The setting of their house was stunning, about halfway up the slopes of the valley, their solar-biased house faced a breathtaking view of mountains and forest. They had a small veggie garden, which we would help extend, and orchard. They were fun people, very energetic and driven, quick with jokes and laughs, and with an extreme fondness for card games at morning tea and.... well, at any oppotunity! It was by no means a bad place to WWOOF, and as most of their WWOOFers are first timers, coming up from Sydney, they must think they've come to heaven with the beautiful scenery, tasty food, good company, comfortable, private accomodation and the free use of phone and internet! But it wasn't one of the most interesting places we've stayed - and some of the work was up there with the most exhaustingly physical we've done on this trip! During our time there the mattock and shovel became our close companions - for digging pipe-trenches, weeding the new no-dig (ha?!) garden, and digging a frankly gigantic (our fault, we took Mary's estimate of 75cm/75cm/75cm literally!) tree for a fruit tree, going through soil to shale to clay to rock in our quest for a good home for our fruit tree. I say 'our' - their orchard had a fruit tree planted by every one or each pair of their WWOOFers, and each was marked by a WWOOFer painted stone recording their names and the date of planting. "Our WWOOFer graveyard" Mary called it. We planted a quince, and Mary's promised us updates on it's progress.

Yes, we dug a big big hole

We also pulled out bagfuls and bagfuls of the dreaded fireweed, a rampant yellow-flowered weed, bashed thistles with (thankfully blunt) machetes, collected and shelled runner beans, and baked and baked and baked - South African 'crunchies', flapjacks, biscuits. It was a welcome relief to go inside to shell beans or bake when the sun, which seemed to have finally realised it's true role in life after a month's sabbatical, became too much.

shelling beans, oh yeah

Mary and Roger also took us out to the cinema one night, to watch Skin, a film about a black girl born to white parents in apartheid Africa. It was interesting to discuss it with people who lived there through that period, and the through the lifting of it, but I was full of more questions which could have possibly caused some tension, and since my journalistic hat wasn't on and I had to live with them for another week, I kept most of them to myself!

We had a nice time, but we were excited to leave, despite the peace of countryside, to get to Sydney... and to leave the mattock behind us!

written by  LizIsHere on October 24, 2010 from Taree, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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guess where #2

guess where?

the harbour bridge

Blue Mountains

On our second day here we headed out on the 2 1/2 train ride to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains - so called because the haze of eucalyptus oil from the forests causes a unique blue haze in the air. It's... and this has been an overused word in this blog... but... stunning. Oh, and breathtaking. And... huge.. HUGE. From Echo Point the forests and cliffs spread out in a never-ending panorama, on and on to the horizon, with the rugged rock formation, The Three Sisters framing the view to the left. I could have gazed at it all day.

Blue Mountains

Instead, though, we opted to clamber down the 1000 stairs of the Giant Staircase and walk along Federation Pass, an approx. 2 hour forestwalk, which passed under the three sisters and ended up at the nauseatingly-named 'Scenic World', where we could catch the world's steepest railway (I was not keen on this, not at all) back up to the top of the cliffs.
The walk was cool, the air was fresh... the world's steepest railway was TERRIFYING. Steep means steep, and the fact that we were the only passengers heading back up didn't fill me with confidence. The words 'I am NEVER doing that again!' may have escaped my lips as we got off, slightly shakily, at the top.

world's steepest railway - action shot!

From the 'Scenic World' (urgh) complex, we caught the Explorer Bus onwards and walked to the Luera Cascades, a walk which passed viewpoints above the Bridal Falls - with white cockatoos soaring over the blue - and climbed up through the trees beside cliffs to the cascades themselves. The heavens opened just as we reached Leura town itself, so we headed back to Katoomba for epic hot chocolates and to catch the train back to Sydney.

On Thursday we checked out the supreme tackiness of Paddy's Markets, then Nik went to Bondi while I chilled out at the hostel nursing my foot, yay. In the evening we went down to Darling Harbour, a massively regenerated area of the city with expensive hotels and restaurants around the harbour, to watch the fireworks displays which have been put on every week this month (I'm not sure why, the info board didn't explain, but they were nice anyway - more the 'Ahhhh I'm watching fireworks over the harbour in Sydney' than for any other reason!)

Yesterday we caught the 'famous' ferry to Manly, a seaside town/suburb with a slightly English feel, pretty beaches and 'good surf', to give Nik his last dose of Aussie beach-time before flying back home today. The ferry ride was a definite highlight, with great views back to the city and Opera House/The Rocks.

It's famous.

It's a cool city, though I like Glebe and it's grungier neighbour, Newtown, far more than the city centre - it's a proper little neighbourhood, somewhere people actually live, and I'm so glad we stayed here rather than Kings Cross or nearer the centre. If I'd come to Sydney first and live/worked here I'd probably never have left to see all the other stuff!

Nik catches his flight back to Blighty today, so I'm back to travelling on my own for next month - starting with what I'm convinced will be a fun fun fun 12-hour bus ride to Melbourne tomorrow night!

Nik's last night in Sydney

Arriving, I couldn't check into the hostel for 2 hours (woe-is-me!) which only added to my zombified state, but after dumping my bags and grabbing a shower, I struck out in to the city. Wearing a hoodie. That was the first change from Sydney - down the thermometer, from 24C + to about 17C. Brrrr. (Yes, and I'm sure everyone back in actually freezing cold Britain is sympathising with me here).

