And a kookaburra in a gum tree...

We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We sure did. Darryll and Donna adopted us as their kids and took us to Donna's family's farm. It was great getting to know her family. We went over to the farm on Christmas Eve and it still didn't really feel like Christmas. It didn't help that it was 35-40 degree weather every day. They had some fake snow spray to help it feel more like Christmas.

Christmas Day the kids opened their presents and then it started to feel more like Christmas. We had a big (overload) lunch and the adults had a Kris Kringle gift exchange. David and I got a lottery ticket and some chocolates, wish us luck! Grandpa usually buys a gift for the whole family and this year it was a buggy. For supper we had a wide variety of desserts Every evening we sat outside having laughs and fun. This particular night I went with Donna and her 2 sisters to have a little sing song. They used to sing together in pubs and different events when they were younger and her sisters have also been in different bands. When we came back to join the rest of the crew Donna's brother had scraped some frost and thought he would give me a Merry Christmas, so he through a bunch of frost at me and asked me how to make a snowman. I formed a ball for him to let him get the idea....and then showed him how we through snowballs. :) It's so weird to me having to show people stuff like that because they have never seen it.

Boxing Day was relaxed with a big lunch and a big supper...of the leftovers from Christmas Day. Donna decided it would be a good idea if all the girls put their hair in pig tails and then decorated them with Christmas decorations, so that was how part of our day was spent. In the arvo (afternoon), we watched Mick (grandpa) do some burn outs with one of the many cars that he has lying around for parts. It was pretty sweet to watch.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend. Lots of chatting and eating and meeting people. To explain the rest of the weekend would bore you but these are the highlights of the weekend.

On Sunday night Catherine took us to the airport and we had the worst 4 hour flight ever...no leg space, no tv because you had to pay 10 dollars for it and no sleep. Never doing the midnight flight again. A highlight of the flight though, is that we got to watch the sunrise from our window. It was soooo beautiful! We arrived in a rainy Sydney and slept until the afternoon. It is nice to be back but we cannot let ourselves get stuck in this city again!!!

That is all for now. I am sure you will hear from us after New Years! :)

Will put up pictures soon,

HOlly and David

Merrrrrrrrrrry Christmas!

Hey!

It's been a busy beginning of a week..Well compared to what it has been. Catherine and her girls have been here and so we have been working a bit more and spending time with them catching marron, cooking, baking and just hanging out. I made yummy nanaimo bars last night. The girls enjoyed them. They are pretty sweet. It will be my contribution to Christmas. I am also attempting lefse (a norwegian dish), it is still in dough form though.

This past weekend was a hot hot 40 degree weekend. We went to Perth for one last time. We stayed in Catherine's house for one last time and then spent Saturday with Juli...She cooked us a Colombian soupa. Yum! Juli lives right next to Swan River so while she worked in the evening David and I took a stroll down there and walked into the city for some Subway. On Sunday we woke up ROASTING, we picked up our liquified selves and headed to the mall for some air conditioning. We picked up a present for Kris Kringle at the Vanzetti farm and had some iced coffee and a chat with our friend Glenn. We went to the beautiful beach in Mulaloo one last time before we head back to Sydney! It was wonderful. After the beach we met up with some friends and had a picnic and waited for the Christmas Carols to start. It was weird. I could not get over it. It felt like they were having a Christmas Party in July. But this is how they celebrate Christmas every year. It was put on by a local church... Hillsong wannabe type music. It was good, they finished off the picnic and carols with some fireworks. Yes, fireworks again. David and I feel like we see fire works on a weekly basis here. They have them for everything..and every single one of them is better than the Canada Day fireworks in Regina. hahaha.

Anyways, it is our last day with Catherine and the farm so we have a lot of work to do! We leave for Sydney on the 27th at midnight and spend a couple weeks in Sydney, working and watching the NEW YEAR's EVE fire works from our friend's house and then we are off to New Zealand on the 12 for about a month. That is our plan for now.

We wont have any internet at the farm for Christmas...but get ready for a photo overload when we get back to Sydney!!!!!

Miss you all! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!! (I have to keep saying this to myself so that I can believe that it's actually Christmas time.)

Holly and David

Ice Skating!!

Another blog update, yay! I have finally pulled myself away from the bathtub. David, Daryll and I went down to the river with Marron (big black crayfish) nets and let them sit for the afternoon and caught 6 marron, we let two go back into the River and took 4 back to the house to live in the bathtub until tomorrow at lunch time. At the beginning of our retrieving of the nets a bull ant decided that he was going to pinch down on the bottom of my foot. OUCH! Daryll and David had a nice laugh for about 10 minutes until the sting settled down. It is still sore but not as bad as those 10 minutes.

