"My Australian Experience; nature volunteer in Australia"

My Australian Experience; nature volunteer in Australia

Lone Friis Larsen

I've now come back from two months in Australia where I went to do volunteer work for the nature in an organisation called ATCV (Australian Trust for Conservation Volunteers). I had the best time in my life!!! .

I left Kuching the 9th of January with the plane towards Kuala Lumpur. A big mess started in Kuching where my flight was delayed and I missed my connecting flight to Darwin from KL. I went through lots of problems figuring out where my luggage had gone, getting new flights and a place to spend the night. I ended up sleeping in the Airport Hotel and went over Singapore the next day.

Arrived in Darwin 4am and went strait to the bus station where I had to catch a bus to Jabiru. Jabiru is a little town with about 6000 inhabitants. It's one of the biggest towns in Kakadu National Park which covers 20 000 square kilometres of the Northern Territory.

Kakadu: The beautiful view of the 'Lake of Sickness' next to the Uranium Mine.

The national park is an amazing untouched area marked by 6 different incredible habitats. It's still owned by the aboriginal people. Most of the people in Jabiru were either miners or rangers for the park. In the middle of Kakadu is a big uranium mine in use. You might all question what on earth a uranium mine, which can be spreading out radioactive waves, is doing in a national park! The truth is that the mine was there before the area was claimed a national park. However it was and still is aboriginal land and they did had to ask the aboriginal people for permission. Unluckily at that time the aboriginals were dragged along with a big dollars sign in their eyes. Now they say they have learned from their mistakes, and I doubt any more mines would be set up in the next long time. The aboriginals have been trying hard to get rid of Ranger Mine but with no luck.

Next to the mine is a big mountain, in English called 'the mountain of sickness'. Through thousands of years the aboriginals have known about the radioactivity and that getting near or living around 'the mountain of sickness' could result in sickness or even death. A few other places in Kakadu has got a similar name, so by getting help from the aboriginals the Australians know exactly where the best mining spots are laid.

Whenever they are finished mining in certain areas the rangers' search for volunteers to rehabilitate the dead soil. And that's when ATCV, who I was working for, gets into the picture. We were said to work there for two weeks replanting trees. They had started the week before I arrived and as they were hard working people they had planted it all during the first one week. Looking for something else we could do, they ended up placing us on the outer mining area two weed the mission grass. That was the hardest week of all of them. The grass reached my height and we had to use big mattocks to force down the weeds. The weed was brought in when the missionaries a long time ago tried to breed cattle. They must have been chased out by the aboriginals...I don't know, but they left this big weed problem behind them. And it has to be weeded often to keep it down so the native grasses can get their room to grow. I was there during the wet season but for some bloody reason the rain kept it's distance and it got hotter and hotter every week. With the sun directly on during the high humidity we had to have long water breaks every 20 minutes. Considering that all of us were non-smokers it was interesting how the Australians have to scream 'time for a smoko' whenever there is cold water on the site. A break in Australia is a SMOKO!

Kakadu: A picture of the hardworking me trying to defeat our worst enemy - weed.

The hardest thing for me was to wake up at 5am every morning and leave for work at 6am. We had to get most of the work done before the sun made an influence on our ability to work. They would normally let us off around 1pm or 2pm. That week we were 9 in the group incl. Damian our supervisor. Two Australians and an English women. A young English man and two very entertaining young English guys. And then there was this one American dude:-) most of them left after that week though so I was left with the two English guys and the American.

The week in Kakadu was hard but it was great being out there in beautiful surroundings. And whenever we weren't to exhausted we would go on trips to see more of Kakadu and Damian could take us to places were the tourist doesn't go. We did a lot of rock climbing to get up and see some really old rock arts. It was very tough at times but an amazing experience. The rock arts has been made by the aboriginals through thousands of years. After the first week we took the long drive back to Darwin. We went to Damians house and cleaned up the car which we had to do every Friday. With the work we were doing, I tell you, the car got very dirty very fast, inside as well as outside.

We were put in a hostel called Frogs Hollow Backpackers. Nice little place with swimming pool and a very helpful staff. However the rooms were nothing special, 5 bunk beds and a few small chests. What you can expect for a hostel I guess. They had a cosy share living room with TV and a share kitchen where we had to cook our own dinner every night. Saturday night the whole group went to Damians house for a BQ and it became a bit of a party with lots of empty beer bottles left behind. That was becoming some kind of tradition, BQ at Damian's one night every weekend. Australians are obsessed with BQ. We had some hilarious times doing that.

