The Box, Part 1

So most of you would have realised that I was gone for a month, and now that I'm back most of you are asking "How was the trip?" with my general response being "wicked cool, it was totally awesome."
I've decided to write about what happened, even though for the most part it can't really be conveyed to anyone. The few people I have tried to explain it to haven't really understood the meaning behind it, and so lives the memory of the greatest time in my life, alone in my head, and of those who I shared it with.


I went to America. An organised trip through ISV - International Student Volunteers - that aims to take Uni students overseas for some volunteer work and a wicked cool time. You don't have to be a uni student though so if anyone is interested go check out www.isvonline.com or ask me.

The first two weeks of the trip were spent on Catalina Island which is about an hour's boat ride west of Los Angeles. This is where we helped the Catalina Island Conservancy for our volunteer project. The Island has one main town, Avalon which is really small. The rest of the Island is mountainous and natural. Most people live in Avalon. The Island was quite arid, lots of cactus and it really looked like Outback Australia, dry and hot, even in winter.

Our accommodation for these two weeks was spent 20 minutes away from Avalon, at the Laura Stein Volunteer Camp. There were two large tents with 4 bunk beds in each, sleeping 8. One tent was the girls tent, the other had to be co-ed because of the large amount of girls on the trip.
We had quite an impressive kitchen with a refrigerator, barbeque, and gas stove. We had all the utensils we needed to cook dinner and had industrial sinks to clean dishes. There was no electricity up here so everything was run off propane gas bottles.
We had a fire pit at the camp which is where we spent almost every night. We'd eat dinner, talk, gossip, toast marshmallows and whatever else until we went off to bed. It was always freezing at night so the fire provided us with warmth. It was nice being outside. I really miss the fire.
We also had two flushing toilets and two showers- one indoor and one outdoor, with hot water. Camping with luxury you could call it.

So what did we have to do? We assisted the Conservancy with a few different tasks. There were two main ones though. We helped build 6 fences in 3 days (it was a record might I add). Thankfully this wasn't three days back to back because it was such hard work. Pounding poles into the ground, which was sometimes really hard, while standing on a ladder on a slope with a few people holding it. The purpose of the fences was to keep the Deer out of the areas we had enclosed. There had been a fire on the Island and the Conservancy were doing experiments on which plants grew back after a fire. The Deer eat the new plants as they grow so they needed to be kept out with an 8 foot fence.

We spent another four days removing an invasive weed called Fennel. I'm so sick of Fennel I don't care if I never see it again. It was growing around cactus so we had to cut cactus out the way, cut the Fennel at the base (it was dead but had to be cut and broken down) and then snap it and leave it on the ground so the nutrients could be absorbed back into the Earth.
It took a whole day to remove every bit of Fennel from the site we were working on.
The next three days (yes we had four in a row doing this) we planted native plants in the area. - California Coastal Sage. Yes I remembered that can you believe it. We planted 750 between the group which was heaps! Not allof us were planting at once. The ground was a bit hard so some people were digging holes with an Auger, and then others were removing the excess dirt from them with a manual hole digger. At the end of the four days though the area looked heaps better.

We also spent two days at the Native Plant Nursery. We helped clean it up a bit and transplanted California Coastal Sage from small pots into bigger ones so they could continue growing until they are ready to be planted. Basically we were involved in the whole process. We transplanted seedlings into bigger pots and then planted them into the ground.

We cleaned up a couple of the beaches on the Island too. Basically the wind and water current brings rubbish from the mainland to the Island and it gets stuck. We found heaps of Disneyland balloons and strings. We even found Wildman's Hut (haha). It's a story on the Island about a guy who mystery just walked into the mountains and now spends his life haunting people. We stole his cup and trashed it. Serves you right Wildman!

We had a couple of days off while we were working. Usually spent in Avalon washing our clothes and doing some shopping, quickly checking emails and calling home. On one Sunday though we went to a private beach and had an awesome barbeque lunch. Some people went Kayaking. I climbed a cliff and took photos of them Kayaking. We played games on the beach, including 'Whats the time Mr Wolf.' Ok don't laugh, we were all Uni students and we all just had a massive good time playing kids games.

That's the hard bit I think, trying to explain to people how good a time it was over there. I miss everyone I went with, the games we played, the talking around the fire, encouraging each other when we worked and worked and worked. Cooking dinner for each other and being like family. It was an awesome time those first two weeks on Catalina Island.

And to those people I went with - remember, you can't shrug a shrotum or shrotum a shrug!!

-Tim.