...we climbed a volcano...

and I cried on the way down.

Mount Rinjani is on the island of Lombok, and is the second highest volcano in Indonesia. Pay a man enough money, and he will guide you up to the top and have a friend of his carry all your stuff as well.

Indonesia was the first stop on our world trip. With no plans and no itinerary, we were able to make it up as we went along, and that saw us on the island of Lombok before long. After an eight-hour ferry journey (next time we'll get the speed boat) we arrived in a place that we didn't know...and then were told we needed to get a bus to Sengiggi. Our faith-in-human-kind filter was on high and we thought everyone was ripping us off and trying to capture us for our obviously superior organs - but in the end they just wanted to get us to Sengiggi.

Scooting around on a scooter

Sengiggi is somewhat of a ghost town. There were not many activities except for scooting around on a scooter, drinking cheap beer, watching fat people try to parasail, dodging the hustlers on the beach trying to sell you trinkets and gecko trinkets, and having the runs. Phill perfected the last activity after some dodgy ice in a refreshing Coke, and I provided much entertainment to the lady at the corner store trying to act out Phill's symptoms. Endo-Stop, for those playing at home: look for it by name.

Luckily thanks to some massive storms our guided hike was postponed a couple of days so Phill could rebuild his strength. We still started our hike in the rain, in the dark, and sweltering by sunrise. We had a guide and for the life of me I can't remember his name, and we had a Lombokian sherpa who carried a pole across his shoulders with two massive baskets holding all our camping and cooking gear. Phill and I had nothing to worry about except one foot in front of the other. For eight hours. Up.

The view from the crater rim - volcanic
ash and smoke

We went from dense farmland with little chicken sheds every now and then, through dense jungle, into denser (more dense?) jungle with monkeys, and finally to a clearing from which you could see for miles, if it wasn't cloudy. The exploding part of the volcano itself is in a lake in the crater of the greater volcano. Our camp for the night was just below the outside ridge, above the lake with views to the west and Bali (apparently). We shared camp with a lovely French couple who we overtook at one of the rest stops on the way up. Even with their minimal English and our appalling French, they managed to invite us to their home for a visit in France (although I may have asked if they would sleep with me tonight, which gives it a bit more context). Our guide (let's call him Dewi) cooked up an awesome meal for us - fried rice with fried eggs and veges, on the top of a volcano! How do you carry up eggs without breaking them?? Fair dinkum. We had a good look around the crater, got lots of photos, then went in search of the perfect place to have a shit.

Look, over there! It must be a perfect toilet spot!

It's an important camping skill, finding that perfect toilet spot. You want enough coverage to provide privacy, but not too much to block the undoubtedly awesome view that turns a toilet stop in to a 'Bliss Piss'. You need loose soil and ground coverings so as to either dig a hole, or cover up the unmentionables once the procedure is complete. A slight downward gradient affords more comfort on the haunches, but beware the risk of runoff. And toilet paper - don't forget the toilet paper. Never leave the toilet paper to someone else, for such a big responsibility is often too overwhelming for lesser skilled individuals.

So we camped the night in torrential rain, with the mangy dogs who had followed us the whole way up whimpering outside our tent, rain sneaking in every which way, the ground feeling particularly volcanic-rocky underneath us, and the I-Phone battery depleting so I couldn't read any more 'Classic Books on the I-Phone' to send me to sleep - Alice in Wonderland just didn't cut it.

Looking surprisingly chipper after a night
with no sleep.

The next morning, the storm had cleared a bit and we were able to see to the sea (not very far, really) and our next destination - the Gili Islands. We had another hearty breakfast courtesy of Dewi, and began the clamber down. I'll tell you this for free - hiking up inevitably means hiking down, and it's not as satisfying. Hiking up you've got a view to look forward to, and...well, that might be the main reason. Hiking down - you've seen it all before! The only difference is which muscle group you're using to the extreeeemmeee. I've never been in so much self-inflicted or inevitable and unaviodable pain...who would have thought that hip muscles could take such a beating? I started crying about two thirds of the way down, when everything just got a little bit emotional. I hadn't slept the night before, my muscles were seizing up so that I could only take a step down with my right (or left - irrelevant) leg and I was at that ten-days-away-from-home-and-shit-we've-got-alot-more-bloody-adventures-to-get-through stage of homesickness. I was hot, sweaty and dirty. Thank god I had found that perfect toilet spot the night before; the thought of that view got me through.

