Saturday November 5, 2016 probably around 6:00pm, the group headed out to a pizza place for dinner. The end of another fantastic week, we were ready to head to Australia and start planting some trees. Not knowing anything about what we would be doing, our lovely OE’ s gave us the mountainous task of dividing the group. Many discussions took place, a vote was made.
Zack, Stevie, Teddy, Kate, Tara and Abigail in one group and Melanie, Giovanna, Hannah, Kevin, Ethan and Bronson in the other.
At the time the splitting was painful, like taking a piece of pizza and having all the cheese slide off. Looking back now it shows how close we are that none of us want to part with each other and let me tell you now many hugs, stories and smiles where shared when we came together.
Landing, collecting bags, not losing anyone, finding our train, getting off at the right stop, finding our contact, we made it to New Castle. Conservation Volunteers then drove us to a house where the latter group would be staying, they would be driving 5 minutes to plant trees for the 20 million tree project to be completed by 2020. The former group was to head up to Musswellbrook and take a 45 minute drive to plant trees with the Green Army (an organization for young people to get work experience and help out the environment) on the mayer of Musswellbrooks land.
My groups days consisted of getting up at 7:00am, eating breakfast, making lunch, getting dressed (long pants and long sleeve shirt…. yes we were all very hot), morning meeting at 8 by the van, drive, get plants, plant plants, 10:30am tea time, plant some more, 12:30pm drive to the park for lunch. After lunch we would decide what to do under the guidance of our lovely leader for the week, Elise. One day we went to a pool, another we went to the library and rented a movie, we went to the park and on the last day we planted the last couple trees including the 5000th tree on the property *cheers*. Once back at our amazing cottage we would make fantastic meals such as burritos, pad thai, make your own pizza and BBQ (including kangaroo burgers which the meat eaters described to the vegetarian as a less fatty mixture of beef and pork). The evenings consisted of talking, a movie night or Australian reality TV, a poker night and simply enjoying each others company as we got to know each other even better than we did before.
The others groups days, from what I have pieced together through the pictures and stories shown to me, consisted of breakfast, drive, plant, drive, walk, library, lunch, crossing paths, laughing, talking, dinner, watching movies from the collection at the house, and of course Coco Monde (a chocolatery that I tried when my group returned from the persistence of the other group as they had gone every night as part of their daily routine).
I am unfortunately not doing the week justice, to describe every second would be as satisfying as eating every last crumb of the peppermint slice I got at Coco Monde but it would simply and sadly take to long. I will say tree planting is a hard yet easy and rewarding rhythm to get into.
From there we all reunited in Newcastle at the house the latter group stayed at, we exchanged gifts and letters we picked up for each other and they showed us around town. Saturday November 12th at 1:30pm we left our home to arrive roughly 4 hours later at our new home for 2 nights in Sydney. We got settled, got dinner and woke up to a day all to ourselves, at 8:00pm we met and once again shared the plethora of crazy experiences each one of us had.
From trains to trees this week as I have said and will continue to say was FANTASTIC!
Peace out,
Abigail