Hello!
We left the farm last week and are in Melbourne now with Sabina. We are going to be traveling during the next 7 weeks and might not be able to update the blog. Melbourne is cold and rainy but we've had a great time with awesome people from the hostel, with learning french and of course with the guitar. Tomorrow we are going on a 2 day trip and are going to see the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians, then we come back to Melbourne and next week we fly to Sydney and start traveling up the east coast. You will hear from us when we are motivated to write again and we promise to at least upload some pictures soon.
Bisous,
~Saara, Katja & Sabina~
2012-04-10
2012-03-18
Still peaches and plums, but also prunes, apples, water pipes and a guitar!! Exciting couple of weeks...
Sorry that we have not updated for a while but as you know we are staying on this farm and there is not much exciting things happening here :P.
We have been doing the same jobs as we last wrote about, picking plums and peaches, but as their season is starting to be over, we have been working with other stuff too. We picked the last of the prunes, which was a very frustrating job since it was slow and there was not a lot of good fruit left. We got paid per boxes we picked and did not earn a lot… Also this job was really physical and you had to crawl around on the ground with your knees, and really, it was not worth the money at all!! Fortunately we got some better projects after that; for example putting up water pipes in the trees and putting bate in the trees against fruit flies. These jobs are quite easy and doesn’t involve rotten and disgusting fruits so we have been happy doing them. Another big project we have had is to pick apples, from both planted and wild trees. Especially picking apples from the wild trees has been a challenge since the ground around the wild apple trees is pretty rough and many times you have to cut your way through to get all the apples.
Otherwise we have spent time watching movies (quite weird ones since there is not a lot to choose from, the last two nights we have watched old movies with Tom Cruise starring; Risky Business and Interview with the Vampire, we wouldn’t really recommend either of them…), reading books and walking around in the area. We were really lucky and happy (especially Katja!) as we found out the farm owner’s wife has a guitar she doesn’t use that much anymore, and now we are practicing playing it to be professionals before we leave :P.
We also went playing tennis last week with Greg and today he took us to a nearby mountain/national park where we did quite a tough 2 hour bushwalk up the mountain! This bushwalk was a lot more untouched (we did not meet anyone else during the walk) than the one we did at the Blue Mountains and the terrain was a lot rougher. The nature was so beautiful and the scenery amazing. The highest look out point didn’t have any fences and you had to be quite careful up there not to fall down! It was really cool though. We heard that wallabies or big lizard could be spotted in the national park but unfortunately we did not see any =(. BUT we got to see a big eagle just 5 meters away from us and on the way to the mountain we saw big and sooo cute alpacas. We heard that it’s common here to keep a couple of alpacas in a sheep or goat herd because they scare away wolfs or other animals that might attack the sheep.
So, even though there is not much happening here we quite enjoy this and are happy to stay for another two weeks =). It feels good to be out in the nature and live an “easy” life. Also it´s nice that we can cook and bake anything we want and we really have time for it. We even got to bake an apple pie now from Gregs wild apples and it was really really good! Next week we are going to start wwoofing and our next project will probably be painting a house!
With a lot of love to our families and all our friends,
Saara & Katja <3
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| Thunder storm!! |
We have been doing the same jobs as we last wrote about, picking plums and peaches, but as their season is starting to be over, we have been working with other stuff too. We picked the last of the prunes, which was a very frustrating job since it was slow and there was not a lot of good fruit left. We got paid per boxes we picked and did not earn a lot… Also this job was really physical and you had to crawl around on the ground with your knees, and really, it was not worth the money at all!! Fortunately we got some better projects after that; for example putting up water pipes in the trees and putting bate in the trees against fruit flies. These jobs are quite easy and doesn’t involve rotten and disgusting fruits so we have been happy doing them. Another big project we have had is to pick apples, from both planted and wild trees. Especially picking apples from the wild trees has been a challenge since the ground around the wild apple trees is pretty rough and many times you have to cut your way through to get all the apples.
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| !!!PRUNES!!! |
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| Normal day at work ;) |
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| Our favourite place on the farm - NOT! Prunes, prunes, prunes... |
Otherwise we have spent time watching movies (quite weird ones since there is not a lot to choose from, the last two nights we have watched old movies with Tom Cruise starring; Risky Business and Interview with the Vampire, we wouldn’t really recommend either of them…), reading books and walking around in the area. We were really lucky and happy (especially Katja!) as we found out the farm owner’s wife has a guitar she doesn’t use that much anymore, and now we are practicing playing it to be professionals before we leave :P.
