2022, raining, I read a few chapters, no, just a couple of pages, of Jungle of Stone. I had thought of working on my Minecraft world a bit while I listened to the rain. Then I thought I’d just listen to the rain and now I’m listening to the rain writing about listening to the rain.
As I head closer to my 50th birthday I don’t think I really need to leave my mark on the world. I don’t want the most Instagram likes. I haven’t even got a Tik Tok account. I doubt I’ll ever write a book, be a Hemingway, but perhaps I wouldn’t mind going to Pamplona one day. I don’t want to watch the bullfights though.
I didn’t even feel inspired to write another blog post. There was a time in my 20s when I forced myself to write. I even wrote a film script which got the interest of a well-known Australian Director and an option from a UK producer.
Some days I think I have a good idea for a story. I’ve usually forgotten them by the next day.
I don’t really want to leave much of a mark on the world now. I just hope that I contribute to making it a slightly nicer place. And hopefully not a shittier place.
I’ve started doing a Sustainability and Circular Economy course online with the University of Cambridge. I first remember getting interested in sustainability, the environment and what have you back in 1992 or 1993 maybe. It was somewhere between finishing school in 1989 and travelling to Ireland in 1995.
I was down in Newcastle visiting my best friend from high school, Christophe’s brother Luke – who had started calling himself Luka at that stage. Christophe and Tanya were in Scotland at the time and although I wasn’t great friends with Luka he’d said I should come down and check out Newcastle. He was hanging out with a bunch of hippy, druggo freaked out types. Even a couple of punks. I just remember a few of them. There was Johno who had this back goatee and was into spirituality and pentagrams and had weird eyes, smoked weed incessantly and collected two dole checks, one under his real name – which I assume was John or perhaps Johno – and one under a fictitious name. He was studying music at some music institute. There was also Pia who was going out with a guy called Canine. They were all a bit freakish. On occasions the punk dudes would come over and have a bit of smack. Pia warned me off trying it. I never did. Even those who use such dangerously addictive drugs can have the sense to warn others off going down that slippery path. I was fine with heaps of weed and the occasional mushroom and LSD trip.
These dudes, except for the punks, all lived in the same house with Luka. I forgot to mention that.
The drug scene distracted me a bit. I mean the reminiscing about the Newcastle drug scene of the early 90s. It wasn’t really ‘the drug scene’. People did other stuff besides drugs. Listening to Rage Against the Machine, the Butthole Surfers and the Pixies (plus others). Playing music – I may have had a go at like a tambourine or triangle. I wasn’t very musical and considered myself a writer or something. Sitting around talking. Occasionally getting some food. Going down the dole office. Visiting other people’s houses. Probably having sex. Though I never did during my time in Newcastle. Like with Agatha, I would have if I had the opportunity, just the opportunity never came up and wouldn’t come up until t 1994 when I met Corinne and travelled up the east coast (again this is a fictitious version of the events, see earlier posts where I explain I met her at a Hurstbridge train station in Melbourne – though much of the rest is trueish).
But back in Newcastle. It wasn’t a drug scene per se. Just everything we did tended to be done stoned.
After hanging out with Luka a bit I ended up renting a garage in a share house with Matt, Aaron, and the guy who worked at the Thai restaurant, who might have been called Rowan, or Lauren or something. I more remember that he’d bring leftover Thai for us, which was very nice of him. Matt and Aaron were going to the University of Newcastle. Rowan may have been going to uni as well but I was more interested in the Thai food.
One day we were out walking around with the guys on the way to the dole office. A few years earlier Newcastle had been hit by an Earthquake and many of the roads had cracks in them. We went past some place on a stormwater drain on the way to visiting some dudes. Possibly to hang out a bit, possibly to get some weed. Possibly to do both. Who knows? The dudes had planted this amazing guerrilla garden on the edges of the stormwater drain. I’m not sure if the drain is the right term, it was like a mini version of one of those pretty big ones like they had in the movie Grease where they were able to race cars along. A stormwater thingy?
