Where are you now?
At time of writing, we're at The Church in Franklinford. (Check out the page called “The Church” for a bit of history and some photos. It’s not a cult, or a commune; it’s a little old renovated church which has been in Tim’s family for about 25 years.)
When are you heading off?
As soon as possible. With one last clean up, and when we both feel better, we’re hoping to head off either tomorrow or Sat morning.
Which direction?
Basically: north-west: up through Hattah-Kulkine National Park (where we’ll hopefully do a bit of paddling in our bright green boats) along the Murray and then on to a little town called Blinman, which is just north of the Flinders Ranges.
Then?
The basic plan is to do a few adventures, and in between to go WWOOFing.
WWOOFing?
Willing Workers On Organic Farms is an organization where farms register that they are happy to take in “willing workers” (i.e. us) and, in exchange for 4-6 hours of work, to provide food and accommodation. To become a WWOOFer, we had to join the organization ($65) which got us our WWOOFing book, which lists all the possible places where we can stay. There are more than 2000 in Australia and it is a worldwide organization, so we’re hoping to make WWOOFing in Australia just the start of a worldwide adventure. Some of the farms sound amazing – with amazing locations and people who are educators, musicians, yoga teachers, writers and Indigenous elders, as well as being organic (or biodynamic or permaculture) farmers. Given both Tim and Lily have a passion for environmental sustainability, gardening, and want to get out and hear other people’s stories, AND the fact that WWOOFing is a super-cheap way to travel, meet people and learn cool stuff, it sounds like a good plan.
And the adventures?
First up is a challenge we’ve (Lily) has set us: to run the Mawson Trail.
Ok. Where’s that?
Bike South Australia has built a mountain bike track called The Mawson Trail. It’s named after one of Australia’s most famous Antarctic explorers, Sir Douglas Mawson, who taught geology and regularly explored these ancient mountain ranges. The trail starts in Blinman then curls through the Flinders Ranges, around through Burra, then Clare and into the Barossa Valley, which is famous for its wine. (That part of the trail is also known as The Riesling Trail. For Lily’s sake I hope it has a Shiraz footpath.) Eventually, it ends on the outskirts of Adelaide.
How long is it? And… you’re running it?
It’s a bit over 900kms long. We’re running and riding it. The basic outline for each day will be to get up, go for a leisurely 20km ride (and I’m not being facetious or sarcastic or egotistical – I do actually mean a slow, enjoyable, cruise-along-and-watch-an-amazing-part-of-the-world-go-by ride). It has to be, because that’s when we loosen up the legs for that day’s half marathon. We’ll sit and have some breakfast, then trot-walk back to the van, where we’ll high five each other, have lunch, then pack up and drive to where we left the bikes after breakfast. Because it’s only 20kms or so, this should be a quick drive, then we set up, roll out the hammock and the yoga mats, and get into the afternoon activities, which will generally be reading, writing, eating, stretching and lying about admiring the view.
You’ll be fit!
Yes we will. If we make it. It is all about having fun, but there’s an element of challenge and hope that we can be gentle on ourselves so that we get fitter as we go. (And calling it a “run” and a “half-marathon” makes it sound harder than it needs to. If I said I was going hiking, without a pack, and had all day each day to walk 20kms in beautiful countryside, it doesn’t sound nearly as difficult.)
How long will that take?
It depends on side trips, rest days etc. But if we average roughly a half-marathon each day, it’ll take something like 43 days, which is good, because we’ve bought tickets to a concert in Adelaide on the 17th of November (Portishead, on the night before Tim’s 40th birthday). There’s an open invitation for anyone who wants to come along.
Are you doing it to raise money for anyone?
No. It might sound uncharitable, but I’m not sure we’re going to make it, and while the motivation of running for someone else might be good, it might also make it a little bit tricky to just say, “Nah; didn’t work out. We’re going paddling.” There will be a site set up and links to a place where people who are inspired to donate can give money to charities that we think are cool (Beyond Blue and Oxfam), but that’s not the purpose this time.
Then just WWOOFing?
We have a few other adventures lined up: a sea kayak trip in the Coorong, which is south of Adelaide, at the mouth of the Murray River. It’s been almost bone dry for the last fifteen years but has recently come back to life and will be looking incredible. (For anyone who wants to see footage of the area, rent the video Stormboy – a classic Australian movie.)