My optimistic aims didn't get me too far that first day - a ride on the free, old-style City Circle tram;a wander round Federation Square, a city focal point that's stuffed with museums, where I sat and watched an energetic Londoner doing comedy-performance art...and then it all went a bit downhill when I got lost somewhere around the Greek/Chinese Quarters, collapsed for a little while in the sudden warm sunshine on the Treasury Gardens' lawns and then gave up and headed back to the hostel to lie around on various sofas until a sensible time (8pm, ahem) rolled around for me to be able to go to bed.

written by  LizIsHere on November 1, 2010 from Melbourne, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Off to the farm... :)

written by  LizIsHere on November 4, 2010 from Melbourne, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Along with the usual planting, harvesting and spreading stable muck on the veggie beds (yum!), the other tasks I did couldn't really be classed as work - from gathering and helping to bottle kilograms and kilograms of rhubarb from the gardens; going with them to collect unsold bread from a Lilydale Bakers Delight to feed to their animals (the shops throw out as waste almost 100% of their stock everyday otherwise!); accompanying Victor to the nearby dairy to collect litres of fresh milk for cheesemaking, and taking part in cheese-making and art classes. Patty was an accomplished artist, and ran classes from home and in community centres in everything from cheese-making to painting to indian cookery, bottling and preserving. I got to take part in the camembert and ricotta-making class, though I didn't get to try the camembert as it takes about 5 months to mature! As Mormons (no, not the scary you-will-be-converted ones, thankfully! And they kept caffeinated tea and coffee in the house for visitors too, phew) they had Sundays off, but even then Patty was keen to get me to do a painting project, which while not my thing at all turned out to be fun. It was all quite full-on, and although once or twice I would have appreciated a little time to myself, they were really open and generous people; I learnt so much and know that I can always email them with any questions about self-sufficiency, about which they were intense and enthusiastic mines of information.

After those ten days, armed with recipes from Patty and having donated some of my trashed clothes to them for rags and mulching material, I returned to Melbourne for one night before flying to Alice Springs for my red centre tour.

written by  LizIsHere on November 14, 2010 from Lilydale, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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We set off at the 6am in our Mulgas Tour minibus, with our guide G-J, a young, fun guy with on his last tour with Mulgas. On the way to the Rock - our first stop of the tour - we picked up seven of his mates from Uluru airport, who'd come for Brisbane for his last tour. The guys were all just finished with uni - rowdy, loud and fun, and injected a huge amount of entertainment into the long bus journeys we undertook over the next few days - although we probably could have done without their gratutious farting on the bus...

Our first day, helped by G-J's extensive Ipod selection, we drove for hours... and hours.... and hours... Through a desert of red dirt covered with pale-green scrub, stretching to the endless horizon and punctuated with burnt-orange and ochre rocky outcrops. The sky seemed endless too - genuine Big Sky. And by the time we reached a rest stop at 1 million-acres-plus Curtain Springs Cattle Station and Roadhouse at around 9am, the temperature had risen to decidedly warm. A hot wind blew across the expanse of red-dirt forecourt as a solitary emu stalked around the four petrol pumps.

After picking up our swags - a sort of hardcore sleeping bag with a mattress inside, which the old bushmen in Australia carried and slept in on their tramps in the outback, and which we would sleep in out under the stars for the next two nights - we drove onwards, past Mount Connor, or 'Fooluru' as it's also known for it's slight resemblance to the Rock when spotted in the distance by eager tourist, to Uluru-Kate Tjuta National Park.

Many Australians had told me that no matter how many pictures you see of Uluru, it won't prepare you for seeing the real thing, rearing up in a solitary mass of rock in the distance, and it was true. It looked both absolutely like the pictures and nothing like them - it seemed, like the Opera House, almost like a movie-scene background, until we got closer and could make out it's true shape - far craggier and with more variation in it's rock formations, shades and texture than the postcards show. It's The Rock. And it took our breath away, the sheer natural mass of it, even without our being able to truly grasp it's significance to the Aboriginal people of the area, to whom it is where their spirit ancestors reside and an extremely sacred place. Which is why they keep telling everyone not to climb on it, naturally enough.

The climb was shut the day we arrived, anyway (it's only open about 50 days of the year, on average), and our small group set off on the base walk, a 10 km walk around the base of rock, taking in some of the spectacular formations in it - wave caves, arched caves, soaring walls of red-orange rock, and even water holes nestled in giant crevices, where it felt as if we could almost walk inside the rock itself. It was a hot day, and the walk had no shade, so we took it slow, meandering along, gazing upward and around, refilling waterbottles whenever possible and sheltering under hats (mine a rather nifty cowboy number borrowed from the hostel)... apparently it's pretty horrible to do in the middle of summer, in 40C heat.. who'd have though it?

From the base walk we drove to Ayers Rock resort, and our campsite - a large fenced-off square of red dirt on which to unroll our swags, with just enough for a dip in the pool before we headed back to a viewpoint to eat dinner and watch the sunset on Uluru. It was just slightly surreal to eat spaghetti while watching the rock change colours from bright orange to dark red to a greyish purple as the sun settled under the horizon...

written by  LizIsHere on November 20, 2010 from Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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