We spend the next three weeks at 'frogs' and worked around Darwin in three different creeks called 'Rapid Creek', 'Mitchell Creek' and.....wups, I forgot the name of the third one, somewhere close to the airport... From then on we could wake up at 7. 30am and leave at 8am but the work went on until 3.15pm. I did prefer being able to sleep longer though. I spend this three weeks side by side with my biggest fear...weeds!! We were rid of the mission grass but coffee plant, snake weeds, passion fruit and other terrible weeds had invaded the beautiful creeks around Darwin and were making it impossible for the innocent native plants to develop their beauty. We did have a few days where we were either planting trees, spreading seeds or trying to prevent erosion, it was a relieve...a lot easier to enjoy. But it was mainly weeding. However the work was not a nightmare, working with the two English guys and Ian the American was a very hilarious and interesting experience. They had a great humour and the ability to make everything fun.

Kakadu: Me on the top of the world after rockclimbing my way up the rocks in Kakadu National Park

For the first two weeks in Darwin it was only Damian and the four of us in the group and the third week it was only Ian and I left. But a lot of one-day volunteers joined us while we were working around Darwin. Small streams and rivers were running through the creeks so whenever we had a break jumping in the clear water was a nice way to cool down. Darwin is a nice city with a lot of rural areas. A lot of cheap hostels were placed around the centre, which gave it a really nice atmosphere. Heaps of young adventurous people were walking around the streets enjoying the little night markets, the cosy cafes or looking at the shops at the pedestrianized street.

I loved walking around with the guys or mostly just on my own and just look at people or talk with people. I got really close with Ian in those three weeks, something like a brother-sister love. However we could easily get a bit annoyed with each other being so close 24 hours a day. I loved living in a small hostel....everyone socialises and helps each other out, borrows from each other, gives each others tips about where to go and all those things you don't find in big hostels or hotels where people just come and go without notice.

Darwin had a nice nightlife as well. Only few good nightclubs but I preferred going to some of the really cosy bars which all had amazing live bands. Our favourite was The Vic, which was a live band bar down stairs and a disco up stairs so it had a bit of everything. At our first Sunday in Darwin Damian decided to bring us out to Lichfield National Park that is another beautiful park marked by amazing waterfalls and rivers layered in pools. Another thing that people go to Lichfield to see is the meters high Termite Mountains which is spread out the landscape in big groups. These tough young boys wanted to proof their manhood out there by jumping from very high rocks into the deep lakes. As the only girl in the group it was for them unacceptable for me to be a pathetic female so I was forced to do the same. I have never tried anything like it and I am certainly not gonna do it again but it was a fun experience, unbelievable.

We went from one beautiful lake to another and jumped from heights between 6 meters (about 18 feet) and 15 meters (about 45 feet), and yes I managed to do the 15 meters. I started up with the low ones where the boys taught me exactly how to fall and ended up doing the perfect jump. I got a bit to confident though and managed to land on my butt and my bag from a 9 meter high rock. The water felt like hard stone and I lost my breath for about a minute, I felt paralysed for a short while and then it was just gone, no pain. We went home and by then I couldn't sit down, as my butt felt very sore. When we got home I discovered a bruise on the whole one site of my butt and all the way down the back of my leg to my knee....good old me. The pain in my back came later that night and I had to see a physiotherapist regularly the rest of my stay in Australia.

Lichfield: Picture of Will jumping from the top of the cliff, me waiting a bit further down for my turn.

I will still HAVE to say that it was worth it though..hehe...guess it's just something you have to try. After the three weeks in Darwin we went out to Lichfield National Park to work for a week. It was great once again to work in those beautiful surrounding but unfortunately this time we didn't have much time to get around the park. We worked in a little town called Bachelor. A nice little town consisting of two gas stations/shops, a pub and a school and a butterfly farm. That was about it. It was fun chatting with the locals. They were all a bunch off crocodile Dundee's.

We worked around the school building fence around a little protected Forrest, planting trees, spreading seeds, weeding etc. So it was a good week with variation. Me and Ian was now joined up by four new English guys who had their next 20 weeks of work to look forward to and an Irish girl and a Japanese guy who was there for the week. So finally the group had grown. These English guys were hilarious as well. Does English people in general possess a really good humour or was I lucky? This was Ian's last week so it was a bit sad. I spend a lot of time with him and the one of the English guys called Chris.

