kids are wont to do).

Two amazingly bouncy kids I’d brought to the sapphire mines were quiet now, writing songs on notepads during the long drive home, quiet as they imagined their heart’s exposure:  “No one listens to me” went one. “On the road to the sapphires” went the other.  Heartfelt, heart-piercing.  Both rather like the earnest Woofers I’d just met, making their way around the world, sharing what they knew with people willing to listen.

For more information about Woofers and fossicking in the New England area of New South Wales, check out these websites:  Tourist Information and Willing Workers on Organic Farms.

I slept with a dog tonight.

I miss my furry family when I’m in Australia.  They stay state-side under my husband’s loving hand.  I walk the dog beach in search of a stolen dog smooch, a patted head, a long-tongued kiss.

Kelpie in the surf at Tallow Beach

I talk to people about their dogs.  “May I take a picture of your dog?” I ask.  Sure!  And I get a short dog-history from people I’d never talk to if I didn’t admire their furry companion.  “This kelpie is a beach dog.  Born here, raised on the beach.”  I think the message is that this kelpie, bred to work sheep and cattle, isn’t nervous around people as many are.

If I approached a stranger, admiring their sarong or a hat, I’d never get past “hello!”.  Scary woman on the beach!  But admire a dog, and now I’m a bestie.  Drink, dinner, a conversation about dogs?  Of course!

Some dogs leap and chase balls furiously on the beach and into the surf, as my furry companion tonight does.  Some trot sedately with their owners, eschewing balls and childish doggish things.  Some are dignified, some watch the surf for their human companions, some dash for others’ balls, and some bounce in the surf, ball-less.

Inka, my friend’s little labradoodle, joneses for thrown balls.  My arm aches and shoulder twinges.  Inka doesn’t care.  She’ll trot beside me, in front of me, only distracted by other curly creatures that carry their tail up and over.  Poodles and labradoodles require a sniff and a doggie greeting.  Others are greeted with a snap, yipe!  Get your own!   Sniff along elsewhere!  Inka fascinates all the dogs, but is quite selective in her own choices for friends.  We like this in a girl.  Ball, please.

Two dogs after one ball

Contrary to Inka’s very well-behaved life at home, with me, she sleeps on my bed, cuddles on the couch, and lives a coddled life.  We chat and play, and I pet her every time I’m asked.  Just for a day or two.  I hand her back, reluctantly, to her own person, and forage again on the beach for a little dog-time.

I don’t tell my own little furries that I’ve slept with another.  What happens in Australia, stays in Australia.

With all things possible, I walked on the sky.

Walking on Clous

The tide has been low at my favorite time of day to walk.  And when the tide is low, and the sun lowers over the banksia and bottle bush dunes, the water glazes the beach and leaving just enough moisture to reflect the sky.

A late afternoon walk presents a gift to take in with all my senses, after a day, between the storms, and before a glass of wine with the news.  A fall, lingering sky.  A wise sky, lighting the pock-marked crone of a beach with just enough peach to remind you of her once-smooth skin and youthful beauty.

All things are possible under this sky, walking on clouds on the beach in the afternoon before the rain.

A Useful Epithet

Rubberlip Morwong.  I hadn’t been searching for something to call the guy who cut me off in the traffic circle, but now, turning the name this way and that, I reckon I’ve found a useful epithet.  Or a descriptor for the sales clerk unable to hide his distain for my simple, albeit American, request.  I could imagine applying it to a recalcitrant supplier or a particularly dull client.  Rubberlip Morwong.  Perfect.

Rubberlip Morwong.  Just the syllables have a ring to them.  Even just plain Morwong has its epithetical possibilities.

It turns out that the Rubberlip Morwong has a serious side.  They don’t all do a tap routine along the bar at happy hour.  No, undersized RM’s have been seized at the Sydney Fish Markets in a recent raid.  Underaged drinking at the umbrellaed tables, hiding out from demanding and marauding gulls?  After-hours dance club and bar at the Fish Market?  All possible, in my world.

The fish seized at the Sydney Fish Markets were under the 30 cm (11 in.) limit.  Harvesting undersized fish limits future breeders and quickly reduces fisheries in the name of greed.  What morwongs would do such a short-sighted thing!

Grey Morwongs, commonly called Rubberlip Morwongs, are in a class of white-fleshed fish like snapper and cod.  Their typical length is around 80 cm (2.5 ft) and weigh in at 4 kg (9 lbs).  Night feeders on crustaceans and invertebrates, morwongs inhabit the southern Australian continental shelf from Brisbane on the east coast around the southern edge to Perth on the west, around the island of Tasmania and in the waters off New Zealand.

