The ride with Liz was.... long. She drove between 60 and 80 kilometers per
hour when the speed limit was 100. She
would stop at intersections to ask directions through the window from another
car or from a pedestrian, and then she would be perplexed that everyone behind
her weren't patient enough when the light went green and she didn't move.
In the evening, she got even slower and was at a
steady 60 kmh. "Road trains"
or what we call semis, were flying past her angrily despite the double line,
because they all get their best driving in when the sun goes down and the traffic
dies. She would curse angrily when they
wanted to get around her.
Not only was she overly slow on the road, but she
also talked our faces off. Honestly, she
would just rattle for a half hour at a time at the passenger, not even caring
when affirmation died. Once she got
started on a topic she would rant and rant without end.
Riding with her was a nightmare, but we
eventually did make it. We were
surprised Liz had not caused an accident.
She let us stay in her yard that night in our tent, which saved us some
money. She very kindly offered us a yard
any time we needed it in Townsville and we kept her number gladly. She also talked us into at least trying to be
a volunteer at the Tablelands Folk Festival if we were still around Far North
Queensland in October.
We had originally planned on heading straight to
Ravenswood from there, but were talked into visiting an island just a little
ways out from Townsville called Magnetic Island. So the morning after staying with Liz, we
headed towards the ferry that would take us out to the island. Since we had to wait a while to get on the
ferry, we took a walk, finding a shopping cart abandoned in a parking lot with
no stores in sight, so we put our bags in and took it for a walk.
Once we landed on "Maggie Island," as
the locals call it, we went straight to the grocery store for rations. We didn't find a gas canister, so we wouldn't
be able to cook much, but we got enough that we wouldn't starve. Before we set out, we had a fantastic meal of
fish and chips.
We spent a lot of the time hiking on the island
from one beach to the next, but we also stopped long enough to see each
beach. Joe swam a little and I watched,
reading in the sunshine.
We could have taken a bus from Picnic beach to
the local favorite beach, but we decided to save our money and get some
exercise, and man was it ever exercise.
We spent most of the day hiking, but finally made it to the beach.
There weren't very many people at the beach, but
we did see a couple of girls with hiking packs like ours. We each eyed each other and before long, one
of the girls asked if we were planning to stay here overnight. I said yes and they said they were as well
and we got along famously.
When a troop of four or five young people came to
the beach at sunset, we were interested in going to meet them, so all four of
us went over. They were German and owned
a van together. They had started to
build a fire as the sun went down. The
four of us agreed how stupid it was to build a fire when we were trying to
sleep on the beach when it was clearly illegal to do so. Building a fire is like asking to get caught
We set up our tent once it was dark and something
made a noise in front of me. I looked up
with my flashlight and there were two eyes shining back at me and coming
closer! The little guy was a possum and
he was not afraid of us. We would chase
him off and he would come right back, determined. He was so cute.
After a few minutes of sitting on the ground to
look for the things I would need for the night in my pack, Joe tried to make me
stand up and put shoes on, but he sounded a little desperate about it. I asked why he needed me to stand up and
reluctantly he told me there were spiders everywhere on the ground. I immediately had a reaction and had to
breathe deeply with my eyes closed, shoulders shaking. Bleh.
I couldn't believe I was barefootedly and unknowingly, standing among
spiders.
I got in the tent and Joe finished preparations
for me, wrapping our packs in the rain fly.
I had to use the restroom just a little, but couldn't decide whether I
could ignore it or whether I would have to do something about it. Eventually I put on Joe's shoes and ventured
out only just enough.
The night was beautiful, but I think we were
nervous about getting caught because I did not sleep so well. We ate breakfast with the girls and then did
a little bit of yoga on the beach. They
had never done yoga before and I felt a little bad that we did such a horrible
job at introducing them to it. We were
awkward and not very good.
We took off together, but eventually Joe and I
turned off to go to Arthur's beach. The
girls said goodbye and hiked out.
Arthur's bay wasn't much, so we didn't stay long. We took to the hike out of the area, which
was steep uphill. We were dying by the
time we got to the top. A path started
on the other side of the main road from the path down to the beaches, and we
decided to take this one, as it would lead us close to the ferry.
That hike was intense as well. We felt really good doing it because it got
us exercising, but it was very hot and had lots of ups and downs. We got a lot more exercise than we bargained
for, which felt good for us, but pretty painful. Eventually we made it back down to the ferry
and waited for the next one to come.
We took the ferry back pretty early in the day,
so when we arrived in Townsville, we caught a bus out to the train station,
where Joe thought we were supposed to catch the bus out towards
Ravenswood. The train station was
entirely abandoned.