This weekend David and I went to Perth again. We spent the morning of Saturday at the Hillary Harbour Markets for Catherine and then went shopping. It was too weird...40 degree weather, christmas decorations, christmas music... I can't even really get into singing Christmas carols or being excited because it feels like its July. We then went to a beach near the house and hung out there for a few hours and had a little swim. In the evening we went Ice Skating!!!!! Two weeks ago we met a guy at church named Isaac and he loves watching ice hockey and skating. He is off to Lewis, an island of Scotland, as he has found love there. So this was his going away party. It was nice to have some air conditioning and ice to cool us off. It was David's second time skating ever. Everytime people asked me if I could skate...they would stop in mid-sentence and be like "Oh wait, your from Canada, you should be a pro." Well, I am not a pro but I can skate. The rink was pretty bad, though. Isaac said that it was probably the best it has ever been. When people fell they were soaking wet afterwards because it was slushy and had puddles every where that there was higher amounts of traffic. I will give Australia credit though....It was a pretty good indoor skating rink for a 40 degree day. And to end the night....David left the lights on in the car...again. He asked everyone if they had jumper cables and no one did. Finally, the last person came out and happened to have them..Boy, were we lucky. I think we have to start taking jumper cables around with us.

On Sunday, we went to church, caught up with people and then met Isaac and some of his friend for lunch at Nando's, a popular portugese restaurant in Australia. It was another 40 degree day so David and I decided to head over to the Mall to do some shopping and then head to the beach. I guess Isaac had missed us already though because he called asking if he could take us out for coffee. So we met him at a coffee shop in the mall and he bought me a big piece of Mars Chocolate Cake and an Iced Coffee...bad girl. David and I then headed off to the beach to enjoy the sun and ocean for a bit before heading off to the evening service at church. We were a tad late for the service since we got the time wrong. Luckily the church was only 10 minutes away from the beach we were at so we were only 40 minutes late. After church we went out with some friends at Hillary's Harbour and Isaac introduced us to some YUMMY ICE CREAM (I know, bad girl). There were different flavours to choose from..and then...you had a choice of different candies and chocolates to put in it...They would then mix it all together and so you had ice cream with your choice of candies in it...We all had a boysenberry ice cream with nerds and gummy bears...Goood choice.. I reminisced about nerds ice cream from when I was younger. Apparently it was only a North American thing.

Well that is it for now,

Holly and David

Sheep & Monks

Hey,

So we decided to cut the blog into two sections. Just like when you get Paragraph breaks in newspapers so that the reader doesn't get bored and decide to go off and do something else.

We left the farm early-ish and headed down the highway to a place called New Norcia. Now New Norcia is the oldest Monastary in Australia, and the only one in WA. We arrived and headed for the museum, booking our tour and had a look around the place. When it was time for the tour, our guide Ricki, who had quite a history herself. She told us that when she was a nurse in the Vietnam war, she put some 'Purple Paint' on this guys bum who fell off his bike. That's what I remembered about her anyway. The tour started near a shrine to a miracle that had happenned shortly after the place was acquired, when a fire threatened to ruin the entire plantation they had, they resorted to placing a painting Mary in the fires path and prayed furiously untill the fire went back on its self. Nice eh?!

So the next bit was to head the the monks area, the general public isn't actually allowed in any of their buildings except the chapel, so we headed up there past the guest quarters and had a small history lesson on all there was to know about the two chapels they used. We later returned to the newer chapel to sit in on their afternoon prayer. We then headed off to the girls school, boys school and Aboriginal school. When New Norcia was formed back in 1876 the main man's idea of the place was to help and understand the Aboriginal people rather thatn to do what every other white man in Australia was trying to do at the time. So this was good stuff to hear, far from the barbaric history we'd heard from Europes first settlers in the country, pillaging, assimilating and generally being horrible to the lands Aboriginals. Holly was pleased, this is her area of passion in Australias history and for me it was good too, people being nice and wanting to preserve the original.

So after our tour we hit the art gallery and New Norcia Hotel, all of which were very nice and interesting. We'd spent hours in the place so we headed off at around 3 south towards the town of Gin-Gin. We'd heard that there wasn't much to see there so we planned a flyby visit on the way back to the farm. We ended up staying there for a while having a look around the tiny village, we got some food and had a mini picnic by the river on the grass trying to hold onto our food rather than having it snatched by some very friendly ducks. We had a walk down the river to see if we could find any marron but no success.

