Tag: outback

Farming in the Bush (Australia)

February 12, 2011

We’re on day three of farm work in the bush! We’re two hours from the closest town. Tonight they served us a traditional Australian meal of Lamb Roast, roasted vegetables, Pavlova for dessert, and a delicious Australian red wine. The farm is a certified organic cattle farm. During the recent storms in Brisbane, the river flooded and the entire property was a lake for six weeks. The family moved back a week before we got here. Fences are down, grass and garden is dead, and house was inundated with bugs, dirt, and an invasion of mice. We came at just the right time! The kids have been in the pastures every day with Rodger (dad), doing all sorts of farm work and I have been helping mom with kids and getting the house back in order. I consider it post partum doula work. The kids are (almost) two, and three and a half and mom is still adjusting to motherhood and farm life, after a career as a Family Practitioner. Life on a farm isn’t as glamorous as some make it out to be, for sure. You are completely at the mercy of Mother Nature! Two years ago they suffered from a draught, last spring they were stuck in the house for three weeks from the river flooding overnight and they couldn’t get out, and now it happened again for six weeks.

They are very grateful to have us here. I am very grateful to be here! When I see the interaction between Rodger and the kids, and hear the stories each evening of what he shared with them, and what they helped with for the day, I feel like it’s the best education ever! It’s more than an education; it’s an inspiration for them. They are working with a man that loves what he does and is as interested in them and what they want as they are in him.

It is beautiful here! Australia has as many birds as South America and there is always a flock singing their songs. The Magpie is definitely my favorite; their song sounds like a flute. Something I have noticed about a lot of the birds is that they are very people friendly, even though there’s no one out here to be feeding them. When they’re on the hunt, you can walk very close by and they don’t flinch. There are also tons of insects! At night it’s loud with crickets, frogs, and what have you. On the night that we drove in (2 hours drive!), it was around 9:00 and we hit a few places where there were cows sleeping in the road! Lol! They would be slightly startled by the car, get up, and then stand there and stare at us. It was hilarious! There was a bull that was directly in front of the hood having a standoff with the car. It took a while to get around them; then the calves were in the road and ran in front of us trying to get away, rather than running off the road!

The kids are seeing kangaroos on a regular basis out on the farm. They are very fun to watch. They use their hands/paws on their front little legs to hold onto plants when they eat them. There are savannah monitors all around the property and the birds love to tantalize them. Eliot has tried his hand at catching one but hasn’t been quick enough. He’s getting his fill of riding an ATV once again! He’s also working as long and hard as the others and not complaining; that’s a good sign for sure!

Here at the farm, they have guest quarters in a separate little “cottage” (sort of). There are two rooms and a bathroom. One room is a bedroom for Sadie and I. The other room has a small kitchen, table, and bunk beds and a trundle. The boys sleep there. We have a deck, outside table, and camp stove for cooking on. It’s as close to camping as I’ll get while here. I wanted to camp but don’t have the equipment.

So, it’s off to work every day at 8:00, home around 5:30, dinner, and then play cards until bedtime around 10:00. There are breaks for “morning tea” and lunch. Kids are fitting in reading also, and swimming down at the river.

We will take a break when we leave here, spend a few days at the beach, then off to another farm!

Australian Outback

February 8, 2011

We’ve been in the “outback” for three days! What an adventure it was getting here! I’ll regress a little……On Saturday, while driving home from hiking the rain forest, Nick and Julian said they would really love to go to the outback. That wasn’t on the agenda at all. We got back to town and started talking to people about exactly where and what was the outback. Turned out, no one really knew. All we got was, “it’s way out west and there’s nothing there”.