During December-Feb it’s really hot in Western Australia, so we’ll mostly be WWOOFing or house-sitting in the south-west corner of WA. We’re also hoping doing some more sea-kayaking trips, including (perhaps) one up around Shark Bay and Monkey Mia – which is famous not for monkeys, but dolphins!
There’s a trail marathon in there as well which we might do, called the Six-Inch Trail Marathon.
Then we plan to wind our way back across the southern edge of the continent, arriving back in Melbourne in late March so Tim can get his surf-ski out of storage and do the Marysville to Melbourne Multisport race. (It’s a one-day race that involves running, cycling and paddling from, you guessed it, Marysville to Melbourne.) That’s on April 1st.
On April 26-27th, we’ll hopefully be teaming up with some great friends to do the Oxfam Trailwalker – a 100km walk/run.
After that we might be ready to go overseas and continue the WWOOFing/learning/writing/running adventure in South America, but there is a plan to return to WA to run a track called the Bibbulmun. That’s another track which comes in at a bit under 1000kms. And that time, if we feel capable of it, we’d probably gear it up more to be something we’d try to raise money for a particular cause. Ideally something involving food, exercise, the environment and community-connectedness. (Are those words too big for a charity blurb? How about we just say we want to raise money for “kids”?)
Then South America?
Yes. We’ll keep going for a while, hopefully. There’s a lot to do and see, and lots of people to meet and learn from. For me (Tim) it feels like I’m putting myself through university again, and this is the best course I could come up with.
Other adventures pencilled in include sea kayaking the inside passage, a six day running race in Chile, hiking in North America, Nepal and India, snowboarding in Canada and Japan, and paddling the Danube from, say, The Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea where it’s the border between Romania and the Ukraine. (That’s about 2800kms, but we wouldn’t be the first to do this; for an incredible story, check out the journey Oskar Speck took from 1932-1939 – paddling a folding kayak from Germany to Australia, via the middle east, India and Asia, only to arrive in Australia after WWII had broken out and find himself imprisoned in POW camps as an enemy foreigner!)
Work?
Volunteering, community development, English teaching, ordinary teaching (Tim), editing (Lily), and writing... along with whatever else comes along.
Sounds amazing… but why?
That, I guess, is the big question.
Lily’s answer is:
Then I started to see it as an end to the type of ‘career’ I’d fallen in to. I began to realise that I was looking for something more meaningful. I hoped that this adventure would point me in some kind of direction. And it already has given me space to work a few things out. Having this time at the Church has given me the opportunity to take yoga classes with an amazing woman who inspired me to keep being influenced by yoga practices and philosophy in everything I do. Staying at the Church and taking those yoga classes gave me more insight into why I want to go on this adventure and has massively influenced my approach to it. By opening myself up to meeting amazing people doing amazing things, I’ll learn from them, and be part of what they’re achieving. There’s the possibility there of new ideas, new ‘career’ choices, new adventures.
There are also the physical challenges: getting fitter (how cool would it be to know that you can run 100km?!!), gaining confidence in riding my mountain bike. I hope to learn to speak to myself in more positive ways, to encourage myself to be stronger, go harder, let go of some of my anxieties and self-imposed limitations. Being outdoors is becoming more and more important to me – running, riding and living outdoors will bring me closer to nature and I know how much happier I am when I’m there.
One of the major reasons I want to do this is so I can live more simply. To let go of the material stuff I’ve been clinging on to. To be less cluttered and allow myself more space to think, breathe, to become the person I want to be: calm, centred, connected.
One of the first things I will do will be to cut off all my hair. Shave it down to the bare minimum. Let go of it. It’s been something that’s defined me, along with my clothes. And shedding those things will feel (I hope) like a move towards a more simple, less material life. I might also get to see who is really under all that clutter.
And and and I think it will be wicked fun to be super fit and zoom down hills and run for miles taking cool photos and having amazing stories of emus and lizards and crazy Australians to tell my lovely but slightly evil nieces.