We drove back to the farm just as the sun was going down and made some food immediately.

So tuesday we packed some olives into jars, very ordinary...But in the afternoon we herded in the sheep with a view to putting these bands around their tails and male parts. We also had to tag the sheep according to age and gender and take some chunks out of their ears for recognition purposes. Holly's task was to make sure the lambs didn't run through the fence, to count the sheep that were marked and to let them through the gates once done. She also got to hold one of the new born baby lambs. Mine was to tackle the sheep, hold them on their back for the bands, then on the front for the ear bits. I've done much more humane jobs at the farm than this, but it was an experience. I left with some blood spatters on my shirt and arms and in desperate need of a drink. My back and arms are slightly achy today but this is nothing compared to what the sheep went through!

Ok, no more. We'll blog again soon. Stay safe and take care :)

David & Holly

Moora Speedway

David and I had another great weekend! Friday was a scorching 39 degrees and Saturday was just as hot. So we spent Saturday in the cool room jarring olives and then went up to Moora to watch Donna's (Daryll's wife) family (The Vanzetti's) race stock cars at the Moora Raceway. It was wonderful to watch! The Vanzetti Grandkids and their parents all race and make up a big part of the racers. We got home to their farm at around 2 am from the races (they live about 5 km from the raceway) and we stayed up with Donna's family until about 5am.

The next morning we spent getting shown all of the cars around the farm. I wouldn't be surprised if there are over 100 cars at that farm. David got a ride into the city by Donna's dad in his Ford GT 05, 5 litre. David was wide awake after that ride. Afterwards, Donna's brother took us out for a ride in the header...which just so happens to be CASE...and actually from Canada. We bonded comparing Saskatchewan and Alberta farming to Western Australia farming. It is actually very similar...but also very different. Their crops are covered in trees. They have to have trees there because they lower the water table that decreases the problem that they have with salt. In the beginning they got rid of a lot of them and then had to replant them.

One problem that W.A. has learned to live with is Bush Fires. The day before we arrived out at Moora the neighbouring farm had a problem with his header and it caught on fire, starting a blaze that went fast across his paddock that had not been harvested yet.

Moora is about the same size as Coronation (Alberta). It also reminded me of small towns in Saskatchewan. It felt like a nice summer day back home.

Anyways, Iduring the afternoon David and I gave a little geopgraphy lesson with an atlas on both of our countries and then I helped Donna's dad's build the telescope that he got for his birthday. Because David and I were there for another night Donna's brother decided we should have a bbq, some of Donna's cousins came over as well. It looks like we might be spending Christmas with the family as well. We get along really well with them and it was a good couple of days. :)

That's all for now.....

Holly and David

Phinally Photos

The computer finally decided to stop acting up and I was able to upload some photos. So it will catch you up a bit to where we are. I don't know if I can link photo albums to different blogs but hopefully you remember the different stories.

Regan's Ridge Olive Farm


The Beautiful Indian Ocean

Perth

SSSssssssSSSSSNAKE!!!!!

Blog Time. Said with a slight sigh. Another Long Blog Post is coming.

Ok, so Friday night we headed down to Catherine's again after two days back at the farm, she asked if we could cme back and help her with a market on saturday. Her daughter was in the city doing one market, and we were at Hillary's Boat Harbour doing another, a full day market. We ended at around 9pm.
The reason the market stayed open so late was that the harbour was celebrating summer, it did so with a 'DJ' on a Jetty and some spectacular fireworks. We didn't do too badly at the market either and made a few sales after the fireworks, I knew they wanted the Oil and the Olives even if they didn't.

We spent the day trading next to a Swedish ex-pat who was selling some Swedish Chocolate Balls. She came and saw us earlier in the day to see our set up and rewarded us with one of her produce. It was Amazing!! A chocolate, buttery, Oaty ball coated in hard sugar. A secret family recipe but the balls are known all around Sweden. And now known to us. She is doing a great thing to the world!

So Sunday, we woke up and headed off to this church we'd heard about. Darryll's wife Donna's sister was a worship leader there, so we thought we'd give it a go. We were given the most amazing greeting and hounded (in a good way) by lots of people. I think we'd been spotted as newcomers as we had one guy come up and say are you the people from Canada? hehe. It wasn't quite Hillsong though they did play some of their music, but it was a good experience. The size was better than Hillsong, you feel as though your a newcomer every time at Hillsong, whereas I can see you being welcomed as a regular after your first visit. The pastor took some time out to speak to us after the service and we had a great conversation about nothing. Cassie Davis who is a newcoming singer from Australia is the Pastors daughter.

