A question gets asked among backpackers...what's your reason for going travelling in the first place?
For some it's a gap year before they go to uni, or a time to find themselves, others it's an escape, some it's purely just a desire to see the world.
For many there seems to be a common reason. Most of us seem to be running from something. Wether it's from the people we left behind, or just the place itself? Or is it the memories that it holds that haunt us. We all just want to get as far away as possible. Why is this?
I frequently ask myself why I decided to come travelling? What spurred the incentive to pack up my life and all (well some) of my things into a backpack and just leave? Other than the uppermost urge to travel and experience a new way of life.
But in all honestly I can't remember the exact reasoning of why, but I guess it was influenced by not having a freaking clue what I want to do with my life. The feeling of pressure and stress that came with trying to make that decision was just too much and I couldn't make the choice at that time. I wasn't entirely happy with the way things were going...So what better way to ignore everything and put off that decision for a year and to move half the way across the world to la-la land where none of your troubles exist...except you couldn't be more wrong...Troubles follow you wherever you go, they're always in the back of your mind niggling away. One thing I have learnt this year is that a place isn't going to make you happy, it's not got the magical powers to take all the crap away that you ran away from.
So embrace the time you have while you're away and don't forget to stop and look around at what you've achieved and what a truly beautiful country you've been blessed with the opportunity to be in.
Thursday, 26 June 2014
Sunday, 15 June 2014
Farm life.
We knew this day was coming and we thought let's just get it over and done with. Sven, a friend from flashpackers had lined us up to go to the farm that he was at, but didn't tell us where we were going nor did he tell us anything about the farm. He thought "it will be better this way" what on earth had we just signed ourselves up for??
Well... in hindsight maybe it was better we hadn't known where we were going because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gone. The farm is situated 800km west of Brisbane, which let me tell you folks...Is pretty much in the middle of nowhere! The nearest supermarket was a 3 hour drive away so you can't be forgetting anything important.
Our first week was spent at Weaona - the other 'property'. The reason it's in quotation marks is because it's not really a house as such. It's basically a mobile shack thing. The toilets and showers are in a separate tin shed. For our first week we burnt trees so we could feed the sheep. Oh lord. It was literally our worst nightmare. I've never experienced anything like it.
Once we returned back to the normal house things got slightly better. We learnt how to ride dirt bikes, drive tractors, use chainsaws, use a rifle. Even learnt how to sheer a sheep!! Shearing was a fun and interesting day to be apart of! We went mustering most days -mustering is basically rounding up sheep on dirt bikes and moving them to a different area of the 65,000 acre property.
Living a life that is so remote to the real world can take a toll on you. The only people you see are the people you live, eat, and sleep with and occasionally the shearers. It's a very different lifestyle to what I'm used to. But in all honesty I'm really happy we've done it. To actually experience the true Australia.
All was going well... We were 2 months into the work and becoming quite adjusted to the way of life out west. Then disaster stuck.
I was out doing a job out in the fields and had just finished and was on my way home when I lost control of the front end of the bike and ended up underneath the bike 5 meters where I had fallen. At first I hadn't realised quite what had happened so I got out from under the bike and tried to get up....OH CRAP. You know there's certainly something wrong when you go to stand and you can feel the bones moving where they shouldn't be.
Right. So I'm alone somewhere in a 65,000 acre property. I knew the guy on the tractor that was in the field would come my way but when...I wasn't sure. So what could I do....nothing. I had to sit and wait and be patient. Someone will come....eventually.
Roughly around 2/3 hours later I see a truck coming my way. I thought it was maybe it was Corn or Dean realising I was missing. But no they still hasn't realised I was missing and It was a French backpacker from a neighbouring property wh,o bless his soul came to my rescue and picked me up and put me in the truck and we drove home... But that took slightly longer because we were in 2nd gear all the way as that's all my leg would allow.
Anyway long story short an ambulance turned up 3 hours later that drove me to cunnamulla community hospital that was 2 hours away. Where I got X-rayed and they confirmed a spiral fracture (break in 2 places) to my tibia which is the big bone in the lower leg. That hospital couldn't deal with the severity of my fracture so told me to make my own way to a fracture clinic?!? Meanwhile my leg is castes up above my knee?? Righto docs.
