Milking sheep for make a cheese after.

Half time in Australia

For starting a new year, we made some little changes. Maybe you might have realized, that we write in English, just to name one of these changes. haha.

But before speaking of these new facettes we want to update you of what has happened during the last weeks.



Adrien makes jump the little dog in the cheese farm.



After our cheesy experiences on the cheesefarm, we went in the Blue Mountains for two days. One day in 2011 and another day in 2012. Wonderful waterfalls, steep canyons and quite a lot of mountains waited for us. Two exhausting hikingdays along a nice little stream who finished up by a giant cascade and a long walk under the thick roof of the rainforest up to a rockformation which is called the ruined castle. On top of these rockformations you have an amazing view about the whole scenery and you only regret not being able to fly away, just like a bird.

JANE and.......



TARZAN.





Blue Mountains.



When our legs were tired enough, we continued our way to Armidale and then further east via the waterfallway to Coffs Harbour. The waterfallway is a little highway which passes by several waterfalls such as the Ebor falls or the Dorrigo falls. We even had the possibility to have a swim just behind the Dorrigo falls. It’s incredible what sounds a waterfall can make. Like a real thunderstorm.

During the next days we heed up north to Byron bay. Actually we didn’t know wether of not it’s worth going there, because quite a lot people told us not to go there. But finally we arrived there, in the same moment as 2431 European and Asian tourists. Crowded would be the best word to describe the atmosphere in Byron bay. Anyway we enjoyed it a lot, because even if the city is very touristic, it keeps its charme and its style. Next to a horse paddock we found a perfect spot to sleep and to have an excellent mango-melon dinner.

The following day it was too hot to continue up north, so we spent the whole day at the beach for the so called ‘’french-german-sandcastle-competition’’. Germany became the finalwinner, due to the fact that the sea decided to remove the French castle. haha. Once the temperature fells below 30 degrees, we continue our way in direction of Brisbane. Brisbane by night, such a NIGHTmare. To tell the truth we got totally lost in this city, but this enabeled us to get in touch with the Australien skyscrapers and all these funparcs inbetween. Wonderful, we regret not having stayed here for a couple of days. Grey, giant, modern buildings, the best place to wwoof.

Due to all these anticityemotions we decide to continue our way back to the wild, in the Glass House Mountains, just north of Brisbane. Maybe some of you remember what happened to us the day before Christmas, when the Australian moskito army invaded our property. We don’t know why, but exactly this exhausting and sleepkilling army came back so as to force us upon to flee. 10 km north the situation doesn’t seem to change. Even the French antimoskito spray version XXL doesn’t do what is written on the back of the spray. Killing moskitos gently. Unfortunately more gently that we hoped. A sleepless night doesn’t change our plans for the following day. It’s raining and hot, but anyway we discover the volcanic craters of the Glass House Mountains.

Our first day in Queensland makes us really realizing that we aren’t again in New South Wales or Vitoria. No, now we are in Queensland, the state of the wet, rainy, and hot summers. We sweat all day long, even at night and there are only little moments of sunshine. Usually it’s raining, because now it’s rain season and that’s why it’s raining raining and finally raining. But when it’s raining in Australia, the people don’t stay in their house like in France or Germany. They even don’t take their umbrella, because it’s JUST RAIN, ONLY A LITTLE BIT WET, BUT JUST RAIN. We had one last day of sun before the final wet season sets in. Grey clouds and grey times .........9 weeks in Australia-what has changed?

swim behind this waterfall-wonderful.

NEW FACETTES

1)  Speaking English:

To start this year the french-german team speaks English (or tries) every time. It’s very difficult and exhausting. As we want you to participate in our journey, we want to share this new linguistic experience with you. haha.

2) Haircut:

For the new year, new hairs. It’s better for breathing with the hot time. Short hair for Silvana and Adrien, yes, 35 degrees instead of 36.

3) Fast-food:

Crazy, it’s easier to find a fast food shop than a fuel station. When you arrive in a city, you have the impression to be in a big friteuse. Mc Donald, Hungry Jack, KFC, Subway, Miss Burger everywhere. Today we realized that we have seen only one single restaurant during 9 weeks in Australia. When someone proposes to go in a restaurant, he means to go in the next fast food shop.

4) No signs:

Noosa head (a city next to our last farm), the city of roundabouts. To many round points without signs, the perfect plan to get lost. Instead of signs for the directions you find signs for the next fast food shop, with the fitting distance in km and minutes.

