Veggie Days, City Nights in Melbourne, AU ~ April 12, 2012 - Present

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Melbourne is awesome. In fact, Melbourne wins the “Genuinely Hip City” prize in the LQJ book of Travel-To-Date (even, I sheepishly add, compared to Our Fair City of Cambridge). Live music for free at creative venues in every neighborhood every night. Beautiful graffiti mural art everywhere, encouraged and appreciated by the city. Great public transit. Weekly markets all over the city, each with their own niche: gorgeous specialty foods, local organic produce, and art/crafts/vintage fun. People from all over the world, bringing personality and culture and delicious (and cheap!) food from Lebanon, Turkey, Africa, Italy, Greece, Korea, Vietnam, China, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Japan. Amazing cafes that seem creative and inviting with a laid-back mix of coffee, wine, foodie food, indie art, music, and performance; there's always fun to be had out here. Distinctive architecture with single-story houses in rows and rows, shallow A-frame peaks and curling wrought-iron on the front lip of the roof in bright colors… always a little yard in front and enough space in the back for some happy veggies. Heaps of “opp shops” (“opportunity shops”, Aussie for “thrift store”) made for the community with vintage finds to be had. Bicycle culture and carbon-free wheels on the road. Backyard veggie gardens in abundance and a widespread healthy attitude of do-it-yourself living and responsible resource conservation. Hipsters and hippies and eco-activists in their fair share but outweighed by a general population who are just genuinely cool, down-to-earth, mindfully people with a sense of fun and a sense of conscience. Good citizens.

I didn’t expect that I’d come to the big city and learn as much as ever about farming and growing, but that has been the case. My time in Melbourne started with an amazing intensive urban wwoofing experience. Through my wonderful Tasie blueberry friends, I got connected with a friend in Melbourne, Kat, who runs an amazing permaculture property/sharehouse in one of Melbourne’s neighbourhoods called Northcote. Kat and her partner Nik welcomed me to wwoof with them for the first three weeks I was in Melbourne getting settled. They were extremely knowledgeable and driven in their vision about permaculture design (in a tiny little backyard they fit about 100 ingenious design elements, all positioned for multi-functionality, all made with renewable and/or salvaged resources, all inspiring and eye-opening), earthbuilding (we worked constantly on re-constructing their back shed into a gorgeous little clay straw house, a project they had been working on for nearly a year – the “studio” is their baby!), fermentation (virtually everything in the kitchen was soaking – nuts, oats, sprouts, kombucha, ginger beer, kefir, beets, sauerkraut…), composting (they have an impressive compost toilet in the city! no smell at all, and it produces beautiful non-toxic soil), and preserving (their pantry is just about as big as their kitchen, and though I never actually saw them enjoy a whole piece of fresh fruit, they had preserved literally hundreds and hundreds of jars of locally harvested fruit). “Wow” doesn’t begin to cover it! They are intense! I admire their vision of creating a life that is both ecologically sustainable and is a demonstration site for others who are newer to these projects. I attacked their enormous bookshelf of literature on all the above topics, and read voraciously. I learned heaps from living with Kat and Nik, and feel really lucky to have found yet more folks who so warmly included me in their home and circle of fun and dedicated friends.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve delightfully achieved something new in my journeys: my own space and schedule! I found a friendly sharehouse just down the street from Kat & Nik’s place – I can now call 201 Separation St. in Northcote home! New housemates are relaxed, fun, friendly, responsible folks in their mid-30s, and the house has some nifty 1950’s vintage charm. We cook delicious dinners from the garden, enjoy music or coffee in the city, and are happy to have each other around. At the moment I’m sitting in front of the woodstove warming my toes; last night I made roasted veggies and gingerbread cookies. My room is mint green, white, brown, and red; it feels nice and I sleep well there.

I’ve found work at an amazing, famous place called CERES – it’s an environmental park that has a beautiful patchwork of projects going simultaneously: huge community gardens; countless programs for visiting school groups (on organic growing, water and waste management, energy impacts, Aboriginal culture, and local environment, etc.); a community bike shed where staff teach you how to make and fix your own bike 7 days a week; a beautiful café serving organic food grown in CERES own gardens; a nursery with loads of plants and books and tools for growing your own feast and recycling your waste back into the growing cycle; and a market and organic food shop that have beautiful produce and crafts on Saturdays! Everything happens at CERES; it’s a hub of the community. Lots of Melbourne natives first visit as little kids on school fieldtrips, which are the programs I’m teaching. Fun to be working with kids, teaching a range of interesting and important curriculum, and doing it all outside in a lovely peaceful atmosphere. I’m also volunteering doing some policy work at Cultivating Community, an interesting local nonprofit that works for good food specifically for urban low-income folks –that’s soooooooo interesting and important to me, so I’m happy to be involved. My income is still too miniscule to let me properly enjoy the city, but I think I’m on the right path to cover my living expenses eventually… it’s definitely not worth being in a city if you can’t feel comfortable buying a cup of tea (or a glass of wine) when you want it.

Some days I’ve even been drawing! That beautiful architecture is just asking for some pen and ink…

And I’ve been catching up with some of my wonderful wwoofing friends. Last weekend I danced to Eriko’s ska band at a popular Melbourne venue. Last night I cooked dinner with Nozomi after a gorgeous day at CERES together. Good times, good people.