AUSTRALIA
- [QLD] Tamborine Mountain,
[NSW] Nimbin (Wk.1
of 1week)
Week
57 of World Tour
400th
Day Celebration
Finally, it was Saturday,
July 3, 2004. The last day of my 400 Day LETS Odyssey had arrived.
When I set off from
Melbourne on May 31 last year, I never imagined I’d be starting
this momentous occasion by working on a book proposal for a leading
Australian publisher.
Christine managed to tear
me away from the computer long enough to join her and Ruby for a picnic
lunch in her backyard. Ruby is 70, from a German backgound and is very
spiritual, like Christine and many others on Tamborine Mountain, which
is a high energy location sought by many women who believe in spirituality.
But as soon as I’d
eaten I managed to escape back to my computer where I continued working
on my book proposal.
However, I wasn’t going
to let this day slip by with just the memory of me sitting in front
of my laptop. So, after a couple of suggestions from Christine, at 6pm
I abandoned my writing for the day and set off to celebrate with Christine
and Ruby. And we were going to do this in Tamborine Mountain style.
Our first stop was to the
supermarket where we bought a roast chicken and the inevitable bottle
of wine. Dinner was going to be followed by going to the movies, so
we found a picnic table on the nature strip going down the middle of
the road opposite the cinema. Cleaning the bird droppings off the table
wasn’t so easy. Not only didn’t we have any towels with
us, but the sun had gone down nearly an hour ago, and we only had street
lighting to work with. Nevertheless, we managed to dodge the little
scats and began our dinner with a celebratory toast to the past 400
days. Cutlery was also one of our oversights, so we dug in with our
fingers and turned that fat little chicken into a pile of dried up bones.
The ladies had the foresight to bring a salad with them, so dinner was
a little more civilised than just ripping into a roast chicken. Thankfully,
some tissues appeared from somewhere, so we were able to wipe our hands
clean, though you can never get rid of that sticky-fingers feeling.
It was almost movie time,
so we walked across the road to the cinema. Now here’s why I was
really excited about going to the Zamia Theatre. I’d been all
over the world over the last couple of years, but I’d never been
to a cinema quite like this one. This theatre only had 2 sessions …
a month! Both happened on the same day, and always on a Saturday. The
theatre operated out of an old wooden hall, maybe 100 years old, and
was run by volunteers administered by the Rain-forest Trust. Actually,
it was only a part-time theatre, so the seats were set-up before the
first session and then put away after the second session. But it was
much easier than it sounds because the seats were 3-seater fold-up deck
chairs. Yes! Simple wooden frames with a piece of canvas running from
top to bottom. Simple, they were. Comfortable, they weren’t. Especially
without any heating in the hall. This didn’t seem to bother the
locals, however, who all turned up with coats, scarves, pillows and
blankets. Us included.
The movie we watched was
The Girl With The Pearl Ear-ring, about a famous 17th century artist.
Typically, the movie was more of a love story than about his artistic
genius. I guess you’ve got to appeal to the masses, and yes, I
still enjoyed it.
But the end of my
400 Day LETS Odyssey was also acknowledged by a very special visitor.
As we drove back home, Ruby looked up at a bright light in the sky and
said, “Christine, I think that’s another Flying Saucer”.
This
article is taken from the ebook,
400-Day LETS Odyssey
About
the book
|
James
Taris web sites
JamesTaris.com
LETS-Linkup.com
Rich-Bastards.com
Honey-BeeBooks.com
TheGloryOfAthens.com
TravelWithoutMoney.com
ChineseArt-ChineseArt.com
ShanghaiPhotoGuide.com
ShockProofMaterial.com
2pups.com
