4:20 Friday - raw safari

…The night is a resounding success. We fill the car with food and only get yelled at by a security guard once.
We get back to the house, tired, smelly, and smeared with yoghurt, but victorious.
Bread, fruit, vegetables, watermelon, strawberries, meat, sausages, a pork roast, a leg of lamb, eggs, cakes, muffins, milk, chocolates…

Friday Afternoon, 4:20 PM: Melbourne, Australia.

Ash parks his battered Suzuki Swift in a laneway, and we walk around the corner to the traffic lights.
Five lanes of peak hour tear past us in both directions.
“This is a my favourite spot” Ash comments as he unpacks his clubs, “lots of traffic and nice long red lights.”
The lights change, the green man lights up, and ash runs out onto the pedestrian crossing, waves to the afternoon commuters, and starts juggling. Three clubs, three minutes. He finishes with a flourish, takes a bow, and as the red man starts flashing, jogs between the queued cars, hat raised, collecting coins.
The reactions of drivers are hilarious. Some people smile and laugh, some people stare straight ahead, stony faced, trying to ignore this unwelcome interruption of their commute. kids squeal, girls giggle, and the odd driver yells abuse.
Ash keeps the show going for two hours. Then the cops roll by and flash their lights.
“Quitting time” Ash says, throwing his clubs back in the bag. We scoot around the corner and count up the money on the hood of the Suzuki. In two hours of traffic light busking, Ash has raised just over a hundred dollars.
“Thats the rent taken care of for the week” Ash says happily. “We’ll get the groceries tonight”.

(Top: Ash strutting his chops at the lights.)
(Below: Juggling HQ – Ash’s training gym.)

Ash spends the afternoon practising in his home-rehearsal space, juggling knives, balls, clubs, scythes and various other things, sometimes while riding a unicycle.

About nine o’clock Ash announces: “time for some bum-stuff.”
“Bum-stuff?” I ask.
“Time to go dumpster diving” Ash explains. “Bum-stuff: you know? Stuff bums do.”
“Aren’t supermarket bins in Melbourne usually locked to keep bums like us out?” I ask.
“Well, it just so happens, a friend of a friend of mine has a bum-sympathetic friend who works for the company that collects the garbage from all the supermarkets in Melbourne. This friend has to carry around the key for all the bins when he does his rounds – and because he is bum-sympathetic, he had a duplicate key made up, and gave it to my friend’s friend.”
“Nice one… so you’re saying we have a key that opens the locks on all the supermarket dumpsters in Melbourne?”
“Bingo!”
So which supermarket are we going to?”
“All of them!” Ash declares. “To the bum-mobile!”

Me, Ash, and Ash’s girlfriend, Tania, jump in the Suzuki and make a tour of North Melbourne’s supermarket dumpsters: two Woolworths, three Coles, and a couple of Aldi’s.
The night is a resounding success. We fill the car with food and only get yelled at by a security guard once.
We get back to the house, tired, smelly, and smeared with yoghurt, but victorious.
Bread, fruit, vegetables, watermelon, strawberries, meat, sausages, a pork roast, a leg of lamb, eggs, cakes, muffins, milk, chocolates… there is enough to feed Ash’s entire share-house for a week. Most of the food is clean, in packets, and still cold from the fridge. Some stuff is a day or two over date, but most of it looks as good as the stuff on the shelves. At the second Aldi we even score a slab of Tiger Lager.
Ash grins with satisfaction. “I love living in a wasteful society” he chuckles.
Adding up the sticker prices, we estimate the value of our haul at around $500.

I cook up a huge meal for us – roast lamb, potato wedges, garden salad, with banana cake for desert. Me, Tania, Ash and the housemates eat ourselves stupid, and toast our corporate sponsors with recycled beer.
Bum stuff!

(Below: Tania and Ash, with just a small part of our awesome dumpster haul.)

Fri 5 June, 4:20

I meet up with Craig in Sydney. He’s staying with his parents in Castle Hill while he finishes off a few days of landscaping work.
We spend a couple of days chilling in wintery Sydney, before we hit the road and head north.

Craig is leaving his beloved Landcruiser behind. I have persuaded him to give hitchhiking a go. It’s a shame really, because the ‘Cruiser has an awesome new hood ornament (see pic above).

We are on a mission.
After freezing our arses off for a month in Gippsland, at Rainbow Gathering, we vowed to find tropical places to play in. We both love the beach, and are fed up with winter. No more sleeping in three layers of clothing, and flaking ice off our tents in the morning. The plan is to head north, until we find sun-soaked beaches, where we can play music, get high, and engage in intellectual conversation with people in bikinis.

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The third member of our northward expedition is KC, Craig’s gorgeous and lovable sidekick. She is a great asset to us when we hitchhike. Everyone I’ve ever met who hitchhikes with a dog says the same thing: “you get rides faster with a dog standing beside you.” Seems to work. We get rides quickly, and lots of people tell us they only stopped because they saw KC.
As well as being an awesome hitcher, KC is also a talented singer. Jamming at Rainbow Gathering, I discovered that if I played an A/D harmony KC would sing along and riff with me! That’s money in the bank for busking!

(Below: me and KC the singing pooch heading north out of Sydney.)

(Below: Emma, our new buddy and host at Whytaliba, chilling out in her cabin with her candy and her chainsaw.)

Friday Afternoon-ish (4:20..?)

There’s a little town just east of Glenn Innes, called Whytaliba.
Whytaliba is a place with a legendary reputation. There are stories about survivalists, hillbillies, anarchists, bikeys and ganja – lots and lots of ganja.

Craig and I stand on the side of the road outside Glenn Innes waiting for a ride. It’s just after four, and the sun is already getting close to the horizon.
After a good hour, a small car pulls up.
“You going to Whytaliba?” the driver asks us. “That’s where I live. Come on.”
We pile into the car with Emma, and her massive dog, named Ochre.
Emma is a second generation Whytaliban she tells us.
“My dad was one of the guys who was around in the beginning” Emma says. “I don’t live out there all the time, but I’m building a little hut in the bush out there so I can chill out when I want to get away from town for a while.”

Whytaliba is less like a town and more like an illicit agricultural community. The houses are widely scattered across a huge forested valley.
Emma’s hut is perched on a hillside, surrounded by forest. There is one room already built, and she is in the process of adding a second room.

Craig and I spend a week hanging out with Emma and her family, and KC makes friends with Ochre and the other dogs.
We do a some hut building, play some music, do a lot of cooking and eating, and get well and truly baked.
In the evenings, Emma’s dad tells us stories about the Whytaliba old-days: tales about gang battles, court cases, droughts, festivals and cabin fever.
“Things are a lot more settled around here now” he tells us, “but there were days when I used to walk around the property with a gat strapped to my waist. We never knew when we were going to get raided by the gangs, coming after our dope. These days it’s pretty peaceful, thankfully. I used to be a bit of a die-hard in my day, but In my middle age I prefer a quiet life. We’re pretty relaxed around here nowadays. Have a couple of pipes of a morning, do a couple hours work after lunch, clock-off about four. No point getting stressed. We’re on a different schedule here. In Whytaliba, it’s almost always 4:20 Friday.”

(Below: Emma’s cabin was a scene of feverish construction activity… between 3:00 and 4:20 every afternoon.)