5) Economic crisis-no job:

After having changed the breaks of the car, we want a paid job to earn a little money. Just one problem, it’s not the good season to find a job. The best it’s in July and August, because due to the monsoon there are nearly no tourists here up in Queensland (instead of one German and one French tourist) and no tourists means no work. Another problem to find a job is that we don’t have the fitting visa. The only possibility is to work in the so called black sector, which means earning cash money for fruit picking or doing additional work on the farms. On one of the farm we worked 8 hours in addition after our usual work, each day for one week, but finally the farmer didn’t give us any money due to some personal financial problems. This sucks!!!

6) Snakes:

In one last farm, a snake of 3 metres eats a whole duck (maybe for the breakfast). The first snake in Australia that we have seen, it’s scary and persecutes us during a few days in our nightmares. The following day the sister snake came and wanted to eat a whole chicken, but the chicken was a little bit too big, that the snake wasn’t able to swallow the chicken. Here up north, snakes are just part of all day life, that’s why we usually have to wear boots and big, long trousers. About snakes in the roof and in the house we won’t speak, otherwise someone else will get nightmares.

7) Alcohol controls:

Too many alcohol controls via the police on the road, even in the afternoon. Crazy!!!

Here a little dialog:

Police: Did you drink something?

Adrien: Yes, a smoothy.

Police: Ok, did you have alcohol in your smoothy?

Adrien: No, just banana, mango, pineapple, coconut, yoghurt, ice...

Police: Ok

Adrien: see you........................................................ never.

8) Heat:

When we think that you are in the snow or you have cold, we are a little bit jealous, because here it’s hot and wet. It’s like you breath and you have the feeling not to breath. One ongoing sauna, but you can’t get out of it. Working in Bikini would be nice, but as far as the UV light is concerned it’s too dangerous. Long shirt, boots...let’s sweat.

9) Rain:

Rain, rain, rain, rain and rain. What else to say, it’s the season of rain in the Queensland, the monsoon. We are happy to be situated on a farm which has a save situation. It’s raining all day without a break. Brisbane had the total record: 400ml a day. The area around the house is a little bit flooded, but this is just a little flooding. When we watch the television we are shocked. A real monsoon like you know it from photos of India. Cars are swimming, rodes completely destroyed, beds in the roads.....totally crazy. We are more than happy to have this save place here and only if the weather is fine we will continue our way up north to cairns. But for the people here it’s just normal. No one is crying about the rain. Because it’s just rain. No umbrella, no raincoat. It’s a little bit wet, but it doesn’t matter.

10) Drugs and police:

We arrived in a city next to Gympie, and we think it’s the capital of the drugs. On most of the farms in this area the people are crazy about drugs and this leads to total problems. Depression and schizophrenia. One farmer of a farm even went so crazy as to call the police so as to get rid of us, because in his eyes we are very very bad wwoofers....

11) Adrien’s jumps in 2012:

The down of the water fall and silvana is more than
happy to have adrien in his arms after the jump.

In the New Year, on the 1^st January, we are in the Blue Mountaines on top of a big water fall. Adrien fells in the river and saves his life just before the point where the water fells. Adrien made a big shock to Silvana.

In another farm Adrien jumps from a latter while painting and so he finished as a green man.

12) Bad Woofing:

Ok, now it’s maybe the time to speak about the woofing in Australia. It’s a pity because it’s a good project, just one problem: the difference between the project in theory and the reality. You make too many Km to see a new country, new people, new job... but all of them treated us more than slaves.

After 6 farms in Australia in different places we can say that the woofing is a very big shit of kangaroos. We arrived in a farm and the people make you working very munch (12 hours a day), or they don’t discuss, or they are crazy, or smoke drugs, or they are very strict with the time, or they are not here for the day...

After the cheese farm we had a farm that is called ‘’paradisio’’.  At this place, it’s not the paradisio, it’s more hell. We arrived in the farm at 12.20 and the woman said we arrived too late and she wants that we leave and we return at 15.00 o’clock. We want just drinking a water, because it’s a hot day and she said we have to go to a supermarket to buy water. The shower of the woman is a little lake with alpacas and ducks swimming in it. When we saw that the woman is very crazy, we flew as fast as possible for not finishing like this woman.