We got the map out and picked a place 12 hours out and decided to head out early the next morning. On the way, about 2 hours into the trip we stopped at a bakery for a cup of coffee and the owner told us we better get bread if we wanted it because he was the only supplier for the outback and he had been out of power since Cyclone Yasi. He also sort of “smirked” when we told him where we were going. He seemed to think it was entertaining. We got bread (solid soft white like Eliot likes it!) and headed west. Nick got to get behind the wheel and boy did he love it! We drove for hours, like six, and only saw about three other cars and a few big trucks. We passed through little towns with a population of 60. These towns would be about two hours away from each other, and about the time we thought we were there, we were back out of town. We crossed the Great Dividing Range early in the day. The landscape was hilly at times and very rocky. The first thing of interest we saw were the huge termite, or ant mounds that we’ve all seen on National Geographic. They were everywhere! We saw lots of cattle and it was all a “no fence” zone. We stopped numerous times throughout the day because cattle were meandering across the road. They were so cute! Sometimes they would get to the other side, stop, turn around, and just stare at us. We saw calves too! We hit flat plains that stretched as far as the eye could see. In certain zones, you would have to drive your car through a car wash on the side of the road, to wash away any “seeds” that might be stuck from the previous zone, so as not to spread them. We saw beautiful parrots that were eating road kill. They were large, white, and pink on the chest and under the wings. We drove for six hours and then hit a “road closed” sign. Checked at the local police station, which was inside of a small house, and he said it was closed due to flooding; we were in the monsoon season! Got out the trusty old map again; boy was that hard for Julian and Nick! They wanted to keep going deeper and deeper into the outback. We discovered we needed to back track about two hours to the closest road big enough to take us south until we could head west again. Did the drive, got to the road heading west again and hit another “road closed” sign……… We talked to a local and she explained about the rainy season and how the roads flooded regularly. We told her what we were looking for and she told us the best place to go that was not flooded and would give us the experience we wanted. Still keeping our spirits up and knowing that it’s all ok, we drove further east and found a room for the night at Charters Towers.

Next day, bright and early, back on the road. Today we were driving on the hottest, flattest land I have ever seen. We stopped sometimes to stretch our legs and the blast of heat when we opened the doors was unbelievable! We couldn’t even open the windows while driving because the heat through the car was too much. We liked it though! It was the Australian Outback! About the time Eliot was feeling like he just couldn’t take the car anymore we decided that on such a long flat desolate road, he could take over the wheel. He drove for about 30 minutes and did a very good job. On the road(s) in the outback, most only have one lane and about four feet of gravel on either side. The roads were designed for cattle “trains” to go through. A cattle train is an 18 wheeler pulling two or three trailers with cattle behind them. It is proper courtesy to pull over and stop when you see one approaching. We saw cattle trains but never another car so we didn’t have to figure out what to do in that instance. As evening approached, we got to see our first actual kangaroo! We saw two or three of them, along with wallabies, dingoes, and lots of beautiful birds including cockatoos! Before leaving the beach, between the rain forest hikes and the boat trip, we did get to see a crocodile, green possums, and a variety of bearded dragon species.

We made it to the town of “Longreach” by afternoon and found a room for the night. Longreach is bigger than any other town we have come across in the last few days but still very small. I can’t really use the word “quaint” to describe any of these towns because they aren’t quaint, but old and homey. The owner of the Longreach motel we are at is a great, friendly Australian. He joined us for part of the meal last night and gave us a thirty minute lecture on Australia. There is a large Barbeque area by the pool and that’s where we are cooking our meals. We decided to stay again tonight while waiting to hear back from farms that we want to work at. In the tree across the street, there are hundreds of white parrots living in it and I can hear them chattering all day! This morning we got up at 6:00 to hike to the river in hopes of seeing kangaroos, but didn’t see any. Damian, from the motel, says in the winter there are literally millions of them here. Most of the locals drive four wheel drives with cattle bars on the front, because in the winter you are very likely to hit a kangaroo on the road at night and with a regular car, the radiator and front of it will be taken out by the hit.

We have farm work lined up for the next few weeks. We’re ready to work and live with some real Australians!