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| One of our many walks =) |
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| Happy with the guitar! |
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| Still cooking gourmet food;) filled capsicums! |
We also went playing tennis last week with Greg and today he took us to a nearby mountain/national park where we did quite a tough 2 hour bushwalk up the mountain! This bushwalk was a lot more untouched (we did not meet anyone else during the walk) than the one we did at the Blue Mountains and the terrain was a lot rougher. The nature was so beautiful and the scenery amazing. The highest look out point didn’t have any fences and you had to be quite careful up there not to fall down! It was really cool though. We heard that wallabies or big lizard could be spotted in the national park but unfortunately we did not see any =(. BUT we got to see a big eagle just 5 meters away from us and on the way to the mountain we saw big and sooo cute alpacas. We heard that it’s common here to keep a couple of alpacas in a sheep or goat herd because they scare away wolfs or other animals that might attack the sheep.
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| View from the first look-out point |
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| Sunbthing lizards=) |
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| Second look-out point |
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| Eagle spotted! |
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| Magical =) |
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| Mount Weddin, that we conquered ;) |
So, even though there is not much happening here we quite enjoy this and are happy to stay for another two weeks =). It feels good to be out in the nature and live an “easy” life. Also it´s nice that we can cook and bake anything we want and we really have time for it. We even got to bake an apple pie now from Gregs wild apples and it was really really good! Next week we are going to start wwoofing and our next project will probably be painting a house!
With a lot of love to our families and all our friends,
Saara & Katja <3
2012-03-07
Peaches, plums, peaches, plums, plums, more peaches….
On Friday 2nd of March we woke up at 4 in the morning, left Balmain, took a taxi to Flemington markets, and hopped on a truck at 5.30 in the morning and drove to an ecological fruit farm in Young. The night before we wanted to experience the nightlife in Sydney once more, and went out to a latin bar to dance salsa ;). We ended up with sleeping around 1 hour which we kind of regretted the next day, but we survived =). It was kind of cool to travel in a truck, neither of us had done that before. It was raining almost the whole way and we even got to see some of the New South Wales floods, we heard in the radio that ¼ of NSW (same size as France!) was under water.
We met the farm owner, Greg, and the two other girls who were working on the farm, in Young, and drove to the farm. So, here we have been staying since last Friday. In the beginning there were two other girls here, Ingerid (from Norway) and Friederike (from Germany). Ingrid has already left and Friederike just left today. Now it’s just going to be the two of us and we wonder how crazy we gonna go??! =D The workers (=backpackers) have their own house here so now we have a house of our own! The house is ok, just kind of dirty and very badly isolated. And the worst part is the worms that appear in the evenings if it´s raining!!! We also have a mouse here as our “house pet”, but it keeps us up in the night and has ripped open some plastic bags with trash, so Greg is probably going to kill it. Otherwise it´s ok here, we have warm water, a washing machine, a good kitchen, a tv (that doesn’t work but it has a dvd player and some dvd’s so its ok)…
The work we have been doing is picking peaches and plums, sorting them for selling, and cutting them for drying. One part of the job is to pick rotten fruits from the ground, and that is our favourite thing (NOT!). The first days it was raining heavily and it was really cold, we had to wear almost all of our clothes and rain jackets from Greg. Turns out we don’t really have good clothes for working because they can get really dirty and destroyed. Fortunately some other backpackers have left some old working cloths behind. The weather changes much; one second it can rain heavily and the next it can be hot and sunny. We had to buy straw hats for sun protection and it combined with all our other interesting clothing combination we look like “landepaukkun”. =D
Today we saw a kangaroo! Turns out they live just behind our house and we haven’t been aware of this until now!! We have heard that they can be dangerous when they get scared so now we are afraid of getting hit by kangaroos. We have also seen an opossum that lives in Greg’s shed, and we suspect there is one running on our roof every morning waking us up as well. Something that also wake us up in the mornings are the birds. Some of them sound like robots, some like cats and some like apes, weird! Something that you should be afraid of when you pick fruits are the wasps! Katja already got stung by one and it hurt her like hell :S.
There is not much to do here, so we have to be creative. Every day we have been cooking gourmet food such as tortilla español, fried rice, really good baked pasta, filled capsicums, a delicious plum pie (of course made of the plums we have picked) and soooo good banana pancakes :P. Also we have been watching movies and exploring the area a little bit. We can’t leave the farm if we don’t get a ride from Greg so basically can’t get anywhere. If the weather gets better Greg takes us to play tennis, wohoo!
