Far North Queensland Rainbow Gathering

We're back from rainbow land! The gathering was wonderful; we had a fantastic time. And of course, it's also great to be home.

The journey up was pretty easy - we drove 1900km (about 1200mi) in 2 days, which included frequent playground stops for Littletree to run around with other kids (our favourite was the roadside JumpingPillow at Rollingstone)

We arrived to the area near the rainbow after dark, so we decided to camp nearby and come in the early morning, rather than trying to find hippie trails in the dark. After walking in 2 full loads of gear and setting up our camp, Purple and I collapsed into bed, exhausted, only to be woken up at 4am by the freezing cold!

Learning the lesson, I dressed warmly to sleep the next night, and we settled in to enjoy rainbow. We set up a great camp, which involved a lot of work digging and carrying sand to make a nice flat area in the rocky riverbed, but the end result was worth it.

I even had a great office area set up so I could keep up with my studies:

While the nights were cold (we were at 900M elevation - about 3000ft), the days were hot and sunny, so we spent a lot of time relaxing in the shade or the chai shop

And hanging around the sweet, fresh river, which was absolutely spectacular and had many little waterfalls and "jacuzzis" in the rapids

I joined in on Sisters' Circles, did a lot of crochet and held a workshop on natural fertility, as well as a lot of working in the kitchen. 

The kitchen is for me, the best part of rainbow. There are 2 meals provided daily, and a large main kitchen, but there aren't any workers or bosses. There's no one whose job it is to cook the dinner or buy the food or wash the pots or collect wood or carry water. People just show up to help and we all work together, cooking delicious vegetarian food for hundreds of people on an open fire, without running water or electricity.

I always have a great time in the kitchen. I think this photo was the day Purple and I made Cholent for the whole gathering.

Breakfast circles were under some shady trees to hide from the sun

While dinner circle was on the rock in the riverbed.

So this is getting long - I came home with a LOT of photos, which after deleting crap ones, was still 111 photos exactly! I'll only share the highlights on the blog, but you can see the full set of photos HERE 

and just because I can't resist, I'll do a 'rainbow part II' post tomorrow ;)

 

Rainbow Gathering part II

In following on from my last post about our trip up to far north Queensland for the Australian Rainbow Gathering (which you can read HERE), here's some more highlights from the journey:

Regular drum circles in the evening

Me drying my hair after a swim:

I brought a pretty extensive first aid kit with me, both herbal/homeopathic and allopathic, so I found myself treating lots of minor injuries and illnesses, including this chamomile tea eye-patch:

We had some spontaneous lessons - Littletree decided that we would save her pocket money while we were at the rainbow (there's no where to spend money there anyway) and she wanted to work out how much money she was saving, which led to discussions about multiplication tables. She was fascinated with the idea and quickly learned the 1, 2 and 10 times tables, as well as a bunch of the 3 and 7s. When it started getting tricky, we moved on to using groups of pebbles to work them out.

Purple played his silver flute a lot and impressed us all with how good he's getting

Here's one of the things I crocheted - a rainbow striped hat that took me about 4 or 5 hours. I also added some sections to Littletree's blanket and made myself mohair leg warmers.

In rainbow people can really show their true colours :)

We had a resident hygiene hand-spray cowgirl

Hair-wrap workshops

and the best breakfast ever - here modelled by the most gorgeous woman

And of course no rainbow would be complete without an all-night mission to make more pizza than 100 hippies can eat!

The oven was awesome - made out of an old barrel and structured with stones and mortar made from termite hills, it survived four rainy seasons and is still going strong!

The beauty of rainbow magic was that one brother had a vision to make pizzas, and then 2 other guys showed up to help that turned out to be an Italian chef and an American pizza chef!

And what rainbow mission would be complete without some funky music and a bunch of people dancing!?

Okay, there's more, but this post is getting way too long. I'll save the trip home for another post tomorrow. You can check out the full album of photos on my flickr page HERE

It’s Curtains for Me

So what was I doing with my time while I was computer-less and off-line?

Making Curtains!

We’ve wanted to get curtains in our house since the weather started getting chilly back in Autumn – there were a few nights before we went up to North Queensland for the rainbow that were bitterly cold.

