Rubbish.
On Monday afternoon nearly the entire branch participated in Clean Up Australia Day. When I signed up, I didn’t know what the volunteer event would involve. As we got closer to the day, we received emails saying we need to not wear our volunteer t-shorts, instead long sleeves are recommended. It is summer. In Australia. But Ok. What else? Wear jeans. And solid shoes. And a hat. And show up early for the safety debriefing. See, kids, we are going to clean up the rubbish in the Berrinba Wetlands. For those of you that need a translation, in my opinion “wetlands” = “bush” = snakes, spiders, and a heap of other critters that want to eat me for dinner. I tried to find some history on the area, but Wikipedia doesn’t even know the Berrinba Wetlands exist. I thought wiki knew everything. Heck, it knew about the long forgotten history if Halloweeny (well, before the wiki cops deleted it and threatened to remove Jay’s access to wiki world).
We showed up early (didn’t want to miss the safety debriefing) and noticed that I was one of about 3 people that followed the long sleeve shirt recommendation. It was like 100 degrees so everyone else decided to choose cool over life.
The safety debriefing did include a warning about snakes. After my reaction to the emails we had received in preparation for this event, when he mentioned snakes everyone looked at the crazy terrified paranoid American girl (me). I kept my composure, but I did squirm.
We were split into groups of about 6 and were told to go off with our empty trash bags and fill them up. If you were to stumble across a large item, like a couch, just let the guy in charge know at the end of the day. That got quite a chuckle.
Now, I am not afraid of picking up trash. I have done my fair share of Southside Pioneers 4-H club Adopt-a-highway days. But I was never afraid I would die on those days.
Did you notice that I didn’t say anything about the purpose of splitting us into groups of 6. I was kind of assuming that we would get assigned a section of the park to clean. Or at the very least, a “hey, you are venturing out into the poisonous bush, make sure you come back with your group in tact.” Nope. Just figure it out as you go. No worries.
My group headed off down a trail. Jay’s group went across the street to an area with zero shade. Feeling good so far. There wasn’t much trash along the trail, but when there was some, nobody else seemed to be petrified of going off the path to pick it up. So I quickly assumed the role of spotter. I wasn’t the first, however, to spot the giant freaking spider web with equally giant spider hanging off a tree. I was told it is a Golden Orb, harmless really. I found this picture online (forgot my camera again!!). The little spider next to it is what I would consider a big spider back home – like a wolf spider.

After about 20 minutes, we came across an unpaved “trail” that led us down a dry creek bed with shoulder high bush on either side. I could feel my blood pressure rising, started getting panicky. I must have squeaked out a nervous sound because the guy behind me said he would go back to the paved path if I was nervous (thank you Steve!!). So back we went. Steve and I walked the trail for a bit and came across a couple strays along the way (more people whose groups hadn’t worried about their disappearance). I did go about 6 steps off the path a couple times to get trash, but I didn’t breathe the entire time. I am a bit surprised I didn’t pass out.
Our little trio of left-behind misfits were wandering along the path and we couldn’t believe what we saw up ahead. Any guesses? A freaking couch. And a smashed up entertainment center. WHAT?!?! Steve wanted to take my picture next to it, so I cautiously approached it. Not sure what I was afraid of…a dead body, a homeless person, a family of brown snakes… Snapped a picture and decided we would tell the city where the couch was when we got back instead of trying to haul it back (although it would have been quite hilarious to show up with a couch at the end of the day). There was a bit of trash that would fit in the bags nearby, but when I wandered over to help pick it up, I almost puked from the stench. That was one part of Australia that I wasn’t about to clean up. PeeeeeeYouuuuuuu! Unfortunately the third member of our trio did pick some up, so the rest of the walk back was rotten. As soon as I came across a couple other wandering misfits I ditched my stinky group and joined them. As we walked out of the wetlands, Harry said, “hey Nicole – isn’t that Jay?” Driving off down the road. Um, yep. Panic set in again, for a brief moment. Was he really going to leave me in this poison infested wetland? And then an instant later my composure creeped back in and I realized he just had to go get more bags. Since my bag was pretty much empty, and it looked like he and another lady (yes, their group ditched them as well) had heaps to pick up, I went over to help them. They had pulled out a set of tires and about 6 bags of trash. Nice work Jay!
When we got back to base after a couple hours, a few people couldn’t wait to tell me about the snake they saw RiGHT by where we had STARTED our day. It’s harmless, they say, just a little green tree snake. I don’t care, I don’t want to see it. And then Harry came wandering over to show me the shed skin of a 4 meter brown snake (2nd most venomous snake in the world). Good freaking Lord. It is amazing I came out of there alive. Thank goodness the only snakes I saw were on an iPhone and the dead remains of one. I hate snakes…
But, at the end of the day, I survived. And Australia is cleaner because of it. And we visited a quite beautiful area that we likely would not have put on our list of things to see otherwise.