Oh yeah, and there was a wood fire-heated hot tub. You haven’t known Jacuzzi-induced, skin-melting satisfaction until you slip into the steaming hot goodness of a hot tub you’ve heated from a pile of wood you’ve split yourself. Just sayin’.
Leanne never showed impatience; instead she just knew the best way to do things, and there were way too many things still to do to wait for me to figure it out on my own. “Yeah, naw, Ben, that’s looking really good what you’ve done there, but if you keep weeding like that you’ll be here ‘til next week!” Or, “Alright, that looks fine Ben, I think we’re done with that for now, let’s just find something else for you to do.”
Marty’s comments and cynical observations were altogether in good fun, but after a few obviously playful jabs, his rhetoric turned a bit sour. Most of his lectures were directed at our government, or at our overabundance of religious fanaticism, which we could only agree with most of the time. We were, however, a little pained to be involved in these discussions – we had flown halfway across the world in part to get as far away as possible from the merry-go-round of lunacy that is our country’s political/religious climate.
It didn’t matter what or how much you wanted, you were getting what Marty deemed suitable, which was usually about enough food to feed a small horse. Feelings of ecstasy and agony were what followed as we each tackled our food piles until we were bursting at the seams. Marty, in his usual fashion, poked fun at me, saying that he wasn’t sure if I deserved so much food, given the fact that the wood pile wasn’t finished yet.
Afterwards, we returned to Margate for one final week of WWOOFing and one last attempt to sell our car in Tasmania. While hiking up Mt. Wellington with Matt, I received a call from a young woman who was interested in buying Alby. With high hopes that she remained interested a week later, I called her as soon as we arrived back at Leanne and Marty’s. By this time in our car selling experience, Mar and I had become significantly more realistic in our expectations. It was obvious now that we weren’t going to get all our money back, and that was fine; considering the 25,000 kms or so we had put on the car, it was sensible to expect a bit of a loss on the sale. The objective now was simple – if we could get more than half back, we’ve done our jobs and not let Devin and Emily down.