Tasmania

The wind is righteous, but so are the views. In pursuit of the view I was rocked like a baby on Cradle Mountain. It was here that I came to think of hiking in a new light; essentially doing a bunch of walking to take off and put on your clothes a ridiculous amount of times all the while trying to not get lost. I got to this conclusion while floating on a cloud of the all consuming smell of eucalyptus and the same, same, but different culture and terrains.

I spent most my recent days at a place where you put a scoop of sawdust in the toilet after you poop instead of flushing. The two times I walked  barefoot I ended up getting bit by a jack jumper — soon found out that the anaphylactic shock is one of the main reasons for death in Tasmania— still not dead yet.

In the heart of what felt like the real life inspiration of Fern Gully, I became more and more conscious of my consumption and the impact it has on life around me. Fact of the matter is we as humans are  heterotrophs... we have to consume for survival but how present are we in that consumption? I stayed at on off-grid permaculture community where it’s the norm to grow what you eat, have power from solar and hydro and cook your food/heat your house with a wood burning fire. The people that make up the town of Lorinna come from all around the world with various backgrounds and experience. En route to Cradle Mountain I caught a lift from Bart, who happens to be one of the original homesteaders. He got his lucky break when a handful of loggers were denied the land of Lorinna due to legal matters and he and a couple of friends went in on a plot of land. Thirty some odd years later and a couple generations of offspring (who have since returned to raise their families here) and he’s still an integral part of the community.

While in Tasmania I escaped the gully and spent a few days in Hobart — highlight here includes going to MONA, the museum of sex and death. I’ll tell you this, my awe and admiration of the human’s relationship to their very common but personal experience of digestion aka their bowel movements aka pooping was satisfied by an art piece on the intimacies of Cloaca. Cloaca is defined as a common cavity at the end of the digestive tract for the release of both excretory and genital products in vertebrates (except most mammals) and certain invertebrates. Specifically, the cloaca is present in birds, reptiles, amphibians, most fish, and monotremes. Wim Delvoye, the creator of said ‘poop machine’ brings together biologists, medical experts, artists and public audiences in a common conversation about the intimate matter. Art has always unconsciously been influencing our identity as a reflection of ourselves and this piece does just that. Naturally drawn to this for more than one reason but most notably for the mere fact of science and art coming together on an engaging and relatable matter.

FYI: Watching a machine poop is like watching paint dry, or so I thought. After twenty minutes of no material being manifested I decided to move on. I asked a gallery attendant if there was an issue and turns out the machine wasn’t fed and if you’re not fed then you don’t have any substance to dispose of — same goes for artificial intelligence.

Enough about that. I finished off my Aussie adventure with a trek through the Grampians and took the slow way back to Melbourne byways The Great Ocean Road. There was more wind and coastal happenings that reminded me a lot of the Oregon Coast. I had my last flat white and boogied onward to Vietnam with a quick stopover in Singapore.

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