We headed back to Catherine's house and hadn't realised that her daughters had set the alarm as they left with their grandparents earlier. So we let ourselves in and stood back as the piercing alarm stunned us both. It was very embarassing and we called Catherine to figure out what to do. She gave us the code and we dissarmed the alarm. It's definately funny now.
So we headed to the beach in the afternoon before church and played in the bathwarm water. It was really windy and the waves were pretty big, we played here for about an hour and headed straight to church. After the service a guy called Isaak came and spoke to me saying he was moving to Scotland to be with a girl he'd met while on holiday earlier in the year. He had a very interesting story and invited us both out for some Noodles at the Boat harbour where we'd done the market the day before. We had a great night talking with him and some of his friends, enjoyed some good noodles and good company, a really nice night.

So monday we headed back early to be here for work. I jumped on the little tractor and finished my mowing i'd started on friday, Holly headed into the Mango plantation and continued the pruning after mourning the loss of the grey cup. (Canadian Football for the British Followers) It was an average day on the farm untill Holly found a snake near the roses, she was weeding there and it was slithering towards her. Darryll caught it and we got some photos. Even he didn't know what kind of snake it was, though he thought it was a baby Dugart. A poisonous snake, we tried looking for fangs but it's mouth was too small. Don't worry parents we were unharmed.

We headed off with Darryll to herd his cows and move them to another of his leased land blocks. It was great fun herding them, they are such placid animals and will always go for an open gate. Too easy. We loaded them onto the trailer and carted them to their new home. In the 5 minute journey they'd managed to poo all over the trailer, even above head height. Of course I was amazed.
Daryll told us to head to his house and Donna would fix us up with something to drink and some food. We had a really fun night and really enjoyed their company. Darryll tried to teach Holly to say his name properly which was entertaining. We stayed the night and spent all day today (Tuesday) doing some trimming of climbing plants, moving some grinded limestone to their pathway and stomping it down. After lunch we loaded the farms Semi trailer (Lorry) with some junk from their garage, a sofa, an old cooker, a dresser and heaps of carpets etc...I then drove it to Lancelin's Rubbish tip, we opened both sides of the truck and heaved all the insides out leaving a nice gap where the truck was standing.

So....I think that's it. There is more detail but you've probably already run out of time. We'll keep busy and make sure we have more interesting news to Blog about.

Uru :)

David & Holly

Things to See...

Sorry that we have not put photos up lately! I will try to put some up tomorrow. We will see how that goes. But for now....We have a couple cool things!

First off...this morning Catherine told us we were famous...and we found out that our photos had been put on a blog from the website of the market we had been to at Hillary's Market. Catherine told me I should share the website with my dad.. But I was one step ahead of her... Sharing it on my blog! ha.

This is the blog of the markets.

And this is the Photo Gallery where you will find our photos under the title Regans Ridge.

We will be helping her out with this market again this weekend...So you can check the website for Week Seven of the markets and find our photos.

Finally, we have been hooked to Australian Idol as one of the finalists we actually met at the Hillsong Conference in July. We were so excited to see him get as far as he did.... Who am I kidding! HE WON!!!!!!!! He had the Good Charlotte brothers, Pete Wentz, Liza Minelli, and Michael Buble marvel over his singing voice and joke about their jealousy towards his singing compared to their own. He is a soul singer but during the past weeks in Australian Idol he has sang anything from Miley Cyrus to Beyonce to Hallelujah and been good at all of them. So, I thought I would show one of my favourite performances from him and you can feel free to check him out further!! Stan Walker - Hallelujah

Well that is my big news for today!!

Take Care,

Holly and David

Rockin' Rottnest

David and I have had quite the busy past four days! Saturday and Sunday we did two markets. We did not do as well at these markets than the other one. Tough Crowds. The first market was at Hillary's Harbour. Just five minutes from Catherine's house. It was a beautiful area. The second day was in the city area of Perth. It was a hotter day. In the morning David and I took time to go to the Art Gallery and in the afternoon we popped into the Museum. They were both really interesting. In the museum, they had a room dedicated to The Lost Generation of the Aboriginals here in Australia. I found it fasinating. They pretty much have the same history as our Aboriginals. The white people came over and tried to assimilate the kids out of their culture and other nasty stuff. This happened up until the 70s. There actually wasn't a formal apology until last year. The prime minister before the current one refused to apoligize and the government agreed.