It didn’t seem to matter how many layers I put on or how many logs I put on the fire, we were still shivering. It was clear that having seven metres of glass doors in the living room was letting a lot of heat out, and good curtains would make a huge difference.

Procrastinating, as I am wont to do, meant that nothing happened on the curtain front till after we got back from rainbow, but finally, a cold night sent me into action, and I went on a mission to town to search the op-shops (charity thrift stores) for cheap second-hand curtains.

In the op-shop, I lucked upon a set of curtains that would do perfectly in the big bedroom, but nothing sufficient for the living room. At least it was a start. On the way home I stopped at the supermarket, and lo! There was a guy set up by the entry selling bolts of fabric at clearance prices.

I found a nice sage-coloured fabric for $1/ metre! It’s like unheard-of cheap :D I bought 20 Metres.

Without really having a clue how to make curtains, I jumped on in, measuring the doors, and cutting fabric

 

Then it was loads and loads of sewing.

I bought curtain hook strips from the sewing shop in town and sewed them on to the top of the curtains for the ‘professional’, gathered effect, and so we could hook in proper curtain hooks and rings. Which was more sewing

Finally they were done, we spend a good long while sliding all the curtain hooks into the strips, and hooking in the curtain rings. We even bought nice curtain rods (thank goodness we saved a huge bundle on the fabric!).

And here’s the finished product :)

I’m so pleased with how it turned out – they look way more professional than I’d expected. And of course, just in time for the freaky heatwave we’ve been having – This week was the hottest winter days on record in this area; around 36 centigrade (that’s like having 97F in mid February for you Northern Hemispherians)!!!

Nomad Family

This week a nomadic homeschooling family came to stay with us - Skelewhale, her partner, C, and their daughter T who is 5 and son J, who is 3. They're travelling around Australia, and I thought it would be a good opportunity for them to housesit for us while we go to the Australian Rainbow Gathering in far north Queensland next week.

Littletree and T have been getting on well... or crazily, depending on your perspective

It's nice to have some kids around :)

And of course our regular house guests have been making visits as well

At least the kookaburras keep the mouse population down around the house - who needs a cat! If only they wouldn't mess with the laundry.

Phone a Friend

Okay, I need help, Quick!

As some of you may or may not know, I’m actually crap at making decisions. I um and ahhh over things for *hours*. okay, for days and days, irritating everyone around me.

My tried and true method of making decisions (other than the multitude of craziness we all remember from when I won the iPad) is to ask my friends. The few friends I now have left will attest to this. I go over and over stuff, weighing up pros and cons ad nauseum.

And in this very moment, I have a massive choice to make… and no friends around to ask! Purple is off at a rainbow gathering somewhere in Queensland, no one else seems to be online… and I’m in Malaysia!

So, I’m asking the help of the internet-at-large: please please please help me design my new kitchen! (not sure if I mentioned it, but while we’re away, our kitchen is getting re-build).

The builder just Skyped me to say there’s a question about the size of the island. Here’s the diagram:

(click to see a bigger version)

The actual walls are in thick black. Don’t worry about the thing that looks like we have 2 ovens – one of them is mis-labelled and will actually be a “dishwasher”, but I’m installing the laundry machine there instead, just because I’m cool and European like that.

The question is about THE ISLAND. (ignore all the faint green lines that indicate the sizes of things, and focus on THE ISLAND! it’s to be 1350mm wide (53” for Americans) (not 1300 as shown) and 2100mm long (82”), and yes, it’s curved on one side, with barstool seating around the curved edge.

So, See how the island sticks out past the dotted line that represents where the edge of the kitchen *was* (there was a half wall and bench here before, but now it’s gone – just lovely open space).

The choice is: Do the island as shown, OR cut out the “300 base” (which is 300mm – 11.8”) and shorten the whole thing to 1500mm (60”) OR change the 300 base to a 400mm base (15.75”), thus making the whole island 2200mm (86.5”).

Less island, which doesn’t stick out so much, but I just loose storage space and seating space, or more island, more cupboards and more seating space, but it sticks out past the “kitchen” space and into the “living/ dining” space 640mm-740mm (25”-30”).

I can also change the configuration of all the cupboards in the island, but let’s don’t go there!

Help!!!