Sunsets over Papanui

Every night at Papanui I would sit out on the LoveShack veranda and watch the sunset. Out here in the Australian countryside the sunsets are so wonderful; so colorful, vibrant, beautiful. Every single night at about 5:45 to 6:30, there was a fantastic light show over the horizon in the hills to the west. From blue to golden yellow to orange to spectacular pinks and purples, back to a deep dark blue, and eventually the black night sky, revealing thousands of stars, and a gorgeous view of our Milky Way.

The sun is setting on Papanui for me now, as I take my leave here. It has been an amazing, perhaps even life changing four weeks. I will never forget the people I have met and the experiences I have had here. Mark and Di have been excellent hosts, and I couldn’t thank them enough. I’ll be moving on up the east coast to the Coffs Harbour area. This time around I’ll be at a homestay (as opposed to a farmstay), where I will be doing bush re-gen as well as gardening and helping build a deck extension.

I often find myself thinking about how incredibly lucky I am. Not only the big stuff, like my words-can’t-even-describe-family, my own good health and wellbeing, or my ‘place’ on this earth, but the small stuff as well, like finding Papanui farm. There are nearly 600 different hosts in the New South Wales section of helpx.net. I somehow managed to sift through them and pick out a few that I thought would be a good place to start my journey. By some crazy stroke of luck, the first host I sent an email to, and the first one to reply (and the only one to reply with an opening), was Mark at Papanui farm. It turned out to be a most excellent place to start my journey, and will forever be one of my most pleasant memories.