We revised our plans, called the bus company, got
back on a city bus and took it to the main shopping center, where we were
supposed to catch the bus. Something
went wrong when he was trying to buy a ticket online and it would not let him
buy it. He called the company instead
and they told us it was full. We were
utterly confused at this point and continued to wait to see if we could get on
the bus anyway, because there would probably be some people getting off at that
stop anyway.
Little did we know that Al had already called the
bus company to see what time they would be going through Mingela, the town the
bus would drop us, which was 45 minutes’ drive from Al and Lydia's house in
Ravenswood. When Al heard that the bus
was full from the bus company (the company is run by a personal friend of
Al's), he decided to drive the 1.5 hours to get us. But we didn't have his mobile number, and now
the bus company was saying there would be space for us!
We had no way to call Al, so we just waited for
him to show up. When he finally did, he
obviously didn't know what we looked like and went first to ask the bus driver
if he had seen us. He looked like the
typical Australian, with brown-red skin, an outback type cowboy hat, a full
face with a white beard, and a big upper-body with regular size legs.
He eventually came our way and we met. He was loud, but seemingly accommodating. We put our bags in the car and took off.
Al and Lydia's helpx ad caught our attention
because it was focused around one detail that would be a new experience and
potentially something that would open our minds to other ways of living. Joe and I like to know people and see how people
live outside of the regular life that comes in a box that most people subscribe
to.
The detail was nudism. His ad said that any helpx-ers that went to
help them should be at least interested in trying it, but shouldn't feel
pressured. He sounded like an open-minded
guy and we love being exposed to new ways of living and seeing the world. I don't really have anything better to say
about what attracted us to it other than we like to know people's life
philosophy because it broadens our horizons, and this one would be particularly
new to us.
Joe was especially forthright with Al, saying we
were willing to experience it, but we were looking for absolutely nothing
sexual. Al sounded nice in his email
messages, and even nicer on the phone.
We were looking forward to learning something new.
So here we are in this little coupe car with a
nudist. He is fully dressed because he
is in public, which we are thankful for because a coupe car with an undressed
nudist would be just a bit too small.
As we drive, the loud starts to pick at my
eardrum and I find that he is the brash we had heard of when it came to
Australians. There were tiny little red
flags here and there as we drove, the first of which was his speed. Liz crawled down the road at a grandmother
pace, while here Al was racing frantically around people whose speed was at
least at or above the limit. It reminded
me of my first boyfriend, showing off by zipping racily around anyone he felt
like leaving behind.
But there was also the comment that, "The
police around here don't like me."
Something can be said for the deservedness of the grudge.
Joe started in on the nudism early, asking all
kinds of questions. Whether it is a good
thing or not, Joe is at least always good for speaking about the elephant in
the room early and openly. We learned
that Al had strong opinions about nearly everything. He seemed okay for this first in-person
conversation. He was straightforward
about a few things, which I think was necessary, considering the topic.
I felt a little bit iffy when we pulled up to the
house and he said, "Now, I need you to know that Lydia is more
conservative than me." He asked
that if we were to participate and Joe were to have a noticeable reaction to
the nudity (ahem, generally called a boner), that he simply go somewhere
private so as not to alarm Lydia. That
seemed like it made sense, but I'm not so sure I would call that conservative,
just an average sense of boundaries.
But maybe that is why I am not a nudist: I follow
social rules and think it is entirely appropriate that a man hide a hard-on so
as not to alarm a lady.
Anyway, I digress...
We were here to stay with Al and Lydia for ten
days and with every passing hour, we were planting red flags along the real
estate occupied by Al in our minds.
The day after we arrived, Al took us out to where
he had his beehives. We were checking on
them in preparation for moving them, but we were surprised how little there was
for us to do. Most of the helpx-ing that
we have done requires very concrete work, but as we would find out, Al really
just needed someone who would be around during the work, but not really doing
much of the work. My personal opinion is
that Al uses helpx-ers to keep his attention on something other than dealing
with his own depression, anxiety, or whatever you want to call the thoughts
that are self-reflection and awareness.
Al seemed timid and careful at first (well, he
was loud-mouthed, an idiot, and a jackass, but still careful with his
words). He was always talking with
hidden goals, trying to steer conversations to what he needed them to be.
While we were out in the bush on the first day,
he went to the front of the truck and stripped to everything except sunglasses
and hat. He tried to make us feel better
by giving the rifle to Joe, saying, "Now some people might be worried
being out in the bush with a nude man who has a gun, so I'll give you the gun
so that you are in charge and feel safe."
