Thursday 18 November 2010

It’s Beautiful Here

Two years ago, my dream was to find a large parcel of land that we could buy; at least 100 acres, on which we could live, and share with several other homeschooling families. Where we could have communal veggie gardens, and fresh water, and forest land, and everyone could build their own houses from straw-bale or cob or whatever, and we’d all live together and raise free-range children.

At the time, we didn’t quite have the cash capital to manifest that dream, at least not without mortgaging ourselves to the limit and having to live off instant noodles for the next 30 years.

By accident (quite literally by accident – I crashed the car here), we stumbled across the village we now live in. It’s not a community in the commune sense, but it’s surely a community in the unity sense.

We live in an awesome village – there’s 5 or 6 families with children in Littletree’s age-group within a 5 minute walk from our home. Most of the people in this small village are very like-minded; no one looks at us oddly because we have bare feet or dreadlocks or children in public out of school hours. There’s an organic store a few minutes walk from our house, and many communes and organic farms in the area.

There’s a wonderful sense of being a part of a functioning community. It seems almost every day there’s some kind of activity, many workshops and classes available in the village hall (like yoga, dancing, singing, drawing, herbs, tree-planting, wild foods, permaculture, meditations, etc), live music shows every week, a farmer’s market, a craft market, a book exchange, a cafe, a herbal medicine store, free complimentary therapy clinics, homeschooled kids, an arts collective, regular jam sessions… and on and on.

There’s always some friends hanging about in the village, someone playing music or crafting something, someone to talk to.

Lately I was hanging around the village green after the farmer’s market; loads of people were about preparing for the village festival. Heaps of kids were running about freely, a small group of people were working on various art projects

14 craft

some were making a sculpture from recycled tea bags

17 tea bag art

a few folk were weaving elaborate stuff

15 weaving

there was a group of musicians together for the usual spontaneous jam

18 village jam

Of course, the small village lifestyle isn’t for everyone, but I love it! This is my home :)

19 comments:

  1. Sounds like a wonderful place to live.
    x

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  2. sounds like my idea of utopia!

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  3. Have I mentioned lately how utterly jealous I am of where you live?!

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  4. thanks everyone :) it is a wonderful, amazing, awesome utopia. and lea, if you're jealous, just move down here :P

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  5. Would love to! But alas, with hubby's line of work I think I shall be doomed to live a life in a non-alternative community for many years more. I'll just have to get my wonderful community fix through visits and rainbow gatherings :)

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  6. ah well, visits are also available. and did I mention the coming Rainbow Gathering that will be in SEQ in January - not far from my home?

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  7. "By accident (quite literally by accident – I crashed the car here)"

    Hilarious! And fortuitous :)

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  8. incredibly fortuitous! I'm sure there was some kind of divine intervention involved, I'm sure :D

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  9. I agree with everyone else. It sounds like an awesome place to live. I'm jealous.

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  10. Sounds so fantastic. Where is it? Not a hot humid place I hope! And how do I find out about the rainbow gatherings?it can get a little redneck in my area , would love to discover you are round the corner...??

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  11. messyfish, I'm just around the corner and up the road from you, but more than a day trip north. It is a little humid, but never really cold.
    for info on Rainbow gatherings in Australia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/australiacaravan

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  12. I forwarded this post to my best friend and she asked me if I knew where your village was or whether you were keeping it a secret. She wishes she could move there this week!
    It really does sound incredible. As do the rainbow gatherings. We saw the link to the yahoo group account and are daydreaming about going in January.

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  13. oh you should totally come to the gathering in January!

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  14. it would be a such long trip from los angeles. needless to say, it's terribly tempting!
    ~ Ana

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  15. oh a trifle! what's a mere hop over the pacific pond? ;P

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  16. let's see now - a 15 hour plane ride with a toddler and an infant in tow sounds pretty rough. i suppose i'll need to focus on winning a chartered flight in order to get there sane and in one piece! kuddos again on winning the ipad, by the way!

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  17. oh, pity my private jet is on the blink!
    I'm sure if you really put it out there, you can manage to win a chartered flight to Australia.

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