Pak Beng (aka pakbeng), Laos, to Luang Prabang and another day on the rather crappy slowboat down the Mekong – 50yr Backpacker Pt 31

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After the Mekong Elephant Park we spent another day in Pak Beng. The smoke from the many fires burning around the country were just as terrible in the morning, so bad we again discussed trying to get out of Laos and into neighbouring Vietnam sooner than we had planned. The new Vietnamese e-visa application had still not been approved so we were going to have to spend at least another week in Laos, until the existing visa date. I had trouble trying to change the hotel booking in Pak Beng as well as I’d booked on one platform but I couldn’t change the booking on the same platform and the hotel owner couldn’t do anything unless we had first done something on the other platform, which didn’t work. So in the end we figured we could survive another night in the smokey haze, not waste money on another night’s accommodation, and head to Luang Prabang for the second part of our slow boat journey down the Mekong. I had initially so been looking forward to the slow boat. So far, my romantic notions had been dashed and mired by smoke, intense heat, the very uncomfortable seating and disappointment at the wanton dumping of rubbish in the river.

I’ve been reading Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed. It goes into graphic and terrifying detail of how us humans are changing the Earth. As a tourist I can complain about the heat and smoke and do my ‘Karen’ thing, but for millions, probably billions,in the world it’s not about visiting a place for a few days, taking the photos in front of stuff and moving on the next day. While we were experiencing the devastating effects of climate change, we had the opulence to just jump on a boat (slow or fast), plane, train or bus to get out of the place. Billions will suffer with the heat, the fires, the smokes, the droughts, the floods, the pollution, and the waste when us tourists have been through. Our little trip is just a glimpse into that world. The average Laotian will have to live with this, mostly un-air conditioned, reality with no option to escape. As Frankopan illustrates, the world Earth doesn’t give preference to any one species it’s outlived lots of pioneering tiny little bacteria types, long stretches of huge T-rexs, brontosauruses, pteranodons, sabre tooth tigers, mammoths, Tasmanian tigers, dodos and all our ancestors like the neanderthals and all the other homos. The death of the homo sapiens through our own stupidity will go barely noticed in the universe. At least all the other species had an excuse, they didn’t have the ability to do anything about their own demise.

Of much less importance, though as a travel blogger I will of course mention it, is the impact on tourists like us carelessly venturing into countries suffering from the effects of climate change, and while complaining about it, and ironically contributing to it through our flights and consumption patterns back home, I fear climate change could be the literal death of many of us humans, perhaps taking much of the flora and fauna with us- though probably leaving a gap for something new to take over – perhaps the dinosaurs mark II! Apocalyptic I know for a travel blog, but travel opens your eyes to the issues the world is having and perhaps can lead us to doing something meaningful about it. If not, and we are all faced with the prospect of annihilation, I have been reading another book which I just finished called No Death, No Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh which I saw a Vietnamese guy reading. He ran a very small café on the opposite side of a little courtyard to our hotel in Ho Chi Minh, which was  down an alleyway, rather cool. He looked super chilled so I took a photo of his book and bought it on Amazon when I got back to Australia. Which in the chronology of this blog is still a few months away. So No Death, No Fear could offer the insight we need to accept the impermanence of the world and perhaps the dire situation we are all facing with climate change, plus waste and general non-Co2 equivalent related pollution and sustainability. I won’t quote it directly as I’m too lazy to get up and get it out of the bedroom – oh now I’m making myself feel bad so I will get up and get it! 

Animals, plants and animals all suffer because of the greed of human beings. The earth, the water and the air are suffering because we have polluted them. The trees suffer because we destroy the forest for our own profit. Some species have become extinct because of the destruction of the natural environment. Humans also destroy and exploit one another.

According to the teachings of Buddhism, all beings have the capacity of awakened nature. How can we stop ourselves from collapsing in despair? It is because Buddhas and bodhisattvas are present in the world. They are not somewhere else in a faraway paradise. Whether we are living or dying, they are here with us.

THICT NHAT HANH

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Such insights might also help us address the issues that contribute to climate change and other environmental issues though with insights into greed, consumption, vanity, and lying to ourselves – such as “we’re doing our ‘bit’ to tackle climate change” which is code for we’re only doing enough to make ourselves feel good when in reality we’re all doing very little and are really just on a slow boat, down the Mekong, bags of rubbish floating past, smoke filling our eyes and lungs, and heat frying our brains.

The guy at the small café down the alleyway in Ho Chi Minh was what I’d imagine a bodhisattva to be. Quiet, focussed, humble. I took a look at TikTok recently and that’s the shit that makes me despair. Why do we need that stuff?

But I digress, back to our touristy trip down the Mekong River!

mekong river slow boat laos

It was way too hot to do anything while there in Pak Beng so in the morning I just did some blogging, at the stage where I thought I could actually keep it up while travelling! It’s almost exactly a year now since we were in Laos, and I only finished off the bits about my travels to Ireland, Europe, India and Thailand (well there’s still a little to go of that) from 1995, so this latest 50 year backpacker trip may still take a while to finish writing about. It will happen at some point though! Perhaps before the next trips we have planned: Mexico with my son Oskarito, and a 30 year plus anniversary (of my 1995 trip) to Ireland, Spain, Bruges, Germany, and maybe Tallinn, Estonia, plus Japan for the cherry blossoms which my kids and mum did back a few years ago now, and which I wrote about here. Though my wife thinks perhaps we should get ‘ a house’ before spending more money on travel. 😉

Back in Pak Beng, though it was way too hot to do anything, our new Canadian friend – new to being a friend rather than being a Canadian, which I think she had been all her life – decided to hire some guide to take her up to some Laotian village. We were like, good luck and we hope you don’t die along the way! After some blogging in the morning out in the breakfast area I decided to go for a walk as i was hungry and didn’t want to pay the hotel’s exorbitant prices, preferring the value of the one and only Indian place in town, which was at least a tenth of the price of the hotel. I made it as far as the Indian place on the main street, about a kilometre or two away.  When I got there the owner was shocked that I’d even gone that far warning that I should have basically avoided any activity during the day. My wife was sensible and stayed in the room with the aircon going full blast. This managed to just take the most extreme of the heat off of the room as the aircon unit was way too small for the space. Also the doors didn’t quite shut properly which meant not only did some of the heat escape but the smoke, particularly in the mornings and evenings made its way in. They were helping out the elephants across the river in the park though so they can be forgiven.

So the last day in Pak Beng was really totally uneventful. We did go down to the pool once the sun went down a bit. We could catch a glimpse of the Mekong from there which was nice. When the sun had disappeared we ventured down to Happy Bar where they offered us a free starter whiskey, that we politely tipped out onto the ground after realising from one sip it could probably fuel a moped, and then buying a few Beerlaos, a very tasty brew that is nowhere near as toxic as the free Laotioan whiskey (there may be classier/ safer ones about, dunno). The Beerlaos IPAs are especially tasty though not available everywhere. Buddhism and alcohol, I know, rather contradictory. We stayed a while at Happy’s, it was the low season and not many people had found the place. There were a few overnighters who had come on the slow boat from Huay Xie (or perhaps Luang Prabang) a few hours ago who we were likely to see again on the boat in the morning again.

The next morning we got up early and had our breaky. Another plate of papaya, dragonfruit, weak coffee and ever so slightly toasted toast with locally made jam that was rather nice. We let the hotel know that we were leaving an empty suitcase behind. My wife deciding she couldn’t watch me struggle up the slopes of the riverbanks another day risking dislocating my shoulders. We had had to economise our clothes a bit, to fit it the remaining bags. I had finally drunk all of my Capital Brewery beer (from  Canberra)  which I’d lugged around the world thus far – it was just a four pack. I also had to say goodbye to my koala mariachi shirt which was irretrievably soiled from the day trip to the Mekong Elephant Park, along with a backpack cover – which I thought the airlines would have made me use to cover my yellow backpack, which in the end they didn’t seem to care about. I think a pair of shoes and some other random items may have also been jettisoned as well. We had managed to get the contents of the large empty suitcase into my yellow backpack, some mochilas (small backpacks) and one smaller suitcase as well as some green bags we usually used for our supermarket and market shopping back in Australia.

We hugged our new-found Canadian friend and exchanged Insta details. As she was going against the flow of the river up towards Huay Xie, we wouldn’t have the pleasure of her company for another day. And then we got on the back of the hotel truck and headed down the hill to the boat area. As we still had 30 minutes before departing I quickly ran into town and grabbed a few bottles of water, some soft drink and snacks for the journey. Then we headed down another steep slope down the stairs to the river and the boats, thankfully without dislocating my shoulders.

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I feel the second day on the boat was not nearly as bad as the first. Firstly I think our romantic expectations had already been dashed, mine especially. I think my wife never held high hopes for the 2-day boat trip so she was about the same. The seats were marginally less uncomfortable and I didn’t notice any kids chucking empty plastic noodles containers overboard this time. I must say, all us foreign tourists kept all of their rubbish for later disposal, so we were good in that respect! There were still plenty of bits of plastic floating about from others and caught in the branches the dry season had exposed, but nowhere near as much as up Huay Xai way. The riverbanks, when not burning, were also a bit more interesting, more buffalo, more villages, more kids running about and swarming onto the edges of the boat selling bracelets when we stopped at villagers. We were also a bit better prepared, with more fluids to get through the day so we didn’t have to buy anything on the boat. I resisted buying a Beerlaos as it cost twice the price on the boat and stuck with what we had. We had a monk onboard who hopped on at one of the small villages which added a bit of tranquillity and colour to the boat. Our fellow travellers were all pretty chilled, also resigned to, or perhaps even excited for, another slow day on the river. 

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We went through signs of Laos’ modernisation with high bridges crossing the river at points. Perhaps it was just ‘A’ bridge but it was pretty impressive. There were also land reclamation projects on the side of the river with machines pilling up sand to build some sorts of buildings on. All financed by the Chinese I believe.

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In the afternoon the river got bendier. The hills became slightly greener and less on fire. We spotted a cave temple which was not far from Luang Prabang which was beautiful and which we should have probably visited when we were in Luang Prabang but couldn’t as my wife vowed to never set foot on a slow boat down the Mekong ever again. And eventually we made it. Two, almost, whole days on the river and we had made it. To lovely Luang Prabang. Well almost to lovely Luang Prabang. The ‘wharf’ which I put in quotation marks as it’s just really a very basic collection of wooden walkways with enough space for maybe a dozen boats – maybe double or triple that in the peak season. Maybe the ‘boat landing’ place is a better description. The boat landing place was, again due to the dry season lack of water, about 10-12 metres below the road. It felt more like 300 metres as I again struggled up the hill, even with the consolidated luggage which was only a couple of less kilos lighter than when we arrived in Pak Beng.

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On top, the lovely Luang Prabang was still nowhere in sight. Apparently they could take the boats all the way to lovely Luang Prabang itself, but instead they dock them about 30 minutes drive away to support the local, low level organised crime, taxi industry. I paid for a ticket on a collective taxi that was going into town. We were unlucky as they were still waiting for the taxi to fill up before heading off, so we had to sit around for a few minutes while everyone boarded. The collective taxi was one of those trucks with two of those long bench seats on either side and the luggage of all 12 occupants piled almost to the roof in the middle. So more of a back of a truck than a taxi.

