Letters from Australia . . .

I was set to start a tomato picking job on the 17th of May, but it was pushed back to first week of June, so I have spent the last couple weeks in a tourist town on the coast called Airlie Beach. Sleeping under the stars and living simply as a sort of personal Thoreauvian experiment in minimal living. You all know I'm fond of these. I have met some lovely people who have taken me sailing, where I climbed the mast with a rope in my teeth and was caught in a storm that broke one of the sail booms and we had to limp back to the lee of an island to escape an angered Poseidon, (or I am perhaps dramatizing somewhat, but the facts here presented are sound) or hooked me up in great angelic generosities with an ocean rafting trip out to the beautiful Whitsunday Islands and snorkeling on the inner reef of the Great Barrier Reef. Visibility was just OK, saw plenty of fish and coral. Lunched on the beautiful Whitehaven Beach, saw giant lizards and eagles and chased the sun and its sharp but diminishing light on its course West at the end of the day. I hope to get out to the real reef before long, since I'm in the area.

My picking job has been pushed back another couple/few weeks, so I'm starting to look for other work, but am not opposed to playing the hobo these few more weeks and getting a more Thoreau (if you mind the pun) experience out of my current experiment and wait for the fruit picking to begin. I think I will be leaving Australia for NZ sooner than planned. I'd planned on November, but may go in may to work on a dairy there in August, which is calfing season. Would be a good experience to get some dairy work. It is at a farm where my sister is nannying for some months. Also would be nice to get my months of work out of the way at the beginning of the trip and have the rest to travel. Or so the plan is going in. You learn real quick when you travel like this that plans change, and that you ought to change out of planning altogether and see what presents itself in the moment. Be where you are!

Well, I guess that's the quick and fast. I hope everyone is well and living. This newsletter thing seems to have taken on a sort of dramatic narrative voice. I've been reading Dickens, if an explanation is needed.

-Jacob