4 Months In

Erika writes--

I was surprised to realize that yesterday was four months into this trip. Although our first week in Australia just dragged, the weeks since have really flown by with my noticing. I'll be home in 7 weeks or so, now. It is really surreal to think that. On one hand, I cannot wait to see my family and friends and catch the end of summer in Colorado. Two weeks after we return, my sister is getting married so I'm definitely excited about being home for that. On the other, I'm planning what we'll still do here in Australia and realizing there is not enough time (or money, as always!) On top of that, I miss New Zealand and I wish I could go back--already! It is a country that exerts a strange hold over anyone who ventures too close.

Our time in Australia so far has been quite varied. The first week was a little miserable. We were camping in Jervis Bay where we hoped to dive and hike for the week. It rained the whole time. We moved over to Canberra where it was predicted to be a little drier and we could do indoor activities. It rained more and was colder. Our tent was surrounded by a puddle--and inside, we entertained ourselves with reading out loud and Bananagrams and general ridiculousness. We spent far too much time solely in each other's company. We became even weirder. Honestly, it was hilarious and fun. But I was not sorry when we saw the sun again and when we slept in beds.

We have wwoofed (volunteered on farms in return for experience, accommodation and food) on three farms since. We spent some time on a biodynamic beef and ginseng farm, a sheep farm working towards self sustainability and are now on a large sheep and crop farm. It has been incredibly fun and educational. This week, I've cut young lambs tails off, shot vaccinations into them, ear tagged them (didn't help to castrate) pulled lambs from ewes after chasing the ewe down with a ute, driven a tractor with hay and helped to weigh and measure fat on yearling sheep. We've learned about bottling beer and making wine, gotten great recipes, moved cows, poured footings and chopped out tussocks. We have stayed with some wonderful, kind and generous families. Without exception, they have welcomed us in and taught us about Australian life and everything else we could think of questions about (how many kinds of football are there here? how does this government work? what is your relationship with England, anymore? why do you hate these tussocks so much?) It's been great. A system like this requires so much trust on behalf of both parties and proves that the world and people are so much better than we often believe.

One of our hosts introduced us to a wonderful woman in Sydney who welcomed us into her house when we had to go back there to change some arrangements. We were only planning on staying a night but she enticed us with a craft fair so we joined her and two of her friends for a show in Sydney Harbor. We saw an incredible display of quilts which would have made our mother very jealous and bought a few things for us all to do in the car and in the evenings. Too much, probably. More darling people and more great memories. We are looking forward to flying out of Sydney, just so we can see them again and tell them all about our trip. Here's a depressing thing about this trip--winter in the northern hemisphere, winter in the southern hemisphere and home just in time for winter in the northern hemisphere again. Incidentally, I am something of a summer girl. I live for those long, hot days and camping in the mountains and gardening, etc. We're in the south of the South Australia right now and even though it is a fairly mild winter compared to Colorado, it is pretty chilly. We are definitely going to head north after this. The north of Australia is in the tropics so we're going to try to find some tropical weather and enjoy that. All we need is the right beach. Right now, though, I'm going to go curl up in front of the fire and read "Eucalyptus", an incredibly Australian novel about a father who says he will marry his gorgeous daughter to the first man who can name all the gum (eucalyptus) trees on his property where he's collected all the known species. Did you know that there might be up to 900 species of eucalyptus?

Erika

PS. I saw white kangaroos today. They were special bred.

postscript #2: answers to earlier questions are--maybe 4: Rugby Union, Rugby League, Australian Football and Soccer. too complicated to tell you here which is good because I don't know if I totally understand it all but historic events unfolded before our eyes yesterday when Julia Gillard became the first woman PM here and overthrew a sitting PM. nobody knows--there is a Governor General who represents the queen (and once kicked out the whole gov't) but she was appointed by Australians! the bad tussocks are called serrated tussocks and were an import from South America--stock can't eat them but they tend to take over paddocks, especially when drought weakens other grass. We hated them, too, very quickly.