Our plan is to stay here for a month; we will be working for money for two weeks and then probably switch to wwoofing, which means volunteer work including free food and accommodation. The internet connection is not so good here so don’t worry if you don’t hear from us for a while =).
Hoping we don’t get crazy here!
With lots of love
Katja & Saara
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| Truck-girl |
We met the farm owner, Greg, and the two other girls who were working on the farm, in Young, and drove to the farm. So, here we have been staying since last Friday. In the beginning there were two other girls here, Ingerid (from Norway) and Friederike (from Germany). Ingrid has already left and Friederike just left today. Now it’s just going to be the two of us and we wonder how crazy we gonna go??! =D The workers (=backpackers) have their own house here so now we have a house of our own! The house is ok, just kind of dirty and very badly isolated. And the worst part is the worms that appear in the evenings if it´s raining!!! We also have a mouse here as our “house pet”, but it keeps us up in the night and has ripped open some plastic bags with trash, so Greg is probably going to kill it. Otherwise it´s ok here, we have warm water, a washing machine, a good kitchen, a tv (that doesn’t work but it has a dvd player and some dvd’s so its ok)…
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| Our house :) |
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| Chilling in our living room |
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| Friederike driving a quat (wasn't so easy!) |
The work we have been doing is picking peaches and plums, sorting them for selling, and cutting them for drying. One part of the job is to pick rotten fruits from the ground, and that is our favourite thing (NOT!). The first days it was raining heavily and it was really cold, we had to wear almost all of our clothes and rain jackets from Greg. Turns out we don’t really have good clothes for working because they can get really dirty and destroyed. Fortunately some other backpackers have left some old working cloths behind. The weather changes much; one second it can rain heavily and the next it can be hot and sunny. We had to buy straw hats for sun protection and it combined with all our other interesting clothing combination we look like “landepaukkun”. =D
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| Landepaukku ;D |
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| At work ;) |
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| Which one to choose? |
Today we saw a kangaroo! Turns out they live just behind our house and we haven’t been aware of this until now!! We have heard that they can be dangerous when they get scared so now we are afraid of getting hit by kangaroos. We have also seen an opossum that lives in Greg’s shed, and we suspect there is one running on our roof every morning waking us up as well. Something that also wake us up in the mornings are the birds. Some of them sound like robots, some like cats and some like apes, weird! Something that you should be afraid of when you pick fruits are the wasps! Katja already got stung by one and it hurt her like hell :S.
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| Shed-opossum |
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| A gigantic spider in our house :S |
There is not much to do here, so we have to be creative. Every day we have been cooking gourmet food such as tortilla español, fried rice, really good baked pasta, filled capsicums, a delicious plum pie (of course made of the plums we have picked) and soooo good banana pancakes :P. Also we have been watching movies and exploring the area a little bit. We can’t leave the farm if we don’t get a ride from Greg so basically can’t get anywhere. If the weather gets better Greg takes us to play tennis, wohoo!
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| "Bää" |
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| We found horses for Saara =) |
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| Our road "Good Friday Gully" |
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| Preparing the plum pie! |
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| THE plumpie..aaaawe..some! |
Our plan is to stay here for a month; we will be working for money for two weeks and then probably switch to wwoofing, which means volunteer work including free food and accommodation. The internet connection is not so good here so don’t worry if you don’t hear from us for a while =).
Hoping we don’t get crazy here!
With lots of love
Katja & Saara
2012-02-28
A week in Sydney, Wollongong and the Blue Mountains
Right now we are sitting at the Balmain Backpacker hostel in Sydney and memorizing the past week, which has been amaaaazing!
In the beginning of the week we decided to get out of the buzzness in Sydney and went to Wollongong to get peace. We stayed at a place of Saara’s friends friend, Alex. It was wonderful to take it easy again. We were welcomed so friendly of Alex and his flatmates. We went often to the beach which was by the way the most beautiful we had seen until now, we enjoyed good meals together with our hosts and their friends and swam in the free swimming pool next to the ocean. We enjoyed our stay really much in Wollongong and are so thankful for it to our hosts =)
After Wollongong we went back to Sydney for one night. Our plan was to sleep in the cheapest place in the centre, which was a dormitory for 32 persons, called the "Church". But when we arrived to the hostel they said that we had been upgraded for free to a room for 4 people, with our own bathroom! We were satisfied with their decision because we wanted to get enough sleep before our early wake up the next morning. We were told that up in the church there would have been parties all night long...
