My dearest friends,
You might have wondered what we did in the last five months. Well, basically we did four things. We built a house, had a holiday in Tasmania, got married and I went back to Germany. 🙂
But first things first. We built a house. We built a straw bale studio for our housemate Kim on his parent’s property in Northwest Tasmania. On a beautifully revegetated former 40 acre farm with hundreds of native birds and paddy melons we had found a nice spot for a little 10 by 5 meters studio. It lies nicely sheltered from the strong winds, facing an open paddock to the north. We used passive solar design to minimize heating needs in winter meaning that the main windows are orientated to the sun in the north. The straw bale building technique we used was quite similar to the one we used in the Cozy Cottage at The Food Forest. We built a timber frame structure which carries the roof with the walls in filled with compressed and rendered straw bales, windows and a cob wall. As it was clear from the beginning, that we could never do this with just the three of us (Kim, Matze and me) we organized a work party for it. In a work party people with or without building skills come to work on your project, in exchange for food, accommodation and the skills they learn by working with you. Other than a workshop, none of the helpers have to pay money and there are no theoretical lectures about what’s happening. So we made some flyers, created a Facebook event and activated the bush telegraph 😉 Gallinula Studio Flyer
We were surprised about how many people were eager to help and didn’t even mind crossing the Bass Strait for us! In peak times we had up to 25 people from at least 7 different countries working and living happily together, despite the nights getting colder and the mud getting stickier… I had taken the job as a camp mom in advance, so I made myself responsible for the design of the camping space, the social design and very importantly the food! I made an estimated plan of how much basic ingredients we will need to make our own bread, yoghurt, drinks, meals and pastries for roughly 20 people, three meals a day for a full months… and then we went shopping! We used the great food wholesalers in our suburb Brunswick to by 5 kg of raw almonds, 25 kg of brown sugar, 10 kg of rice… you name it! Big fun 😀 Matze and Kim then went down to Tassi about two weeks before me and took maybe 50 kg of food with them on the ferry.
When I went down I spent a week full of preparation, making big lots of hummus, Adzuki bean paste, muesli, granola, sprouting, testing and getting used to the kitchen. Then all these amazing people came and in about week 2 it all developed its own momentum and the building went up so fast, that every time I went to have a look at it, I could hardly believe the progress in one day. In the kitchen I got help from the amazing Bec, who is a founding member of the famous Mud Girls in Canada and saved me from a burn out between the pots. Notice to myself: Never again try to cook every meal and do all the cleaning for more than 15 people and longer than a week alone. Bad idea. Bec was greatly experienced from dozens of building workshops she has participated, organized and conducted and it was a sheer pleasure to be super creative with her in the food department. She also helped me implementing some organizational structures, which made living together in this big group much smoother. Also Anna, one half of our amazing Dutch friends Anna and Wieger aka the Bike punks, was helping me a lot in the kitchen and together we awed people every day with our tasty creations. Surprisingly people stayed longer than they intended 😉 It was a bit crowded at times, but everything worked out fine. After one month, at the end of April, the weather finally decided to turn into winter and it got colder and wetter. As we had planned we decided to stop the build at that point and to leave the finishing of the render and the windows until the next spring.
Kim will be the organizer next time and he might organize the finishing of the build in a different way. I hope he is up to the challenge and finds support from our friends. Sure is, we wouldn’t have come so far without all the enthusiastic help from so many people we can call friends now through this binding experience. We build a beautiful house from foundation to roof to walls with almost no heavy machinery and just a handful of professionals, indirectly teaching people, what building, eating healthy and living together means. Sounds like a Win-Win-Win to me. I definitely learnt a big deal about myself, workshop organization, group dynamics and cooking amazing stuff for a lot of hungry mouths 😀
After that, Matze and I were quite exhausted so we decided to go for a holiday on beautiful Tasmania. Together with David, Damo and Daniele we first went to the very touristy but stunning Cradle Mountain, where the wind blew snowflakes in horizontal lines, paused by glittering rainbows in between. Then we made a two day walk into the alpine region of the Walls of Jerusalem, an area that reminded me of the swamps before Mordor in Lord of the Rings… just without the dead bodies underwater 😉 It was stunning and freezing, so Daniele and I decided to just do half of the walk and sleep on a camp site a few hundred meters lower. Matze, Damo and David took the challenge and camped in a mountain hut, disturbed by a humungous possum at night and blended by fresh fallen snow in the morning. They were quite happy, when we met again the next day.
Matze and I then travelled further alone in a rented car. We went through the seemingly deserted middle of Tasmania, in island as big as almost Germany, with the inhabitants of Berlin spread all over. It really feels, like you are at the end of the world… because basically, you are! 😀 And it is so beautiful there! Tasmania has probably the clearest air on the planet, constantly cleansed by the Antarctic winds blowing over it. A big portion of Tasmania is still native primeval temperate and cold rainforest, which was never cut down. In some of the forests, all trees around you are hundreds of years old, mushrooms and lichens in all sorts of shapes and colors everywhere. It is hard to find the words to describe how that feels. It is certainly a feeling that you cannot experience in middle Europe, probably even in whole Europe. A forest this pristine leaves you humbled, like a walk into the high mountains or like contemplating a massive waterfall. These forests need all the protection they can get, as greedy investors try to transform this “useless timber” into woodchips for paper making in China and then want to replace the once rainforest with dead plantation forests. Thankfully there are people like Erik and Lisa, also friends we met through our straw bale house, who actively fight for the protection of the forests in Tasmania. We also met Anna and Wieger again in Tasmania’s capital Hobart, were we spent a few relaxed city days, before we celebrated Matze’s birthday in the very hippie-style Cygnet. Finally we went onto Bruny Island, an island from the island from the island. We tried its delicious seafood, artisan cheeses and chocolates and discovered the Adventure Bay, where Captain James Cook landed the first time in Australia and where nothing except Antarctica lies behind the waves. After two very relaxed weeks of driving around Tasmania, getting more than 9 hours of sleep per night again and stunning landscapes, we said Goodbye to this little island at the end of the world and went back to marvelous Melbourne.