‘I don’t think we’re all going to fit’, I’d said before getting on. To which a young backpacker  replied, ‘oh we’ve fit more than this in before!’ Bless the hearts of those young backpackers, for despite having a yellow backpack myself, I now realised I preferred a little bit more comfort in my 50s! Which my wife would probably have said ‘te lo dige’ – or I told you so in Spanish!

Once we were all stacked in and unable to move, we were told, or perhaps not so much told as it was it became evident, that we still weren’t going anywhere for a bit as we didn’t have a driver, so we all sat there for maybe 20-30 minutes waiting for a driver to show up. I mean perhaps they could have figured that out before they shoved us all in ike sardines, but het, that’s just me and my 50-year backpacker ways. The younger backpackers all seemed down with it and unperturbed. If I was their age I’d probably be fairly stoned by now and also lacking stress about the situation. We did get a chance to talk to a few of the young people, they’d been travelling here, there and everywhere. That’s the life. In fact the life we were living ourselves at that moment! And then suddenly a driver appeared, and we were off to lovely Luang Prabang. Though at that stage we were still unaware at just how lovely it was going to be.

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That’s for the next blog post. I’ve had enough today.

Oh, after bagging TikTok, I’ve started an account, it’s literally better than 95% of the shit I’ve seen on the platform so far: https://www.tiktok.com/@juanitos.travels Get your laptops out and check it out!


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Still in Pakbeng, Laos, writing about Koh Chang, Thailand. Just saw one of the elephants from the Mekong Elephant Park, across the Mekong from us going down and taking a dip in the river. It must be their male as it was alone and having been to the park yesterday they explained the male was the only one that would go down to the river by himself, with his ever present Mahout of course. Jeez those Mahouts are dedicated. But I’ll write more about the park later. Even though I wasn’t overly impressed by Koh Chang, I feel I should finish writing something about it acknowledging that my last post was probably a bit on the dull side. I spent a lot of time writing about getting money out of ATMs, but you know these are things you need to think about when travelling. Like here in Pakbeng, there’s 2 ATMs, both are not working and nobody, except maybe the hotels, takes cards. So if you wanna eat you need money. Luckily we had brought a few thousand Thai Baht with us to Laos which the guy at the Indian restaurant exchanged for Kip after we paid our dinner bill. It was a nice place actually, thinking of going back there for lunch. But back to Koh Chang. Our second day in Koh Chang we decided to head to Khlong Phlu Waterfall because it was April, and so f*cking hot and a waterfall has water in it. It cost us around 200 baht each way, maybe 150, can’t remember. It’s a great choice to spend your time in the heat. The taxi driver agreed she would come and collect us in 2 and a half hours, which was ample time to swim, sit, and for my wife to be covered in butterflies. There’s lots of little and quite big fishes there as well that like nibbling at your feet. Some gave quite a nip actually and it felt on occasions that big chunks of skin were being taken away. I had a wonderful on my leg caused by a fellow tourist a few days earlier who carelessly whacked his backpack into my leg as he got out of the shared taxi tuk tuk thingy which I can still make out on my leg here, maybe 10 days later, or something like that, I’ve lost track. Well the fish liked chomping on bits of my wound, not sure how hygienic that is but I kept applying my tea-tree ointment I brought from Australia to try and keep it from getting infected. Which it did! I also swear by tea-tree toothpaste when travelling as it helps to avoid bacterial infections. That’s about it for the waterfall, what else can you say about waterfalls,Khlong Phlu Waterfall, a bit of a hike from the carpark, maybe 800 metres, and it takes about 10-15 minutes to walk there. It costs around 200 baht each to get in as it’s a national park. There’s a few birds about, the water is nice and refreshing as opposed to the mostly warm waters you get at the beaches that time of year. And yeah, here’s another butterfly picture! We went back to Lonely Beach after, had some lunch, went up to the hotel, had another swim and more showers then headed back down into town to have dinner having to skirt around some angry dogs on the way. If the beaches of Koh Chang were a little disappointing – though I did certainly enjoy the Lonely Beach vibe much, much more than Klong Prao Beach – partly because Lonely Beach is not that easy to get to, and with no paths you either have to get yourself a moped to drive around (presumably stoned which is probably not advisable) or walk on the road to get there. There’s no long stretches of beaches down that way you can walk along. But, if you go early in the morning you can see monkeys though! Anyway when we decided we’d like to see the islands around Koh Chang, to see if they were any better – the reports being, yes they were. So we organised a snorkelling tour of four islands near Koh Chang for the next day. You can also do 5 islands, 3 islands etc. I’d say in the end it doesn’t matter what number you visit, they are all pretty much the same, and all very nice. I don’t think you’re really getting much more value by seeing 50 in a day. You get to snorkel at each of the 4 islands, or however many you pay for, and on one, don’t ask me the name of it, you have time to wander about on the island for about an hour. The typical tour thing where they’re rushing you about so they can tick off, yes you went to 4 places and they were all islands, so you can’t complain. But, if you’re expecting the oceans to be teaming with life then get ready to be disappointed. Which is where I come to part of the title of this blog entry: where’d the sharks, rays & turtles. Inspire dog course by Ween’s classic song Where’d the cheese go? (I don’t know). We have been to Queensland’s Heron Island, which is on the Great Barrier Reef. There we saw an abundance of coral, even though it’s been bleached and damaged a bit over the years with global warming. We also saw an abundance of fish, rays, turtles and sharks, including some cute baby sharks I was snorkelling with on the last day on the island. We even saw baby turtles hatching out of the sand and a mother turtle laying turtle eggs. You also have plenty of space to swim about and enjoy the reef just off of the coast. It’s a natural paradise. That’s not the experience you’ll get on the islands tour off of Koh Chang though. They gather tourists from all parts of Koh Chang in the morning and they ship them down to Bang Boa harbour – one thing you can certainly say about the Thais is that they are super efficient at herding tourists in tourist activities. – which is full of plastic waste by the way. There they fill up dozens of boats full of tourists and then ship them off to each snorkelling spot, and while you do see a lot of fish there’s nowhere near the biodiversity you’ll see in a truly natural spot like the Great Barrier Reef. There are no rays, no turtles, no sharks, the coral is super mangy and the water, at least at that time of year (April) is super hot, like tepid bath water. Also because they have so overexploited the area there is no concept of doing things in moderation and you end up getting crawled over by tourists trying to stay afloat. So all up, the scenery above the water is pretty nice and you’ll get your nice pics to post on instagram. But the snorkelling is very shit and honestly the Thai government needs to put some effort into controlling the exploitation of its natural resources, maybe limit the amount of people visiting the islands every day or setting aside more protected areas. Because whilst I do find sharks, rays and occasionally even turtles a bit freaky, they are indicators of a healthy ecosystem. And the bottom line is the islands they take you to around Koh Chang are far from healthy. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they get so overexploited that they won’t be worth visiting in years to come. Frankly they are barely worth visiting now. The day trip was pleasant. If you can, go visit a natural reef in Australia or one of the pacific islands if you want to truly explore nature. Well, that was our last day on Koh Chang. I wouldn’t bother going back again, though the waterfalls, and massages on Lonely Beach are nice.

Khlong Phu waterfall koh chang thailand

Still in Pakbeng, Laos, writing about Koh Chang, Thailand. Just saw one of the elephants from the Mekong Elephant Park, across the Mekong from us going down and taking a dip in the river. It must be their male as it was alone and having been to the park yesterday they explained the male was the only one that would go down to the river by himself, with his ever present Mahout of course. Jeez those Mahouts are dedicated. But I’ll write more about the park later. Even though I wasn’t overly impressed by Koh Chang, I feel I should finish writing something about it acknowledging that my last post was probably a bit on the dull side. I spent a lot of time writing about getting money out of ATMs, but you know these are things you need to think about when travelling. Like here in Pakbeng, there’s 2 ATMs, both are not working and nobody, except maybe the hotels, takes cards. So if you wanna eat you need money. Luckily we had brought a few thousand Thai Baht with us to Laos which the guy at the Indian restaurant exchanged for Kip after we paid our dinner bill. It was a nice place actually, thinking of going back there for lunch.

But back to Koh Chang.

butterfly Koh Chang Khlong Phu waterfall thailand

Our second day in Koh Chang we decided to head to Khlong Phlu Waterfall because it was April, and so f*cking hot and a waterfall has water in it. It cost us around 200 baht each way, maybe 150, can’t remember.

khlong phlu waterfall koh chang thailand

It’s a great choice to spend your time in the heat. The taxi driver agreed she would come and collect us in 2 and a half hours, which was ample time to swim, sit, and for my wife to be covered in butterflies. There’s lots of little and quite big fishes there as well that like nibbling at your feet. Some gave quite a nip actually and it felt on occasions that big chunks of skin were being taken away. I had a wonderful on my leg caused by a fellow tourist a few days earlier who carelessly whacked his backpack into my leg as he got out of the shared taxi tuk tuk thingy which I can still make out on my leg here, maybe 10 days later, or something like that, I’ve lost track. Well the fish liked chomping on bits of my wound, not sure how hygienic that is but I kept applying my tea-tree ointment I brought from Australia to try and keep it from getting infected. Which it did! I also swear by tea-tree toothpaste when travelling as it helps to avoid bacterial infections.

fish Khlong Phlu Waterfall Koh chang thailand

That’s about it for the waterfall, what else can you say about waterfalls,Khlong Phlu Waterfall, a bit of a hike from the carpark, maybe 800 metres, and it takes about 10-15 minutes to walk there. It costs around 200 baht each to get in as it’s a national park. There’s a few birds about, the water is nice and refreshing as opposed to the mostly warm waters you get at the beaches that time of year.

And yeah, here’s another butterfly picture!

butterfly boobs oblong phlu waterfall koh chang thailandbutterflies khlong phlu waterfall Thailand

We went back to Lonely Beach after, had some lunch, went up to the hotel, had another swim and more showers then headed back down into town to have dinner having to skirt around some angry dogs on the way.

If the beaches of Koh Chang were a little disappointing – though I did certainly enjoy the Lonely Beach vibe much, much more than Klong Prao Beach – partly because Lonely Beach is not that easy to get to, and with no paths you either have to get yourself a moped to drive around (presumably stoned which is probably not advisable) or walk on the road to get there. There’s no long stretches of beaches down that way you can walk along. But, if you go early in the morning you can see monkeys!

monkey on wire Koh Chang

Anyway when we decided we’d like to see the islands around Koh Chang, to see if they were any better – the reports being, yes they were. So we organised a snorkelling tour of four islands near Koh Chang for the next day. You can also do 5 islands, 3 islands etc. I’d say in the end it doesn’t matter what number you visit, they are all pretty much the same, and all very nice. I don’t think you’re really getting much more value by seeing 50 in a day.

Snorkelling Tours to Islands around Koh Chang

You get to snorkel at each of the 4 islands, or however many you pay for, and on one, don’t ask me the name of it, you have time to wander about on the island for about an hour. The typical tour thing where they’re rushing you about so they can tick off, yes you went to 4 places and they were all islands, so you can’t complain.

