Meeting the Team - Night 2

I awoke early today, as usual, and spent

the first few hours of the morning using what I would later learn to have been some of my last free wireless internet access for some time. Checked out of the Brisbane City Backpackers around 9 am and headed east over the William Jolly Bridge to the South Bank, and eventually on to the Conservation Volunteers’ Home Office. We were to arrive at 11am, I showed up at 9:30 and they weren’t quite ready for me, so I dropped my pack and took a wander through the

Mangrove Swamp

South Bank Parklands, a verdant, beach-ish park along the south bank of the Brisbane River. I came upon a pedestrian bridge over the river to the City Botanical Gardens on the north bank near downtown. A beautiful city park, no doubt. By far the most interesting part was the elevated boardwalk through a partially-submerged mangrove forest.

Made my way back to the office by 10:45 to find two of my fellow volunteers had already arrived; Mandy, a mid to late 30s, British woman from a little town near Manchester. I came to find out that she sold all of her belongings in April and has been traveling the world volunteering ever since. The other prompt team member Peter (Hu Wuan), a mathematics student from South Korea. Minutes later, our fourth and final member of our group, Daniel, a mid-20s fellow also from England, arrived. We were painfully subjected to the obligatory safety video and orientation session and then broke for lunch to get to know each other a little bit. My first actual meal in Australia was a delicious salmon/chickpea sandwich with cream cheese. At first, $10 AUS might seem a bit pricey for a sandwich, but once you figure that tax is already included and tips are not expected, it seems fairly reasonable…now if only the dollar weren’t so weak – the Europeans definitely have an advantage over here. We returned and were whisked away to the volunteer house, our place of lodging while we weren’t out in the field. FYI: The first time you ride in a right side driver’s car, especially in the front seat, is a bit of a scare.

The Volunteer House

Our digs are located in Albion, a northern suburb, about 5 train stops from downtown. The place is an old Queenstown house (which meant nothing to me until I saw it) consisting of an amalgamation of rooms and covered porches that appear to have been added in the most haphazard of manners over the past 100 years. The 12 foot ceilings, decorative woodworking, and maze-like floor plan do offer a certain bit of charm, however. It lacks air-conditioning and insulation of any kind, so the days are hot and the nights cool as wind seems to blow straight through the place. The house consists of two women’s rooms, two men’s rooms, a caretaker’s room, kitchen, two baths, a laundry, and various lounges and dens. The back yard has a small courtyard. I am rooming with Daniel and Peter this week, though as volunteers come and go we’ve been warned that room assignments are likely to change.

Around 3pm the other crew of volunteers returned from their weekly assignment in Noosa. In this group were Matt, a 31-year old from Wales, Aaron a 19-year old student from New Hampshire, Jana (pronounced Yana), a cute little, 20-year old from Berlin, Germany, Anna a youngster from Tasmania, and Lena, a mid-40s women from somewhere, though judging by her misappropriation of pronouns and poor verb conjugation, somewhere English is not the primary language. Apparently a few more souls will be filtering in over the weekend.

Our volunteer program is set up so that we spend the weekends here in Brisbane and each Monday, or sometimes Sunday, we are put into groups and taken to our place of work. We stay at the volunteer work site until Friday afternoons and then return to Brisbane for the weekend. The best part is that we can leave things at the house during the week, so we do not need to haul all of our possessions out into the wild. While at the house, they provide all the food, all we have to do is cook it and clean up after ourselves. We’ve received our first assignment already; this Sunday, Daniel, Aaron, Jana, Mandy and Glen(?) and I leave at 8 am on Sunday morning for a 6 hour drive to Expedition National Park on the other side of the mountains in what is considered the Queensland outback. We’ll be camping out in the wild until Friday morning, so for anyone reading this, you’ll likely not get another update from me until next Friday at the earliest.

After some time chatting with the new volunteers, or volleys as we are known, Matt, Aaron, Jana, and I took off for Cambridge Street to do a bit of shopping and grab a pint or two. Cambridge Street is a bit of a poor man’s Queen’s Street Pedestrian Mall. The shops are dirty and cheaper, the pubs more abundant and every block a few peep shows tuck themselves into small nooks and upstairs spaces. My kinda place. After the young kids grabbed some smokes, we settled on The Elephant and Wheelbarrow, advertised as a traditional English Pub. Having never been into a traditional English Pub, who was I to argue with this proclamation? Had two pints of Toohey’s, which tasted a bit like Leinenkugel’s Original.

On the return trip I had my first run in with the Aussie law. Earlier I had errantly purchased an off-peak train ticket, which means it was not good from 3pm to 7pm. We boarded the train back to the house at 6:58 and wouldn’t you know it, immediately two transit officers stepped on board to check our tickets. When he saw mine and said “This is an off-peak ticket”, I responded in my best confused tourist, American accent “you mean it isn’t 7pm?”. He looked at his watch and said, “you are two minutes early, don’t worry about and don’t do it again.” I am such a badass.

What I Learned Today: The first five minutes you meet someone tells you all you ever need to know about them...well almost everything, usually. Six hours in and I appear to be spot on with everyone. Makes me wonder what they all think about me. The interesting part about this volunteering arrangement is that each Friday people come and go, so I’ll get to try out this little psycho/socio-logical experiment every week.

written by

exumenius on October 12, 2007 from Brisbane, Australia

from the travel blog: Kiwis and Kangaroos

Send a Compliment

Hi Andy,

I've never worked with a Blog before, much less responded to them...so here it goes!! I had no idea that you knew any German, where'd that come from?!? Sounds like it'll come in handy! What's the exchange rate over there? AND have you had yourself some spaghetti for breakfast or any Vegemite (spelling?) yet :) Things I recommend...VB (Victoria Bitter Beer), the Sydney Zoo, and the bar Three Monkey's in Sydney, when you get there.

Nothing too exciting happening back here, weather sucks but the leaves are getting pretty. Have a good week and I can't wait to read more!!

peace,clf

written by Chessa on October 14, 2007

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