leaving town

i'm finally leaving... after months of anticipation and preparation, i'm leaving my home town of melbourne for the big apple. my furniture left on thursday, and last night i had my farewell party, which was beautiful, but hard to say goodbye to my wonderful friends. i'll miss you all so much!!! i'm totally exhausted.. it's been a crazy full-on couple of weeks/months, logistically, physically and emotionally, and i'm really looking forward to just being on the plane and not having anything to organise. i think i'll sleep for about three days when i finally get to nyc.

the last couple of weeks since christmas have been really amazing. for new years, i went to confest (a big hippy festival in the middle of nowhere). check my flickr site for photos (i'll post them in a couple of days). it was really nice, but crazy hot. apparently got to 51 degrees celsius! (that's 124 Fahrenheit for those in the old units).

i met an amazing woman at confest (hi tiku), and we journeyed down to tasmania together to hang out in the forest (more photos on flickr). the forests in tassie are so incredible, and the devastation caused by logging is so intense and traumatic. the corruption in the logging companies and the state government is blatant and digusting. i watched a documentary about a year ago on television about the corruption and collusion between the government and the main logging company in tassie, and it was so scathing, yet still nothing has changed. it is truly heartbreaking. hopefully something will change before there is no old-growth forest left. (for those who don't know, australia's old-growth mostly ends up as woodchips for export, to be made into paper and toilet paper).

okay, sorry for the spontaneous rant. hope you all had a beautiful christmas and new years...

see you in new york!!!! farewell marvellous melbourne...

m