Wednesday 3 November 2010

Blue Mountains Rainbow Gathering

We’re all home from the rainbow adventure now and well unpacked. The gathering was spectacular! One of the most stunningly beautiful sites; and not just beautiful, but logistically perfect and easy – clean water, nice land, soft grass, no ticks, mozzies or leeches, easy access while not being too close to any towns… and awesome people!

Littletree and I drove down slowly, stopping on the way to see the Solar System Drive that you can read about HERE.

There were so many rainbows on the way there, it was almost like magical providence leading us home

002 rainbow

We were lucky enough to get there early, before the road was blocked, so I could drive right in to the site to unload our tipi and the poles and everything (cars aren’t allowed to enter the rainbow site after the opening day), and since we’d decided to sleep the night on the road just before coming into the site, we arrived early morning and had plenty of time to find our perfect campsite and set up and get the car out before the day was over. Our faithful van Sunshine served us like a true champion :)

034 welcome home

I had help from a couple of people to get the tipi up and was quickly rewarded by yet another rainbow

039 tipi rainbow

So we were settled in and ready to work on helping set up the gathering and build infrastructure

080 welcome home sign

The gathering was so full of wonderful friends. I barely saw Littletree as she roamed freely with a bunch of other kids exploring the forest. They all made bows and arrows

099 bow and arrow

and played all sorts of cool games

140 kids

and made faerie crowns

041 faerie crown

and did face painting

100 face painting

and attracted butterflies

077 butterfly

It’s such a supportive environment for children – no cars or roads to worry about, dozens of supportive grown-ups available, and freedom to roam and explore :D

A local theatre group, Living Light, joined the gathering to give a preview of their performance

093 theatre performance

I spent a fair bit of time in the kitchen, though not as much as I have in the past, which is pretty good

117 kitchen faerie

and we opened up our tipi for chai nights where I made doughnuts for everyone. I pumped out a few hundred organic chocolate-filled doughnuts, and cinnamon ring doughnuts. mmmm

I also did a lot of crochet – I added six new hearts to Littetree’s blanket, I held a couple of crochet workshops

 045 crochet circle

and I even made a rainbow heart that slowly morphs into a square to be part of a patchwork community blanket; a free-form heart that becomes a square was no easy feat, I don’t think I did too badly, considering this was my first attempt.

078 crochet heart square

Since there were several pregnant mamas,

151 beautiful belly

I held several midwifery circles and did ante-natal check-ups

145 midwifery workshop

I swam every day in the creek

086 dread faerie aphrodite

sang and danced in the magic hat parade

133 magic hat

played capoeira and partied around the drum circle by main fire

068 dancing before dinner

enjoyed the sunset against the mountains

156 mountain

and watched the full moon rise

072 full moon rising

It was such an enriching, revitalising experience. To be in nature, to hold hands and chant AUM with 100 people before every meal, to sit in talking circles, and feel supported by my family. I was sad to leave, but I left knowing the consensus for the next rainbow in Australia will be just 2 months away, in January! details HERE

Of course, there’s no way I could fit the whole experience of rainbow into one (or even two) blog posts, and I took many photos, which you can browse on my flicker page HERE.

8 comments:

  1. thank you for sharing this wonderful pictures.
    it is such a special place...
    I wished it would have been possible for me being part of that gathering.

    love and light
    heike

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful photos. It really looks like you had such a wonderful time. Cannot wait to see you at the next gathering.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice pics. It was definitly a special place.

    ReplyDelete
  4. looks like a great time. how did you make the crocheted heart square? I would love to make them!

    ReplyDelete
  5. young jedi, the secret to the crocheted heart square is one that may take many years to master and is only for the pure of spirit.
    :P

    I'll do a post about it soon if you remind me. (but I'm not actually sure how to do it coz I just make these things up as I go along)

    ReplyDelete
  6. How wonderful! What an amazing adventure! The photos were gorgeous.

    ReplyDelete
  7. lol... if you're able to do a video, I could probably figure it out from that. If not, then I will still try. I'm in love with it! <3

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your lovely words, witty banter and entertaining discussion :)