Next up was the beautiful Blue Mountains. Our trip there started on Thursday 23.2 when we were picked up from the YHA in Sydney. On the way to the Blue Mountains our guide told us about the aboriginal point of view of the Australian history. It was really interesting and we felt sorry for the aboriginal people. We made two stops on the way, the first one was the morning breakfast of kangaroos that we were fortunate to see. The second one was in a small village where we had our own breakfast. After that we made the first trekking tour and got to see the Three sisters and Wenworth falls, the second trekking tour consisted of seeing the Katoomba falls and taking Australia’s steepest railway uphill. It was really heavy to walk up and down stairs in the mountains in many hours but at the same time really interesting as the guide told us about the nature around us and how aboriginal people use it for daily purposes. For example he showed us how to make make-up from a special rock and how to get natural insect repellent from the bushes.
The second day was already planned but we didn’t really expect it to be that though and crazy! We had pre-booked an abseiling trip and we knew that the day was going to end with abseiling down a waterfall. Our group consisted of us two and four men =0. We started the day with learning the basics of abseiling down a 4-meter cliff. After that we already got to try a really hard 15-meter high cliff with a long edge that was hard to climb over (see the pictures, it’s difficult to explain :P). The last (dry) cliff we abseiled down was 30-meters high. It was pretty cool because in the end you had to slide down and dingle in the open air, just enjoying the beautiful scenery around you, at the same time you were nervous cause you had to make sure that you land on the next edge, otherwise you would fall down the cliff and you couldn’t even see the next landing point :S. After these experiences we already felt like winners but we had no idea of what was waiting for us up next. Canyoning was nothing that we would have imagined. We had packed our backpacks and walked pretty far away to a river and put our wetsuits and abseiling equipment on. Then we started to walk in the deep water in the caves. We had to do a lot of water jumps and slides down the rocks. That already was scary. It was impossible to see all the rocks you stepped on in the water and we nearly tripped over them many times and almost twisted our ankles. The only thing that comforted us was our experienced guides and that they told us that there were no dangerous animals in the water =D When we came to the waterfall it was shocking to see how much water there was and how steep the waterfall was. At this point we were exhausted after all the swimming, jumping and climbing but the only way out of the caves was to abseil down the waterfall! We were terrified. They even dared to ask us if we want to get wet or really wet which was pretty annoying at that time. Well down in the waterfall there was water everywhere and it was so heavy when it hit you. It was slippery and hard to get touch of the rope. We both survived with some bruises and scars. Afterwards we think we could do everything else again except for the waterfall. The whole day was an amazing experience and we are still surprised that we dared to do the things we did. One of the guys from our group had a water proof video camera so we have proof of everything we did. In the evening we went out for some beers with the group to change some experiences and have a good laugh =). The next day our bodies ached like hell and we didn’t do anything. We had planned to do a trekking tour on our last day (Sunday) but since it was raining we took the train back to Sydney.
We came back to Balmain Backpackers. We were eager to find work but we were told that it’s really difficult. One of Saara’s friends from Finland heard that we are looking for work in Australia and gave us the contact information of a farm she worked on six years ago and now fortunately we have a job starting from Thursday! We were really lucky with this. Now we have just been chillaxing; yesterday we went to Coogee beach with some people from the hostel and did the walk from Coogee to Bondi and the scenery was of course beautiful. Today is the hottest day we have experienced in Australia so far so we have just taken it easy; sunbathing and probably going out tonight.
With love to all our mateys,
Saara & Katja
In the beginning of the week we decided to get out of the buzzness in Sydney and went to Wollongong to get peace. We stayed at a place of Saara’s friends friend, Alex. It was wonderful to take it easy again. We were welcomed so friendly of Alex and his flatmates. We went often to the beach which was by the way the most beautiful we had seen until now, we enjoyed good meals together with our hosts and their friends and swam in the free swimming pool next to the ocean. We enjoyed our stay really much in Wollongong and are so thankful for it to our hosts =)
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| Arriving to Wollongong! |
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| Posing;) |
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| Saara is amazed by the sky divers |
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| The best breakfast we've had - müsli made by Alex! |
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| Katja is a bit obsessed with seashells... |
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| Wollongong beach |
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| And obsessed with acrobatics... |
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| The first jellyfish we saw, fortunately it was dead |
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| This amazing picture is taken by Saara! |
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| Last night, preparing the food |
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| Crazy finnish girl baking "laskiaispullia" |
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| Our hosts! |
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| They tasted better than they looked;) |
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| Crazy finnish girl posing with the "laskiaispulla" |
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| Fish and chips without ketchup (would have costed 2$!) |
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| A wild pelican? |
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| Cuckatoos! |
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| Our swimming pool! |
After Wollongong we went back to Sydney for one night. Our plan was to sleep in the cheapest place in the centre, which was a dormitory for 32 persons, called the "Church". But when we arrived to the hostel they said that we had been upgraded for free to a room for 4 people, with our own bathroom! We were satisfied with their decision because we wanted to get enough sleep before our early wake up the next morning. We were told that up in the church there would have been parties all night long...