After Bachelor we went back to work in Darwin and back to live at Frogs Hollow. That weekend before my last week of work I ran into a terrible incident of burglars. Saturday night we all went to bed around three. I was alone in my room as the ATCV had given us the possibility to have boy rooms and girl rooms and I was as usual the only girl. Around five that morning I woke up as a man was sitting next to my bed. He was getting very close and said some horrible things but I was half asleep not thinking strait and didn't realise how dangerous this man was. I had already got use to the open minded backpacker environment and thought he was just a young drunken man who had walked into the wrong room. I got a bit worried as I couldn't get him to leave so I started screaming at him and managed to get him scared that someone would wake up so he left. I went back to bed and next morning I realised most of my stuff was gone. I moved the rest into the boys room as I found that more safe.

I spend the whole day at the police station and at night I went out with Chris and had some drinks on the shock. We slept over at a friends place and went home at seven Monday morning to find that the burglars had been back. They had broken into the boy's room and stolen most of the stuff in there while the three English guys had been sleeping. It was really worrying. What scared me the most was the big knifes they had left behind the night before. The rest of the week was used to get new flight ticket, passport, visa, credit card, backpack etc. etc. All I had left was some clothes. Not much work was done that week.

Despite the coincident I still chose to stay in Darwin for another two weeks. I was finally off work and wanted to travel around and see a bit more. I used the first couple of days to see more of Darwin's facilities. Then I went on a one-day trip back to Lichfield National Park with an English couple. It was a really good laugh and an aboriginal guy who had joined us taught me a lot more than I did already know about the aboriginal religion. It is very complicated and no matter how hard I try to understand and learn about it, it still confuses me, it is very fascinating. And I was impressed by their strong believes.

Later I joined a group of nine to Kakadu National Park. We got a guide and took the four-wheel drive through the amazing landscape. The three day trip contented a lot of rock climbing which I had fallen in love with earlier on and we got to see some amazing rock arts from thousands of years back. Still I learned more about Australia's history while talking to the others. We had to camp both nights but had managed to get by a shop and by some beers so it was some really cosy nights around the fire. Another fantastic experience is when we went sailing down the river and saw the three-meter long crocodiles swimming next to us. We saw a big part of the native wildlife including annoying bugs and insects.

Kakadu: My master photo of a three meter long crocodile in Kakadu

When I was back in Darwin I loved just walking around for hours looking at beaches, people, shops...anything. Just enjoying life all the way, every single breath....I understand why people says backpacking catches you. You just want to continue, there is soo much out there. I loved just being me, walking around in comfortable clothes, no makeup and there was no one telling me how to do things or how to act. And people respected me for being me. That's what I liked the most.

One day an Australian man and I found our selves getting too bored and decided to find some bikes. We had no money to rent so we went around to friends and managed to find a couple who borrowed us theirs for day. Then we decided a direction and went on that way for hours. It was great. When the others were off work I spend most of the time together with Chris who had become like a brother to me. It's great being able to get close to the other sex and being able to keep it on the brother, sister level. We did everything together. We made a rule that every night we had to watch the sunset on a new beach. Unfortunately we only made it a few times as we often had to walk for more than an hour to get there. We were good at being five minutes late. Few nights before I left we heard about a good one down at the harbour and went there for the sunset. It was a surprise when we saw the place; groups of young backpackers were spread over the beach drinking beers while watching the sunset. It was a really nice atmosphere. We got some beers, dipped our feet in the water, admired the stars and went up to get some dinner. We couldn't hold back for a really posh restaurant with dressed up people calling us madam and sir. It was a big change and we felt a bit out of place not being dressed up as the guests around us. We got nice questions from the waiters asking if we were enjoying our honeymoon....hahaha....and so we did. I certainly enjoyed it. Anyway, I could speak forever about Australia. It was an amazing experience.

Chris is still own there. He is writing me many times a week when he can get to the computer telling me what they are doing back in NT. So I can't help missing it a lot. It was strange coming back to Kuching; I was hit by the feeling of restlessness and didn't know what to do with myself. Now I am keeping myself busy again. I got a job at a new bar where I work five nights a week. And I have finally got started with my fitness again. And I am looking for some singing lessons.

Lone Friis Larsen

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