PHOTO: From tightrope walking to aerial acrobatics, Coonamble residents would be forgiven for thinking a group of backpackers exercising in Smith Park last week were practising a circus routine.
By OLIVER BROWN
PEOPLE walking by Smith Park recently may have wondered if the circus had come to town.
In actuality, this troupe are a group of Argentinian backpackers using a novel form of exercise to unwind after a hard day’s work.
The group have come to Coonamble for jobs as harvest labourers – a big change from what some of them used to do back in Argentina.
“We met each other in different parts of Australia but because the borders were closed the backpacker community in NSW is now very small so we kind of came together and are now travelling around,” said Nicolas Selin.
“We may have only met recently but we’re all together with the same goal – to work and make money and travel.”
Mr Selin, who was seen last Wednesday learning how to walk on a ‘slackline’, said the exercise was one of several new things he had experimented with while travelling around Australia.
“Here, we’ve started to do a lot of things we didn’t do in our country – the kind of life we have in Australia is very different to our lives in Argentina – it’s kind of like a working holiday,” Mr Selin said.
“It’s like you’re in a circus – you put up the rope between two trees and make it very tight
and then you try and walk from one side or the other without falling.
“Then the girls are using a piece of fabric to go up and down, using all their muscles – it’s just a different kind of exercise to going to a gym and using weights.”
Teaching Mr Selin was Nicolas Nunes who said he took up the slackline as a fun hobby.
“It’s basically free-aerobics – it’s not like any other training – you need to be really focused on your breathing and use a lot of muscles to get a good balance,” Mr Nunes said.
“I really like rural towns like this one – before this I was in Moree on a cotton farm which was also a really nice place,” he said.
“Back in Argentina, I used to live in a place like this, so it kind of feels like home.”
Later this week, Mr Selin will have been on his “working holiday” for two years, with places like Sydney, Melbourne, northern Queensland, Noosa, Byron Bay, Perth and Adelaide all ticked off his bucket list.
However, he said he appreciated rural towns and working jobs unlike his career in Argentina.
“I think I might stay one more year and maybe then I’ll go back to my country and continue my normal life as an industrial engineer.
“It’s very common that backpackers are professionals – everybody is a lawyer, an architect, an engineer, but we all made a pause in our life – we’re tired of the office – and decided to go to Australia to surf, to have fun, to travel.”
“It’s a good place to make money and stay chilled because it’s a very quiet town – we don’t have to spend a lot of money and we work a lot of hours every day, so it’s a good place to be,” he said.