And honestly, it did feel a little safer.
We walked out to a water hole not very far away,
looking for dingoes or anything else that might give the bees trouble in their
home. Once we saw that there was nothing
there and we walked around a little bit, Joe took the plunge. He asked me to hold the gun while he took off
everything but shoes and hat. Hahahaha.
To Joe's good credit, he is someone who wants to
walk a mile in everyone's shoes and really know how people live and feel. He gave a valiant try and was nude for
probably 15 minutes. We walked back to
the truck and just before we got there, Al sent us off in the other direction
(still carrying the gun, thankfully) in case I wanted to try to be nude for a
while without feeling pressured around someone new.
Once we got out of sight, I did try it. I was nude for maybe five minutes and I will
admit that it was a brand new experience to be out in nature without
clothing. It was certainly novel. But at the same time, I thought to myself,
wait, this is it? I wasn't having some
spiritual revelation about how freeing it was, and really all I ended up
feeling was that I was revealing all flaws to the world. But maybe that is the point—maybe revealing
your “flaws” to the world eventually teaches you that the flaws are really just
unique detailing in the human canvas.
I put my clothing back on to return to the truck.
Having not had a spiritual moment while being
nude sort of started my disinterest, but it built even more (along with
uneasiness) when Al mildly chided me for coming back to the truck with clothes
on.
As we were driving home from this little outing,
Al all but came out and said that he wanted to leave Lydia because she was
conservative, i.e. she was monogamous and uninterested in being anything
but. He told us he had had sex with two
different other women, presumably helpx-ers, and Lydia was unaware. He said this proudly, like a douche-bag
telling his douche-bag friends about his sexcapades.
And from there it just got weirder.
He told us one of his helpx-ers had never seen a
man urinate, so he whipped it out and peed in front of her. Then she admitted she had never seen a man
masturbate, so, of course, he masturbated in front of her. Because that’s what you do, or something.
And the thing was, we never really felt
threatened, like maybe it could have been with such a creepy person. Maybe I have watched too many horror movies
(not true at all, I hate horror because I'm a wimp about it), but it was the
sort of creepy that you could associate with erratically aggressive
behavior. But Al never seemed anything
except weird, conservative, douchey and wildly self-centered.
But once he started bringing the subject of sex
up unnecessarily, it got uncomfortable.
People sometimes think they're so sly, like Al testing the water for our
interest in sexual experimentation with him.
Joe had been very forthright from the very first
contact email, saying we were not interested in ANYTHING sexual. Al had apparently taken that to mean, yes, we
could be talked into something experimental.
It was awful.
Joe had his guard up from the very first afternoon. He made sure he knew where a knife was at all
times, and he was doggedly watchful, refusing to let me be alone for anything
besides the locked door of the only restroom in the house.
That first night, sitting in our cinder block room
right next to theirs, we didn't feel safe talking out loud. Everything could be heard everywhere, so we
pulled out the computers and typed messages to one another. Are we in danger, or is he harmless?
We made lists, one side being signs that Al was
an okay human being, the other side being red flags that we should get out as
soon as possible.
We felt a little trapped. In a perfect world, leaving Ravenswood early
wouldn’t have signified anything insulting to Al and Lyd, it would just have
been a simple choice. But humans are
messy and unpredictable. So we stuck it
out tentatively.
Our discomfort must have shown because Al seemed
to slip into a pout. Not only was he a
little to creepy talking about his sexcapades, but he also started to treat us
like we were idiots. I realized more and
more that having helpx-ers around was not at all about getting help with work. It was about having someone on the line waiting
for him to say go. He needed to feel
superior by being our teacher, and then he needed to feel superior by telling
us what we were doing wrong.
Poor Joe bore the brunt of it. I think Al must have sensed that he couldn’t
pick on me about things because I was a sensitive girl (also he may have been
hoping to salvage any possible interest he thought I might have in his sexual
advances), so he turned on Joe.
One day we spent the morning learning how to
re-load bullets. In the process we got
to hear (and I say hear because most conversations with Al are one-sided) about
conservative politics, fear-mongering distrust of the government, and the
divine intelligence that Al possessed by stockpiling guns and ammunition and
being capable of re-loading his own bullets.
When the apocalypse happened and the government started invading the
homes of every freedom-loving Aussie, Al would be there as a shining beacon of
wisdom who could hold off the evil bureaucrats.
I don’t make this up.