We are quite lucky, because we have a number for a second farm next to here. A nice woman with two children, a little bit exhausting, and a wonderful house and garden, we are in an Australian paradise. After one week of good gardening, painting, building... we have discovered the real facete of the woman unfortunately. Another crazy woman with problems of money, drugs and familiar past. We made a paid-job in addition to the woofing work, but the woman didn’t pay the totality. Because of her familiar-problems, she wants us to leave. We don’t leave fast, because we prepare the backpack and we call a new farm, that’s why she calls the police which we see on the road after a big escalation.

On the road a new farm calls us just next to the last farm. A new game, the first impression it’s a real  paradise for us. A beautiful little house with a nice swimming pool, tropical garden... The two old farmers want us to clean the garage, the windows and they are very strict with the working time. We are like slaves for them. For this we leave this farm before the end of the week. Because we are bad woofers, they have reported us at the Australian woofing organisation.

After 200 km, a new city, a new farm for a new experience. It’s a woman with 4 competition horses. The work is brushing the horses, walking with the dog and weeding, it’s not too bad, but not too good. The problem is that the woman works in a hospital the day and the evening she watches the tv, for a exchange it’s very difficult, nearly impossible.  

All in all the whole wwoofing is a big mistake and we regret having chosen this project for going abroad. As we have already told, it only works in theory but not at all in practice. Originally the wwoofing is a project which focuses on willing workers who want to work on an ORGANIC farm in exchange of food and accommodation. Usually the wwoofers have to work 4-6 hours a day with times off and the work should have a learning effect for the wwoofer, such as permacultural gardening or something else. The main object of the wwoofing is a cultural exchange between the host and the wwoofer, but what happens in reality?

You have inhumane working hours with no times off, a stupid work without any learning effect and without any sustainable or organic background ideas. (or should cleaning the private garage be considered to be sustainable?). Most of the work is monotonous weeding, where we had to discover that the bad herbs are exactly the same than in Europe. As far as accommodation and food is concerned i don’t want to lose many words, because it’s really not worth speaking a lot of these conditions. Sleeping together with sheep, without shower (only a yucki dam), completely distanced from the host family, doesn’t make you feel like a family member. On some farms they even cancelled our food and they wanted us to cater for our food on our own.

Another point is the cultural exchange. As i’ve already mentioned, they try to distance the wwoofers from themselves and they really don’t want to get in contact with us. So all in all the wwoofing is a real failure. 9 weeks in Australia and we did never find a farm where we have been happy. We have the impression to learn nothing and to change for the bad, for the sick. It really makes you sick, when you are nearly never happy with what you do and when you dream of being at home. It’s not possible that the same will happen to us in Canada, because for this we wouldn’t have enough energy......The ongoing weathers situation which causes a lot of difficulties (due to the monsoon and cyclones a lot of roads are closed) for the  journey, doesn’t improve our current situation.

Grey clouds, grey times.....one big failure.

Conclusion:

We draw one conclusion: Everything is big in Australia!!! The supermarkets are big, as well as their prices (4.95$ for one chocolate, 200gr), the distances between everything are very very big, the cities are too extended and big, the prices of ...just everything are very big,  the body size and the body weigh of most citizens are extremely big, all natural sights such as waterfalls or mountains are big and bigger, the gekkos are not comparable to European gekkos (3cm to 1.5m of length), all the fast-food shops are like everywhere and a lot bigger than at home, the highways and roads are so big, that on one Australian lane there would be enough place for two or three European cars, the cars and trucks are very big (trucks like trains), the snakes (3m) and spiders (8.3cm)  are so big, that they persecute us in our nightmares, the moskitoarmy is too big to get it under control, the avocados are very big and yummy (only the aldi-avocados are yucki), the farms are too big (sometimes it’s impossible to move the sheep, cows or horses without helicopters or motorbikes because one farm has 32000acres), big is also the amount of dead animals next to the roads (smashed kangaroos, wombats, possums and snakes), everything which concerns the weather is just big (the heat as well as the amount of rain-400ml in one day), the tea consumption is 10 times bigger than the European consumption....

Big Australian Gekko.

BIG BIG BIG, but we don’t want you to be afraid that we will come back in Australian style, that’s why our today’s task was to organize a scale. And here the results to calm you down:

Silvana: 54kg (on Thursday, the 26 january 2012; at 1.45pm)

Adrien: 70kg (on Thursday, the 26 january 2012; at 1.46pm)

Big koalahugs to everyone,

Silvana and Adrien.

Australian Honey or Nema.
(new familly member)