Whence the seized?  They were donated to OzHarvest, an organization that collects unused food to distribute to charities.  There.  Profit on the undersized denied, but the resource utilized at the same time.

When I looked Rubberlip Morwongs up on the web, I found that the common name is now Grey Morwong.  I had to ask myself, is “rubberlip” a vestige of an earlier era, on in which derogatory names were commonly applied and used with impunity?  Would I be violating a PC code of some sort if I used the morwong’s common name?  I easily and unknowingly trip over Aussie-isms and have been alternately encouraged and chastised by different groups of friends over the same words.  Still, I like the Rubberlip Morwong’s name.  You could affectionally call your best friend a morwong, or perhaps even “Rubberlip.”  Versatile, effective.

Just having Rubberlip Morwong tucked in my back pocket, waiting for the perfect opportunity to employ its awesome weaponry, is good enough for me.

More info on Rubberlip Morwongs, now also referred to as the Grey Morwong?  http://www.sea-ex.com/fishphotos/morwong.htm. or http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/fisheries/recreational/saltwater/sw-species/rubber-lip-or-grey-morwong

Note:  I was first introduced to the amazing Rubberlip Morwong in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, March 12, 2010, titled “Market Raid Nets Undersized Catch” by Jessica Mahar.

Expectations

Sunset on the pools at Ruby Gorge, NT

A year ago, an article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald about a creative camp, run by a naturalist and an award-winning artist, in a stunning setting several hours outside Alice Springs in the Red Center of Australia.  The reports were glowing.  A friend asked if I’d seen the article. Was I keen to go?  She’s a hoot — wonderfully innovative and creative. With her along, it couldn’t be other than lots of fun.  We signed up.

In the intervening year, economies shrank, but the creative camp still loomed large.  What bliss it would be to just think about art for a week, to do art for a week, to be fed and taught and organized, to enjoy the company of other artists in an exceptional setting.

I tried to keep my mind open and free of expectations, but I realize in retrospect, that I did harbor some, hidden in the far reaches of my psyche and formed from experiences over 15 years getting to know some wonderful Australians.

I expected to meet some interesting charismatic people.  I did.  The campers were a fantastic lot — funny, engaging, talented, with life-experiences worth sharing.  If we hadn’t been admonished not to talk about our life-experiences other than at Ruby Gap, we might have learned more, engaged more.  I learned heaps from each of them, though, and couldn’t have been more delighted to be in their company.

I expected the landscape to be fascinating.  It was amazing.  Folds and ribbons, layers and tilts, determined plants in the face of extreme drought and momentary flood.  Wind-prints and footprints in the sand and sudden pools and reeds in a dry river.  Last tides frozen in rock and ghost gums rising from rock in solitary cool defiance.

Ghost gum with Bitter Springs Dolomite

I expected the camp leaders to enjoy people.  If you aren’t fascinated by people and their stories, their talents, and hope to learn as much from them as they learn from you, why operate a hospitality-based business?

Not only were our hosts clearly not interested in those who attended camp, their mercurial and irritated posture indicated that they wanted to be left alone, free from the demands we might inadvertently make on them.

I found this such a curious long-term posture, because in reality, those, like us, who participated in such adventures become the marketing voices of the camp’s future.  If the owners didn’t naturally enjoy people and want to engage with them, at least, in their own self-interest, they should have faked it.  It was a gig, after all.

I expected the hosts to be cordial, not moody, angry nor charismatically challenged.  Their personalities set the tone for the camp and colored each day.  None of us was spared a jab or disparaging remark over the course of a week in the desert.

Sharp, impatient, derisive, and sometimes profane retorts became the norm from our camp leaders.  It doesn’t take much to keep people away.  Steering clear?  You bet!  By day three, each artist retreated, wary and remote.  By day six, we’d rallied again and so had they, but the damage was done.  Opportunities and possibilities lost like puffs of smoke.  Gone.  Done.

I expected the leaders to have organized our time — a hike in the morning before tea, perhaps, and a tactic or still-life or master class after lunch.  We did have 3 hikes in 7 days, to be accurate.

And, true, we did have a three techniques demonstrated.  The first, oil pastels and water-based media, resulted in a temper tantrum from the owner about returning 150 pastels to precisely the same boxes in the same order they’d arrived in.  The joy of exploration quickly evaporated as people struggled to find the correct combinations and then drifted away from the atmospherics.