On Monday we spent the day in Fremantle. This day was much better than the other day that we went when it was pouring rain. It was nice and hot. In the afternoon we went to the Fremantle Prison and did a few tours. This prison had been running up until 1991. The second tour we did there was only David, Juli and I so we got some special treatment and went to some of the places that larger groups do not get to see. When we eventually get caught up with photos you will get to hear some pretty crazy stories about the prison.

Today, was a hot 35 degrees..But this is nothing compared to the heat wave that Eastern Australia has been having. We got up early in the morning to catch a ferry to Rottnest Island. There ended up being construction on the highway and what was only supposed to be a 35 minute drive ended up being an hour drive and we almost missed our ferry. We caught it will 2 minutes to spare. Yikes. Now, Rottnest. This island is probably one of my favourite things that I have seen in all of Australia so far. David and I rented a snorkel and a bike and we biked around the whole island and snorkelled a only a few of the 63 beaches!! I only had to get off my bike and walk up a couple hills. I think this is pretty good for not having ridden a bike for quite a few years. But going uphill and down hill was ALOT of work! We are definitely pooped now. The water is beautiful and the snorkelling was fun. It was not quite as good as the Whitsundays but still pretty fascinating. The pictures we took are wonderful...But they still do not do justice to the real thing. We also saw some dolphins swimming along the island a few times as well!

Along the coastal drive home we decided to stop at a few beaches along the way. Cottesloe is one of Perth's bigger beaches. It is actually a pretty nice beach. We were spoiled up north by the farm with all of these secluded beaches. Cottlesloe is busy. Not close to as busy as Bondi though. We stopped at a couple others and then pulled into one to see the sunset. It was a dog beach... there were dogs every where... But the sunset.... it was sooooo beautiful.. Probably one of the first times we have seen a sunset over the ocean without clouds(and we have seen our fair share of them since Catherine has a fish tank of a living room overlooking the ocean.) AND to top it off..There were dolphins playing right close to shore, right in front of the sunset. Awesome!!

Anyways, we are now at Catherine's and are about to watch a movie and then call it a night since we are back out at the farm working tomorrow!

tata,

Holly and David

Bull Ants Suck!

Hey All!

Time for a blog update!! This past weekend we took Occy's car up north a couple hours to Nambung National Park to visit the famous Pinnacles. It was a sight to see. It really is hard to explain. We just have to show you pictures.. There was formations of limestone everywhere. Big ones, little ones, in between ones. We spent the afternoon there and then headed up to Jurien Bay. When we got there we found out that every accomodation was booked because of the Blessing of the Fleet festival that was going on. This is a festival that is well known in these parts. It is to celebrate the starting of Rock Lobster season and saying farewell to all of the fisherman for the season. So we joined in on the festival for a bit and then head to Cervantes, right next to Nambung National Park. For supper we ordered some fish caught fresh that day and then headed down to the beach to watch the beautiful sunset. We went to bed around 9:30 as it was dark and we had no torch so we couldn't do anything. I woke up around 2 in the morning FREEEEEEZING...luckily it got warmer by 6 oclock and was able to sleep comfortably.
The next morning we packed up and headed out to a beach and walked along it for the morning...collecting beautiful seashells and coral...and then putting the coral back :(. After walking for a bit at this beach we decided to take off to Hangover Bay and spend the afternoon there. It was pretty empty at first, then it seemed like a good place for families to hang out..so it got a bit busy. It also got pretty windy and chilly. So we decided it was probably time to pack up and head back to home. This was a good thing as when we got home we realized that David had burnt his face, neck and back of his legs.
Monday was a day of pruning and yesterday David and I went out to do some fencing. Yes, I am a woman of all trades...haha. Well, I must say though, the fence looks pretty darn good! David finished off with only a few barbwire nicks and a finger full of blood. Blah... I was not so lucky. First of all...after many bending downs to do pruning and bending downs to twitch the fence...my shorts decided to retire themselves...and split...I wanted to cry. I have wrecked all my shorts being out here in some way or another... :(. THEN, let me tell you. They have these HUGE bull ants here. They are about...3 times the size of a normal ant. It's like looking at a little ant through a magnifying glass. They have these huge pinchers and the top of there heads and they are sooooooo UGLY...Massive things...Anyways, we tried to be very careful of them because we had to remove a colony to get to a picket...and after a few rows down I guess one managed to travel along with us and get his revenge. I looked down at my finger to see a DISGUSTING Bull Ant on the tip of my glove, I tried to get him off but he didn't move...so I tried to take the glove off to prevent him from biting but it was too late! OUCH!!!! Boy did it hurt at first...luckily David grabbed the cold water from the UTE and poured it on the bite.. The pain was annoying for a bit and then slowly went away and I could get back to work. I never want to be bit by one of those again. I can now say I know what it feels like to be bit by a Bull Ant.