So we drove 12 hours to Lorraine's (the little life saver she is) where she took over as mother hen and got me to the nearest hospital to hers which was 100X better than cunnamulla where Cornelia was made head nurse and left in charge to look after me!?
8 days after the accident and lots of polavas later...I was in the operating theatre getting a metal rod shoved down my bone to keep it all in place...how delightful.
This little mishap kinda ruined my families plans for when they came out...my bad. After 2 weeks with my family I made the decision to come back to the UK for a while to recover and have a roof over my head and then I can get a job and once I've got enough money I'll head back out.
So I came home and wallowed in self pity for a good week or 2 but when I got told I could walk again I thought. Right. This is it, time to get fit and functional again. But nothing's ever that straight forward...1 step forward 10 steps back. It didn't seem like I was making any progress whatsoever. But sure enough a few weeks later I was going on long walks and back to normality.
Hey ho. Hey ho. It's back to work I go....I got a job easily enough and it was only bar work so not a lot of walking but lots of hours spent on my feet. This was a test to see how far i could push myself. Which turned out to be a fair bit, and shift by shift my leg would get more used to the work load. My determination was at an all time high to get back to Australia so I kept on working and then went to the gym a few times to see what I could do. I managed a 5k on the cross trainer in 25 minutes. And boy was I proud of myself!!
This was when I decided to come back out. I'd already had enough of England - even though I'd only been back 7 weeks. It was too long considering had I not had the accident I wouldn't have been back till September at least! But upwards and onwards.
So after a 27 hour flight I'm back in Australia and I'm heading off to the farm tomorrow...wish me luck...
Well... in hindsight maybe it was better we hadn't known where we were going because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gone. The farm is situated 800km west of Brisbane, which let me tell you folks...Is pretty much in the middle of nowhere! The nearest supermarket was a 3 hour drive away so you can't be forgetting anything important.
Our first week was spent at Weaona - the other 'property'. The reason it's in quotation marks is because it's not really a house as such. It's basically a mobile shack thing. The toilets and showers are in a separate tin shed. For our first week we burnt trees so we could feed the sheep. Oh lord. It was literally our worst nightmare. I've never experienced anything like it.
Once we returned back to the normal house things got slightly better. We learnt how to ride dirt bikes, drive tractors, use chainsaws, use a rifle. Even learnt how to sheer a sheep!! Shearing was a fun and interesting day to be apart of! We went mustering most days -mustering is basically rounding up sheep on dirt bikes and moving them to a different area of the 65,000 acre property.
Living a life that is so remote to the real world can take a toll on you. The only people you see are the people you live, eat, and sleep with and occasionally the shearers. It's a very different lifestyle to what I'm used to. But in all honesty I'm really happy we've done it. To actually experience the true Australia.
All was going well... We were 2 months into the work and becoming quite adjusted to the way of life out west. Then disaster stuck.
I was out doing a job out in the fields and had just finished and was on my way home when I lost control of the front end of the bike and ended up underneath the bike 5 meters where I had fallen. At first I hadn't realised quite what had happened so I got out from under the bike and tried to get up....OH CRAP. You know there's certainly something wrong when you go to stand and you can feel the bones moving where they shouldn't be.
Right. So I'm alone somewhere in a 65,000 acre property. I knew the guy on the tractor that was in the field would come my way but when...I wasn't sure. So what could I do....nothing. I had to sit and wait and be patient. Someone will come....eventually.
Roughly around 2/3 hours later I see a truck coming my way. I thought it was maybe it was Corn or Dean realising I was missing. But no they still hasn't realised I was missing and It was a French backpacker from a neighbouring property wh,o bless his soul came to my rescue and picked me up and put me in the truck and we drove home... But that took slightly longer because we were in 2nd gear all the way as that's all my leg would allow.