Snorkelling Tours to Islands around Koh ChangSnorkelling Tours to Islands around Koh Chang

But, if you’re expecting the oceans to be teaming with life then get ready to be disappointed. Which is where I come to part of the title of this blog entry: where’d the sharks, rays & turtles. Inspire dog course by Ween’s classic song Where’d the cheese go? (I don’t know). We have been to Queensland’s Heron Island, which is on the Great Barrier Reef. There we saw an abundance of coral, even though it’s been bleached and damaged a bit over the years with global warming. We also saw an abundance of fish, rays, turtles and sharks, including some cute baby sharks I was snorkelling with on the last day on the island. We even saw baby turtles hatching out of the sand and a mother turtle laying turtle eggs. You also have plenty of space to swim about and enjoy the reef just off of the coast. It’s a natural paradise.

That’s not the experience you’ll get on the islands tour off of Koh Chang though. They gather tourists from all parts of Koh Chang in the morning and they ship them down to Bang Boa harbour – one thing you can certainly say about the Thais is that they are super efficient at herding tourists in tourist activities.  – which is full of plastic waste by the way. There they fill up dozens of boats full of tourists and then ship them off to each snorkelling spot, and while you do see a lot of fish there’s nowhere near the biodiversity you’ll see in a truly natural spot like the Great Barrier Reef. There are no rays, no turtles, no sharks, the coral is super mangy and the water, at least at that time of year (April) is super hot, like tepid bath water.

Also because they have so overexploited the area there is no concept of doing things in moderation and you end up getting crawled over by tourists trying to stay afloat. So all up, the scenery above the water is pretty nice and you’ll get your nice pics to post on instagram. But the snorkelling is very shit and honestly the Thai government needs to put some effort into controlling the exploitation of its natural resources, maybe limit the amount of people visiting the islands every day or setting aside more protected areas.

Because whilst I do find sharks, rays and occasionally even turtles a bit freaky, they are indicators of a healthy ecosystem. And the bottom line is the islands they take you to around Koh Chang are far from healthy. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they get so overexploited that they won’t be worth visiting in years to come. Frankly they are barely worth visiting now.

The day trip was pleasant. If you can, go visit a natural reef in Australia or one of the pacific islands if you want to truly explore nature.

Well, that was our last day on Koh Chang. I wouldn’t bother going back again, though the waterfalls, and massages on Lonely Beach are nice.

Snorkelling Tours to Islands around Koh Chang

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – 1995 New Delhi to Jaipur, India on a train to meet Steve, or whatever his name was, the Aussie guy, Pt20

Map in hand, I headed to New Delhi railway station. I had plenty of time, the train didn’t even leave for another 2 1/2 hours or something, I felt super organised.

From the map it looked like I probably;y just needed to walk a kilometre or two, so after getting there I thought I’d just be able to relax and have some more dhal, and perhaps a mango lassi and another chai, perhaps my fourth or fifth for the day, as I waited.

I couldn’t quite figure out the direction of the map so I asked a gentleman with another fine moustache for some help.

“Excuse me sir, I was wondering if you may help me find the railway station.”

He stopped and asked, “Indeed, where are you going to?”

“Jaipur” I said. “According to the map the station should be around here somewhere”.

“Jaipur? I travelled there many times. This is not the station you want, the train leaves from a station across town.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Totally certain. I travelled to Jaipur by train many years. Every month I would go there, the train departs from old Delhi station. It is across town.”

“Oh! How long does it take to get there?”

“Maybe 40 or 50 minutes. When does your train leave?”

“In around 2 hours, so I better get over there.”

“That should be fine.”

“Thank you”, I said.

“You’re welcome, enjoy your time in Jaipur, the pink city, it is very beautiful”.

He waved me down an auto rickshaw (the smoky ones with kerosene or petrol power) and explained to the driver where I was going, after some negotiation he agreed on a price for me and I thanked him again and headed off.

Oh well, I thought, I’d still have enough time for a dhal and chapatis when I got to the station and checked my bags in and in about an hour I had arrived. I wandered casually onto the station and looked around for my train, clutching my train ticket for the travel agent at the fancy hotel. There were not too many English speakers around but after 10-15 minutes of searching I found a train conductor who spoke English and showed him my ticket.

The train conductor looked at my ticket and looked at me, and rocked his head from side to side in the familiar Indian way and said, “This train is not for foreigners, you need to go to New Delhi station. This is old Delhi station. Why did you come here?”

My face went pale, I replied “I was walking to New Delhi station and I asked someone for directions and he said he always took the rain from this station, not the one I was walking to.”

As usual a couple of interested crowd members gathered around to watch the confused foreigner who had gotten lost. It was like watching reality TV I guess. The train conductor shook his head and clicked his tongue and said, “this train is just an Indian train. The train taking tourists leaves from New Delhi station. What time is your train”.

I told him that it was now about 1 hour away.

“Hurry!” he declared, “if you go now you might make it!”. A rickshaw driver was somehow privy to this conversation and motioned me to jump on his rickshaw. I stood by it for a few seconds and haggled over the price to the station. You didn’t want to sit down until you’d negotiated a price, otherwise you may end up paying anything. The negotiations were rather rushed, the rickshaw driver was getting almost as nervous as I that I would miss the train. He agreed on a price and I dived on and he tore through the streets at record speed.

The rickshaw driver could have easily been a stunt driver for a James Bond film, he weaved around cows, people, narrowly missed trucks and did everything short of using wooden planks to jump over the crowd. He was an absolute legend. I just sat back waiting for us to hit something, my life was in the hands of Ganesh, any other god who’d wager for it. I looked at my Mickey Mouse watch – I haven’t mentioned that before so I may not have had a Mickey Mouse watch with me, but I did own one at some stage and I did need a way of telling time before having an iPhone so it’s quite possible I did have Mickey on my wrist.

The train was due to depart in about 20 minutes. I had no idea of whether we were getting closer but I feel like we didn’t stop for anything.

“You’re doing really well!” I yelled over the noise of the engine. I wasn’t sure we’d make it in time, but ten minutes later we were there. As we approached I carefully counted out the amount of rupees we’d agreed upon and then added about a dollar’s worth more. He deserved whatever little extra I could give.

I jumped off the rickshaw as it slowed, handed him the cash, he went to give me some change, and I was like keep the change please, and I put my palms together in reverence at his super-human rickshaw driving abilities. I ran into the station, frantically asking whoever I could get the attention of for the directions to the platform I ran along, and several train conductors stood together around a clipboard. They saw me coming and motioned for me to come towards them. I ran over to them, panting.

As I approached the man in charge of the clipboard yelled to me, “Mr Royston”. Royston was my middle name so I knew it must be me. “Yes!” I yelled back as I got nearer.

“Hurry”, the train is about to depart.

“Sorry, I’m so late, I was told to go to old Delhi station. So I had to rush back here.”

“What sort of person would tell you to go to old Delhi?”

I reached the train conductors and handed the man with the clipboard the ticket, he looked at it and then said, “this is your carriage, hurry!” he shook his head “why would someone tell you to go to old Delhi, that is a local train, not the tourist train”, he was in disbelief as to how someone could have done such a thing. I could see it was a genuine mistake, but now I never trust directions. Google maps is the only one you can rely on, the rest is mere suggestions.

I jumped on the train, a few moments later it was pulling out of the station. I looked out of the window at the train conductors, there seems a sense of pride on their faces that they’d got the tourist on board. Nowadays I’d put a clapping emoji on a picture of them and post their picture on instagram, back then I just slumped in my seat and let the adrenaline subside as I watched them disappear as the train pulled away from the station.

——-

I had a sleeper carriage, first class A/C – it was still only $5 or $6 and had saved me another night’s accommodation. It was around a 7-8 journey, so I’d get some rest, before arriving early in the morning. I was sharing the berth, if that’s what you call them, or was it just a carriage, with two other men.

We got to talking a bit. One of the guys was a British Indian businessman on a trip over and the other a local businessman who didn’t speak any English. So the British guy translated for us. I don’t remember much of what we chatted about, perhaps where we were from, what we do. I remember the British guy saying the other businessman was very surprised when he told him that they had to clean their own houses in Britain. “What, no servants?” the guy had said, and we laughed a bit before I said I better get some sleep.

A few hours later we pulled into a station. I was still a bit peckish and asked whether there was a chance of getting something to eat. Of course there were people selling wares on the platform and I think I managed to get something to eat, and also a chai in a clay cup. The train stopped for a few minutes, enough time to drink the chai. I asked the British guy what I should do with the empty clay cup and he said, “just throw it onto the platform, they will collect them and make more” and chuckled a little. He was a jolly man.

So I wound back my arm like I used to when playing baseball at high school and pitched the clay cup onto the platform, narrowly missing the head of the conductor and others around before smashing into small bits on the platform.

“Sorry!” I yelled. The British man chuckled again. “You don’t know your own strength”, he gently lobbed his empty cup onto the platform.

There was the usual array of kids, families, women with children, dogs, cows and the like around. A man watched as his young daughter peed on the tracks away a bit. The air was still very warm, almost without a hint of chill. I went back and rested some more.

 

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – 1995 New Delhi India without a visa but with a little scam Pt18 (not pt IX of Star Wars)

New Delhi India Street 1995

March 2023

There’s risks with nostalgia. Stuart, from the biodynamic farm, Inisglas, I first stayed on when I visited Wexford, Ireland, told me: “never look back”. I perhaps interpret that as never hold onto the past. Anyway Stuart said lots of things and was against floppy discs and technology in general so I will ignore Stuart and go back to reflecting on a trip from 27, now 28 years ago. Though Stuart did have a point of the need to move forward. Sometimes I want to try and recapture the spirit I had back then in 1995 rather than move on. But I also like to remember.

Patrick Leigh Fermor looked back on his trip walking from Holland to Constantinople in the early 30s in a trilogy starting with A Time of Gifts. That was a nice reflection, not trying to change the past, just remembering. It’s a nice slow read with some interesting details of the past. A Time of Gifts wasn’t published until 1977. That was the year Star Wars IV: A New Hope was first released in cinemas.

Star Wars IV: A New Hope is a very good film. One of the best of all times. It has a very simple story, lots of action. It had the character of Hammerhead, the best supporting character ever to appear in a film. I wrote a fan fiction featuring him in a story I wrote: Cuba: with Hammerhead the star of Star Wars: A New Hope.  I bought an action figure of Hammerhead in the late seventies when I went to Toombul shopping centre in Brisbane with my grandfather. My cousin Alistair told me I should be getting all the main figures before I started getting the more obscure ones. But Alistair’s family was rich, I had to choose more carefully, and I couldn’t go past a dude with a head like a hammerhead.

 Star Wars IV brings back wonderful childhood memories that I love to reflect on. I still have a Hammerhead action figure (even with the original weapon), along with a Jawa and Greedo. Now in 2023, I am faced with the nightmare of Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever seen. EP VII was okayish, EP VIII got worse and was a waste of however long it took to watch it, maybe 2 hours or something. Then came Ep. IX: a confusing nostalgic homage to a great trilogy that began in 1977, and has still, yet to be surpassed. A New Hope brought so much hope. Then the hopes were slowly destroyed. Years later the originally released trilogy was followed by a prequel trilogy which did have their moments, they were ok, even looked like they were going to be good, but then Annikan just walked around being grumpy and frumpy all the time like some petulant child and in the end it just got shitter and shitter. And then came the abyss of the trilogy sequel, where the only stars were those from the 1977 film, including two non-human, non-droid stars, the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon. Those began the era where the writers couldn’t get away from their nostalgia for what was once good, where not one new idea was created, where they created another Death Star, like they had been stuck in the tractor beam of that original Death Star since 1977, which meant the best they could do was now create a new Death Star which was now the size of a planet.

