Day 117 Bundagen Tuesday 2nd October 2012

Hi All,

It was actually hard to awaken this morning, must have been the bath last night, I slept extraordinarily well, but the light streaming in the window would not be dulled (ahh no blinds), so we arose and breakfasted.

Shunyam wrote up the list of jobs which will give us plenty of variety over the next couple of weeks. Today it was a bit more gardening and organising some fruit to take down to the co-op. We also moved our trailer into Shunyams yard to appease the neighbours and free up a parking space.

At the "main house" a cafe is run each Tuesday, and the co-op is open which offers a buy and sell option, grains, breads, eggs etc are sourced locally and pre-ordered or purchased on the day. Community members can also sell excess produce from their garden. The co-op now has one person who does the organising, previously the responsibility was shared, apparently this arrangement is more effective. It will be interesting to get a bit more information about the workings of this co-op, as it was one of the considerations of the Tasman Village.

We had lunch in the cafe, well actually sitting outside. It is more of a canteen (line up, served at the window, find a seat). The food was excellent felafel, rice, yoghurt dip, chickpea dip, and Mediterranean salad. After lunch we wandered about and had a look at the school building and library. The school is no longer operating, children go to schools outside the community, a decision taken some years ago, however a preschool is still run within the community.

Water tank art

We drove past the meditation centre at a distance, a place to visit, which has some interesting architecture. There is lots of artwork here, I managed to take some pictures of painted rain water tanks, and will take snaps of the mosaics when we next visit the main house.

Python

Finishing off our days jobs we headed to the "woofers" shower, outside the other cabin, as the shower at our cabin needs tiling. It was there we spied the python laying contentedly half in the down pipe, we estimated it was about 2 metres long.

I am not sure whether Simon was kidding when he suggested pulling it out by the tail to get a better picture, thankfully he heeded my caution.

Freshened up we headed back to Bellingen for dinner with Kevin, Larry and Corey and helpxer Daniel. We had a fabulous evening, great food, nice wine, lots of laughs, wonderful company. Not sure what they call their restaurant, but I reckon they just earned their 4th hat!

Choc Mint Pavlova

The happy group

Cheers

Susan