Next up was the beautiful Blue Mountains. Our trip there started on Thursday 23.2 when we were picked up from the YHA in Sydney. On the way to the Blue Mountains our guide told us about the aboriginal point of view of the Australian history. It was really interesting and we felt sorry for the aboriginal people. We made two stops on the way, the first one was the morning breakfast of kangaroos that we were fortunate to see. The second one was in a small village where we had our own breakfast. After that we made the first trekking tour and got to see the Three sisters and Wenworth falls, the second trekking tour consisted of seeing the Katoomba falls and taking Australia’s steepest railway uphill. It was really heavy to walk up and down stairs in the mountains in many hours but at the same time really interesting as the guide told us about the nature around us and how aboriginal people use it for daily purposes. For example he showed us how to make make-up from a special rock and how to get natural insect repellent from the bushes.
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| Kangaroo posing like a squirrel |
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| Beatiful... |
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| Nature-maid make-up advertisment |
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| Our guide was kind of original... |
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| The three sisters |
The second day was already planned but we didn’t really expect it to be that though and crazy! We had pre-booked an abseiling trip and we knew that the day was going to end with abseiling down a waterfall. Our group consisted of us two and four men =0. We started the day with learning the basics of abseiling down a 4-meter cliff. After that we already got to try a really hard 15-meter high cliff with a long edge that was hard to climb over (see the pictures, it’s difficult to explain :P). The last (dry) cliff we abseiled down was 30-meters high. It was pretty cool because in the end you had to slide down and dingle in the open air, just enjoying the beautiful scenery around you, at the same time you were nervous cause you had to make sure that you land on the next edge, otherwise you would fall down the cliff and you couldn’t even see the next landing point :S. After these experiences we already felt like winners but we had no idea of what was waiting for us up next. Canyoning was nothing that we would have imagined. We had packed our backpacks and walked pretty far away to a river and put our wetsuits and abseiling equipment on. Then we started to walk in the deep water in the caves. We had to do a lot of water jumps and slides down the rocks. That already was scary. It was impossible to see all the rocks you stepped on in the water and we nearly tripped over them many times and almost twisted our ankles. The only thing that comforted us was our experienced guides and that they told us that there were no dangerous animals in the water =D When we came to the waterfall it was shocking to see how much water there was and how steep the waterfall was. At this point we were exhausted after all the swimming, jumping and climbing but the only way out of the caves was to abseil down the waterfall! We were terrified. They even dared to ask us if we want to get wet or really wet which was pretty annoying at that time. Well down in the waterfall there was water everywhere and it was so heavy when it hit you. It was slippery and hard to get touch of the rope. We both survived with some bruises and scars. Afterwards we think we could do everything else again except for the waterfall. The whole day was an amazing experience and we are still surprised that we dared to do the things we did. One of the guys from our group had a water proof video camera so we have proof of everything we did. In the evening we went out for some beers with the group to change some experiences and have a good laugh =). The next day our bodies ached like hell and we didn’t do anything. We had planned to do a trekking tour on our last day (Sunday) but since it was raining we took the train back to Sydney.
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| Made it! (picture taken before the terrifying experience in the caves...) |
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| Our room at Blue Mountains YHA |
We came back to Balmain Backpackers. We were eager to find work but we were told that it’s really difficult. One of Saara’s friends from Finland heard that we are looking for work in Australia and gave us the contact information of a farm she worked on six years ago and now fortunately we have a job starting from Thursday! We were really lucky with this. Now we have just been chillaxing; yesterday we went to Coogee beach with some people from the hostel and did the walk from Coogee to Bondi and the scenery was of course beautiful. Today is the hottest day we have experienced in Australia so far so we have just taken it easy; sunbathing and probably going out tonight.
With love to all our mateys,
Saara & Katja
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