Tim’s answer is:
In no particular order, I really want to:
Be still and write: I want to write my way into a world in which a young boy takes on inconceivable odds to rescue his parents, and through doing it gets to know them. Just writing that makes me excited. And that’s just one thing on the list!
Experience other cultures: Japanese nightlife; Indian markets; South American festivals, music and dancing. The hills of Nepal and Patagonia. And futbol, ideally in Brazil.
Connect with nature: time to understand it, connect with its spirit, and learn the stuff that takes time – the ability to see things, for one. Moving through it on big (though not fast) journeys, for me, is the way to do it: by foot, bike or kayak. (Time snowboarding would be good, too.)
Stop with people: to meet people and hear stories, from all over the world; to write profiles of a hundred people whose lives are different from mine and be able to tell their stories with empathy, to see and present their world from their point of view. I’d like to get outside my cultural understandings, and also lose my fear and become comfortable stopping, listening, sharing and make real friends.
Explore what my body can do: to find endurance, strength, balance and flexibility in my body: to ask it questions and learn what it’s capable of. And through my body learn some of the bigger things about myself. I don’t know what, exactly, but that’s the point.
Follow my curiosity: Food. Agriculture. Writing. Culture. I want to learn by doing, reading, talking with people and writing about it, reflecting on it and trying to make sense of it. And to be thorough – to actually know what I know.
Having fun isn’t everything I want out of this next year, or couple of years. That list crosses over, connecting fun and work – “work” as in “something that takes effort”.
There are too many possible end points to this trip. If I think about them too much I get paralysed. I want to write a book, or three. One is a young adult novel; one is a non-fiction exploration of how different the world would be (or already is for some people) if we changed our relationship to food; and the third is about running. Then there’s the play I’d like to write, about Edward Stone Parker. The book of profiles really just supports the book about food. I’d like to work on the Amazon, and teach English or work in community development and try to get a clearer picture of how environmental sustainability can work in different contexts. I’d like to learn to be a journalist write good non-fiction and get it published. I want to do some long runs and bike rides and paddles. By long, I mean longer than a month. I want to get comfortable wwoofing, and find out whether or not I can contribute and learn things by doing that, and what else can be achieved along the way. I want to meet the “kinds of people” (if such a thing exists) who host wwoofers, and I want to do that in other countries. I guess I want to understand and become better at being the kind of person who creates community. If I can learn that way, great! In those people and those places I know there is hidden a lot of the information I want to learn – about food, agriculture, nature and community, just to name the basics. I want to come out with ideas about how to teach, how to start a business that combines writing, teaching and exploring/confronting nature by travelling through it (by foot, bike or kayak), and also to be an environmental journalist, if such a thing exists. (I heard the other day someone called a “nature correspondent”.) I want to have the chance to be a sea kayak guide, and the opportunity to study writing full time for a year – somewhere intensive, like the Iowa Writer’s Centre – or to study writing for the theatre in a workshop setting in New York. And ultimately to create some good work, which somehow reflects the fact I’ve learnt something while travelling and writing.
So you may see that I think of this journey as like an undergraduate course in nature, travel, culture, writing (forms, structures, mythologies, histories, sentences, words, and punctuation), food, self, spirit, people, empathy and humility. An adventure, for sure, in every sense of the word – the outcome is unknown, it is wild and involves crossing a whole range of different frontiers, I hope. It’s about putting on, as is suggested in Zen Guitar, the white belt – and with it the beginner’s mind – because I really feel like I have heaps to learn and the opportunity to follow whatever big questions I have with real commitment, wherever they lead. All of my favourite books do this – The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Born to Run – so in a sense I’m just following their lead.
In the past I have tended to try to please others – I’ve often put too much energy into trying to make people happy and happy with me – and I’d like to kick this habit. I’d like to be better at relaxing and having fun, to be more accepting of myself and stop trying to pull my socks up all the time. I would like to find more real joy and laughter. I would like to be more genuine, truthful and loving in sharing my energy and love with others, and be better able to be comfortable finding time to be alone.
I think the van offers a chance to live really simply, and that makes it sort of easier to try to be really genuine. Hopefully: genuine also means joyful!!!
I don’t really know what’s going to happen or what I’ll achieve. Ask me again in a year and hopefully I’ll have something to show.
So there it is. That’s the plan. Get in the van and go.
