The Cocoon
As published in Stay Awhile magazine Volume 3: The Rugged Issue.
Chloe Fox shares her journey of leaving the big city behind and finding inspiration while living off-grid in a bus outside Byron Bay, leading to the creation of her thriving hot sauce business.
Before I moved into a bus with a man and his four-year-old, my life had felt chaotic for years. It was a 1968 Bedford, 12 feet long, beige and white, with ‘Toolondoo’ boldly emblazoned upon its brow. Once a tour bus with Victorian number plates, it had taken tourists around the state forest of its destination sign. And now here she was, tyres deflated, rust-pocked, and glimmering, a big old Nestle Milky Bar in a cow paddock in Byron Bay.
To walk inside was like being swallowed by a cabbage moth caterpillar; she was all white walls, long and curved edges. Wood-look linoleum floor and windows upon windows. Seats replaced with house furniture—albeit the narrow DIY kind—a double bed down the back, a single along the side, and a kitchen bench with a camping cooker.
At the heart, just as you climbed the two aluminium checker-patterned stairs with a clang-clang, the engine protruded from the floor like a great big box boulder. This, as my womanly touches crept in, became a coffee table, never without a vase of banksia or a jackfruit ripening in streams of sun through the windscreen.
“The engine protruded from the floor like a great big box boulder. This, as my womanly touches crept in, became a coffee table, never without a vase of banksia or a jackfruit ripening in streams of sun through the windscreen.”
The toilet was a walk away, too far for number ones in the night. The grass was where I’d wee for the next two and a half years, and funnily enough, it is the memory that all these years later, I still hold most precious. A toilet within the same dwelling as where you sleep, or at least one with more geographical convenience to one’s own bed, means you do not tend to spend time guaranteed under the stars each night. There is a special kind of vulnerability and magic in going to the bathroom outside over any great period of time. The stars, the moon, the planets become known like the moles and freckles on your arms.
The fact that half its tyres were deflated so that it sat snug with the uneven earth, that it was a bus going nowhere, was spiritually symbolic, soothing, a deep throaty yogic exhale. What I like to refer to as my quarter-life crisis had ensured I quit my journalism degree in Brisbane and moved to a dairy farm to milk cows. I’d found the job on Gumtree and told my mum I wanted to live like “I had a beard” for a while.
“What I like to refer to as my quarter-life crisis had ensured I quit my journalism degree in Brisbane and moved to a dairy farm to milk cows. I’d found the job on Gumtree and told my mum I wanted to live like “I had a beard” for a while.”
The property belonged to a musician; the bus was right down the back in the lowlands, the flood plains of his sprawling 120 acres of Byron Bay real estate. It was the swampy area right by his recording studio, which was hooked up to a couple of solar panels so big they could summon an eclipse. That is how we got electricity: we hooked up to those bad boys. Outside of when it rained heavily and for a while, we looked out with our feet up on the engine coffee table over the beautiful big wide-open plain, gullies lined with paperbarks, willy wagtails darting through the grass, and out at Wollumbin in the distance, the sacred volcano, shaped like a teardrop or an old man’s hunched back, depending on who you asked.
Our landlord was a household name, and so he toured a lot. Most of the time, we had the whole property to ourselves and a herd of black cows. They free roamed, coming right up around the bus, outside the window, and you’d look up and see this great big eye looking in at you.
The cows were renowned for eating everything: wheelie bin lids, trailer tyres. One time they chewed through the power cord which connected us to the recording studio’s solar, leaving a live wire which my partner almost picked up. Despite the immediate danger they posed, they had a way of making everything - even if it wasn’t - feel idyllic. Something about them through the windscreen, great big black beasts wandering free through the orange, red, and pink sunsets; it was better than any wall art.
I began growing my own food quite early into my move into the bus. It started with a pot of herbs on the dashboard, then a lemon myrtle tree. The space before it was soon taken over, and the Bedford itself became a sturdy trellis for passionfruit. Then came the beehive and the 40 Japanese coturnix quails. By the time Covid hit, we were semi self-sufficient. People were stockpiling tinned soup and freaking out. Our rent was nothing, we had minimal bills, and we almost had enough growing, laying, and producing honey to survive for months.
“By the time Covid hit, we were semi self-sufficient. People were stockpiling tinned soup and freaking out. Our rent was nothing, we had minimal bills, and we almost had enough growing, laying, and producing honey to survive for months.”
Apart from the first lockdown giving big ‘the impossible actually happening’ Armageddon energy, the general irksome feeling for us quickly melted away. The world dissolved with it, the cow paddock became our own planet, the bus our trusty spaceship. I lay in the garden for weeks on end, twirling flowers in my fingers, watching bees in the sun. We were held by our low-maintenance, semi self-sufficient life, and that meant lockdown provided the once-in-a-lifetime privilege of being able to remain idle, out of work but financially supported, indulging as an adult in the purest form of nowhere-to-be childlike presence.
Since I could remember, I’d wanted to be a writer, but the commitment to my art had reacted with me, had me like a rodent to Ratsak for tortured people, and digging so deep inside myself I’d often have trouble crawling back out and acting normal again. Food, when I found it as a creative expression, was pure lightness, a perpetual skimming of the joyous surface. There was nothing offensive about it. It didn’t toy with your heart or require a nudey run of vulnerability—it was a different sort of creativity, a honeymoon giddiness that never fades.
For me, it amalgamated my love for gardening and took it into the next phase, all the senses pinging.
I’d been cheffing for a few years but kind of hated it. I imagine being in the army might be similar, perhaps the only difference being there is more substance abuse among head chefs and as a result, they’re more irrational and meaner than military officers. I wanted to do my own thing, cook on my terms: with love and as medicine. I’d held this idea for a while, of a garden-to-bottle hot sauce—all organic, bright, light, fruity, and flavour-forward—but I had anxiety even thinking about trying to run a business. I’m a clumsily emotive, big-feeling gal; gals like me can’t run businesses, or so I thought.
“I’d held this idea for a while, of a garden-to-bottle hot sauce—all organic, bright, light, fruity, and flavour-forward—but I had anxiety even thinking about trying to run a business. I’m a clumsily emotive, big-feeling gal; gals like me can’t run businesses, or so I thought.”
Read the rest at Stay Awhile Mag…