In Melbourne we reconnected to our friends there after being away for over two months and I went back to volunteering in the propagation section in C.E.R.E.S. What followed were two really relaxed months. Matze worked a bit, I did a bit of gardening (homegrown purple broccoli and giant cauliflower made me proud) and we both prepared for our next big adventures: Our wedding and me going home. Both are kind of connected, because while Matze still feels like travelling and likes to change places and environments often, I feel different about that now. I figured in the last years that there is definitely a lot to learn living this way and it had taught me invaluable lessons. I also learned though, that it is quite tiring for me to constantly adapt to new situations and that I’m more of a network person. I love to have my friends and my books around me and unfortunately, none of these can be stuffed into a backpack… So our long stays in Sapney, farms and finally in Melbourne have all been compromises between Matze’s and my way of travelling and living already. But one challenge always remained: The way back home. While Matze likes the idea of doing part of that by boat, bike, bus, with a little bit of working here and a little bit of action there I didn’t feel like spending much time for the way back myself. You could also say that I’m just tired of travelling now. After almost 3 ½ years, six countries, three continents, travelling thousands of kilometers and meeting hundreds of people I feel like going home. Wherever home is now. On the other hand, Matze and I still want to spend our lives together. So about a year ago, Matze suggested an unthinkable solution: Let’s get married. Let’s promise each other to not loose each other while we are giving ourselves the freedom to do what feels right for each of us. It took me a while to adapt to that thought, as I never wanted to get married 😉 But in the end, it is a beautiful thought and probably the best reason to marry anyway. So after an exhausting day building the straw bale studio in Tassi I suggested that we get married. We get married in August and then I’ll fly home.
Our wedding was just beautiful and all felt like it was meant to be. We invited our many colorful friends from all walks of life, booked a nice little room in the heart of C.E.R.E.S. as the venue and wrote down “our story” so people get an idea of what happened to us before we met them. I found my wedding dress and shoes in the second hand shop, the simple silver rings we bought the day before the wedding in a shop on Victoria Market, the flower decoration was sweet smelling Jasmine, picked from the fences of Brunswick and our celebrant was Amber, a good friend of ours and a comedian from Canada. Matze and Anna went dumpster diving for food, which they then transformed together with Francesca into a delicious Buffett for our 50 guests. David, our Swedish friend and housemate spent three days making an incredible double-story wedding cake, which we enjoyed after the ceremony. All our friends helped to set up the tables and chairs in the venue and we all sat down for a feast. Our little ceremony began. We started with a little game, trying to catch a cherry with the mouth. Then we told people our story, first as a little play and then with a little film I composed out of pictures from us.
After that we played the shoe game, where we had surprisingly matching answers, according to the audience 😉 Our best mates Kim and Wieger and bridesmaids Francesca and Anna joined us and Amber did her funny and honest speech about being together and loving each other. Then came the most exciting part for me: We read our wedding vows to each other. It is quite something to tell your deepest feelings to the one you love in front of other people you love. It is quite magical and really overwhelming. It feels like the love just multiplies instantly and swaps everyone’s façades and fears away. After we exchanged the rings I can just remember hugging everyone in the room at least twice and smiling until my jaws hurt… and beyond that 😀
After this incredible event called our wedding, we went to a marvelous honeymoon, gifted to us by our friends. They all had chipped in so that we could spend a night in a super luxurious cabin with fireplace and massive hot tub in the woods of the Dandenongs. The Dandenongs is the mountain range Southeast of Melbourne and full of towering gum trees and my beloved fern trees. We enjoyed the train ride to the end of the line in Belgrave where we got picked up by Donna, who dropped us at our cottage. When we arrived the fire was burning and the hot tub was warm so after months in a not insulated house in the winter of Melbourne we spent the rest of our time there running around naked and soaking in the tub 😀
But the sad part of me leaving was always with us, walking next to us for the last months. So after our trip to the cabin it was inevitable: I’m flying home. Tomorrow. I don’t know why we seem to always do these things, combining the most emotional events close together. In this case it was my choice to do so. It was tough nevertheless. After the emotional high and me feeling deeply connected to Matze we had to say Goodbye to each other, I had to say Goodbye to all my friends in Australia and to my “old life” all at once. Just crazy… if you ask me 😀 Well, somehow we made it and I took the long flight home, without sleeping, crying a bit und being exited about what there is to come in the new and next chapter of my life.
I didn’t wanted to come home in winter and being back in my hometown Dresden I see that that was a good choice. I arrived just in time for the harvest season. Everywhere I look I see food ripening on trees and shrubs, foods to swap with neighbors and food for free in public spaces. It will be a long and productive autumn. I’m strangely heartbroken and also strangely fresh. Come whatever may.
I love you all,
Julia