Back to Sydney

Kristen writes;

I believe we've mentioned our love of food. I want you to appreciate when I say our last wwoof host was one of the best cooks we've stayed with so far I'm giving great praise. We arrived in time for a going away dinner party they were having for a friend and enjoyed some of the best food ever! It didn't go down hill from there. One night we mentioned, accidentally as it is a taboo subject, our love of Mexican food. Wayne immediately decided we should cook a Mexican meal and did everything in his power to make it possible!
We were overwhelmed! We made beans, salsa, guacamole, tortillas, chimichangas, enchiladas and even a syrup we served over ice cream that we made from prickly pear fruit that we got from the back of their property! It was so much fun to be able to share our love of Mexican/Indian food with other food lovers and to be able to cook for someone that appreciated it. In fact, appreciated it so much they let us cook it another night, we had a dinner party for our going away as well!
Leaving Wayne and Angela's we traveled back to Sydney where we had to trade in the toy car for another car from a different rental company. They were nice enough to call a friend and ask if we could stay with her for the night we had planned here.
We liked Karla so much and got on so well with her that we ended up staying. The truth is she invited us to go to Sydney's largest craft show with her and her friends the next day so we took a day to explore the north beaches of Sydney and today spent several hours wandering a wonderful place! The problem with craft fairs is they make you feel so very crafty and you immediately start planning all the projects you want to do and of course we're traveling. We still managed to spend quite a bit more than we planned and now have a couple of things to keep us busy on the long car rides we'll be on.
Tomorrow we head off again in the direction of Broken Hill.

toy cars...and wwoofing

Erika--

We are at a new wwoof hosts' farm near Bega (on the coast east of Cooma). We came here on Sunday straight from the last farm. We decided to drive on slightly smaller roads from Braidwood here. We figured we could avoid the highway and see a little country. We were in no hurry. We ended up taking our toy car (no power at all, barely fits us and our bags) through streams and over a 4WD track. I told the girls at one stage, "this is exactly how those 'stupid tourist' stories usually go. I'll definitely show you guys pictures of this later but rest assured, everything was fine and we got here only slightly later than planned.

One of the things I love about wwoofing (volunteering on farms) is that we learn about such unexpected things. We have primarily chosen farms that raise some type of stock and are pretty large so that we can learn about meat and wool production. Along the way, we've learned much more about biodynamics (someday I'll try to explain here, for now google it if you want to know more!), solar power (measured and poured footings for solar panels), strawbale houses (last family had built theirs) and brewing and bottling beer. Yesterday morning, we helped Wayne bottle his latest batch of homebrew. They are trying to be sustainable/self sufficient and part of that process is making everything they consume. I have loved that idea since I was a child. Anyone want to move back to the land with me when I get home?

Australia

Kristen writes:

We made it to Australia!

We then had some disagreements with the Sydney Airport, our car rental company, the lack of maps out of the Sydney Airport and the highways. So we decided to get out of the city as fast as we could and drove south to a city called Nowra.

We found a nice campground in the national park on Jarvis Bay and though the rain threatened to float our tent away a couple of nights, cancelled the SCUBA dive we set up and made us spent a bit more time in the small spaces that are our tent and car, we were able to enjoy the area pretty well. We spent two days in the nations capital, Canberra, trying to stay dry and find ways to amuse ourselves, realizing we had spent quite a bit of time just the three of us recently.

We've discovered a food item called the 'Bee sting' which is a delicious pastry filled with an incredible cream that we've quickly become addicted to. Taken in a couple of movies in Canberra when the rain threatened to overwhelm us (including a cute little Aussie film called I Love You Too). Toured the National Art Gallery with a funny little tour guide named Rachel. Visited the house of parliament where we were able to sit in and watch the 'question hour' where politicians are allowed to laugh and heckle at each other while they ask and answer questions about each others practices and politics, that was overwhelmingly amusing!

We're currently at our first WWOOF hosts outside a town whose name I cannot spell (Queanbeyan?). They have cows and a gynsing farm and are a really fun family. We've spent today, our first day, with their son Andrew walloping tussocks out of the pasture, putting together fence posts, and washing out their meat trailer (it was muddy not bloody or anything).

Australia was a little bit hard for us to love at first but the sun has come out again and life seems to be looking up. We're looking forward to our next three months on this island continent.

