Tag: Jungle of Stone

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Newcastle, Australia & Tubbercurry, Sligo – 1995 BlogPt14

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.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Donegal (the greatest place on earth) in the Carrot Car, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean & Reflection on Gay Abandon – 1995 BlogPt13

donegal postcard 1995

In 2022, I’ve been reading a book called Jungle of Stone by William Carlsen. It’s about John Stephens’ and Frederick Catherwood’s journey into Central America in the 1800s to rediscover the great civilisations of the Maya at places like Copán in Honduras and Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. I have my own stories about my visit to Palenque, on my first visit to Mexico, which you can read here, also one to Calakmul, another grand Mayan site in the jungles of southern Mexico not far from Guatemala. I thought it was a bit of a trek to both these sites, but nothing like in those days. I mean I was watching Mel Gibson dubbed into Spanish in the movie Get the Gringo on an air-conditioned ADO bus on one leg from Merida to Palenque while occasionally chatting to a few young women British backpackers who had seats by the toilet, and a British couple who were sitting just behind me. Meanwhile Stephens and Catherwood were held up by bandits and constantly attacked by nasty disease ridden insects. There are a few bandits about, but comparatively speaking I would say it’s a much safer trip now.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but it has already struck me that adventurers often have this sense of gay abandon. Decades before heading to Central America, Stephens’  tried to buy a house in Greece after visiting the great ancient sites there. He found they wouldn’t lend him money for it, nor were they that keen to sell a bit of their ancient country to an American. He shrugged it off and then jumped on a boat ‘at a whim’ and headed to Turkey. He wanted to visit Egypt but THE Plague was going around (yes THE Plague) and ports like Alexandria displayed red flags to say it was a no go zone. Stephens had to spend months in quarantine at several other ports in lazarettos, where even letters were treated as though they may be carrying plague and were allowed off of ships only by means of extraction with iron tongs, with the letters then placed in an iron box for their own quarantining period.

Nothing as exciting as that awaited us in our carrot car as we left Northern Ireland on the way to Donegal, Republic of Ireland. I just mention the Stephens experience as more of a reflection of the gay abandon I used to have in my twenties and the difficulties I have now to even contemplate such things, what with work, kids, a wife, bills and the like. Though the spread of diseases like COVID and Monkeypox are still ever present. And some years ago I did pop off to Mexico to visit some Mayan ruins in the jungle, plus a few Aztec, the archaeological site of Guachimontones not far from Guadalajara, oh and the ancient Purépecha site of Tzintzuntzan near Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacan, with my wife to be. I also visited the Pyramids of Teotihuacan, another lost civilisation north of Mexico City. So I haven’t done too bad. I also plan to take my wife to Italy and other places. Perhaps even Turkey and Greece on a whim, sometime during my 50th year – oh yeah the purpose of this blog! Even I get sidetracked sometimes as to why I’m writing this!

I can’t say Donegal left a great impression on me. It was nice and all. We went to the ‘smallest pub in Ireland’. But the one we’d been at in Enniskillen in County Fermanagh the night before was, in my opinion, even smaller. I’ve seen smaller ones down alleyways in Melbourne. And added disappointment was Agatha’s Spanish friend who turned out to be a bit annoying. I felt myself more of a traveller, something more like the Patrick Leigh Fermor ilk (Patrick walked from Holland to Constantinople and into Greece in the 1930s –  for those who haven’t read his stories or my earlier blogs), travelling along on less than  £15 a day (Patrick did it for considerably less, but it was the 1930s). My Spanish friend seemed like some wealthy spoilt tourist, whose parents probably supported Franco (I’ve gone too harsh there, she wasn’t that bad!). I abandoned the crew a bit and left them to do the touristy Donegal things while I just walked around by myself. It seemed a bit hilly from memory. You could see the ocean. I think. I just wasn’t that into it. We did get some postcards and wrote ourselves a note and sent it to la chaparrita in Dublin. That was fun. And cheap. It was the only note I now have from Agatha. A memory of  the last days I ever saw her, though I didn’t know that at the time.

On the postcard it said:

postcard from donegal 1995

It was the sort of thing you write in your 20s. Seems like Agatha’s friend was called Olga. She did predict that I would have kids in 15 years. Indeed I had a daughter and son by then, with my daughter having already turned 8 and my son 6.

I’m not sure where we stayed in Donegal. Some sort of backpacker place. I think we managed to get ourselves a room altogether again. Agatha and I might have even shared a bed again. I don’t know. We stayed one more night. Had some drinks, smoked some weed and the next day we were off to County Sligo.

Not before a quick drive north of the town of Donegal though. Now that I remember, if not vaguely. I’m not sure why we drove north of Donegal, or even whether it was north. It may have been Westish, but there doesn’t seem much West of Donegal. Perhaps it was North-Westish, but I’m sure not south.

We drove along one of Ireland’s coast roads. With no GPS we just went with the flow. We saw a farm that faced the Atlantic. It was a nice day. A sunny day. Mild. We drove along the road for a while until we decided we were lost. Not panicky lost. Just not knowing where we were lost. It didn’t matter. It was a nice road. With sheep, green grass, the wind, incomprehensible farmers who you think are speaking Gaelic but who just have that really thick Irish West coast accent. Majestic views of the ocean which stretched to Iceland, if you could see that far.

We stopped for a bit. Perhaps we had a sandwich. I’m amazed I can barely recall eating in Ireland in those days given my obsession with food now, but that was way back then in 1995. I wasn’t much of a foodie then.

I remember the first time I tried carnitas in Mexico though. It was on the way to the archaeological site of Tzintzuntzan near Lake Pátzcuaro. My wife was a vegetarian at the time but she insisted I try tacos carnitas – a slowed cooked pork delicacy. The man who gave me my first one ended up being featured on the Netflix show the Taco Chronicles. I thought I would definitely get food poisoning as the pork had been sitting out in the sun on a wooden bench with ZERO refrigeration for hours. I didn’t. And carnitas have become my second favourite taco type just behind tacos pastor, which is pork cooked with chilies, spices, pineapple, and achiote paste. Que rico!

Back in Donegal. I think we may have had some nice bread and a bit of cheese now that I strain my brain. With the Spanish adding some ham. I was vegetarian at the time, so cheese was my kind of go to protein source. We stopped by a little rocky outcrop which had a narrow path to the sea with Irish green grass lining both sides of it, which led down to a small beach with some fairly safe looking waves coming in.

It was warm for Ireland. I felt like a swim. Spanish woman stayed up by the car eating her jamón because she didn’t want to get sand in her shoes. German carrot car owner (I think I tried naming her in earlier blog posts. I liked her, I wish I was more confident of her name), Agatha and I went down to the beach. They sat on the beach smoking cigarettes. I stripped down and waded into the water. I didn’t go further than waist deep. I grew up by the beach and was always respectful of the ocean’s power, especially if I didn’t know the area. I spent about 15 or 20 minutes in the Atlantic Ocean. I put my head under a few times just to get my body temperature adjusted. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t freezing either. It was almost approaching the Goldilocks zone, though more on the side of slightly invigorating. The Atlantic Ocean felt smooth and clean on my naked body. I felt alone. I wanted to be alone. I came out of the water and sat for a few minutes naked with the girls, smoking a cigarette before dressing and heading back up to the carrot car.

I had the feeling this may be the first and only time I would ever swim in the Atlantic Ocean. It could always be the last time you swim in the Atlantic Ocean. It could always be the last time you do anything.

Later we drove back along the same road, along the coast, then past Donegal and towards Sligo.