Anyway long story short an ambulance turned up 3 hours later that drove me to cunnamulla community hospital that was 2 hours away. Where I got X-rayed and they confirmed a spiral fracture (break in 2 places) to my tibia which is the big bone in the lower leg. That hospital couldn't deal with the severity of my fracture so told me to make my own way to a fracture clinic?!? Meanwhile my leg is castes up above my knee?? Righto docs.
So we drove 12 hours to Lorraine's (the little life saver she is) where she took over as mother hen and got me to the nearest hospital to hers which was 100X better than cunnamulla where Cornelia was made head nurse and left in charge to look after me!?
8 days after the accident and lots of polavas later...I was in the operating theatre getting a metal rod shoved down my bone to keep it all in place...how delightful.
This little mishap kinda ruined my families plans for when they came out...my bad. After 2 weeks with my family I made the decision to come back to the UK for a while to recover and have a roof over my head and then I can get a job and once I've got enough money I'll head back out.
So I came home and wallowed in self pity for a good week or 2 but when I got told I could walk again I thought. Right. This is it, time to get fit and functional again. But nothing's ever that straight forward...1 step forward 10 steps back. It didn't seem like I was making any progress whatsoever. But sure enough a few weeks later I was going on long walks and back to normality.
Hey ho. Hey ho. It's back to work I go....I got a job easily enough and it was only bar work so not a lot of walking but lots of hours spent on my feet. This was a test to see how far i could push myself. Which turned out to be a fair bit, and shift by shift my leg would get more used to the work load. My determination was at an all time high to get back to Australia so I kept on working and then went to the gym a few times to see what I could do. I managed a 5k on the cross trainer in 25 minutes. And boy was I proud of myself!!
This was when I decided to come back out. I'd already had enough of England - even though I'd only been back 7 weeks. It was too long considering had I not had the accident I wouldn't have been back till September at least! But upwards and onwards.
So after a 27 hour flight I'm back in Australia and I'm heading off to the farm tomorrow...wish me luck...
Time to get our backpacks back on...
Surfers paradise - well for one thing. I don't think it lived up to the "paradise" name. Maybe that's just my snobbiness coming through! But it was just full of really tacky people and reminded me of what I could only imagine Maga to be like. Was very thankful we only spent a few nights there! But we did have a few visitors from Noosa and it would be rude not to experience one night in tack city. So Jan, Shane, Brandi and I headed out. Fairly it wasn't that bad but think that's because it was easy to forget where you are when you're having a good time and in good company.
Can say with certainty I won't be returning to the Gold Coast any time soon!!
Time to visit the relatives - we went to coolangatta to visit Lorraine and co. Which was so lovely to meet them all. And was nice to be in a family environment for the first time in months! Dean took me up Mount Warning which is the tallest point on the east coast and was a 10k hike up... Which was a hell of a workout but the views
were definitely worth it! Then Ross and Annabelle took us to see Byron Bay and up to the lighthouse which is the most easterly point on the coast. (4 months in and was time to do some sightseeing!)
MELBOURNE - in all honesty...when we first arrived in Melbs it wasn't my favourite place and I wasn't a very happy bunny and was fairly grumpy throughout our first week (sorry corn!!) but by the end of our 2 weeks it grew on me completely, the city has such diversity! Brunswick had such a Camdeny feel to it. Bit gutted we didn't spend enough time actually enjoying it.
We decided to splash some cash and hit up the Australian open. But dear lord we couldn't have chosen a worse week to go. Melbourne was experiencing the hottest temperatures in over 10 years. NOT COOL. The day we went to the tennis it was 43 degrees and we were sweating like there's no tomorrow. It was disgusting, I don't think there was a part of my body that wasn't sweaty.
Can say with certainty I won't be returning to the Gold Coast any time soon!!
Time to visit the relatives - we went to coolangatta to visit Lorraine and co. Which was so lovely to meet them all. And was nice to be in a family environment for the first time in months! Dean took me up Mount Warning which is the tallest point on the east coast and was a 10k hike up... Which was a hell of a workout but the views
were definitely worth it! Then Ross and Annabelle took us to see Byron Bay and up to the lighthouse which is the most easterly point on the coast. (4 months in and was time to do some sightseeing!)