And then we made it down. Remember that time when we climbed a volcano...and I cried on the way down? I forgot it soon, because these were our next activities:

Going Tom Hanks on a coconut

 

 

Getting acquainted with the reefs off Gili T

Watching the sunrise over the afore-mentioned
Mount Rinjani

Dressing and posing like my mum

Watching the torrential rain from the
comfort of a bar which also sold
particularly cheap alcohol.

Where: Mount Rinjani, Lombok, Indonesia

When: February, 2010

...we made cakes which looked like our faces.

Phill and I just played a game of photo roulette to decide what I was going to blog about this rainy Wednesday afternoon (it's not actually that rainy, we're just lazy and tired from a bit of a stroll through the bush). And this is what we came up with:

Ahh, the Tooke.

Tooke Street was the fifth and final house I was to live in during my time in Newcastle for uni and that brief start of a potential career in television. It definitely had the most character and potential - at least that's what the real estate agent claimed. It was an old pile of bricks, falling down from the ground on up, mouldy to the point of potential lung diseases and filthy from whatever squatters squat there before us ('us' is the other two lovely cakes in the picture - Lucy and Clare).

In any university town, there's a period around the end of January every year, when the country kids come back to the city and need to find a place to live (or squat) before uni starts in February. It's a stressful time of year, especially when your other two country kids are still in the country and can't help out with searching, applying, being denied, and eventually cleaning the above mentioned Tooke once we were accepted. You start out the year with such high expectations of a brand new house, ocean views, dishwasher, and a vegetable patch - but end up with the Tooke.

Once you get past the thread-bare carpet, mouldy bathroom ceiling, cobwebs behind the doors, overgrown lawn, flaky ceiling plasters, and that old/dead/damp people smell, the Tooke isn't really that bad. You can make any house into a home with four important elements - housemates, furniture, knick-knacks, and baking.

Early morning drinking AND a Kitchen Party!
What more could you ask for?!

I know Lucy and Clare from my brief stint at International House college at the University of Newcastle. I shared a flat with Clare and Lucy lived close by, and there were many shenanigans in that semester of college life. I was not allowed back to college for the next year (very unfairly if you ask me) so after my Christmas holidays at home in Armidale, I was able to take a massive, and thus far extremely successful step and move in with Phill in a tiny flat in Newcastle's Bar Beach. That was 2008. In 2009, Phill moved home to help run the family business and I had the task of finding that elusive rental property.

The Tooke has location, location, location down pat. It was about a seven minute walk to Bar Beach, three blocks to Darby Street and two to Darby's Pies. I could walk to work at NBN in 15 minutes...or drive in two. Centennial Park and the Cooks Hill Bowlo were across the street, and Coles was an evening stroll away. And then they built an Aldi, whacko!

New Years Eve at the Tooke, 2009

In every urban street, there is a token dilapidated dwelling, and ours was it. But it didn't matter! We had friends, jobs and studies, activities galore! We lived in an awesome city! We had every type of baking pan, multiple types of tea, and a collection of beer and wine bottles lining our loungeroom wall. We held dinner parties, pot lucks, games nights, pre-drinks, Australia Day (paddling) pool parties, formal dress Christmas parties, New Years Eve parties, graduation parties. We had friends and family sleep on our futon, Dads help mow the lawn and plaster the ceiling, workmates and Barry the friendly neighbour donate furniture.

There were a couple of times that city living got to us country girls. I was woken once by a girl peeing in the garden outside my bedroom window. I was woken another time by a phone that someone had dropped in same garden. I was woken yet another time by Clare running into my room screaming that there was someone at her window. There was, and his bike was still leaning against the front fence. We called the police, I guarded the door and his bike while Clare turned on all the lights. I turned for one second to make a very witty joke to Clare, and the sneaky bugger managed to swipe his bike and ride off into the darkness. We slept on the couch that night. After my time at the Tooke had ended, there were (I think?) two break-ins, a couple of computers nicked, but everyone safe and sound in the end. Home contents insurance, for those playing at home. 

In the three years of the Tooke, there were multiple house mates coming and going. Lucy lasted the longest (and not just because of the alliteration), and every new housemate has different stories, different memories and possibly different lung diseases.

But it was a good time. Look how big our delicious smiles are!

Lucy, Clare and Kate:
Tooke Street Pioneers

Where: 47 Tooke Street, Cooks Hill, Newcastle

When: 2009