Our conversations in the evenings when Lydia
would come home from a long, hard day of work tended to be around
conspiracies. And many times they were
conspiracies around things that didn’t even concern him. For instance, one of the conversations that I
remember most vividly was Al’s preaching that Barrack Obama was not born in the
United States. His sources were blogs
and his reasoning for trusting said blogs were that the information was
“published,” or written on the web and therefore factual. My biggest question here is… why the f* does
he care? Barrack Obama’s nationality has
absolutely nothing to do with Al. He
also preached to us about the faking of the moon-landing. No joke.
In the process of him imparting his wisdom on
reloading bullets to those of us who were of lesser intelligence, Joe asked a
few light questions here and there. When
Joe is on the job, and especially doing something new, like me he tends to ask
a lot of questions. This isn’t because
we’re stupid and can’t do it ourselves, it’s more just that the questions
signify our involvement in the process, our respect for the trainer or boss,
and our work ethic, showing that we like to do it right. Joe has reloaded bullets before. Al took the questions to mean that Joe was
stupid. It was so frustrating. There was a moment when Joe made a minor
mistake on one of the bullets and Al was actually blatantly rude to him, saying
he didn’t listen and if he had just listened to the almighty trainer—himself—he
would have done it right. Then he kicked
Joe off the stool so he could haughtily show him how it was done. He then, of course, did it wrong in almost
the same way Joe had.
We lost respect for him. Anyone who talks to Joe like that entirely
loses my respect. Sometimes I am mean to
Joe in my most hormonal times, but I think irritability is different from
disrespect. Even in my meanest moments,
I still respect Joe. He’s an intelligent
human being. Anyone who dares to think
otherwise is crossed off my list forever.
It only got duller from there. We were trying our best to continue to be
polite. It was a stupid situation
because the peer-review system on helpx kept us from just bagging the whole
situation. That and we were in the
middle of nowhere and had no idea how safe it would be to try and hitchhike in
the middle of the bush on unfamiliar roads.
We are both the kind of people who stick out a bad situation because
we’re not quitters.
Looking back, I’m glad we did stick it out. We did learn some cool things; how to handle bees
(this was scary and exciting!), how to make kefir cheese, how to make kombucha
tea, how to make sourdough bread, how to make soap, how to make fruit chips, how
to reload bullets, how to make really excellent salads, and a beginner’s look
into welding. They’re all cool things
that we will probably try later on in life, so we are thankful for that.
We weren’t thankful for the situation we were
in. One of the worst parts about it was
watching how mean Al could be to Lydia, who was this sweet woman. Lydia was not super intelligent, but she was
also not stupid and she was definitely a capable human being. Their income had two sources: the long, hard
hours that she put in as a cleaner at the mines (Ravenswood has a huge mining
operation, which is probably the main reason the town doesn’t just sink into
the red dust), and his “disability” pay.
For such a conservative man with conspiracy theories about the
government out the wazoo, it annoyed me that he was “on the DoL,” (welfare; DoL
stands for Department of Labor, I think) as they say here. Then again, that is an easy thing to
criticize. It’s still a double standard
though.
The other awful part about the situation was
being treated as incapable. I love and
respect Joe for his competence (and more self-centeredly, I love and respect
him for the love and respect he feels for me and my competence). Joe started his own business when he was 15
years old, for heaven’s sake. He paid
his own way through college, made his own choices about his life path, made it
through two years on the sometimes rough streets of Chile, traveled around
Europe and India mostly by himself, and has kept a garden at his father’s house
almost every year since his mother’s passing for the simple joy the work and
the produce bring him.
Shall I continue on this mushy path? Perhaps not.
Suffice it to say that I thought Al was a moron for withholding respect
and dignity where they were due. Nobody
puts my baby in the corner. ;)
Enough of the rant though. We loved Lydia. She was a fantastic cook. She taught us a few things here and there,
but one of my favorite was also very simple: how to make a great salad. Her method was pretty easy; just shred a bunch
of stuff in a bowl. Carrots, onions,
cucumbers, peppers, cheese, many kinds of lettuce, radishes, tomatoes. Everything went in. She loved her garden, which was a work in
progress all the time, and so most meals were planned around what produce
needed to be used up in the garden. Joe
will make fun of me for this because he prefers to eat what he is craving, but
it really has been a helpful concept in food preparation for me. Most days we just eat what we have on hand,
but by the end of the week, we have a couple of squishy tomatoes here and some
slightly slimy mushrooms there, some onions that are starting to shrivel on the
cut end, and some green onions that are all the way wilted. So, I chop everything up and make spaghetti
sauce, or fajita mixings, or some breakfast bites. It doesn’t always turn out awesome, but
sometimes it is really creative and really good. I think Lydia helped me to develop that
creative side that takes expiry dates into account.