Algae in pools on the Hale, Ruby Gap

I expected that there would be enough art materials for everyone to explore the techniques presented, although most of us brought what we wanted to work with.  We were often told that there were not enough art supplies for everyone to participate.  I wondered if they weren’t expecting 8 people?  What did they have in mind?

Our first day in camp, our creative camp leader showed us the art materials and their place in the storage bin.  She pulled out prayer flags created and hung around camp by a previous group and searched for her favorite.  There were three blank flags and eight of us, so the group flag exercise was limited to three “if we wanted to.”

This turned out to be a theme:  supplies were limited, but we could do it “if we wanted to.”  We could do anything with the art materials if we wanted to, but if we asked to explore one technique or another, the tone of the response was irritation.  The good will and hopes of the camp ebbed with each push/pull of invitation and irritation.

The art bin was stored between camps.  “We don’t look at it between camps.”  As we had dug the last of the glue out of the last two glue sticks, the next two camps were out of glue-luck. But they could “do whatever they wanted to” — except glue things together with glue-sticks, make prayer flags, use good paper, make lino-prints.  Because there won’t be enough for everyone.

We began to work in pods, nurturing and caring for each other, avoiding the hosts.  I walked and drew each day, returning for tea.  Except for the meals, our hosts became peripheral.  Who wants to engage with people who treat you as if you are misbehaving school children?

Ruby Gap on the Hale River, NT

To be fair, there was a plus side.  The logistics were well-organized.  The vehicles were well-kept and their spaces and cavities creatively employed.  Our swags were clean and comfortable.  The meals were healthy and tasty.  While we were chastised for drinking too much wine (and did any beer drinkers switch to wine?  shame!), there was enough for 2 small glasses each night (and 2+ mugs for the hosts).

It’s not enough, though, to bring people to a remote place, to say “you can do whatever you want” but to be angry and combative if one asks to use certain materials, if one asks where something should be returned, if one asks a question or offers help.

I tried to greet each day without expectations and with joy, but I struggled to remain positive, to find that joy, to find the amusing incident.  Defense and protection are at odds with openness and delight.

Over the weeks since my return, I’ve replayed the week.  Could I have escaped from art camp gulag?  Asked a ride from passing tourists?  Why didn’t I?   By day four, I considered asking to be returned to Alice Springs — a 4 hour drive in a high 4-wheel vehicle. I learned that others in previous camps had longed for escape too.  All of us kept hoping that it would get better, that the hosts would redeem themselves, get a grip on their own issues and help reshape our — and their own — experiences.

Last tide metamorphosed

The “maybe’s” are legion:  Maybe being the 6th camp of 8 scheduled meant the hosts were just too tired, too burned out, too over it.  Solution?   Cancel the camp and refund the money?  Don’t schedule so many? Hire an art teacher who enjoys the gig and a naturalist who likes people? Maybe this group of people just didn’t fit the hosts expectations?  Solution?  Take a course updating your hospitality and management skills?  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Would I recommend Larapinta Creative Camp?  How do you feel about charismatically challenged, mercurial leaders in a stunning landscape?  Your call.  Your $1550.

Remnants

endless variation

We leave tell-tale remnants of ourselves here and there.  Some lie in bright heaps of sunlight and others drift to adhere like faux spiderwebs sold at Halloween.

I left a crabby remnant at the grocery store the other day. I couldn’t find what I was looking for in a new arrangement of health supplements that seems to suit the arrangers rather than the consumers.  One might mention old dogs and new tricks, but I still hold on to the tail of that crabby remnant, draping it more carefully over my supremely logical argument and tucking it in around my grumpiness.

Sometimes remnants are more graceful, however, more generous, and find residence in memory, expanding the soul beyond its previous confines.  A waft of perfumed air on a walk, when you have to stop and go back and lift your nose to try to find the wave of it again.  Ephemeral, yet deeply satisfying.  A gesture, a touch, an acknowledgement — quiet, quick, with lasting import.

If we are lucky in our remnants, they include the explosion of belly-laugh, or a worldview that refuses to take the day-to-day plodding too seriously, finding tiny amusements to freshen the moment and lift the spirit.  Revisiting these remnants of grace sweeten and settle, softening the form of the day.

I gather my remnants and hold them close to me — savoring, sorting, making middens of these and those.  Over there, a heap of situations I’d rather forget — the ones that reappear uninvited and stick in gray patches to the edges of insecurities.  And there, the moments of delight, a far bigger pile, that I can sort through gratefully, relishing and wrapping them around myself like a perfumed silken shawl.