MELBOURNE - in all honesty...when we first arrived in Melbs it wasn't my favourite place and I wasn't a very happy bunny and was fairly grumpy throughout our first week (sorry corn!!) but by the end of our 2 weeks it grew on me completely, the city has such diversity! Brunswick had such a Camdeny feel to it. Bit gutted we didn't spend enough time actually enjoying it.
We decided to splash some cash and hit up the Australian open. But dear lord we couldn't have chosen a worse week to go. Melbourne was experiencing the hottest temperatures in over 10 years. NOT COOL. The day we went to the tennis it was 43 degrees and we were sweating like there's no tomorrow. It was disgusting, I don't think there was a part of my body that wasn't sweaty.
Cheers to 2013
New Year's Eve - we headed into Brisbane with Tamara and Brandi after packing up all our stuff(note to self...far too much stuff) then time for the masquerade ball babyy and a open bar... What could go wrong...?
....a few minutes to midnight I'm looking around for Cornelia and can't seem to find her nor had the girls seen her for a while. Anyway we were sure she was somewhere and just couldn't find her...but after all the cheers'ing and whatnot I still couldn't find her so I went to the toilets to look there. And guess what I find. A very drunk corn hanging over the toilet! Barely coherent we said our happy New Years and she wanted to be left in the toilet so us girls decided to dance a little longer taking it in turns to look after the invalid. But as the night came to an end we manoovered her into a taxi and straight into bed as we got in.
Overall a very funny night with our favourite girls and a lovely way to bring in 2014!
IT'S CHRISTMAAAAAAAAASSSS
I was so apprehensive about christmas. Worried that it would have just been me and corn wallowing about how much we miss home, or not feeling like we were apart of something. But I can hand on heart say it's one of the best christmas's i've ever had...even if I was an orphan, but i'm pretty sure I played mother hen all day anyway!
We started off by opening the presents Cornelia had brought back with her from her flying visit home for her sisters wedding. Then made a monstrous breakfast buffet for all the house and the 2 new Canadians we picked up at Fraser!
While I let the first food baby of the day deflate a little, I FaceTimed home and wished them an early Merry Christmas (as I wasn't sure how I would be after the 2 boxes of goon and 3 bottles of wine we had bought at Dan Murphys the day before)
What's christmas without heading to the beach? No christmas at all! Never had I expected in a lifetime to be spending Christmas day on the beach. I just couldn't wrap my head around that it was d
December let alone Christmas!
Christmas dinner was just like having a massive family sit down...round the table we had, 4 Canadians, 4 Brits, a French, a Taiwanese, and even an Israeli celebrating his first ever christmas which was a delight to be a part of! The food had been a huge success having a classic British roast and was demolished very quickly. But in hindsight can now understand why the Aussies have a cold/seafood christmas dinner...it's waaaay to hot to be cooking roasts in a kitchen without aircon!
I have to say I think Christmas Day has to be one of my favourite things about Oz so far. There was something so lovely about seeing all the travellers sitting round a table, being in the same boat by not having family or friends near by but all being so content to be there. I think it's something I'll treasure forever.
We started off by opening the presents Cornelia had brought back with her from her flying visit home for her sisters wedding. Then made a monstrous breakfast buffet for all the house and the 2 new Canadians we picked up at Fraser!
While I let the first food baby of the day deflate a little, I FaceTimed home and wished them an early Merry Christmas (as I wasn't sure how I would be after the 2 boxes of goon and 3 bottles of wine we had bought at Dan Murphys the day before)
What's christmas without heading to the beach? No christmas at all! Never had I expected in a lifetime to be spending Christmas day on the beach. I just couldn't wrap my head around that it was d
December let alone Christmas!
Christmas dinner was just like having a massive family sit down...round the table we had, 4 Canadians, 4 Brits, a French, a Taiwanese, and even an Israeli celebrating his first ever christmas which was a delight to be a part of! The food had been a huge success having a classic British roast and was demolished very quickly. But in hindsight can now understand why the Aussies have a cold/seafood christmas dinner...it's waaaay to hot to be cooking roasts in a kitchen without aircon!