Blenheim Vineyards and the Queen Charlotte Track

Kristen writes:

David and Pam Speedy were our last WWOOF hosts, Erika mentioned their vineyard and gardens in her last post.
We spent a week with them, working in the gardens with the other wwoofers there (the first time we've stayed anywhere with other wwoofers at the same time). Pelle and Camilla from Sweden were both there when we arrived as was Cosima from Germany. The three of them, Erika and I and generally four Speedys (including their two sons Tim and Angus) made up a good party. The work went fast with friends and our off time was very enjoyable, entertaining and usually pretty exciting.
Easter Sunday a third son, Nick, and another wwoofer, Meg from Washington, showed up as did our cousin Jewel who we had been waiting anxiously for. The whole house was turned upside down for places to sleep and there was a big party to celebrate our numbers.
The reason the Speedys had been collecting wwoofers in numbers was the harvest was due, unfortunately it was also put off as the harvester had double booked! So there they were with all these workers and very little to do but hold off the harvest. So we worked removing rot from the grapes, tying up the vine nets, weeding gardens, spreading house poo, clearing bush, demolishing a room on their sons house, and shifting sheep.

Last Wednesday Erika, Jewel, Cosi (from Germany) and I all got a ride from David up to Picton where we took a boat out into the sounds and got dropped off at a place called Ships Cove. We planned to do the Queen Charlotte Track in three days, which apparently is duable. We took three days and did over fifty kilometers! There was absolutely beautiful weather almost the entire time we were hiking up and down the hills, we only got one blister between the four of us and managed to squeeze all four of us into Jewels three person tent. We were really very impressed with ourselves!
Unfortunately we didn't finish the entire track and took a boat back a couple of bays short of the end. It was still an awesome treck and we had a blast doing it!

David was kind enough to pick us up from Picton, just off the boat, and take us back to their place where we had left Cosi's van, our bikes and quite a bit of our stuff that wasn't needed for the track. We had a big pizza party with almost all the family, Meg, both Pelle and Camilla who had stayed to help with the actual harvest and to see us once again, and two new wwoofers! Once again quite a party and really great to be able to see all our friends again.

Saturday we helped in the vineyard in the morning until it was time for us to meet up with our next hosts. Angus drove us to town where we met Neville and Lynn. You might recall from Erika's last post that we stopped off to help shear sheep and got a ride into Kaikoura. In fact we asked if they would need any other help at their place as we had really wanted to work on a sheep station while in New Zealand and they were kind enough to say yes!
So, yesterday we went to their son, Andrews, rugby game in Blenheim- our first rugby game in person and it was rather fascinating. Then the three of us caught a ride back on the team bus while Neville and Lynn took our stuff back to the house. What a ride it was too, honestly we had a blast and certainly will never forget the whole experience!

Now we're on Neville and Lynn's sheep station!
More news to come as we have it!

Riding in the Rain

Kristen writes;

We're in Rangiora, about 3o km north of Christchurch. We took three days to do the trip from Karen and Glen's up to this rather quaint town and two of them it rained pretty steady all day.
There are four things that make me want to throw this bike in the ditch: 1. Round abouts. 2. Trucks (otherwise known as lorries). 3. Rain. 4. Headwind.
Round abouts are in every town and are not the easiest thing to maneuver on a bike, let alone with a trailer and watching Erika take a few of them have made me cringe.
Some of the trucks that pass us by have such a wind gust with them that it nearly drags you into their wake- you could die that way!
The rain wouldn't be so bad if it stayed warm the whole time and our rain gear was actually as waterproof as rain gear is supposed to be... Our jackets have let us down in this department a bit and that can get frustrating.
Wind is the devil and on this island it always seems to be blowing in the wrong direction, no matter what direction you are going.

Still, the trip was a nice one. We found a place to copy off the pictures on my camera so we have an empty card once again, we took a bike path that took us off the road for several miles and through the beautiful country, we stopped at a great truck stop that had a very warm dining room with great hamburgers to refuel us, everyone we've stopped to ask directions of has been absolutely great- even if they have no idea where we are going and we've realized how very funny the two of us can be when left alone for long periods of time. We've decided it's good that there isn't someone else to gauge our humor as it might not measure up if there were others to judge.
After two wet days we showed up at a campground as the sun came out full steam and everything, including the two of us, was able to dry out before we went to bed that night. The campground also had wild blackberries and we had a delicious dessert of them that night!

We went to church the next morning at the Catholic church in town and afterwards were invited to lunch by a very nice mixed family (American,her - Kiwi,him). They were very sweet, they had four kids which was a bit much for us after not spending time with children for several days but good conversation and nice to hear from another American that Kiwi's are just more exercise directed than we generally are. (They have their first duathlon in the third year of school! First triathlon in the fourth!) They suggest that we should be able to make it fifty to a hundred km a day and we gasp a little bit! Our plan is thirty and sometimes that seems like a lot.