The sequel is full of characters who die and then come back to life and save lightsabers from being chucked into fires and having chats with their sons. Where Palpatine comes back to life and wants to take over the universe again and the character Stoke or Snoke or something was really Palpatine. Where all the actors can do is keep yelling out “Poe!” or whatever. They’re always yelling! When Luke yelled it sounded like he was yelling for a reason. When the new ones yell I’m left asking: What the feck are they yelling about? And they just keep flying around to places to find some triangle thing which will show them how to get to some other place they need to go to to destroy a new star fleet filled with star cruisers which, like the Death Star, can destroy whole planets, but like there’s heaps of them, thousands or something – must be cheaper in CGI to just make one and then copy it hundreds of times.  I couldn’t tell you how Ep. IX ends, I’ve struggled to get halfway through it and not sure I can bear the pain any more.

But enough of the horrific side of nostalgia and back to my own reflections of adventures past, in the lead up to my new adventures in a few weeks.

1995: Maybe November

After the 20 odd days in France at the Vipassana meditation centre, and hitchhiking from Paris to London with Beth,  it was time to try and make my way back to Australia.

My Thai Airways ticket had options to stop in India and Thailand on the way. I had to stop in Bangkok, even just to change planes. India was an optional stop. All I wanted to do was go home, but when I booked my ticket in Paris, at a travel agent, before the time of online bookings, before leaving for London, they only had a seat available to New Delhi, India, where I’d have to wait at least a week before getting another seat from India to Bangkok, then Bangkok to Melbourne. I’d at least only have to spend one night in London before heading off.

I had about £80 to cover the 16,800 kms from London to Melbourne. I spent around £10-15 staying a night in London. I probably got a slice of pizza for a couple of pounds. I had to get out of London otherwise I’d go broke: Down and Out in Paris and London. London felt that way at the moment, I felt I had a pretty good time in Paris. I always love Paris. My friend Howie wasn’t too impressed with it. He also thought Laos was so-so. I’ll be finding out about Laos at the end of April (2023).

My first leg back to Australia via New Delhi posed another challenge. My visa for India, which I got before leaving Australia, had expired. It was one of those ones that went from the day you stamped it and this one lasted 3 months. The three months were up about 3 months or so ago. I looked at getting another visa but it cost £20 and would take 2 days to get. I couldn’t afford 2 more nights in London or the £20 for the visa. Figuring if they caught me in New Delhi they’d deport me towards Australia I thought I’d just risk it. I wasn’t too worried about deportation at that point having almost been deported the first day arriving in London at the beginning of my trip.

I got up early the next day and was heading into the tube somewhere around Earls Court, perhaps Earls Court station around 5.30am. I think I had to wait a little until the first train to Heathrow. I looked at tickets out to the airport and it cost something ridiculous like £12. Maybe it was only £6, but it felt like a fortune at the time and any amount I spent meant breaking a precious  £ note and getting coins which couldn’t be converted to rupee in India. Even though it would take a big hit from my remaining funds I couldn’t bring myself to jump the gate. Better to get out of the place with a little less money than get arrested on the way to the airport.

They didn’t ask to see my Indian visa when I was checking in to the plane with my blue backpack, and by mid-morning I was heading in the right direction on my final legs. I was out of Europe.

I slept a fair bit on the way to New Delhi and I didn’t feel too bad when I got there. I lined up for immigration when I arrived and a big scary looking man with a big hipster – before hipsters really took off 20 years later – moustache looked at my passport, he looked at me, he looked closely (apparently) at my expired visa then looked at me again, then without a word he stamped my passport and let me enter India. I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Whatever’ I thought, if they let me in, that’s on them. Now I’d just have to wait it out in India for a week or so. At least it was a place where my remaining £40 could get me somewhere. But of course it wasn’t going to be that easy and I was about to fall for another small scam, within my first minutes of arriving. This wasn’t a scam of the scale I’d had in Bangkok on the way over to Europe but it still cost me a bit.

I walked out of the terminal and was hit by the heat and the haze of dust glowing with pinks, purples and oranges of an Indian sunset. I was entering what seemed to be the largest, most chaotic car park in the universe. There were thousands and thousands of cars, and even more thousands of people, cooking things, selling things, yelling at each other, yelling at me, trying to get me to take a taxi. I was pretty sure there were a few donkeys and perhaps an elephant in amongst the throng. There were a lot of cows and dogs for sure.

I chose a taxi about 50 metres from the exit. I asked the driver to take me to the backpacker area which I knew was around Connaught Place. We drove along a very long dusty road, there were more cows, many more people, and more dogs around.

“Sir, that area of Connaught Place is dangerous at the present time. We have Hindu/ Muslim troubles. It is not safe. I can take you to a nice safe area, with nice hotel”.

It was before the times of the internet so there was no way to check if there really was Hindu/ Muslim troubles. I kind of doubted it, and felt a bit like a scam was coming on, but figured I could probably cover a hotel for a couple of days while I waited for the $200 to be sent to me from Australia via Western Union, which I’d asked my family to lend me before leaving Europe. So I went where the guy took me.

When I got to the hotel I explained to them that I was waiting on money and could fix them up when that arrived in the next few days. I rang my sister and she even tried to pay for the hotel with a credit card. But it was 1995, and the hotel guys wouldn’t take a credit card, they wanted cold hard cash. There wasn’t even an ATM around to get cash transferred and withdrawn. So I just had to wait. The hotel agreed to put me up for an unspecified amount. I knew I’d be hit with an unrealistically high bill but I had a roof over my head for a few days, until my money got transferred, and it was a pretty good roof, a fairly decent hotel.

I did get out for a walk on my own in the early morning and explored the neighbourhood a bit. There were some guys making yoghurt out in the open street with milk from cows that were wandering around eating marigolds and cardboard from rubbish heaps. There was a guy with a dancing bear trying to get money from people. The kind of scene you see on those animal cruelty ads on TV – if you watch TV anymore. I got a photo of the first street I saw with a lady in a sari walking down it and a dog in the smoggy haze. Like today it’s a very polluted city. They need electric cars. Which I’m sure they’ll have by the next time I visit.

After the first night the hotel must have gotten nervous that maybe this hippy wouldn’t pay up. They kept a minder around for me to make sure I didn’t run off without paying. It was a bit awkward. The hotel took me around to a few highlights of New Delhi. I went to the Red Fort for a bit. There was a sad looking cobra in a little basket and a million people, cows, dogs, and perhaps even a donkey or camel. It was insane. The actual fort provided a little break from the craziness. I looked up and in one of those arched windows typical of Mughal architecture a woman was brushing her long silky hair oblivious to the throng of people and the noise down below.

A couple of young German guys arrived at the hotel and were staying in the room next to me.  I ended up buddying up with them a bit. I find the young Germans can be so enthusiastic and often bound with joy and energy – just like us young Australians (True Blue or otherwise – see previous post if you don’t get that bit).  One of the guys climbed over the balcony which was adjacent to mine and scared the shit out of me when he opened the glass door from the outside. I was ready to stab him with the Swiss Army knife I’d gotten from Corrine the year before, and which I always carried with me, which was even allowed on the planes in those days. He invited me out for some food. They wanted to go to some fancy place, but I still had very little money and had been going to the cheapest places I could find. I took them across the road, somehow slipping away from my minder and took them to a place that sold these vegetable patty things in soft white bread for about 4 rupees each – maybe 10 or 20 cents. I was really making sure the £20 or whatever I had left worth of rupees would last me until the money transfer arrived. I also had one traveller’s cheque left which was a small note, maybe another $20AUD. I don’t know what happened with the German guys, I think they were just there for a night.

The hotel guys kept taking me to the Western Union office to see if my transfer had come through. I didn’t tell them how much I’d asked for. When, on the morning of the third day the money still hadn’t arrived, they kicked me out of my room but said I could stay with the hotel staff workers. That was an interesting experience, they drove me around to an area of New Delhi I’d never have seen as a tourist, I suppose a typical local area. The workers all stayed in one room and we all had dhal and chapatis for dinner, sitting on the floor, just using our hands and the chapatis to scoop up the dhal. I was happy with that. There were about 4-5 hotel workers in the room. I think they didn’t just work at the hotel, they also worked for the hotel’s associated travel agency, but I wasn’t clear about that. I’d seen most of them over the last few days, often they’d be napping in the car they drove me around in, or napping on couches in the small travel agency office which they’d taken me to when they got sick of my money not arriving, to hang around. After dinner they rolled out some mats and the 5-6 of us slept on the floor taking up most of the space in the room. Years later my mum, son and daughter rented an AirBnB in Shinjuku, Tokyo which claimed to be able to sleep as many people in about the same space. Read more about the shonky Shinjuku  AirBnB and our trip to the snow monkeys.

Possibly on the morning of the 4th day when my minders took me to the Western Union office again my money had arrived! And I had my $200! I got some cash and the rest in traveller’s cheques I think. Well I must have ended up with a few more travellers checks – which would again pose a few problems over the next few days, but I’ll come to that.

With my $200 I could finally free myself from my minders. I went back to the travel agent and braced myself for the bill, knowing it would be a lot. The travel agent guy did some sums, adding up trips to the red fort, hotel accommodation etc, I’m pretty sure he was just Putin random numbers into a calculator that would add up to the sum he had in his head, and then he announced, “$200 USD”.

Having mentally prepared myself for this moment I unleashed a tirade of abuse: “You fucking scammers, there is no way that place is worth $200 USD, my father is a diplomat (posing as a semi-retired carpenter driving taxis on the Gold Coast) and you’ll be in big trouble.” I was playing a role I’d rehearsed in my head for days, make as much noise and fuss as possible and keep whatever money I needed to survive the rest of my Indian leg at least. “I don’t have that fucking money, I only have $100 AUD and that is all I will pay which is still probably double what I actually owe you scammers” and blah, blah, blah. I felt kinda bad as I’m not usually like that but I needed to look after myself. The lower level workers who’d shared a floor with last night just gathered around, interested in the entertainment on an Aussie going ballistic.

“Enough with your fuckings this and fuckings that, you are being a very rude person”, said the travel agent guy and he took the $100 AUD, form his lack of protest I could tell I was being well and truly fleeced even at that price, but less fleeced that I would have been so I was ok with that. After the exchange was done and the yelling died down I said, “sorry, I’m just tired and want to get out of here”. He just looked at me. But it wasn’t quite done. I still didn’t have my luggage. The boss guy sent a worker off to get it. I don’t know where it was but it seemed to take a long time to get it. I was starving so I asked if there was any food around. The boss guy signalled to one of the workers to go get me something. He came back with some dhal in a clay pot. I gave him about 5-10 rupees. I was starving so I just ate the dhal with my fingers. The boss guy looked at me and said, “without chapati, what a waste”.

