The more astute amongst you will realise that the title of this post is me trying to be clever/amusing. You can’t plant trees in deep space for lots of reasons. For a start there is no nice soil, or gravity and it’s much too cold for gardening. However, I did spend 2 days at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex planting trees around a creek. It was super cool, but sadly I have no photos to share with you as cameras aren’t allowed in the complex. I have no idea why, it’s just a series of big satellite dishes. I wonder if any of the top security dudes at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex have seen Goldeneye? Pierce Brosnan and the yummy Sean Bean have a massive punch up on the exact same dish and that’s been on TV.
I think that’s been my favourite thing about the whole volunteering experience – going to places that are far off the well-worn backpacker trail. I would never have got down the coast to the stunning Bateman’s Bay as it’s essentially a holiday destination for other Aussies – it would be like someone coming to England and making a bee line for North Devon. Deep Space wasn’t really on my agenda either but it was pretty interesting, and we got a special tour of the control room. Exciting eh? Well no, not so much – it was full of balding middle aged men sat in front of PC’s, much like Birmingham City Council.
Canberra, where we spent week 2 of our volunteering, wasn’t high up my agenda of places to visit either but I’m glad I spent some time there. The Nation’s capital has a reputation for being a bit staid, and for having virtually no nightlife, but we managed to amuse ourselves pretty well for a weekend. We visited parliament, rode bikes around Lake Burley Griffin, and went to a few galleries and museums. The evenings were rather harder work, as there really isn’t much going on, but we did chance upon a comedy night at the AFL club so we thought “why not?”. While it wasn’t a bad night over all we did have to sit through a tortuous 10 minute routine ripping the piss out of Germany, which included a rendition of James Blunt’s ‘You’re Beautiful’ in the style of a Nazi officer, while sat next to fellow volunteer Simon, who is, of course – German. They’re not too into political correctness these Aussies.
The national passion for all things Australian and suspicion of all things not Australian also spills over into their approach to conservation. Any plant or tree not native to Australia is classed as an ‘environmental weed’ and is duly ripped up and replaced with something suitably Aussie. To is end we spent a lot of our second week cutting down healthy trees and pulling up pretty plants on the grounds that they were ‘non-natives’. This included a whole day spent ripping up African Daisies which, back when I had a garden, I remember buying from B&Q at not inconsiderable expense. Crazy plant xenophobia! The most amusing and ironic part of this scenario was that the people doing all of chopping and weeding were mostly non-natives themselves! Transported over from Europe at an earlier date, much like the poor plants we were destroying.
Getting to know the other volunteers from all different countries was probably my other favourite thing about the 2 weeks. We had toasts in 4 or 5 different languages every time we opened a beer and we worked our way through a few national dishes over the evenings. We did have a couple of Aussies in the volunteer house, which meant that we got to eat immense Aussie burgers complete with pineapple, beetroot, bacon, eggs – you name it! We also had Dutch pancakes, German meatballs and an English fry up (made by my own fair hands). I also discovered that old English sitcom ‘Yes Minister’ is huge in Holland and that we English really do drink too much tea!
So would I recommend volunteering as a holiday choice? Definitely. I met great people, saw some beautiful parts of Australia and learnt a lot about it’s animal and plant life. Yes I got sore muscles – I’m a weedy office dweller really – I got cuts and bruises, I got rained on and I got attacked by leeches and ticks but it was all brilliant fun. Or maybe it’s one of things like childbirth or Guide Camp where by some magical process your brain tricks you into thinking ‘it wasn’t so bad’ so that you’ll do it all again in the future! I guess I’ll never know……