There’s a rainy-day pile too, for that 32nd-rainy-day-in-a-row, the pile of small pleasures that keep you from leaping out of your skin and dancing over the horizon.  And on the occasion of rare delight, they accompany me as I leap and dance away.

shell remnants

On my patio in Australia, under the corrugated metal awning, on a rusting Moroccan table lie my shell-remnants, gathered over the years on my afternoon walks at on the beach.  Rarely does the sea offer up the whole, but rather the fascinating bits — inner twist, fluted edge, striped arch.  Sensuous curves and spines that invite the finger-tip and call to the palm.

Tiny spiders have taken up residence under the limpets, and I reorganize their efforts as I examine, and sort, and fondle.  The same bits are endlessly fascinating.  Some with shiny nacre inside and others with keyholes on top.  This kind from Tallow, that from Lennox, or Main Beach or Belongil or Brunswick Heads.  The wind rearranges as the sea once did, and so do I.

On a Saturday morning, I move a few bits of shell to make room for my tea and a few small squares of dark chocolate.  I settle into the leisure of the Sydney Morning Herald and the weekend Australian, lounging in the air heavy with frangipani.  I lift my cup for a sip of the aromatic Jade Oolong and breathe deeply.  I’m drawn again to examine the shells at my side, wrapped in my own sweet remnants, piled and draped in bright heaps of sunlight, even in the shade.

Bubbler Crabs

Bubbler Crabs

I’ve felt like a bubbler crab lately.  I’ll bet you have too.  

Bubbler Crab

These little sand-colored crabs occupy the highest low tide line, ensuring a twice-daily banquet delivered by the tide .  When I walk my local beach at low tide, I see whole colonies of them — identified by the little balls of sand they leave behind.  

Their colonies are about a meter wide, and stretch for a block along the sand, stop for a meter or two and then start again for another block — a good half-kilometer or so all together.  Some areas are crab metropolises and some are lonely outposts of crab-dom.

Twice each day, these tiny creatures come out of their holes and glean the sand for food, molding the cleaned granules into a ball forced up through the mouth-parts, then discarded on top of the sand, another ball already begun. The sand balls are the leavings, the crusts of bread left on the plate, the shells, the gristle, the clumps of fat, pits, seeds, stones, grit, and other inedibles of sand bubbler crab cuisine.  

Each line of sand balls occupies the edge of a trench that a crab has mined, and each ball represents the limit of the outward expansion until the next mining operation is undertaken.  And always, an escape route is cleared for a quick retreat back into its home hole.

Bubbler Crab Colony

The sand bubbler crab is perpetually wary.  Silver gulls, menacing giants in sand-crab juxtaposition, prey on the knuckle-sized creatures.  The crab’s frenzied gleaning and cleaning gives it away.  Darting home or freezing in place are the necessary but risky survival strategies, depending on how far the crab has ventured from its home hole.  Near = dash home.  Too far = freeze in place.  Only the crab knows how far is too far or how near is near enough.

Once the sand dries out, the eating frenzy and ball creation ceases. Gulls head for more promising territory, leaving the odd red-legged sentry behind.  The sand crab tidies its hole, ejecting little puffs of sandy detritus, and readies its den for the next tide.  It will poke an eye-stalk out of its hole (or perhaps a leg to get the eye-stalk into viewing position), but will zip back into the hole at any hint of predators, footfalls, shadows, or any other likely danger.  And it will wait for the advance and retreat of the tide for another smorgesbord of minute morsels.

I, too, am hunkered in my little hole, cleaning out the overly sandy bits, and waiting for the next tide.  Rather than living in dread of the next silver gull of disaster to view me as a tasty treat, however, I’m trying to be wholeheartedly positive in the present (a daily challenge), while planning for the future. 

Point Byron

I glean the details of my Oz-life for little story bubbles to leave on my life’s beach and relish the people we hold dear.  That doesn’t mean I don’t obsess over election trends, fingers tapping and scrolling and feeding on shifts and feints and obfuscations.  And I am clearing a path of retreat, just in case freezing in place proves to be a less-than-useful strategy.  

I’ve felt like sand bubbler crab lately.  I’ll bet you have too.  

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For more on the amazing sand bubbler crabs, check out this video:  http://videos.howstuffworks.com/animal-planet/29027-fooled-by-nature-sand-bubbler-crabs-video.htm