My departure from Adelaide was orderly and efficient, save for the airline actually weighing carryon baggage.  Since when does anybody do that?  They really try to squeeze your dollery-doos out and smile gently about it.  At any rate, that was the only drama available for the evening and I had a row to myself on the plane, sleeping over the top of the Nullarboor Plain before arriving into Perth just past midnight, local time.  At the airport my new WWOOF host picked me up and we drove back to his suburban block nearby.  The next day, after breakfast and picking up another volunteer, our hashed-together trio was off north to the beekeeping farm.  It was about 150 kilometers north from Perth, the only outpost of civilization in Western Australia, and it wasn’t long before we were in the red clay earth and bush scrub country that typifies so much of this continent.  Mind you, that is no complaint, as the landscape of Australia, the unforgiving climate and the sheer rawness, is perhaps the most captivating and arresting feature, two months on in this journey.

We settled into the house out on the 500 acre block.  It is typical country home for Oz, tin roofed and clapboard, fed with a rainwater tank.  It takes advantage of the site beautifully, resting atop a hill ringed by large gum trees with an expansive view over the rolling plain of scrub trees and bushes in all directions.  From the verandah, there are few better things then listening to the birds and staring out into this vast expanse, feeling the isolation.  As the sun drops the light turns harsh, striking coarse contrasts between the darkness and the lingering rays.  It is the same expansive sky and low horizon that dominates the continent, gives it a feeling of endlessness and hammers in the precise smallness of a human being amidst the backdrop.  For everything that is on sale, for the experiences and tours you can get, I don’t think they can match up with that simple pleasure.

As for the work, it was varied, though initially involving the scraping and cleansing of 400 odd bee boxes coming in from a neighbor.  Later work expanded into painting new frames and I was set loose in the yard with our host to help sort out the dead hives.  This meant wearing one of those white suits with a big mesh veil that one associates with an apiary, and indeed, I was well suited in mine with rubber gloves.  Or so I thought.  We came across a particularly ornery hive that sent waves at us.  It was then I learned that my bee suit wasn’t quite proofed as I felt the little bastards prick me on end.  As I was being swarmed, it set me off running from hives to the shade on the opposite side of the shed, cursing mercilessly and stripping off clothing, swatting at the bees with my t shirt until it was over.  By day’s end I counted up a dozen stings that I could see or feel, with more perhaps elsewhere, lost in the confusion of the event.  I was later told that such swarming events are a rare occurrence, and for the discomfort it was still a good experience to have.  However, I am not terribly keen to repeat it.

Later in the week we worked with some of our host’s neighbor’s prepping a shipment of bees to the Northern Territory.  As the one person working the bees with no experience, I was relegated mostly to watching and trying to be helpful.  Predominantly this came in the form of stoking the smokers and smoking out the bee hives to settle them down and drive them up into the frames.  The process then of shaking out the bees into metal cages for shipment, aided by a leaf blower, is a bit comical to think.  But it is like any other farming of livestock, just on a miniature scale with millions of little guys out there.  And sometimes they want to attack you.  You get used to the circling about and the bees resting on your suit, but the buzzing is intense and I imagine that I will need more time before I am used to that.  All said though it is a nice experience, a unique window into something entirely new for me.

Since prepping the shipment we’ve been back at the Perth house.  I took advantage of a free day to go into the city proper and have a look around.  In many ways, it is just another modern city, simply set on the edge of a great nothingness in either direction.  Near downtown is King’s Park, a vast green expanse on a hill that offers spectacular views of Perth’s downtown, inner suburbs, and the Swan River winding through it all.  Farther down the train lines (yes, trains!) is Fremantle, the old port-prisoner centre-artist colony that boasts the closest thing to history this territory can claim.  I say that with the caveat of course of the Aborigines, but their history is not so evident in the modern mass of houses and blocks that is the city.  With the time passed in town, I have retreated back into the suburbs for now and leave next week for China once again, with a couple days stopover in Malaysia.  The time here is a pleasant, enjoyable end to a summer spent in this vast land.