It was an awkward wait around with the travel agency guys. They kept giving me dirty looks because of all my swearing and carrying on. It was worth it to have $100 in my pocket. When the bag arrived I headed straight to Connaught Place to find a cheap backpackers to stay. There weren’t any Muslim/ Hindu problems. At least none that made it unsafe at the moment.



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.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Enniskillen, Northern Ireland in the Carrot Car 1995 BlogPt12

Agatha’s friend from Spain was staying at la Chaparrita. Ines was away with her boyfriend, so there was a spare bed in the girls’ room. The Irish guy was away so I was sleeping in his bed.

In the middle of the night Agatha decided to come down and get into my bed. We hugged and chatted and caressed a little. I ended up with an erection that felt like the size of my forearm, as hard as a stick.

‘Is it ok if I take my pants off?’ I asked Agatha.

‘Sure’ she said.

We played around a bit more, kissing a little.

‘I can’t’, she said.

‘That’s fine’, I said, and we just held each other. We continued to hold each other the rest of the night, my erection pressing into her back until early morning, just before dawn, when Agatha jumped up out of bed.

She said something like, ‘I have to get up for the quiet hour.’ I’m not sure if it was the quiet hour, or the silent hour or something similar. We’d watched some French film set in the French countryside where they were really into the time of the day right at the end of the night, but just before dawn, where the night sounds cease and the morning sounds of birds and the such, has yet to begin. It wasn’t really an hour, more like 5 minutes, but because of the silence it felt like an hour. It was an arty sort of film.

It was meant to be an especially quiet time of day though, this quiet hour or whatever they called it. They may have called it something much cooler than the quiet hour, but for the life of me I can’t remember.

I was too tired to get up so I just rolled over. I started to think why Agatha ‘couldn’t’. Was she married like Corrine? Or did she have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend? Was she a man? She didn’t feel like a man. Was she not into men? Not into me? Did she have her period? Or was she just not in the mood. I never asked though, so now in 2022, I still wonder why. It was all pretty cool anyway, I was, and still am, just interested. I wanted sex, but I had had a year without it. After Corrine’s visit to the Brock’s farm, and our trip travelling around AustraliaI’d pretty much lived the life of a celibate monk. Working, meditating, working, sleeping.  (Like I mentioned in an earlier post a fictionalised version of this affair is here – one of the main fictions being I didn’t mention we’d met at a train station and we didn’t travel together with my Bulgarian mate Kosio, much of the rest is pretty much true).

Of course I masturbated most nights when I was on the farm having no sex, just as I took the opportunity to do when Agatha had popped out of bed in the early hours of the Dublin morning. But I had no love interest and no sex or girlfriend for over a year.

About 45 minutes later Agatha returned, looking a bit guilty.

‘I wrote something on the wall’ she said.

‘Oh’, I said.

I got up and peeped through the curtain. Across the road on the wall was scrawled in uneven purple spray paint was the words: ‘The Quiet Hour’.

———

The next day we got into the German girls car and headed to Northern Ireland. The car was a light green with stencilled carrots all over it. We therefore called it the carrot car.

When we reached the border with Northern Ireland we had to show our passports to the British army guys there with big deadly looking guns and berets. They made us drive the carrot car into this big thick concrete barrier place in case they needed to blow the car and the 4 occupants up.

After satisfying themselves we were just some beatnik hippy types rather than provisional IRA, they waved us through. They didn’t smile. This was still a time of The Troubles, with sporadic violence still part of their recent history. It seemed to be getting better though, and nothing like the 70s & 80s. The Troubles were on the way to being not so much a trouble with a capital T.

The weather turned depressing as soon as we crossed the border. Dark, cloudy and miserable. Worse than I’d ever seen in Dublin in the few months I’d been visiting there. We drove down streets lined with houses where people displayed their Union Jacks proudly. Then we’d see some IRA inspired art on some walls and Irish flags waving.

Agatha said she knew some place on a lake near the town of Enniskillen that had cheap accommodation. It was in an old nunnery or something.

Part of my best friend from Palm Beach Currumbin High School Christophe’s family came from Enniskillen. They were protestants. His grandfather, whom he lived with growing up, still called Catholics ‘Micks’.  Enniskillen is in County Fermanagh, which borders my Grandmother Bee’s birthplace of County Sligo, which was more of a Catholic place.

We found the place in Enniskillen after a few hours drive through Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is pretty small, especially compared to Australia – you can fit all or Ireland just in Tasmania. It was a creepy, dark manor that we found in Enniskillen. Quiet. Very Quiet. Quiet enough to murder us all and not be noticed all that much as long as you could dispose of the carrot car and our bodies. We entered what seemed to be the main entrance of the manor building. It seemed all but deserted. We tried to find someone but couldn’t see anyone. All of a sudden this guy appears. He looks like Lurch from the Addams family, a creepy loner, even creepier than the creepy manor. The type who might mail bombs to people. He wasn’t much help. We all got the Heebie Jeebies and decided to split, just like Scooby Doo and the gang might do on one of their misadventures, after Velma or one of the gang ‘had a bad feeling about this’.

We instead found a room at a hotel in Enniskillen town itself. It had 2 singles beds and a double.

After dumping our bags we went to a very, very small pub which seemed mainly frequented by locals who didn’t really want a bar of some suspicious looking foreign types.

The German girl – I guess I should name her, let’s call her Hilda – and Agatha’s friend from Spain took the single beds and Agatha and I shared the double. There didn’t seem to be any discussion about it, it just happened. Agatha and I were the mum and dad, and the Hilda and the Spanish woman were the kids they joked.

Agatha and I hugged again most of the night. I loved having her body next to mine.

Nothing much happened in Northern Ireland, it was basically a drive through. I’m sure it’s nice in parts and as we were leaving the weather did improve a bit with a few breaks in the dark clouds and a bit of sunshine. All up our Northern Ireland adventure was not even two whole days. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back, mainly because there’s a million other places to go, but you never know, I might make my way there another day, maybe check out the craic of Belfast or the far north coast.

Northern Ireland out of our system we made our way to Donegal. Which back then seemed like a long way away, but looking at Google maps is just a 48 minute drive.

I might start with Donegal next post though.

 

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker 1995 Dublin, Temple Bar, the Chaparrita girls, Wicklow Pirates of the Penzance, and more Inisglas community Wexford 1995 BlogPt10

The Spanish girls nicknamed the house, in Blackpitts Dublin, La Chaparrita. I think it was mainly Agatha’s idea, she seemed the most enthusiastic when it came to zany ideas, and less zany ideas. She just liked ideas in general I think. Chaparrita means short woman. Indeed Agatha and Ines were both short statured people. I can’t recall the name of the Basque woman, I didn’t chat to her very much, but she was a bit taller.

The La Chaparrita household wasn’t entirely Spanish. Even out of the 3 Spanish girls (women) living there, Ines was the only one who truly considered herself Spanish. She was from Madrid. Agatha was from Barcelona and vehemently committed to being referred to as Catalan. She could have been a character out of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, which was one of my favourite reads. She wouldn’t teach me any Spanish, preferring I try and pick up the Catalan language. The Basque woman was more ambivalent about her nationality but definitely considered herself Basque first and Spanish second. There was a German, I’ve also forgotten her name. My memory of her was that she was more of an average height and had no obvious link to Spain. And there was Irish Guy, also can’t recall his name but I think he was the one who created the connection with the Inisglas biodynamic community as his mate regularly travelled between Inisglas and Dublin. He was a little taller than me I think, quite a gentle fella, and the only fella of the house.

So while La Chaparrita wasn’t entirely Spanish, 3 out of the 5 inhabitants held Spanish passports and could speak Spanish even though 2 of the 3 strongly preferred their mother tongues and cultural identities.

The household wasn’t that far from Temple Bar, a bar and restaurant district of Dublin. They were near some big church or cathedral. When I used to get into Dublin I’d just walk to their house, which took me maybe 20 minutes or half an hour. I never took much notice of the times or distance back then. But it wasn’t far from the bus or train station. Looking at Google maps around 27 years later, I see it was St Patrick’s Cathedral, a few blocks from the house, that I used to use as a landmark to find their place. You used to have to resort to just techniques before smartphones.

I became a regular visitor to their house, popping up from Wexford every few weeks. Sometimes I’d wait for the Inisglas community van to go up to the markets on Saturdays and get a lift with them, see some bread and then head to their house. Sometimes I’d just hitch a lift. People were pretty up to giving people lifts in those days so I usually didn’t have to wait too long. I think a couple of times I forked out the money to take the train back as it wasn’t as easy to get a lift the other way.

The girls mostly worked at the Elephant & Castle in Temple Bar. They get much for working there. Around £40 a week plus tips, from memory. I think the tips pretty much doubled their wage though most weeks. They were flush with cash and were appreciative of their mothers’ food packages that appeared every now and again from Barcelona, the Basque Country or Madrid. I think the Basque woman had a bit more money and may have had her own room. I think she may have also had a boyfriend. Agatha, Ines and the German shared a room. I’d sleep on the couch when I visited most times.

I usually didn’t make pre-arrangements to come up to Dublin. I tried to call a few times but they’d always say, just come up! So I’d just be bored at Inisglas one day and then get up and go to Dublin for a night or 2. Mostly mid-week when I didn’t have any bakery chores. I never really stopped doing my bread making activities while at Inisglas but I did neglect the vegetable gardening part a bit and became more of a casual labourer supporting Frankie to pick veggies and spread compost as required. I also helped Stuart with the cow milking many evenings. Though there were only 2 cows to milk so sometimes he’d just do that himself, especially when he was grumpy and wanted to be alone. Which was not too uncommon, him being a poet and all.

If I couldn’t find anyone at La Chaparrita house I knew I could go off to the Elephant & Castle where they’d usually be working and just get a drink while waiting for them to finish a shift, or just walking around Temple Bar for a while until they finished. Sometimes Irish Guy would be there by himself and he’d let me in and I could dump the small backpack I usually brought with me, which just contained some underwear, a new shirt and whatever bread, yoghurt and farm produce I had at hand at the time. It would usually be enough to contribute to cooking up something for the household during my visit, which was appreciated due to their poverty. It certainly wasn’t a spiritual poverty and they mostly displayed a bubbly zest for life. It reminded me of another of my favourite books by George Orwell, Down and Out and Paris and London, except maybe a We’re Poor but Don’t Care, We’re Still Up for a Party in Dublin version. One day finances were so bad that Agatha made lettuce soup. I’m pretty sure that’s not even a real thing, but we didn’t care.

I mainly hung out with Ines and Agatha. We’d hang out in St Stephen’s Green park when it was sunny, which was increasing in frequency once summer set in, just smoking and chatting, and maybe reading for hours on end. Or we’d just walk around exploring the place. I loved my time with Agatha, we felt like real soulmates. She told me she’d come to Dublin because the conditions in Barcelona were so bad and that her family just expected her to get married and have babies. It seemed like she lived in a high rise building complex there and that you were never far from a neighbours argument.

One day I took a walk around with Irish guy who showed me some Dublin street markets and gave me a bit of a potted history of the Irish rebellion which included showing me bullet marks at the main Post Office, which I’d still on occasions visit to see if my bloody Irish passport had shown up from the Irish embassy in London, after being sent from Canberra, Australia. It’d been missing for around 3 months at that stage.

