1995
It was an overcast and miserable day when I made the crossing from Fishguard, Wales to Rosslare Harbour in County Wexford. I spent most of the time hanging out on deck watching the ocean, maybe a seabird or two, with a freezing nose. I wore my green Melbourne tram conductors coat Evan had given me. And my beanie, and a few layers more. I think it was late spring by that stage. The sun was nowhere to be seen.
I was on my way to Ireland for the first time in my life. Somewhere almost equidistant between Wales and Ireland I felt calm. I was nowhere for a few minutes. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was sailing into the unknown. Starting with a blank piece of paper.
I don’t know how I got from Rosslare harbour to the town of Wexford, whether there was a bus, or I hitched a lift, maybe there was a train. Whatever way, I arrived in the town in the afternoon. I found a BnB in the middle of town for £14. It was one of those places that is probably listed on AirBnb now. It had a nice warm bed.
There’s an old ruined church in the middle of Wexford which I explored a bit the next day. It’s St Patrick’s Church and dates back to mediaeval times. I had no idea about that back then, I just thought it was cool and old and something I wouldn’t see in Australia.
The next day my bed and breakfast host served me a proper Irish breakfast. I was vegetarian so the host substituted bacon and sausages for more eggs and beans to make sure I didn’t starve to death with all my no meat nonsense. There was also toast and Jam. I was pretty happy with it all and had it my fill, not knowing when I’d next have such a feast.
The address I had for Nora, the neighbour of my friend’s mother in Tugun Australia, read something like: Inisglas, Crossabeg, The Deeps, Co. Wexford. There was no street number, nor phone number, so I asked around about The Deeps and Crossabeg. Apparently I had to cross over a bridge and go down the road a little bit until pass some viking tower – well back then I thought it was a viking tower, but it seems it’s a memorial to the Crimean War, which is still causing trouble today, both the tower being confused with mediaeval viking monuments and the Crimea featuring in the latest European conflict with Russia. Once past the tower I was to find a road which I would take to the left and would eventually lead me to the general area I was looking for.
So I put on my backpack and started hiking. The sun was out, the grass fresh and damp from yesterday’s rain. I stopped off at a pub on the way where some grannies were having some whiskey. I hadn’t been drinking, and it was still only 10.30 or something, so I got an orange juice, just so I could sit for a minute in one of the booths, and asked for some further directions before heading off again. I could see the Crimea tower from there which was a convenient landmark before the days of Google maps.
I crossed the bridge and passed the tower and found the road I was looking for and started heading towards the left, down some narrow laneways through hedges, green fields, sheep, cows and some river’s edge I think with reeds growing about. After around 1.5/2 hours walking I felt I should be getting close. I asked a local and they said Inisglas might be up further to the left. I kept walking and found a dirt road that looked like it was heading the way I wanted and wandered down, past some sheep and a fruit orchard. I found an old man cutting grass with an old scythe and he said this was indeed Inisglas. It turned out this was the founder of the Inisglas community, Anthony Kaye.
About a kilometre down the road I came to a huge rhododendron tree – I didn’t know it was a rhododendron back then I just thought it was a big tree – which stood before a stately country manor. I looked around for signs of activity. A few kids darted about ignoring me. After a few minutes a curly haired Irishman came up to me.
‘Hello’, he said, offering his hand.
‘Hi’, I said, taking his hand, ‘I’m John from Australia. Is Nora here?’
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A bit later I got to chatting to Nora, she was surprised to see someone from the Gold Coast all the way out here at Inisglas (or perhaps Inis Glas) in The Deeps, Wexford not far from the mighty Slaney River.
‘What a surprise’, she said.
‘Yes’, I’ve come a long way. Didn’t want to explain the whole journey to date, especially the sapphire incident, just that I was travelling around and wanted to spend some time in Ireland and I was looking for a place to stay and work.
‘Well, they’re a bit wary of people just showing up and wanting to stay here.’ She said. She explained it was a community and that everyone would have to be consulted to see if they would let me stay.
‘Do you have money?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, I have a couple of hundred. But I’m an Irish citizen, I should be able to get some unemployment benefits.’
‘Irish?’ She said. She had residency in Australia it turns out. Her son’s father was Australian, so she was kind of used to the whole dual nationality thing. It also turns out the community was used to dealing with the whole unemployment benefits thing as well.
‘We can ask if you can stay. I can’t promise anything. How long would you like to stay?’
‘I’m not sure. It’d be good if I could stay for a little while at least.’
The community was brought together, there were a fair few people, of various ages and nationalities. On first count all up there seemed to be around 15 adults and a bunch of kids. We chatted and discussed whether they’d let me in, I was asked to give a bit of background about myself, kind of like a brief pitch to see whether I’d fit in. I told of my work on a farm in Australia, my desire to travel, my Irish granny who used to live in Sligo before travelling to Australia at age 10 (I may not have given that much detail then, perhaps just my granny was Irish which made me Irish and legible for the dole I’d hope) and my keenest to get involved with community there.
They sent me off and chatted amongst themselves. I must have come across ok because they called me back in and announced that they’d agreed to let me stay for a bit as long as I could work out the dole or some other way to bring in regular cash and help out with the running of the farm.
It turns out they had a mixed operation, with vegetables, some livestock, including sheep, chickens, pigs, and some milking cows, as well as a flour mill. It was all based on biodynamic principles – an esoteric farming method this eccentric Swiss or Austrian guy made up.
Everyone was expected to contribute to the costs of the place, £40 a week I think it was, which Eve Kaye, the kind of matriarch of the place, explained covered food, board and electricity. I said I could pay for 2 weeks up front and then organise some unemployment benefits or perhaps find a job.
