Farwalk

In which we walk far.

~It was Monday morning. Apartment day. We got up at a reasonable hour, not too early nor too late, had some brekky (oats and fruit), grabbed a copy of The Echo (the local paper) and sat on the patch of floor of the hostel nearest the wall sockets to recharge our electronics with a map, the paper, a telephone, a pen and a sheet of scratch paper. We called a zillion listings, looking for room shares, house shares, independent units, and most covetedly, studio apartments in our price range and within walking/easy biking distance to the town and the beach. After an hour or two we had two places to go visit and a bunch of call-backs coming. We set out for the Far Walk, having no idea just how far it would be and woefully under-provisioned.

*First stop, a house share in, as we were to learn, the middle of nowhere.

~The guy sounded very nice on the phone. "Sure thing," he said, "I'm not home but feel free to go have a look. It's just two kilometers past The Arts Factory."

The Arts Factory, let it be said, is a very cool hostel. Situated largely on boardwalks erected over The Cumbebin Swamp Preserve and consisting of a building of rooms and suites, dormer tents that are semipermenant structures, and a fend-for-yourself tent camping area with a shared pavilion kitchen, an swimming pool, small beach volleyball court, and water dragons hanging out everywhere, and sharing the grounds with a brewery and a cinema, it's a pretty sweet locale. Unfortunately, the rooms are seriously out of sight for our budgets, and Ben's not thrilled about the idea of living in a tent. I have a bit of a romance with the idea, but I secretly suspect he might be right. I also suspect we may be hanging out there some for the brewery's awesome happy hours anyway.

~So there we were, a few minutes walking from our place to the Arts Factory, and setting out a few kilometers beyond on a narrowish paved road with a two foot wide dirt and gravel track on either side for bicycles, pedestrians, and as we discovered, five foot snakes.

* The incident went a bit like this: We were walking along, Karen was a couple of steps ahead of me, and I was musing pleasantly to myself. "This really is lovely walk. Look at that tree. I have never seen a butterfly
that color before. Hmmm, a snake. @&%$@# "FULL REVESRE! EVERYMAN FOR HIMSELF! Wait. Grab the sister. HARD A PORT! However, all of this took place instantaneously in my head and all the heads up Karen got was my hand yanking her back.

~Hmm, very interesting internal monologue. All I remember was a very calm, "Whoa, hold up, there's a snake." Having been in a walking reverie of my own, I jumped about as far up in the air as the snake was long. Having scuttled a safe distance back, we stood and observed what we were pretty certain was a python. He waved his head about at the road a bit, apparently looking left and right to determine whether or not it was safe to pass. Our standing and gawking attracted the attention of a passing driver and cyclist who agreed that yes, it was a *$&@(*$&@ big snake. The python eventually decided that it would find a less busy crosswalk and slithered back into the swamp.

WARNING: Objects in photo may be WAY WAY WAY bigger than they appear! This photo was taken from a RESPECTFUL distance

~And so, snakey interlude concluded, we continued the Far Walk, still having no idea how far we would be going.

* The walk really was gorgeous though, we had seemingly endless swamp and trees on both sides of the road that some poor bugger apparently had the misfortune to build and, after a while, the few shifted into rolling plains and horse enclosures. Were we busy taking this in and having a really charming time while, well more than two kilometers later, we were still walking.

~And walking.

*And walking.

~And walking.

~"It must be soon now."

*Any minute.

~AAAANNNNNNNNY minute now.....

While walking, we saw a pretty wood carving:

... Some nice flowers....

A beautiful great big viney tree...

* ...and a sign outside some guy's pasture that simply states "Trespassers will be recycled."

 

~ Signs handwritten in red spraypaint should always be heeded.

~Eventually, we found the place. Nice house, great views over fields behind and rainforest before, good layout. Not the place for us. We finally managed to arrive at the front door through sheer unwillingness to give up after coming so far. Honestly, on a bicycle, it really wouldn't be that bad. But in the dark, in the rain, in any sort of a hurry, under really any conditions other than, "Shall we go have a pleasant afternoon jaunt up Mount Kilimanjaro?" it would be a Very Far Walk, and just too far to happily commute on foot every day. And so we returned through the swamp, still in good spirits. 

~Sometime around our return arrival at the Arts Factory, we got a callback from the real estate agent about a studio apartment closer to town. Enthusiastic, we continued our pursuit, although my flipflops had begun to make a vaguely squeaky protesting noise. 

* After a we got back to town, we promptly walked through it and headed out the other side. Before long, we came to a whole foods produce store along the roadside. We went in just to see what it was and stayed because we realized that we really were very hungry. 

*Lunch on avocado, peach, pear, and some kind of chocolate/date bar = totally delicious.

~True story. So we went on, fortified, and saw the studio apartment in our price range. Which was a very lovely sardine can with a surprisingly awesome jet-whirlpool tub filled bathroom and a very very tiny main room with a sink and a plugged in stoverange as a microwave. Nice enough and workable as a spot for one person with furniture and appliances or, you know, a blowup mattress of some kind, and a very nice scooter/moped/high powered golf cart, it was too dark, too closed in, too unprovisioned and too far to be the right place for us. So the hunt went on. We actually got a call back at the studio place about a homeshare in town, and trucked it back that way. 

~The neighborhood was gorgeous. The home was lovely. The people very nice - we'd actually met one of them in town earlier without knowing it! We'd have had had a room to ourselves plus a half kitchen in another large room, places to hang our clothes, nice big beds to ourselves with no rickety ladders, hammocks galore, an easy commute into town, a shared full kitchen, only one bathroom in the house, but that'd be okay, and best of all, paying less monthly rent than a month's stay at the hostel. We really hoped it would work out, and were promised a call back.

~And, mysteriously, sometime in the intervening day, we changed our minds. It still wasn't the right spot for us - we'd have really been sharing a home with other people, and lovely as they and the home were, we found ourselves really charmed with the lifestyle here. 

* Yep, the Main Beach Backpacker hostel is the place for us. So we had a good day. We got to know the town some more, figured out a little better what we want in housing and what we don't and, having walked a solid ten miles in the Australian heat while still having fun, we reaffirmed what we already knew, that we really do like hanging out together.