I took the coach down to Ulladulla (three hours south of Sydney) to meet Kelly's friends Stephen and William. Stephen is an ambulance driver by day and a clairvoyant/psychic healer/reiki master the rest of the time and runs courses with his wife Jennifer. William has a retreat in the Bush with cabins and has recently discovered his own psychic abilities. Together they are starting to put courses on at the retreat to allow people to connect with the earth energies and learn skills such as dowsing, divining and meditating.

The course was good fun and good natured and i loved being back in the Bush, having really enjoyed that in NZ. Although i can't see things (like the others on the course could) i can feel changes in energy and really appreciated the chance to connect with the earth and the greater consciousness. It's true we can "plug in" wherever we are but this place seems especially magickal.

The weather has been stormy and changeable and i've seen some great clouds. We had a bbq and campfire on Saturday night and the sky looked amazing being lit up by distant thunderstorms - it was like the Blitzgreig! It's been very hot too and 25 upwards now seems the norm - Summer's here almost! This is about as hot as I like though and the threatened hotness to come seems forbidding, especially when people look at me slightly puzzled and say things like "you think this is hot....??!"

So being in the Australian version of the Bush is a VERY different kettle of fish and certainly takes some getting used to. The life here is just that - ALIVE!! - like nothing I've ever experienced. You really can't get away from the vital nature of the flora and fauna and it makes you realise that you are very much a PART of this great buzzing globe, rather than a separate entity within. I've had lots of discussions with various natives over these past months about snakes and like and you can't help but feel a bit trepidatious, especially coming from a land where the scariest thing you have to cope with is a wasp in a particularly bad mood.

When Will showed me around his property he gave me some tips and warnings about what to look out for. Luckily there's no funnel web spiders here and I haven't actually seen any spiders at all strangely. The most unexpected part of going into the bush here were the leeches. The wet weather brings them out with a vengance and i had no idea a constant leech watch was going to be required, down by the river especially. There's no flip-flop wearing to be done and you even have to tuck your trous into your socks because they're so fr*gging adept at find their way to your lovely warm pulsating fleshy bits. We were constantly prying them off our boots and chucking salt on ourselves. One did get me on the calf - a big hungry striped monster called a Tiger Leech - and it left a nasty itchy bite behind after the salt treatment.

Will suggested being vigilant about snakes as their season was just starting. I didn't really take it fully on board because I'm not phobic about snakes and it just all didn't seem real. But it became "very real" on only the second day when I was trotting back up to my little cabin from the main house to find a big black snake sunbathing on the little patch of lawn only 5 feet from my front door! I made the classic mistake of running past it to get indoors - really you should run back the way you came and not get cornered. Anyway it didn't move and i managed to get behind the fly screen as Will came up the path. In an uncharacteristic girly shrieking fashion I informed Will there was a snake there and he said "Oh, it's just a black one and a baby too." Oh that's alright then, I thought, and there's me thinking a highly venomous creature lying 12 feet from my safe little bedroom was a problem....!

As it turns out, the innocuous sounding Brown snake is the one to be scared of because they are aggressive and not shy like this Red-Belly Black. Aussies will almost always kill a snake that comes so near the house especially if there's kids around but Will felt a bit of a moral dilemma coming on about the unnecessary-ness of it. I didn't see the need to kill it but respected Will's decision if he wanted to get the spade out. However as we were debating the matter the snake slinked off into the bushes anyway.

The next morning as the other course-goers arrived, I nipped out the back of the cabin headed for the outside "dunny" and there once again was the snake, sunnying himself on the back porch. I nearly stepped on him this time. Everyone gathered to watch the snake as he curled up quietly in the sun and the execution debate raged once more. However, Chris, a work colleague of Will's and our resident Dr Dolittle, decided to save the day and later on managed to pick the snake up and take him far away into the woods. This isn't done Steve Irwin style by the end of the tail, but with a forked stick on the head and then by picking him up round the back of the head.

There are also lots of parrots here which are just gorgeous - Kings, Rosellas and Rainbow Lorekeets. And just yesterday we saw Kangaroos - they live all throughout this area and it was fantastic to see them bounding along - they're actually really fast and big!

Will was away with work this week so i had the place to myself one night which was quite weird. It gets so dark and all you can hear is scufflings and chirpings of unseen creatures - you can imagine what runs through my overactive mind! Forest all around, 20kms to the nearest road and only the possums and snakes for company! Or so i thought....

After watching tv down in the main house, i turned the lights off and got my torch ready for the VERY dark walk back up to the cabin. I had kind of been preparing all day for this night, knowing i was going to feel a bit scared about being so alone and in a cabin that doesn't have locks! As i came out of the house, there was this almighty scuffle and grunting and the patio chairs been shoved and scattered. There's no outside light so i couldn't see what it was. But instantly i knew it was a possum or wombat or some such abominable rodent creature they have here and so i just ran straight back in the house and pulled the fly screen across, my heart lurching out of my chest. I hoped the creature might be running off, as scared of me as i was of it but i shone my torch down to see a nose and two little eyes pressed up against the fly screen. It was a little black Staffy dog. He was very insistently trying to get into the house, grunting and pawing at the flyscreen! I rang Will and found out it was Clyde, the neighbours' dog who seemingly trots the TWO AND HALF miles across the river to visit now and again. I went out and petted him and said hello and thanked him for coming. He trotted happily behind me up to the cabin and installed himself right outside my door, looking out into the darkness, like some little doggy bouncer! I felt very protected and couldn't have wished for a better escort or buddy in the darkness.

This week Will and i were driving through the forest to find our path blocked by a great lump in the middle of the road. As we got nearer we could see it was a wombat that had been hit by a car. Poor thing. They're about as big as a good sized pig and just as solid. He had been dead a while and we decided to move him off the road. Luckily with a father like mine, handling road kill is a pre-requisite, so I didn't see a problem. This was my first day here though and Will and I hadn't yet got to know each other properly, so when I said "Right come on then, you can have the bloody end", he looked quite shocked, probably expecting me to be squeamish about these things, being a girl. I felt like saying "Just because I've got pink toenails doesn't mean I won't pick up a dead wombat!" However, Will suggested my approach was a little too "hands on" so, using sticks, we rolled him to the side instead.

So Barbie in the Bush has drawn to a close for the time being and I am leaving to go to Canberra tomorrow.

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