I have to say I think Christmas Day has to be one of my favourite things about Oz so far. There was something so lovely about seeing all the travellers sitting round a table, being in the same boat by not having family or friends near by but all being so content to be there. I think it's something I'll treasure forever.
Muchos gracias to all the people who made the day so special
xoxo
Countdown to Christmas...
Christmas was nearing and we had decided that our time in Noosa was coming to an end, we wanted to travel and see the rest of Oz.
But we'd thought we could do with a little break before the crazy christmas frenzy started...HELLO FRASER ISLAND.
We managed to persuade our little Canadian meatballs to come with us, so all of us squeezed into the little Exel and off we drove on our first road trip to Rainbow Beach.
The next few days were filled with stunning scenery, beautiful beaches and lots of laughs. Pippies 4x4 tag-a-long tour was so much fun, and I think that was down to a good crowd and the hilarious tour guide Steve.
I even managed to cope camping for 2 nights (big achievement for me!!)
Summary...beautiful island, beautiful weather and beautiful company resulted in a fab few days away.
Christmas Eve and we were reunited with our favourite flashpacker boys and was so good to see Jay, Levi and Jesse. Another night of lots of laughs and plenty of alcohol.
xoxo
But we'd thought we could do with a little break before the crazy christmas frenzy started...HELLO FRASER ISLAND.
We managed to persuade our little Canadian meatballs to come with us, so all of us squeezed into the little Exel and off we drove on our first road trip to Rainbow Beach.
The next few days were filled with stunning scenery, beautiful beaches and lots of laughs. Pippies 4x4 tag-a-long tour was so much fun, and I think that was down to a good crowd and the hilarious tour guide Steve.
I even managed to cope camping for 2 nights (big achievement for me!!)
Summary...beautiful island, beautiful weather and beautiful company resulted in a fab few days away.
Christmas Eve and we were reunited with our favourite flashpacker boys and was so good to see Jay, Levi and Jesse. Another night of lots of laughs and plenty of alcohol.
All rolled into one...
The month flew by and before I knew it, it was December and we were having our work christmas party...
Working for the Sheraton, we knew it would be good night with plenty alcohol and good food flowing and boy did it live up to the expectations!
It was fancy dress with "S" being the theme. So being adventurous old me I went with a sailor however Cornelia wasn't going unnoticed so she went as Snoop Dog....well let me tell you, she looked hysterical! She'd gone all out with drawing Snoops tattoos on her arms and, well, she just looked great...but upon arrival to the party, and getting a few weird looks from the senior staff not having a clue who she was - she changed to be a bit more of a conservative sailor like me.
The Sheraton had pulled of a beautiful banquet yet again, they had made it into a winter wonderland with fake snow machine and turning up the aircon made it feel a little bit like home ;) Down went some scummy cocktails with cute little candy canes hanging on the glass - and a few too many glasses of wine...but topped off with good music and fabulous company. I couldn't have asked for a better night.
During our time at work we had met some genuinely lovely people, and I am truly gutted that we've left and having to say goodbye was tough but I mustn't dwell but look back on the good.
Working for the Sheraton, we knew it would be good night with plenty alcohol and good food flowing and boy did it live up to the expectations!
It was fancy dress with "S" being the theme. So being adventurous old me I went with a sailor however Cornelia wasn't going unnoticed so she went as Snoop Dog....well let me tell you, she looked hysterical! She'd gone all out with drawing Snoops tattoos on her arms and, well, she just looked great...but upon arrival to the party, and getting a few weird looks from the senior staff not having a clue who she was - she changed to be a bit more of a conservative sailor like me.
The Sheraton had pulled of a beautiful banquet yet again, they had made it into a winter wonderland with fake snow machine and turning up the aircon made it feel a little bit like home ;) Down went some scummy cocktails with cute little candy canes hanging on the glass - and a few too many glasses of wine...but topped off with good music and fabulous company. I couldn't have asked for a better night.
During our time at work we had met some genuinely lovely people, and I am truly gutted that we've left and having to say goodbye was tough but I mustn't dwell but look back on the good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)