Relief fell over me. After weeks of uncertainty I now had a reasonably priced place to stay, assuming they’d let me sign up for the dole. I was shown a little room in the main manor house and settled in. I could sort out the dole thing later, apparently someone drove a van into town fairly regularly and I could get a lift into the social security office the next day.
I’m not sure I can remember every single person who was staying on the community at the time. But here goes.
There was Nora, she was a preschool teacher studying Steiner education in London and travelled there every few weeks to study. Steiner education was based on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the same one who came up with the practice of biodynamic farming. It was all pretty esoteric. I wasn’t opposed to a bit of esoteric thinking in those days, the more ‘holistic’ and ‘spiritual’ the better, though I still held a modicum of scientific doubt.
Nora had a kid, I forget his name. He was Aussie-Irish like me. Nora was going out with Frankie, the Irish guy who greeted me by the rhododendron tree. He mainly looked after the vegetable gardens, including, as you might expect in Ireland, quite a few potatoes. Nora, Frankie and the kid shared a loft apartment kind of above the flour mill, from memory, which was behind the main manor house.
The flour mill was run by the community’s founder Anthony Kaye. Anthony lived with his wife Eve in a nice stone house connected to the mill, next to, or below, I can’t remember exactly, where Nora and Frankie and the kid lived.
Then there was Ross, he was on the run from the British cops for importing drugs from Amsterdam. Which I suppose technically made him a ‘criminal’. He’d fled the UK while waiting to go on trial for importing drugs. He spent a few months hiding out in France in tents before making his way to Inisglas. Apparently the French police when they questioned him one day as to why he was camping out on French roundabouts said, ‘you know, the English do not help us, and we do not help the English.’ And that such crimes would only warrant a slap on the wrist in France, but that he had to stop camping on roundabouts. Ross mainly looked after some pigs and chickens, both of which he’d occasionally slaughter and sell. He was rough as guts, I think having spent a short time in prison. He was going out with a homoeopathic vet whom I don’t remember the name of. I think she had a kid whom I also don’t remember the name of.
Then there was Stuart. Stuart was the all-Ireland yoghurt making champion. He mostly milked the cows and made yoghurt and cheese for the community and for sale. He had a room in the main house down the hall from me. Stuart was a poet, he also won poetry contests when he wasn’t making yoghurt. He had a very feral kid who used to just shit on the front lawn. He was from Leeds.
There was a Danish guy (or he could have been Norwegian) called Tron. He was one of the worst cooks at the place (well, let’s face it he was the worst) and Nora complained that when it was his turn to cook the community meals he just boiled up a bunch of nettles. He was committed to biodynamics and liked making one of the main biodynamic farms special esoteric blends called 501 which is made by putting cow manure into cow horns and burying them from months and then digging them up and emptying them in big barrels of water and then stirring the mixture up and then spraying it around the farm to improve soil fertility.
There was Michael. Another Dane (if indeed Tron was Danish), he was mates with a few more Danes who worked on another nearby community which helped out disabled people – he had a Danish girlfriend who worked on that community. Michael had blond curly hair and liked chopping firewood, he chopped a lot of firewood. He also helped Frankie with growing the vegetables.
There was Yvonne and Ian. Yvonne was of a gypsy background. Ian was of north English heritage, spoke with one of those northern English accents that sounds kind of musical. He liked cider and weed. Ian looked after the currant and fruit orchard I’d seen on the way in and lived with Yvonne in a little shack just off the path I’d come into the farm on. Jeff also lived down there in another shack.
There was Jeff, or Jeremy, I’m sure his name started with J. Or maybe he was an Ian. No, actually he was just called Jay! He had dark hair which was shaved to a spiky shot length. He was a British hippy type, perhaps from London, who called the dole the ‘gyro’ who dabbled in beekeeping and ran the bakery.
Jay was going out with a German or Austrian woman called Annika or something like that. Perhaps Anushka. She was very quiet and I barely spoke to her the whole time I was at the community. Her and Jay may not have been going out together when I was first staying at Inisglas but it wasn’t long after that when they started shacking up in one of the shacks down the path from the main manor house.
There was another character called Wobbie, he looked after a tree nursery on part of the farm. I’m note sure where he lived exactly, he wasn’t staying on the farm though, nowhere at least that I knew about, but possibly close by.
That was everyone I could remember who was staying at the place when I first arrived. There was another Irish guy from Dublin who popped in from time to time, but I’ll come to him later.
While there wasn’t any strict division of duties, people were expected to get in and help out with the running of the farm. I ended up helping Frankie with the vegetables most days, mounding up potatoes, planting and maintaining the tomatoes, eggplants, courgettes, cucumbers and pumpkins in the plastic poly-tunnels, weeding the cabbages. leeks, onions, lettuces and the like. We had a large open field, which also housed a couple of plastic poly-tunnels, plus a walled garden.
I helped Jay in the bakery on Fridays where we’d make bread to sell at Dublin markets on Saturday morning. We took Stuart’s yoghurt to sell as well as bags of Anthony’s stoned ground biodynamic flour. We also took a few of these things into Wexford to sell at the health food store.
That was pretty much Inisglas. It was a largish property that included the walled garden, the mill, the fields, some pasture for sheep and cows, some barns for the pigs and a bit of forest. The property went down to the Slaney River, or River Slaney, and there was even a boat we could take out. I’d struck it lucky with having Nora’s contact. I pushed my luck by calling the mighty River Slaney a creek, but as much as that riled her up we were always on good terms.
After the uncertainty of the last few weeks, it was a bit of paradise. I felt comfortable, safe and accepted. If I could organise the dole, or some work, I’d have all the food I needed, a roof over my head and even a small amount leftover. It was all I needed at that stage.