As you can tell, I have not sat down to write in
a while and I am getting rather verbose and personal. :)
Sorry.
It wasn’t all bad with Al. Sometimes he was quiet and peaceful, though
this was admittedly rare. And sitting
out on the flatbed truck and on milk crates with a cold drink in one hand and
BS-ing with them in the sunset was nice.
Min-min (which means light of the forest in Australian Aboriginal
languages, I think) was a sweet half pit bull or bull terrier doggie that I
really got attached to, as per usual when we stay for very long in one
place. I liked getting to hang out with
her when Al wasn’t around to assert that HE was her master and she should
listen to him alone. She was a sweet
dog.
I really loved learning to use so much
produce. They had something like eight
little papaya trees scattered around their property, so they had a fairly
constant stream of ripe papaya. They had
me cut up and arrange papaya slices on their food dryer to make into dried
papaya fruit chips. Al of course tried
to teach me how to arrange them the right way, until I told him that my parents
had a fruit dryer and I had done it before.
I liked pulling this trick out when he tried to feel superior. They also tried to tell me off for using
their Vitamix to make smoothies because I didn’t know how to use it properly
and would most likely break it—but then I told them my parents own the exact
same model (just a different color) and I knew that slowly speeding the blade
up was the key. They shut up and let me
use it. :)
I learned a lot, but oh my was it awesome to
leave. We stuck it out, but towards the
end there was just no conversation and no interest on either side. We were still polite, but only just. Our patience was wearing thin and the end of
the ten days that we promised couldn’t come soon enough.
The day of our departure, you could tell Al was
ready to be rid of us. As I’ve said, I
think Al uses helpx-ers to feel validated and superior by knocking them down
and climbing into the teacher-of-the-idiot-masses role. When we got tired of that and drew inside
ourselves to prevent more of this verbal abuse, he started to notice. He noticed that we weren’t the kind of people
that would simply submit and so he lost interest. By the last day, he very willingly took us to
the place where we could catch the bus, shook our hands, gave a very non-committal
goodbye, and sped off, not bothering to make sure the bus did actually come.
We were so relieved. If he was relieved to be rid of us, we were
much more relieved to be rid of him. We
decided we wouldn’t leave bad comments on helpx because he hadn’t overtly done
anything wrong (we weren’t over-worked, we were fed well, he never actually
acted on his verbal sexual innuendos), but we wouldn’t leave any positive
comments either.
We laughed and laughed and laughed about the
experience, with a bit of shaking our heads in frustration. We had come to the northern part of
Queensland for the sole purpose to stay with nudists and open our minds to an
alternative way of living, to at least better understand someone else’s way of
life. What we got instead was a
gun-toting, apocalyptic, self-centered, conspiratorial solo-act strong
personality with double standards and little hope for being anything but all
that.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be down on him, but
considering we were there because of him and his seemingly open mind he
portrayed on helpx and in emails, we were highly disappointed.
I can honestly say though that I feel a little
sorry for Al. I think people become who
they are in extreme cases like his because of some sort of hurt they have been
through. I look at mean-spirited or
messed-up people and I see a little of myself.
I’ve done weird and stupid things because of depression, anxiety, and
low self-worth and it means I tend to project all of that on other people. I imagine Al probably deals with some of all
of that, and the way he copes is self-promotion, extremist conspiracies, and
claiming to have the key to life above everyone else.
I see an alcoholic and I think to myself, that
person must be trying to drink away the depression and anxiety so they don’t
have to feel all that. Maybe not true in
every case, but that is my projection.
I see Al and I think, he must have depression and
anxiety and that combined with his extrovert personality has the opposite
effect that my struggles have had (I hide in a hole and lick my wounds while he
climbs to the top of the pack, inflicting the wounds on others). I’m not sure either is better.
So you could say the experience opened our eyes,
but in a way we didn’t expect. Though we
saw a few things we liked (Lydia’s amazingly kempt productive garden, and
culturing your own cheese and probiotics), we learned what we don’t like,
namely biased and extremist views, self-promotion, and lack of respect for
fellow humans. It was still a good
lesson in the end. We learned to like
capable, quiet, productive people like Lydia.
Boof. What
an experience. I’m shaking my head in
disbelief even now. Everything in life
is a lesson. I wish Al the best and if
his attitude really is a coping mechanism for some inner hurt, I hope it
heals. To Lyd and Min-min I send the
warmest affection.
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