When everyone was at work I’d sometimes wander around by myself, trying to find a decent coffee. Back in 1995 that was not that easy. And, having lived in Melbourne with access to some of the great cafes like Pelligrinis on Bourke Street and Tiamo’s on Lygon Street, I had high standards, even as a poor backpacker type. I tried Bewley’s coffee house on Grafton Street. It was the worst coffee I’d had at a place that claimed to make good coffee that I’d ever had in the world. They had a suggestion box and I suggested they learn to make coffee. I’m sure they’ve improved by now. Well, they still exist at least.

I found a second hand bookstore, that was in an old building that was on the River Liffey, which did better coffee, plus I could browse books. I don’t know if I ever bought a book, I feel like I was probably too stingy. Perhaps I bought Homage to Catalonia there. I’d like to think so. Perhaps I even bought Agatha one, if I didn’t I wish I had.

In the evenings, and days when the girls weren’t working, we’d party at the house. There was a fair amount of alcohol to be had and almost always some weed. I liked the weed the most and didn’t partake much of the alcohol. We did go out to a pub or two here and there, but I don’t think we stayed long. On one occasion we were in a pub and I saw on the TV that Prince Charles was visiting, which was the end of May. It was a pretty big deal as Lord Mountbatten, Charles’ great uncle, was assassinated by the I.R.A in the late 70s. I think that could have been a Friday – the day I saw that Charlie was visiting, it must have been before I took on the baking duties at Inisglas, which took up all my Fridays. I remember there being an awful lot of vomit on the streets of Dublin on the way back to La Chaparrita that evening.

At other times, when Charles wasn’t visiting, we’d just go have something to eat at the Elephant & Castle as the girls got some free food or discounts. Once we went to an illegal bar up on the top floor of some two-storey building. Because it was illegal they couldn’t open the windows so it was probably the smokiest, most disgusting place I’d ever been on earth. Yes, they smoked indoors back then, and I was probably exposed to the equivalent of 300 cigarettes in the space of 2 hours. But because it was illegal we could at least pass a joint around. I think I got sick from the smoke and asked if we could bail.

My visits became a cycle of smoking, drinking, chatting, and eating and then eventually crashing on the couch for me, and the girls in their bedrooms. Sometimes we’d go hire some videos. I always wanted to see Pulp Fiction, but the girls had all seen it several times so it wasn’t until upon my return to Australia sometime the following year, or even perhaps the year after that, that I got to see it. Apart from videos we’d also listen to hours of music, singing, dancing and shooting the shit. They were a ball.

I think I usually only stayed a couple of nights and then headed back to Inisglas in the morning so I could be back before dark.

On one occasion it took longer than usual to hitchhike from Wexford to Dublin and I arrived around 6 PM. I went to La Chaparrita and found Ines, hurriedly packing her mochilla (backpack).

‘Juanito!’ she said and kissed me on both cheeks in the Spanish way. ‘I’m going to Wicklow to see a musical. Do you want to go? We have to leave now.’

‘Sure!’, I said. And we literally left that moment. Somehow made our way to a country house in the nearby county Wicklow where Ines knew a few people. Turns out the people Ines knew were putting on the Pirates of the Penzance, the Gilbert and Sullivan show, out on a farm in County Wicklow.

They had a stage set up in front of a pond. It’s possible Ines and I got stoned before the show behind some bushes, who knows. Sounds like something we used to do. We managed to get there just before the show started, as the sun set. It was the craic as the Irish say, though I felt a bit like a dirty hippy surrounded by slightly more refined musical going Irish gentry type people.

It turns out Ines was keen on one of the Irish blokes whose family owned the farm where the Pirates of the Penzance was performed. He was one of the pirates I think. Or perhaps even a very model of a modern Major-General with information vegetable, animal, and mineral (he wasn’t as that fella was old and this guy was young).  It became apparent I was Ines’ wingman and I stepped back and let them have their dalliance. I’d grown fond of Ines so I was a bit disappointed she’d got together with Wicklow Pirate man, but at least I got to see a musical, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t pay for, and they put me up at the country house overnight before Ines and I headed back to Dublin the next day. We’ll at least I think we headed back together, she may have stayed on and ditched me like Tom Cruise did with Goose in Top Gun. Tragic. It wasn’t just a weekend hookup though, Ines and the Wicklow Pirate kept together at least for the time I was in Ireland. The bridesmaid role was set to continue the rest of my trip, but I didn’t know that then.

I was growing fonder of Agatha, and she seemed to be growing fonder of me. We’d often just hang out by ourselves, especially after Ines started spending more time with the Wicklow Pirate. We had similar philosophies on life, Agatha and I, and would often stay up to the early hours chatting. Sometimes we’d go to someone else’s house and hang out a bit, I don’t remember much of that, but I think we’d go to another Spanish person’s house near some canals. Her name may have been Bee, or something similar. We used to call my Irish granny from County Sligo Bee as well, it was short for Bridget.

Agatha and I went to see a Lesbian violent travel film called Butterfly Kiss at some point. It was some sort of arthouse film, which premiered at some film festival in Dublin. I think we may have seen at least one other film together, maybe even at the same festival. We were all into the independent alternative scene. I’m not sure if she even ended up visiting Inisglas again one time. I’d like to think so, perhaps for our Inisglas festival we hosted towards the end of summer, but thinking it doesn’t mean it actually happened.

At one point towards the end of summer I picked up a fair amount of weed in Wexford that someone had been growing. I walked into the kitchen at Inisglas one day and there were a couple of very giggly residents there. They offered me some of the cause of their gigglyness, giving me a decent sized takeaway bag. It was good shit and the next time I visited La Chaparrita we had a really big party time, courtesy of that biodynamic magic. I’m sure Steiner wouldn’t approve unless the shit was first buried in cow horns under the full moon and left for a few months so it would pick up all the cosmic vibes.

I felt free and alive during those months. I had good friends, good times. I never really needed to spend much money either. It was the way life should be.

Meanwhile my life at Inisglas continued. I started doing a bit of writing, with the help of Master Poet Stuart, and I think I actually improved a little, though I don’t think I’ve saved any of that work. I think I may have sent the occasional letter to Agatha, or at least some notes about her in a diary I’ve long forgotten, and back to the family in Australia. I’d call my mum every month or so courtesy of the special phone card my dad had given me before leaving, just to say I was alive and kicking. I also sent a roll of film back to them to be processed. It was like posting pics on Instagram before it existed, only much less instantaneous and with more chemicals involved.

As the summer went on I started to get itchy feet and thoughts increased of moving on from Inisglas. I mean, I was still enjoying the place and we had some craic to be sure – which wasn’t, as I originally thought, the crack cocaine – but the Irish term for fun. I’m sure that’s a common confusion.

On a few occasions, when it was warm, we took the kids down to the beach and spent a few hours there. I remember chatting with Nora on the Wexford beach for a while, drinking homemade cordial and then going for a bit of a swim in the cold Irish Sea.

On one occasion most of the guys from Inisglas took the community row boat down the River Slaney to the pub where I’d stopped on my first full day in Wexford on the way to Inisglas.  We had a few joints on the way, perhaps courtesy of Ross, who’d somewhat warmed to me and who had some secret weed grow plot about that I never came across despite my frequent walks into the forest. It could have been beyond the nettle forest, or close to the border of the rubbish dump that was adjacent to the property and which was the cause of a massive fly outbreak that meant we resorted to putting sticky fly traps in the kitchen for a few months that would be covered in a few hours.

But back to Ross, he had warmed to me to the point where he offered me some great advice that I’ll always remember.

‘John’, he said, ‘never drive a truck with drugs in it between Amsterdam and Britain. When we were importing from Amsterdam we’d occasionally set up a young dopey hippy like you to get busted by the cops.’

He went on to explain that they’d put a small amount in the dopey hippy’s truck and contact the customs people. ‘While they were busy busting the poor cunt for the small amount of drugs another truck would drive through with heaps in it, unchecked.’

It seemed Ross may have had some remorses around setting up naive hippies, and took me for the type who might fall for such a thing. But after my Bangkok Gem scam incident I was much less trusting of people anyway. And, even without being ripped off, that sounded like a seriously dodgy proposition anyway so I would certainly have avoided it. I’m quite confident in that. But I still appreciated Ross looking out for me. You didn’t want to get on the bad side of Ross. One day one of Michael’s Danish friends from the nearby disabled support community tried to get Inisglas to put money in to support their activities and Ross, smelling a rat, fairly violently reacted to the guy. He didn’t do anything physical, but the guy I’m sure shat himself, after getting a verbal serve from Ross, figuratively speaking, if not actually.

Anyway on the way to the pub in the row boat we saw a seal. On the way back up the Slaney River (which sounds like the title of an Irish folk drinking song) we were more stoned and more drunk and it was dark, and we were singing and then I looked out to the bank and I said: ‘Hey it seems like we’re not moving’.

Frankie, Stuart, Michael, Jay, and perhaps even Ross, looked over and there was some discussion on whether we were moving or not. I mean we were rowing so we should be going forward, but yes indeed it did seem like our efforts weren’t getting us anywhere. So Jay put the oar down and he said, ‘I think we’re on some sand bank’. And then he put his foot over and said, ‘yes, we are on some sand bank’. So we got all out and pushed ourselves off and continued rowing and singing all the way back to Inisglas.

On another occasion we’d all gone to a pub in Wexford and Stuart and I walked the few kilometres home in the dark ourselves, maybe leaving the others there for a bit longer. We had some deep and meaningful discussion that night I feel, by the light of the moon as we traversed the lanes between Wexford town and The Deeps.

Michael and I hitched down to Rosslare Harbour one night just because we were bored after doing a day’s baking, which Michale was now helping out with. We ended up inviting ourselves to some party at someone’s house and then trying to see if anyone would let us crash at their place. When it became apparent no such offerings were afoot I took my sleeping bag and headed to the beach leaving Michael behind to party some more. He joined me an hour or so later having had no success to convince neither man nor woman to give him a bed for the night. We had one of those cold and uncomfortable beach sleeps for a few hours and then got up and hitched back to Inisglas the next morning. I think Michael had wanted to get away as he’d recently been back to Denmark with his girlfriend, who worked at the same nearby disabled support community that the other Danish guy who had managed to piss off Ross worked at. He was meant to be staying at his girlfriend’s house but they somehow managed to break up on the flight over, so he just ended up sleeping on the street for 3 nights and then heading back to Ireland.

He wasn’t the only one getting rejected. But, perhaps more of that after. For there were a few other changes afoot at Inisglas.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker Zen Cleaning Robot, fiestas, mas drama y thinking of moving to County Sligo 1995/2022 BlogPt11

2022

I haven’t focussed on why I started this blog for a while, that is planning for my 50th birthday world trip. It turns out planning a 50th trip is a lot more complicated than planning a 22 year-old trip. When I was 22, in 1995 – for most of the year at least, I turned 23 in December – I didn’t think about jobs, kids, any wives, retirement savings or anything like that. I was like a bird that could just fly off and sit in a tree for a while when the desire took me. A simple life. I could just pack my blue backpack with a few things and hit the road.

