So I finally decided to move to Alice Springs. I found a job with Life without Barriers that sounds pretty great. I sent an email yesterday saying I would start in January next year. For the moment I think I'd feel useful enough to possibly justify the stupendous quantity of resources consumed maintaining us white people in our luxury desert lives. Although still not really.
So I'll probably be a bit stuck here for some time, because I'm still not going to fly and it really is a terribly long way from anyway. Even driving 3000km to Sydney isn't particularly low-impact living. However, I am going to drive back to my old home and collect my corporeal life into the back of a ute or camper.
I am slightly devastated to be leaving Sydney, because I quite loved my lives there. There are so many dear dear loves that I will not be able to sit about with anymore. Perhaps I will have some sort of Ahoy There and Goodbye party.
There are already some vegans in Alice Springs. They are the hardcore separatist sort, so I will have to lift my game a tad.
I'm not sure where I will live yet. But I think I want to build a house. It will probably be made of mud. Like the oven I built perhaps. Except the house would be less dome-shaped and more house-shaped. And with bigger bricks. Chinese take-away containers make pretty good brick moulds for oven bricks, but maybe not good house bricks. Quite small bricks. I will plan a bit of a house over summer, when it is too hot to leave our carbon-fired cool bubbles. And then build it next autumn and winter. I have dreams of a 12v solar house, with no bore water connection at all. That is my dream. Tough dream I reckon. But we will see.
Crunch and I are also applying for a town camp community centre coordinator job. It would be pretty great I think. I also think we won't get it. You can quickly get pulled into the Alice Springs utopia of endless opportunities for under-qualified, under-achieving white folks powered by Indigenous money that the government seems desperate to avoid actually giving to anyone Indigenous. Want to try to avoid that. Probably won't but.
I am happy to move here. It is a nice place except for the racism and horrific, crying, miserable stories of what people do and have done here.
And it is beautiful. The mountains don't judge any of us.
Thanks for sharing.
The Chinese take-away containers are big and round shaped here. Could you build a house out of that?
Jo / 12:11am / 20 November 2010
Maybe you could. Although I think rectangle ones are easier. They were actually a remarkably good shape. The taper in the tub is really handy for pulling the mould off the mud and for tricky corners and thinks in the actual mud dome.
Ryan / 11:23am / 20 November 2010
Hey – how exciting that you’ve found somewhere beautiful to live….! The MacDonnell Ranges are gorgeous, aren’t they. I want to walk the Larapinta Trail one day… One day! Sorry that we won’t be able to be friends for a while (!). And sorry that you only got to experience Loving Hut the one time before leaving Sydney!! xo
Claire / 5:07pm / 21 November 2010
Hey you!!
I don’t know what to say except you would never be a waste of government money. Believe that!!! xx
gem / 10:56pm / 22 November 2010
How can you possibly claim to speak for the mountains like that?
Libby / 9:11am / 25 November 2010