So we've been here at our second hosts for four days. Fons and Ellis are from Holland and came over about twenty two years ago and have been working on this property for about eight years after giving up their butcher business! They've kept us busy! We've learned how to trim tomato plants growing hydroponically (they look like trees they grow so long and are strung up so high!), weeded beautifully laid out raised beds of beets, carrots, asparagus, basil, and what they call silverbeet, dug out cemented poles in one of the 'tunnel houses' and done up the work in their backyard, which is beautifully kept. It's a bit different than our last hosts. We have a separate building to sleep in with an attached bathroom and small kitchenette which is nice but it's not exactly the same welcoming family atmosphere. It's been a bit of a transition but we've come to appreciate the way this works, we're just glad we had the experience we did with our first host family!

We've made sure to keep up biking every day and of course find it a lot easier when we don't have all our luggage behind us! We have another two days here before pushing on and taking about ten days to get up to Blenheim.

More on WWOOFing

Kristen writes-

WWOOFing has been great so far. Willing Workers On Organic Farms puts people in touch with hosts who give you free room and board for several hours of work a day. I don't know how any host will be able to live up to this first family! The work is work and we do about five hours a day, but there is a break for tea in the morning and another for lunch and time flies when Karen has us doing different chores all the time and mixes it up so we don't get stuck doing any one thing. Today we emptied the worm bin (something we've been looking into getting ourselves) and planted lettuce and spinach, kale and kohlrabi. Over the weekend they took us on their family holiday with friends of theirs to a place called Okains Bay. Getting there was great! Roads like we're used to driving through Colorado and amazing views out to the ocean on either side of you when you were up at the very top! NZers know how to camp, we've never seen such large tents! There was good food, great weather, a couple nice walks along the beach and some nice live music from the fathers of the families (one plays guitar and our host dad plays harmonica).

It does make you laugh a little bit when you're prepping someone else's beds for planting and you realize, I could be doing this to my own beds, planting my own garden and paying attention to our bees and chickens. Karen has been great though, the perfect source of information. Teaching us all about the organic systems in NZ, how they apply the rules to people, how the farmers best sell and when and where. All things that we were hoping to learn about on this trip. Seeing how a small organic farm can make it and make money.

We're thinking of leaving Thursday and having four days to get to our next WWOOF hosts on the north side of Christchurch. They are a Dutch couple who grow tomatoes with hydroponics, they won't be able to live up to the experience we've had here so far but hopefully it will also be a great experience.

One Week In

Erika and Kristen--

So, after 40 plus hours of travel, we made it to New Zealand. We were tired, that's for sure. We recovered, though, and adjusted to the time difference with very little trouble. We spent the weekend in Christchurch and thoroughly enjoyed the city. It's nicknamed the Garden City for good reason--we spent much of our time in the Botanical Gardens and the parks. So much is blooming here! We visited 2 stunning rose gardens, saw dahlias, clematis, fuschia, etc. It was fantastic. We also attended quite a few services at the beautiful Christchurch Cathedral. There was some great liturgy and friendly people.

As we were contemplating leaving ChCh, we realized that walking was going to limit us a lot. This, plus some other considerations, prompted us to look into other modes of transport. A lot of cars were advertised in our hostel but that seemed like a lot of headache and not really the kind of trip we wanted to take. One of our goals on this trip is to really enjoy the countryside and we would fly past it a little more than we'd like in a car. Also, a car would tempt us to try to see as much as possible, taking advantage of it, and we wanted to avoid that. When we stopped into a bike shop, we found some decent deals and decided to take the plunge. We now own bikes and a little trailer in NZ!

We have to ride on the left side of the road and learn to tow a trailer and carry our luggage but it is working out really well. Don't worry, we're taking it really easy so far and going short distances every day. Our bums hurt but we're enjoying seeing so much and camping as we go along. We've met super people along the way.

Speaking of super people, we're currently at our very first WWOOF host location, with a great family: Glenn, Karen, Ruby and Islay. Karen has huge gardens which she harvest for a local farmer's market. We have weeded and sown green cover crop so far and are staying in a little campervan. Riding the bikes out here was a little tricky since they live down a long gravel road but we managed and we're going to try to keep up every day (to toughen up our bums--otherwise, we're going to need some of those padded shorts really soon!)

Hey, it's super warm here and we're getting a lot of color and wearing shorts. All that fear about endless winter was for naught. So far.