Rainforest and Wallibies (and Cyclone)

February 4, 2011

We survived Cyclone Yasi and are back on track! We ended up being awakened at 6:45am and told to pack up and leave asap as the beachfront was being evacuated. It was kind of tough deciding what to do next; evacuation center or time share high rise for $220 night. We ended up at the time share because we heard the evacuation centers were filling up, and we were told that they had aluminum roofs vs the cement and steel construction of the time share. Safety was definitely the first priority, and also the thought of a very crowded place, sleeping on the hard floor, eating ‘who knows what’, vs a very nice, clean, comfy 2 bedroom time share with three balconies to keep an eye on the storm and an ocean view (it was two blocks away so wasn’t evacuated). We stocked up on food, cooked what we could before losing power (which never happened!), got comfy and lived in luxury for 24 hours! At times during the storm we would go out onto a balcony and the last time, the wind was so strong that we had to duck down and hang on for dear life! There were Magnolia Trees across the street with hundreds of the giant bats swarming around and screeching. I don’t know if that was their normal behavior or if they were confused due to the storm. Very cool to observe! The kids got pics and videos of them. Next morning we decided to rent a car, pack it up with all of our stuff and go driving to the Daintree Rain Forest.

The Daintree Rainforest is a World Heritage Site and this area contains the highest number of plant and animal species that are rare, or threatened with extinction, anywhere in the world. It is said to be the first place for plants to flower and is the oldest rain forest in the world. World Heritage Sites are actual “places” that are endangered and protected by the United Nations. The road getting there was a bit of a mess but the drive was beautiful. Australia is much more scenic than I expected. We got there, took a ferry over the Daintree River, and drove along the windy beach road that goes through the Rain Forest. It is also home to the endangered “Cassowary” and there are 86 of them that live there. The Cassowary is the largest land animal in Australia and is actually a bird. We were the only people we saw that day in the forest. We found a place to hike. The trails were covered with debris from the storm. It was our first “outback” sort of experience and we weren’t sure what to expect! Because of all the talk of poisonous insects, snakes, and so on, we were feeling rather daring. It was very damp, due to being a “Rainforest” and the weather conditions from the Cyclone. We heard birds of every nature and insects. We had numerous “panic” moments when someone would be covered with hundreds of funny looking ants and doing the “ant dance” while knocking them off. There was a vine that was very thin and covered with spiky thorns that both Sadie and I got trapped in and of course we panicked to the point where you would have thought we were being strangled! Lol! With each panic moment we would all end up laughing to the point of tears!

On the way back to Cairns from the Rain Forest we saw Wallabies all along the fields off the road! Wallabies are like small kangaroos and live in Australia. We called them kangaroos because they look just like them and were 3-4 feet tall! We saw so many of them! For Australia it seems as common to see Wallabies as to see Deer in the country in the north in America. That was a real treat! So, Wallabies and giant bats are the two most unusual animals we have seen so far! More to come, I am sure!

We got back to town and checked back in to the hostel. We’ll be here for the next 3 or 4 nights and then we will head south. We’re ready for a real “out back experience”!

Australia Bound

AUSTRALIA

January 31, 2011

I’m on a flight from Sydney to Cairns, watched the sunrise from the plane at 6:00am and am listening to my “Travel’ CD (thank you Michele and Jordan!)! Life is good! I love traveling and seeing the world and all it’s charm!

We arrived in Sydney yesterday morning and met up with Nick at the airport. Once again, we arrived in a foreign country, with no reservations for travel, no map, or plan of how to get to the hostel. We checked costs of public transportation and it turned out that it was cheaper to rent a car for the night; we were leaving again at 6:00 this morning. We drove straight to the hostel; checked in, and took the free bus around the city. What a cool city! Old, character, charm, artsy, café’s, bars, people everywhere. The waterfront was happening and looks like a great place to be. In the evening, at the park across from our Hostel we saw bats everywhere with a wingspan of about 15 inches! There were three large Magnolia trees in a row and they were flying all around them and feeding on the seed pods; sometimes fighting over one. They were very cool to observe. One would land on a branch, and use the little hand like things to grab hold and pull itself around the branch. We will be back here at the end of the trip and have time to tour around.

This morning we’re flying to Cairns, which is at the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. From Cairns we’ll visit the Rain Forest and have an Outback experience. We’ve heard a lot about this part of Australia and are looking forward to being there! Our plan is to rent a car In Cairns, spend time there and then take our time visiting little towns along the coast as we work our way back to Sydney; we’ll have 30 days to do it in.