Now, I research guidebooks, try and find the best time to travel to fit in with plans to move back to my hometown of the Gold Coast in Queensland, while maintaining a job here in Canberra where I’ve worked for various departments of the Australian government for the last 15 1/2 years. Thinking, should I quit my job, get a payout, travel around the world and then return and try and find another job, or should I try and keep my Canberra job, use up all my Long Service Leave and Annual leave, travel the world, visiting my wife’s family in Mexico, and having a 50th birthday party, on the way, then return to the Gold Coast and find another job, hopefully with enough savings to live off until I do.

Life was much simpler in 1995 when I was 22 and 2022 was some freakishly high number I could hardly fathom, where the Zen Cleaning Robots had taken over all the mundane jobs of the world leaving us humans to just run around having fun in free houses, rather than post-pandemic fears, rising housing prices, and, just to keep it interesting, part II of the 1850s Crimean War where Russia fought the West (and Turkey) for control of Sevastopol and other such strategic places on the Black Sea, which has also managed to drive up the price of lettuces here in Australia to $10 a head.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, people need to learn history, how often seemingly forgotten events from hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago can affect us and influence the current era.

But back to 1995.

1995

I returned to Wexford one summer’s afternoon, after visiting Agatha, Ines and the girls in Dublin. I think for once I got the train back to Wexford, as I’d managed to save a small amount of money over the last months and I couldn’t be bothered trying to hitch. When I arrived back in Wexford I had to walk from Wexford town out to Inisglas, in The Deeps, around 14-15 kms.

About halfway back the blackest of black clouds covered the sky which, moments earlier, had been clear blue and sunny. It was a most ominous sight. It came out of nowhere. Maybe not nowhere, it seemed to be from the direction of the Irish Sea. The elements erupted. A gale started blowing. Rain started pouring from the sky. The world turned black. Black as the night’s sky. Then the lightning started. Lighting strikes came down every 3-4 steps. 1,2,3 then a thunderous thunder clap. 1,2,3 and the ground shook like an electric bomb, and then another, and then some more. So loud. Whipping down from the heavens with a crack so intense it made my spine shiver, my hands shake. So terrified. I didn’t dare look up to see where the lighting was landing. It was close. Metres away close. No gap between the light and sound. No time to count to 1. How close to death I was, any step now I thought. I walked closer to the trees hoping they might take the brunt of any lighting strike, pulling my chin to keep the rain from my chest. No escaping it though. I kept walking. 20 terrifying minutes or so later,  looking at my feet, drenched with rain. It was gone. Quiet. Just for the sounds of the water dropping from the leaves of the trees.

I can’t remember many times I felt so close to death than those 20 minutes. Apart from the time the Thai Airways’s plane’s engines had failed – twice – after coming out of Bangkok a few months earlier. Or that time Luke had boiled up a whole bag of magic mushrooms that Matt had picked on his birthday and put in the freezer in the house we shared in Newcastle and given me a whole glass without alerting me to the phenomenal mind-fucking strength he’d made it. I mean most people just put in 3 or 4 mushrooms. That’s more than enough! What psycho puts a whole fucking kilo or something in? I ended up at a pizza shop that night asking a waiter to call an ambulance because I’d OD on mushies. But as I waited I saw a dog and started feeling better and decided to follow the dog to Sydney or somewhere.

Inisglas was also changing. The Buddha went on about change all the time. I would hear it everyday in my Vipassana mediation courses. Change, change. Everything’s always changing. If you get attached to things without recognising they will sooner or later change, you will be miserable.

I wasn’t feeling that miserable at the time, so perhaps I wasn’t that attached. But there were certainly changes afoot.

Nora and Stuart hooked up. Because Nora and Stuart hooked up, Frankie and I were now sharing the little space above or near the flour mill near Anthony and Eve’s house as Nora had moved to the main house. Frankie wasn’t too happy about the whole thing but he accepted it with sad dignity and continued to tend to the vegetable garden, even though most of the community, including myself, weren’t pulling their weight in that respect. Mind you I did continue to help Frankie out, picking veggies, mounding up potatoes, but it was more like a part time thing.

I also kept helping Stuart with the cow milking and yoghurt and quark making from time to time. Frankie helped me once when I drank a bunch of fresh unpasteurised milk straight from the milk bucket and ended up throwing up. He was a really nice guy. I think I’d discovered that day I might have also been intolerant to milk and asked Eve whether we could buy some soy milk during the weekly shopping run. Anthony, already upset that we had a freezer full of a dead cow that nobody was eating as we always made vegetarian meals, rolled his eyes in regards to the idea of milk intolerances. He also said Plato was dead set against people eating beans because it ruined their philosophical capacity or some crap like that. Sorry, but if the Buddha and Plato were in a fight the Buddha would shit on Plato and his beans any day, even when he was in his unhealthy self-deprivation period before he found the middle path.

Nora’s hooking up with Stuart meant Stuart’s son was getting more attention and being slightly less feral and pooing on the front lawn much less. But it meant Nora’s son getting a bit upset as he obviously as less attention was being given to him.

The kids in general were like community farm kids, roaming about like free range chickens most of the day and occasionally getting into trouble. One morning they all came in screaming and yelling and us adults all sprung into action wondering what the heck was going on. After more screaming it transpired that apparently they’d all been down to the beehives and  decided to whack the sides of the beehives with sticks, which the bees objected to. They were covered in bee stings. I think the homoeopathic vet had some lotion to put on the hundreds of stings. They all survived.

The homoeopathic vet also gave a cow that had eaten too much clover, and was thus getting bloated, some plain old dishwashing detergent. She held her nostrils and poured it down her throat. You’d probably charge someone £50 for that.

Then there was Jay. Jay had bought himself a donkey, and a cart, and was making plans with Anushka, or whatever the quiet German girl’s name was, to travel around Ireland picking winkles and smoking grass, while kipping on the cart. He was going to leave in a few weeks. Just at the start of Autumn. Not that I had any idea at the time as I hadn’t read or seen Lord of the Rings, but it sounded a bit like something a hobbit would do.

Michael from Denmark was getting tired of Ireland. He was planning to go back to Denmark I think, or perhaps go work with the other Danish people at the disabled home, where, I think, his ex-girlfriend was still working, but where he’d also get a real wage, which was not forthcoming at Inisglas due to its philosophy of not really making money from the farm despite it’s great potential.

Tron was looking into some biodynamic program somewhere else in Ireland or Scotland or Norway or something, so was soon leaving the place.

Ross, being on the run from the UK police, was happy to keep low and remain in place with his chickens, baconers and porkers.

And I, well I had saved a little money, but I wanted to save more, so I started looking into WWOOFing opportunities elsewhere in Ireland where all my food and board was included, so I could save all my dole. I had found a place in my granny’s home County Sligo, in fact around the area of her home town Tubbercurry, also spelt Tobercurry on occasions. I was going there in a few weeks so I was getting ready for that.

But there would be one big event before that move happened.

Inisglas’ main manor house was in disrepair, and since the farm barely made any money, there was no way to fix it. So Stuart had the idea of organising a music festival where we could sell tickets and put the proceeds towards fixing the place.

He turned out to be quite the organiser and got a few local bands to play at the event for free. He even managed to get his friends from a band called Elephant Walk, or some name like that, a folk/ world music outfit who’d played at Glastonbury. So we had a pretty good line up. To add to that, the guys at Inisglas decide to perform a few songs ourselves. We decided on Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton, and two other songs I can’t remember. I was only singing choruses in those so I didn’t pay as much attention to them.

We decided for our performance we’d dress up like women. There was Frankie, Michael, Stuart and I, plus some googley-eyed German who’d recently arrived on the farm as a part of some farm stay thing he’d organised to learn biodynamic techniques. Tron was happy as he finally had someone on the biodynamic farm, besides Anthony and Eve who started the community, who was actually interested in biodynamics.

I liked Googly-eyed Person, but wasn’t there long enough to remember his name. He seemed like a good person.

We practised our songs for weeks and learnt all the words to Tears in Heaven which are still in my head somewhere today I’m sure. We did up posters, and put them up around town. Stuart got a spot on the local radio station to promote the event and after a few weeks, concert day was here.

It was a beautiful sunny day, though another summer storm threatened in the evening.

We decided that they Inisglas crew would start the event, so we donned our dresses like brides on a wedding day and made our way out for our big performance. Stuart had a nice slim dress which was in 1920s’ style. He even had a bit of lippy from Nora. Frankie, Michael and Googly-eyed German guy also had nice dresses. I was very happy with my dress, it was a lilac number, kind of thing you might see a Mexican woman wear on her sweet 15. I had really long hair, and the face of my great-grandmother from Sligo, so I think many in the crowd were thinking I might be the real deal, if it wasn’t for the obviously hairy legged men besides me. After Tears we had a more upbeat number and I went wild swinging my hair about. We had a ball.

The crowd was good and I think in the end we had a few hundred come along. We’d tried to get a liquor licence but were refused because we were holding the event on a Sunday, which was a harder day to get official permission to serve drinks given it was the Lord’s day. We got around the ‘law’ by having a game where you threw darts at a dart board, and if you hit a particular number we’d give you a free beer. It cost £3 to enter. After some confusion people realised the special number was any number, and even if you couldn’t hit the board we’d still give you a beer to console you. We kept making people throw the darts though as it was funny.

I’m sure if the liquor licensing people had come our whole scheme would have quickly fallen apart.

We also had sandwiches made with bread Michael and I had baked, some cheesy buns, also made at Inisglas, and home made cordial. Michael and I were the main bread makers at the time as Jay had moved more into beekeeping at that point and was prepping for his donkey-cart tour.

The rest of the real bands played throughout the evening and much craic was had by all. It did rain for a bit in the late afternoon and many of the families with young kids went off, leaving the harder core revellers. We ended up finishing up late into the evening smoking weed and drinking beers and wine by a big bonfire. It was like one of those wistful scenes at the end of some coming of age movie.

It was, really, the craic.

I decided to end on this high note, and in the days after, packed my bag and hitched up to Dublin to spend a few days with Agatha before heading to Sligo.

As it happened, Agatha had a friend who was coming to visit from Spain, so they’d organised a little trip through Northern Ireland and Donegal and were happy to drop me off at Tubbercurry, Sligo on the way back. So the universe was once again providing.

But just as change was happening at Inisglas, change was also happening at the Chaparrita in Dublin, and for me, most importantly, a change in my relationship with Agatha.

More of that in the next blog post though, I think finishing up Inisglas after a few months is also a nice spot to finish up this post.

P.s The Zen Cleaning Robot is a concept I came up with Rob Skelton at RMIT later in the nineties. I think it was for a school project on writing for the internet that started with a drunken night of wine and indoor soccer where I ended up sleeping at a house in Saint Kilda with the friend of a classmate who was growing a super awesome little weed plant grown from a seed form Holland.

I would have hoped Zen Cleaning Robots would be being manufactured by now.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker Inisglas Biodynamic Community 1995 BlogPt9

The day after arriving Ian drove the community van into Wexford to deliver some veggies and yoghurt to the health food shop. I went into the social services office and started the paperwork to get some unemployment benefits.

