Mike and I are in the town of Gympie in Queensland. The place we are staying is about 15 minutes out of town by Mothar mountain. It is absolutely beautiful out here. We are working for a lady, Karh,who is working on building a wellness retreat, called Mystory Retreat. There are three other helpers staying here, Meg and Amy from Japan and Pink from Taiwan. We have been working in and on gardens for her.
Kath has many gardens around the property with the largest one right at the front. She is making a zodiac garden and has a giant circle, visible from the air, divided into twelve sections, for each sign of the zodiac. She is building Hugel gardens in the zodiac garden. A Hugel garden is a type of raised flower bed, built from logs, trees and branches stacked into a pile. The pile is then covered in dirt and then the hill formed is planted on. The trees start to decompose under the dirt, releasing nutrients and water into the soil, and therefore, the garden does not need to be watered. It is pretty neat.
We have also been working to pull grass and weeds out of the side of a hill on her property to make a new flower bed. It was a lot of work but quite rewarding. I have a whole new respect for grass and the root system it develops. It was rewarding to be able to physically see the results of our hard work and with it being very physical to pull the grass, it felt like a great workout. After we finished pulling everything out (we came across wild tobacco plants and gooseberry bushes), we laid down a thick layer of mulch to help keep away the grass and weeds we pulled.
Once we finished the new flower beds, we had to load up the truck with bales from the field that had been slashed and baled. Kath plans to build the cabins for the retreat out of straw bales to be more environmentally friendly. It is great that she has the land to produce her own bales. Between myself, Mike, Pink and Peter ( the gardener/maintenance guy), we moved about 70 bales. It was fun trying to teach Pink how to use her knee to lift the bale onto the truck.
One night, after we finished working, Kath's business partner took Mike, Pink and me to a group meeting for Toastmasters. I have never heard of them but they apparently really big in Canada and the states. They are a group geared towards aiding in public speaking and oral communication. It happened to be their 600th meeting in Gympie. Some of the things they do include a new vocabulary word for the night that everyone has to try and use throughout the night, table topics which are two minute speeches on a random topic given and speech evaluations for members trying to improve their speaking skills. It is a very interesting group. They were all very friendly and nonjudgmental during the speeches. One of the members shared his story about how his stuttering was so bad he could hardly string a sentence together, yet he was speaking very confidently in front of everyone. It was a very powerful moment. He was very genuine and spoke from the heart. It was my favourite moment of the night and really impacted me. It is a group I would like to explore and possibly join whenever I decide to settle down from my travels.
