2008-11-01

Island Vibe

We trundled up the road to Brisbane once again, and caught up with Marina, Bruce and Naomi, and our ex-flatmates Oscar and Aida. K loved the big city this time around - she wanted to investigate everything she saw and heard. C took her around the Roma Street parklands, the central toy library, and the Queen Street malls, while I had a couple of days working from Gensolve's West End office.
That week over, we took the ferry to Stradbroke island, found our campsite, and got set up. All was well until 3 am, when a drunken Frenchman got into an argument about his girlfriend, and half the campsite joined in. The next morning, fortified by much caffeine, we headed to the Island Vibe festival site and registered as volunteers.
We got an excellent deal - free weekend tickets in exchange for three hours work per day, and best of all, the other volunteers in ticketing weren't even reggae fans, so no-one objected to us swapping our shifts around to catch the headline acts. Katchafire (naturally) rocked. Schoolfight were also rather toptastic. I can't even make up an adjective to describe Olmecha Supreme's efforts... Perhaps bizarrific comes close... I didn't even know you could overdrive an acoustic tin whistle. But you can.
We ate unhealthy, fatty foods. We lay on the beach and paddled in the warm ocean. We were desperately tired and wished the baby would sleep. Our own fault, I guess, for disturbing her routine.
Before heading home we put K in the backpack and did the hike to the blue lake. It's a beautiful spot - if it had been sunny I'd've swum for ages there, and even cloudy, it's peaceful and unique.
Back home in Nimbin we've now had two weeks of sunny weather, so the village pool has been much patronised, and the garden is slowly getting less cluttered as I work my way around it with the chainsaw, pruning shears, axe and machette. I need to call the man with the woodchipper before the pile of branches entirely obscures our view of the road and prevents us getting through the gate with the car.
This week we sat our aussie citizenship tests. I think we passed, but the staff couldn't operate their computers so they printed the tests out and will have to mail us the results in a couple of weeks' time - the usual chaos.
We're keeping busy over all - I'm now writing a series of articles on internet freedoms for the local paper in addition to compiling their crossword, C's list of local clients for her web-design services is ever growing, Gensolve want me to do more work than I already am, and there's plenty of paperwork left before we get our passports - the main things getting squeezed are sleep, and blogging time.





-

No comments: