As our blog and social media is called Family Life Explorers we not only like to travel and explore the world. We also aim to explore life and alternative ways of living. As a family and in a broader sense. Therefore we did a Workaway as a family.
We choose to do part of journey in a different style. We decided to go for a Workaway on a permaculture property near Byron Bay (Australia). This meant working a few hours per day on the property and learning about permaculture, but most of all learning about an alternative way of living.
In this article we share how our two weeks were, what Workaway is and about all the lovely people we met. Our first workaway experience was amazing and this was completely thanks to our wonderful hosts Olof & Anna.
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What is workaway
Workaway is a global platform for cultural exchange, working holidays, volunteering and house sitting. A Workawayer is a traveller who wants to give back to the communities and helps hosts for a few hours a day. Using the experience to learn and immerse in the local culture. (source: workaway.info).
For many travellers Workaway is a great way to explore a new country and learn new skills. At some workaway places there are multiple workawayers working at the same time, which makes it easy to make new connections. For us it meant that we could immerse ourselves in the local community, learn about permaculture, and what it’s like to live somewhat secluded.
If you like to travel but are short in finances Workaway is also a great option. Usually you will receive accommodation and meals during your stay in exchange for a few hours work per day. Not a bad deal, especially if you can make new friends or learn new skills.
Why we wanted to do a workaway as a family.
There are many options to do a workaway, but we decided to volunteer on a permaculture property near Byron Bay in Australia. The main reason was that we are dreaming of starting our own rural property in the future. A property with many fruit trees, a veggie garden and probably something like a small retreat center.
These two weeks with Olof & Anna already gave us many insights of how we vision our property and how we would approach starting such a project.
Another reason was that we like to experience other ways of living compared to how we used to live our lives in The Netherlands. A life of working a lot, quite materialistic and always restless. We often had the feeling that we weren’t truly living life, but more reacting to everything that happened. During our travels we already met people who took another approach, and in these two weeks we saw how life can be on a rural property. More peaceful than what we’re used to.
The third reason was that it seemed fun to do interesting manual work, instead of only chilling, travelling and hiking. Especially if this work helps others and provides us with new skills.
Where we did the workaway.
We choose to stay with Olof & Anna in Terania Creek Valley (near Byron Bay) surrounded by subtropical rainforest on a 15 acre permaculture property. Their profile on Workaway, combined with their experience and love for travelling really spoke to us, and they seemed lovely.
They bought this property a few years ago and are therefore still in the process of developing, which gave us the opportunity to learn from the starting-up fase.
6 years ago Olof & Anna were also workawayers and woofers. They over-landed from Spain all the way to Australia without taking a single flight, visiting amazing farms, homestays and permaculture projects across the world. During the extended evenings we had at their house they shared many great stories about their trip and experiences on the way. Since Olof is a great chef and they both love wines as much as we do, the evenings almost never ended early.
Due to all their experience and knowledge of permaculture we learned a lot from them. Anna is a talented botanicus and didn’t mind sharing about the trees, plants and how to grow everything (or how to remove unwanted species). We were fascinated by their approach of developing their beautiful property.
What we learned during the workaway.
As said, we learned a ton about permaculture. Permaculture is a concept of gardening, but also living and working with nature. The concept integrates land, resources, people and the environment through mutually beneficial synergies, without depleting any of it.
It is a multidisciplinary toolbox including agriculture, water harvesting and hydrology, energy, natural building, forestry, waste management, animal systems, aquaculture, appropriate technology, economics and community development. (Source: permaculturenews)
If you want to know more about permaculture Google the developers of the permaculture concept: Bill Mollison and David Holmgrem. Or Geoff Lawton at Zaytuna Farm. Zaytuna is the demonstration site from Geoff Lawton, which we were lucky to get a tour at. It was nearby Olof & Anna’s place, and Anna did her permaculture course there, so they took us on a private tour.
What we didn't know before we selected this workaway was that the area around Byron Bay, Nimbin, and Mullumbimby once was the hotspot for nature conservation in Australia. The national park there was the first of its kind. Initiated by participants of the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin who never left. They stood up to the logging industry who decimated the rainforest and saved part of the forest from extinction.
Later this place became one of the hotspots for permaculture in Australia with Zaytuna Farm, The permaculture research institute, permaculture college Australia a.o. all in the same region.
Things we learned that we didn’t consider before:
Because we have been brainstorming about our own property in the future, we already had a vision about how this would become, but a few things changed these weeks.
We don’t want animals at our property. We love animals, but having to car for them would limit us in the freedom to keep travelling.
We thought we wanted a property of at least 5 hectares, but we’ve seen that less is also quite okay for us. Anything more than 2 hectares creates exponentially more maintenance and is far more than we need for realising our dreams.
Olof & Anna live in a rainforest. They like this wet climate, mainly because many things grow easily. Since we don’t like rain too much (had enough in the Netherlands) we aim for a dryer climate.
You can make the development of a property as expensive as you want. We met a friend of Olof & Anna, Alex, who developed an inspiring property with minimal financial means. Her approach was new and refreshing. Check her Youtube > Dreams of Green.
We don’t want to be located too far from a village and prefer to have a normal (paved) road to our property. We thought we wanted to live secluded, but that changed.
Furthermore, we always said that we wanted to move to Portugal, the land of our wedding. However, Olof & Anna have opened our eyes to Spain as well. Or maybe France even, who knows! Portugal is not a fixed item anymore.
Things we did during our workaway
As a workawayer you usually do tasks or projects the hosts wants you to do. We were lucky that we could choose from multiple projects since Olof & Anna are still in the starting-up fase of their development. This made the work much more enjoyable, and we did many different things. Here's a small list.
Building a chicken coop. Olof & Anna wanted to relocate their chickens and duck to a more secure premise. They lost a few chickens and ducks to goannas, snakes and dingoes and therefore needed a stronger coop. We helped them digging the trenches for the concrete foundation and made wooden uprisers to support the roof.
We made five trellises for the Dragon fruit plants, which turned out beautiful. Watch our video about this specific project. > YT building a Dragon Fruit trellis.
We trimmed a few trees and cut down others completely.
We helped planting new trees and creating a levelled food path.
And of course we fed the chickens, the little duck Selma, and Lee the peacock.
Besides working as workawayers
Since we worked about four to five hours per day, five days per week, we had time to do some other activities as well. And, Olof & Anna were amazing host for inviting us to several gatherings and activities.
We visited the lovely town of Nimbin. A quirky place that still feels like the flower power era.
In Mullumbimby we went to a garden market, with fun nature activities for the boys.
At Olof & Anna’s place we met Elisabeth Fekoni & Diane. Elisabeth is famous in this area because of her cheese and bread making workshops. A hilarious duo > check her website permaculturerealfood
Olof and Anna took us to a pubquiz in town, and afterwards for a nightwalk in the Nightcap national Park. With our flashlights we saw two highly venomous snakes, a few frogs and glowworms.
Olof and Anna gave us a tour at Zaytuna Farm of Geoff Lawton, where they showed us permaculture in its full glory. Unfortunately Geoff wasn't the himself, but we follow Geoff Lawton on Youtube.
We went out for lunch, where we met Alex of ‘Dreams of Green’, who invited us for a visit at her inspiring property the next day.
Olof and Anna invited us to their Garden Club. A club a gardening lovers, who gather once a month to socialize, admiring someone’s garden, and to exchange seeds, seedlings or cutting from all their beautiful trees and plants. It was inspiring to see how these sorts of communities are numerous in this area. To keep people, who live rural and many miles apart, connected.
Do you want to do a workaway?
We really enjoyed our time as a workawayer and are seriously considering doing it again in this journey. If you also like to learn new skills, meet new people and immerse yourself in local communities Workaway is a great way to do so. If you're into permactulture, languages, sustainability, teaching abroad, or many other topics, Workaway has places to help around the world. It's a low cost, fascinating way of travelling.
Visit workaway.info to find all the opportunities.
It is pretty easy to create an account and sign up. Every workawayer pays USD49 per year to be able to contact hosts and use the services of Workaway.
Final thoughts
As you can read we did a lot during the two weeks of our workaway. Since we like to work hard and finish projects, we worked more hours than needed, but we enjoyed it very much. We had many insights and learned new skills.
The feeling that we want to create our own property has grown bigger, and how we want to develop this has become clearer.
We don’t know if all workaway experience are as amazing as this one. We feel we were lucky to have this experience as our first workaway. Meeting Olof & Anna and learning so many things. They went out of their way to deliver a memorable and valuable experience. We can’t thank them enough for this.
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For more family life inspiration read our other blogs or find us on Instagram and Youtube » @familylifeexplorers.
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