They gave me a number and issued me a plastic social services card which I still have today. I’m not sure if I actually got it on the day or whether they sent it to me later. Luckily I had enough documentation even without my Irish passport to prove I was Irish. They explained the unemployment system, similar to Australia in that you had to apply for a certain amount of jobs, but different in that they’d send a cheque to the address, which I could cash at the post office, rather than having money deposited in my bank account which they did in Australia. When I said I was staying at Inisglas they immediately recognised the place as it turned out just about everyone there was on the dole. Wexford wasn’t a huge place so people generally had a notion there was a bunch of hippy going-ons at the place, but that they were mostly harmless.

There were a few at Inisglas who weren’t on the dole. Anthony and Eve, and Ross – who probably didn’t want any official record of himself due to being a British fugitive – and the homoeopathic vet who brought in a basic income with the homoeopathic treatment of cows and the like. I think Wobbie also got most of his income from selling trees from the nursery. The others weren’t on the Irish dole, their respective countries had some sort of arrangement with Ireland so they could collect unemployment benefits from Denmark and the other places they were from. I think they got a bit more than us Irish.

I wasn’t that keen to be collecting the dole, but I really didn’t have much of a choice if I wanted to stay in Ireland more than 2 weeks. I soon also found there weren’t many jobs going in the local area so working on a biodynamic farm on the dole was going to be it while I was in Wexford.

I put my qualms about social welfare aside and quickly settled into a routine in the Inisglas community.

My granny from County Sligo had to move to Australia when she was 10, after her mother died. She worked on a farm in central Queensland close to Mt Morgan, near Rockhampton. I was sort of doing the same in reverse, but I think much more comfortable than my poor granny probably had to endure.

Before heading back to Inisglas I stopped off at one of the pubs in town with Jay and Frankie. Jay had a pint,  I think I just had an orange juice again. Stuart popped in a bit later for a quick drink.

The day at Inisglas always started with a light breakfast, or at least a cup of tea and a snack, at the wooden table in the kitchen. There was a wood fired AGA oven in there that was always on low. There was always a kettle there and a pot of tea on the go.

Ross was obsessed with having the kettle going 24/7 and used to get pissed when anyone left it empty, or drank the last of the tea without making a fresh batch. As he often had that look in his eye like, ‘I’ll stab the next person who leaves the teapot empty’, it seemed wise to make sure the brew never ran dry. I was suitably scared of Ross, but I was also friendly so I tried chatting to him. He’d often just grunt, but he would also sit occasionally and drink tea at the table with me and smoke rolly cigarettes at the kitchen table. If there were too many people about he’d usually just grab his tea and run off to another part of the manor house.

You could tell this used to be a stately home because the kitchen had places for a bunch of bells which were attached to various rooms to alert the kitchen staff to the desires of the stately home owners. It was a big place with maybe 10 bedrooms, a sizeable living area and space for a fancy table. The fancy table was long gone and we always ate around the solid wooden kitchen table that easily fitted 15-20.

Breakfast would normally be a bit of soda bread baked in the AGA, which Jay or Anthony would make during the week.  The community also had a sizeable bakery with professional bread ovens subsidised by the European community. But we only used that when we were doing the baking for the Dublin markets on the weekends as the ovens were only worth firing up if you were making dozens and dozens or loaves. I’d have the bread with jam for breakfast most days. Occasionally I’d go for a porridge or just fry a few eggs, depending on my mood. We have eggs and fruit in regular supply in the pantry as well as some dried and fresh fruit, and as much milk, freshly squeezed from the farm’s cows that you could ever possibly want to drink.

After breaky I’d head out with Frankie for a couple of hours to tend to the vegetables. It wasn’t overly strenuous. Sometimes we’d tend to the huge compost heaps which we’d use to feed the veggies. Sometimes we’d slash nettles and comfort and soak them in water to make fertiliser teas for the plants. Sometimes we’d plant out seedlings of kale – before kale was even popular – or spinach. It was still early in the season when I arrived and there wasn’t a huge variety to harvest, but we dug up a few Jerusalem artichokes which grew in abundance. Jerusalem artichokes are gassy, not super delicious, but highly nutritious and easy to grow root vegetables. Most evening meals made in my first weeks there at Inisglas included at least a few artichokes in them, while we waited for the nicer Mediterranean vegetables – although most of them originated in central America – like the tomatoes, zucchinis, eggplants. The other things ready to harvest in those first weeks of me being on the farm were carrots, some peas and a few beets and brassicas – kale and the like. I think we were getting the odd leek as well, so enough variety. Being Ireland we had a lot of potatoes growing, but in spring we could only forage a few little spuds, still plenty to add to meals though.

After a few hours in the garden we’d go back and have some more tea, some home made cordial and some bread and cheese, perhaps with some gherkins from bottles. After lunch we’d go do a bit more gardening, perhaps going to 5 PM, depending on the weather, or whenever it started getting dark, before stopping and heading in for dinner. I was amazed we never had to water much, just the stuff in the poly-tunnels and seedlings in the first few weeks after planting until their roots got down into the wet sublayer. We did regularly add the nettle and comfrey fertiliser teas though which gave the plants a bit of a drink I’m sure. Otherwise the rain was sufficient to keep them all going.

We took turns making dinner using some sort of roster. As mentioned, Tron was the worst cook. The rest of us usually did up a vegetable stew or curry with some sort of pulse like chickpeas, kidney beans, white beans or dried peas in it, as well as a few spuds, carrots, peas, parsnips and whatever veggies we were picking at the time, including the dreaded Jerusalem artichokes. Tron’s focussed on cooking nettles until Nora banned the use of nettles. I was thinking of writing: to be fair on Tron, nettles are nutritious, but I don’t think we should be fair on Tron and he should be rightly condemned for his cooking abominations, especially given the other delicious things we had at hand.

Often we’d add a few tins of tomatoes and tomato paste as well as herbs and spices to add flavour, and serve with rice, or pasta, or some carbs. There was always some bread to go with it if you wanted.

As there were around 20 people all up including kids you had to do up a big pot. As the veggies were fresh and full of biodynamic flavour the meals were pretty good, nothing super fancy but hearty and filling and never too boring apart from Tron’s nettles.

I’m not sure exactly what time of year it was when I started out at Inisglas, but one night soon after arriving I saw Eurovision was on the tele, which is usually in May. According to the Internet, the final was 13 May in 1995 to be precise, and Ireland hosted it that year after winning in 1994. I didn’t have the internet back then so I’ll stick with sometime in May just to be retro.

After initially focussing on helping out Frankie with the vegetables, I branched out a bit and started tagging along with Stuart, who milked the cows in the morning and afternoon. I got to be a regular cow milker and Stuart showed me how to make his Irish championship yoghurt. I had beginner’s luck and my first batch was as good as any Stuart had made. He also showed me how to make quark, a type of soft cheese, which, at least in Stuart’s version, involved putting yoghurt in cheesecloth and hanging it under the big rhododendron tree. It was another good thing to have for lunch with the bread from the AGA oven. I think we also made a type of cheddar cheese, or at least a cottage cheese, as well, which meant separating the milk curds from the whey, just as they did in nursery rhymes. Whey, for those who don’t know, is a watery yellowy buttery milky type of stuff, pretty clear and not white like milk. I’d take most of the whey to Ross who gave it to his pigs to fatten them up to make bacon out of them. Ross explained there were basically 2 types of pigs, porkers, which you used to make pork out of, and bacon’s, which you used for bacon. And thus endeth the pig lesson from Ross.

We would often save some cream from the milk, after we pasteurised it. You could have that on some of the cakes that people like Yvonne and Nora occasionally made. We’d also sometimes use a bit of the whey that Ross’ pigs didn’t eat to add to the vegetable stews. It gave a nice bite to the broth.

One thing we didn’t make was butter. Back then Ireland and Europe had a butter mountain and when you got your dole check they’d also send a voucher to get a pound of butter each fortnight which Eve would collect together so the community always had good Irish butter in abundance. I hope in some way I contributed to dealing with the butter mountain while I was there.

On Fridays I started helping Jay out in the bakery. After breakfast and tea we started making bread the whole day. We’d work up a sough dough or stoned ground biodynamic yeast bread batch, put it in the tins to rise, work on the next batch, and then chuck batches in the oven every hour or thereabouts. In between bakings, while the dough was rising and the risen ones were cooking in the oven, we’d sit and chat and have tea and cigarettes (me less than Jay who was a self confessed chain smoker), as well as freshly baked bread with some jam, cheese, and quark. We’d usually go from 10 am to 6 pm, then load the van around 7-8 PM ready to take the markets in Dublin the next day. We mostly had sourdoughs and yeast wholemeal breads just with some sesame seeds on top, but we also made a few fancy loaves. We made packets of flat pita style breads, some ones with olives and tomatoes, a sunflower seed loaf and a batch of raisin and nut loaf.

On Saturday mornings I’d hitch a lift up to the Dublin markets and help sell the bread, yoghurt, cheeses, bags of flour and whatever veggies we’d brought up with us. We’d usually sell out of everything by around 11 or 12, except maybe an olive loaf or raisin and nut bread. We alway kept a few loaves back at Inisglas for the community.

The drive to Dublin was nice. It only took an hour and a half to 2 hours. I was still getting used to these little countries after the expanse of Australia. We passed through County Wicklow, and got a nice view of the Wicklow Mountains. I remember a stand of Australian gum trees somewhere on the way and a few picturesque forest edged roads on the way.

Initially I didn’t stay much in Dublin, I just hung out at the markets for a few hours and maybe walked around whatever area that was in. I also took the chance to go check out the Dublin GPO to see if me Irish passport had arrived, which it never did. Later on though I’d come up fairly often to Dublin and stay with friends.

The friends from Dublin were ones I first met at Inisglas. One of the guys who seemed to regularly show up at Inisglas invited a few girls from Dublin to Inisglas one weekend. They were Spanish, well Ines was Spanish, Agatha, she was Catalan, as she would often point out. Stuart encouraged me to hang out with them and they invited me back to Dublin where they shared a house with an Irish guy, a Basque Spanish woman and a German woman, all in their twenties. After a weekend of fun on the farm and showing Ines and Agatha around I was keen to see more of them, so next time I took the bread up to the markets instead of going back to Inisglas, I took a loaf of bread, some cheese and yoghurt and headed off to their house. I started doing that every couple of weeks.

The first time I went to the girls’ house was a few weeks after arriving at Inisglas. By that stage my dole cheques were coming through. After contributing my £40 (yes it was still before Euros) I’d have £20 leftover. I used about £4 buying some duty free tobacco from Nora, who got it duty free on the ferry when she went over to London to study her Steiner education and brought enough back for all the smokers, which was pretty much everyone, except Stuart, who pretended not to smoke, but who ended up having a regular smoke. He was diabetic so he did need to try and at least to pretend to avoid it.

So I had about £16 pounds leftover each week which was enough to hang out in Dublin with. Especially if I could bring some bread, cheese and some veggies with me to cook at the girls house.

This allowed me to explore Dublin a bit over summer and party with the girls who had dubbed their house the Chaparrita. The girls were very short and this does seem to mean ‘shorty’, though sometimes I think it may have had a double meeting by the way they spoke and giggled about it.

More on Dublin next time though, I think it deserves some focus. Especially my relationship with Agatha Julia and Ines.