September 10 - 13th and 16 - 24th. Kijiri community, Mullumbimby.
- Bouncy kangaroo comin' down the valley.

Our next WWOOF host, our first in NSW, took some prolonged travelling to reach - a three hour coach south from Brisbane to Byron Bay, a three hour wait there that due to the heavy rain we mostly spent in the bus shelter, a hour and a half coach south-west inland to Lismore and then only another hours wait until our host collected us from the bus stop there. Oh, and then a forty minute drive to the north of Byron the the community they lived on...so another day well spent then!

On the drive ouver we met one of our hosts, Jude, a slightly nuts but ultimately extreemly pleasent woman as well as, sandwiched between Liz and myself in the back of the car, Sam, her two year old son. Now I've never really had a whole lot of contact with children, of this age or any other, since being that age myself so I'll be honest and say I was very nervous because I didn't really know how to deal with them...however this was something I'd have to get used to because it would transpire that half of the work would be looking after Sam whilst Juse and one one of us got into other tasks...plus he didn't exactly vanish one we were done with work either! (Though we could retreat to the sanctuary of our caravan, far enough from the house to appreciate the silence!)

Though unusual and stressful (watch him! watch him! arrr looked away for one second! Is he still OK?! watch him!) to begin with this actually turned out to be far from the worse way to spend time and was probably a good learning experience too. OK, so some time the seconds did seem to crawl by, the repetition of the same games (Carz movie, Thomas the tank engine, Dora the explorer - sonds of which are now lodged in my brain and taking a stuffed toy kangaroo and peguin for hour long tours around the outside world - feeding them gras to a soundtrack of num-num-num, him turning to request 'comin'?' if I lagged behind as much as two steps_ could become maddening at times but overall it was alright, some moments could even be called fun.

I do wish he hadn't been, not too successfully, going through toilet training though...that rug took some serious cleaning...but enough of that

The place we were staying, nearest to the town of Mullumbimby, was a community hidden away from the outside world at the bottom of a beautful valley, the feel of isolation hammered home when as the weather got bad (it rained for five days solid at the end) thick mist hugged the tops of the hills surrounding us, seeming to add a shifting roof to the place. There were six landowners across 120 acres, I'm not sure how many people that would mean, Jude was one landowner and on her bit was her family house, plus one person in a studio and another couple living in a bus. Any hippy/commune/crazies stereotypes were quickly put to rest by meeting such people, they all had 'proper' jobs (counciller, psychologist, vet, builder) outside the valley and whilst worldvuews definatly swerved left of centre nobody seemed to hold massively extreem ideas i.e. though they might dabble in alternative healing they'd still go to a doctor when sick. It was actually a really decent place, after all nobody would have been able to afford the land by themselves and to be in a place where everybody knew one another, there was no need to lock houses or car door and children could be allowed to explore worry-free was great.

Our time in the vallet was split into two runs, first we arrived on Friday 10th, stayed three nights and left on Monday 13th to spend three nights in Byron Bay (written up elsewhere) before we returned on Thursday 16th to stay another week, leaving on Friday 24th. The reason for this was that Sams grandfather was meant to arrive on the Monday and it seemed best if we were elsewhere for the first few days, in the event he didn't actually come but we stuck to the plan and I personally think it was a good way of doing things, a small break gave us a chance to recharge our batteries and in a way leaving and coming back meant we didn't become too used to the beautiful surrounds and were perhaps better able to appreciate it.

Work (as above mentioned this was on alternative days as Liz and myself took turns looking after Sam) tended towards cleaning and sorting things out within the house, not really the sort of thing I started WWOOFing to do but I'd been doing a lot of physical farm work over the last few months and so to be honest it was a nice break from that sort of thing. During our initial stay work was geared towards getting the place looking parent-in-law judgment-proof, so lots of sweeping, clearing of cobwebs and scrubbing of windows. Work continued in this vein after we returned (to there being no grandparent there...but Hanson, Jude's husband, was back, he wasn't actually there a whole lot during our stay but seemed an decent enough bloke) and then became more focused on the imminent arrival of one of Jude's friends (and family! more presently) and getting a room ready for them - more cleaning, painting of cupboards and building of beds.

We did do some farmesque work during our stay, the focus of this being the small veggie garden behind the house (incidentally - a Queenslander which had once been in Lismore but made the journey to the community on the back of a truck...how it got down the narrow fairly steep road into the valley is a question I repeatedly forgot to ask.) The plan was to extend this and so I septn some time laying out cardboard and tarpalling to kill off the grass in the proposed area and also pulled up half of the existing fence (a necessity when you have free-range chooks wandering about, not to mention wild animals, chiefly hords of wallabies - sometimes we would see a dozen of these walking between the house and our caravan at night) and rebuilding it around the new area. Pretty satisfying to look down on it from an upstairs window when it was all done...plus I now know that wire and my eye are a bad combination!

We mostly resided within the valley but on one occasion did venture beyond its hills to the outside world, to a beach in Byron bay to be precise. It wasn't the best of weather but between downpours we managed to bury lots of Sam's toys and try to share in his marvelment of different coloured sand, which I guess is kinda cool.

Prior to the arrivial of Jude's friend the back room that she, Sam and Hanson were going to move into enjoyed a temporary life as a film room - a giant television and wall to wall beds making it ideal for this purpose. Escaping to there after a days work and losing ourselves in a film over a cup of tea was a great way to wind down...plus it was good to be remined that not every TV program was Dora the explorer!

So, yes, three days before we left one of Jude's friends came to stay...plus her two children, a girl aged two and a boy aged eight. Cue absolute and total chaos - screaming children, crying children (sharing amongst those aged two...doesn't really work...), talking children, louder screaming children...running, climbing, jumping, falling...retreat to the caravan! It had a funny side but I think any longer would have driven me insane!

Including our time away in Byron it was a fortnight from our arrivial until we left, Jude driving us to Lismore where she was to be working, us to catch a bus to our next destination. This time absolutly flew by, it was stressful at times (I'm not sure how I would have coped if I'd gone by myself and had to look after Sam every day) but in the end very rewarding and it was a little sad to go, the whole place just seemed so alive and energetic it was hard not to get infected with such spirit...still I did find myself hoping our next place would be a little bit quieter!

...and hopefully nobody would run car toys over their own poo.