The one in Newcastle you could race a few BMX bikes along.
The dudes in the house, well maybe not a house, it was more a shed or abandoned factory type thing you could access from the stormwater drain, had marigolds growing, and some veggies. I can’t remember but I imagine some beans and maybe a zucchini, and some tomatoes. They may have had a few sunflowers growing as well. I was intrigued by the garden and asked the dudes I was visiting about it. They said it was some organic, permaculture garden thing.
I was straight into it. I think maybe after we’d gone to the dole office I went to the library, got a library card and rented out a VHS video which featured Bill Mollison, one of the creators of Permaculture, this sustainable gardening/ farming system, and watched it. It explained the general principles of Permaculture. I got inspired and went and got some beans seeds and some other veggies seeds and found a patch in the backyard and planted them. They started growing and I was amazed, but then I ran out of money and went up to Queensland for a few weeks and when I got back the grass had grown over the spot as neither Matt, Aaron or Rowan were interested in looking after veggies. They also hadn’t done any dishes since I’d been away so I did all the washing up when I got back as I can’t fucking stand piles of dirty dishes.
I felt like Neil from the TV series the Young Ones. Neil plants the seed, nature grows the seed, then we eat the seed. Except when your housemates neglect the seed altogether.
Anyway that was the start of my passion from gardening.
This post was meant to be about my trip to Sligo with Agatha and the girls in the carrot car. It’s turned into one of those ‘3 years earlier’ things TV shows always do now.
1995
Around 3 years earlier. I had hired a video about Permaculture featuring Bill Mollison. I got into sustainable gardening. I wanted to help the planet. I wanted to be green. I started doing gardens at friends’ houses in Melbourne. I sent off to Eden Seeds for heirloom seeds. I focussed on mixing the three main types of plants in Permaculture, and sustainable gardening – legumes (things like beans and peas) which put nitrogen in the soil, heavy feeders like tomatoes and zucchinis, and root crops like carrots and potatoes. In that way you helped keep the soil healthy, without using chemicals. The ancient Mayans and Aztecs used the same method growing beans with corn and pumpkins together, to maintain the health of the soil and get greater yields from smaller spaces.
And now, in 1995, after working for a year on a farm in Nutfield, Victoria, for Bev and Peter Brock, who I met after doing some WWOOFing on a farm in Gippsland, Victoria, and a few months on the biodynamic farm of Inigislas, Wexford, I was now heading to another organic farm in Tubbercurry, Sligo, to do more to save the planet.
Oh I forgot to finish my story about my adventure with Agatha and the girls in the carrot car.
Well, we had driven from Donegal to Sligo in the carrot car. I was getting more and more annoyed at Agatha’s fresa (Mexican way of saying posh) friend who always wanted to go buy oysters from restaurants and thing like that, and who wouldn’t go skinny dipping in the Atlantic, who wouldn’t let me drive the carrot car because I didn’t have a licence, who was basically super boring.
I mean I was always going to get dropped off in Sligo to go work on the farm, but now I was super ready to be done with the carrot car and go help plant some actual carrots. I was still into Agatha mind you. We didn’t have, and would never have, a sexual relationship – sounds like a statement from former President Clinton when you put it like that – but I did find her to be a soulmate. Someone I’d like to spend more time with and whom I’d miss having around for years to come. But her fresa friend, I was totally over her.
I can’t even remember where the carrot car dropped me off. I think I’d maybe contacted the German guys who ran the WWOOFing farm I was going to and they said they were going to be in Sligo city that day and that I could get a ride back with them. Whatever happened, I said my goodbyes and ended up on the farm in Tubbercurry which was where my Irish granny, Bridget Marron, who we just called Bee was born before coming to Australia as a 10 year-old girl with her father and uncle after her mother died.
But more on Tubbercurry next time around. I’ve been giving too much backstory in this post so I’ve run out of space.