Today is a not so beautiful day out at the farm. It is windy and cloudy. Catherine is coming out and we will be working in the cool room, I believe. I must go get dressed and ready as Daryll and Catherine could arrive anytime!

Cheers for now,

Holly and David

To Infinity....and beyond!

What do you know, after a really quiet period we have some wicked exciting events happenning all at once.

Yesterday, Thursday started fairly ordinary, we spent the day cleaning the house and removing the oodles of spiders that seem to have taken refuge among our living space. In fact, just tonight we shared around 1.5 hours driving time with a huntsman spider. That's a big ugly hairy harmless spider to you guys.
So at around 3 in the afternoon David (I) was mowing the lawn when raindrops the size of your little fingernail started to slap on my head. So I ran to get the washing in, being the domestic god I am and ran into the house just as the heavens open and seemed to release some water reservoir in the sky on the farm. Thunder then came striking directly above the farm with deafening claps of thunder. We raced to shut off both pump sheds to prevent the electronics from being fried.

Today, we had an early morning taking a swim in our pool and returning to have some breakfast. Daryll arrived at around 11 and we played around with some organic fertilizer. Seaweed powder and fish protein liquid (Made in Canada). I nearly heaved and my hands still have a nasty gross fish odour. I'm sure the trees will love it. Later on we went to the farm next door and got some fencing equipment to build a bordering fence. While having our after work drink Daryll's wife Donna called, after a conversation he suddenly mentioned that we might like to head down to where she works at the Gin Gin Observatory. We of course jumped at the chance and raced down there for our evening with the stars.

Now this observatory is one of the most important places is the world for Astronomy. It houses the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere with has been built to look into gravity. Too complicated to explain here, but fabulously interesting. The Telescope is called the Zadko Telescope. Go Here for some more info. We had our own personal tour of the telescope and all the gizmos involved in making it work. It isn't open for public viewing but Donna hooked us up with a guy named Timo. This guy, who was very passionate and knowledgeable about his work, gave us a quick talk and demonstration of what this thing could do. He also showed us that in about 20 years there will be a big meteor (I think) that will come along the same line as the earth....heading straight for the India region. On April 13, 2029, which is a Friday. He says that they will hopefully find a way to solve that problem before it arises. If you click on the link ("Go here for some more info") you will find out more to what the big telescope can do with watching our galaxy and saving the earth from possible future harm.

Other than this amazing telescope we also had a presentation of the sky which Donna and her knowledgeable colleague Grant presented using the crazy green lasers we played with when we went over for supper at Daryll and Donna's a few weeks back. We looked through three different telescopes one was a refractor lens relying on mirrors and reflection, and the other two were GPS locators programmed to find anything in the night sky. We saw Jupiter (and you could even see the rings around it), the Silver Coin Galaxy in the east sky and a heap of star clusters to the south of us. A truly fascinating night which will remain with us for a long time. We can now tell the difference between orbiting satellites, whether they are spinning or simply orbiting the earth. And get this, shooting stars are not always what they seem. Apparently you can mistake a shooting star for a container full of space poo from the space station. It was a beautiful night....no moon so the stars were bright and it was a clear sky. What a beautiful thing. They also had a computer program that was like Google Earth...but it was the whole universe that we know of so far. We cannot even begin to comprehend HOW BIG this whole universe is. We are just a speck in our whole galaxy....that is just one of many galaxies...Ah, Amazing....

Well....what a fun night!! Unfortunately, the camera was left at home so we have no photos...We could of taken one with the massive million dollar telescope!!!!

tata for now...

Holly and David

Living it Millionaire Style

Ok,

So after a few weeks of not doing much at all we have done heaps in just half a week. Friday was a day putting olives into buckets and a short trip after work we ended up at Catherine's house. Mansion is a word I'd use, set in a stunning area. I woke up to the Indian Ocean every morning and my room was like a fish tank so I had an amazing view.

Friday Night Catherine had a family birthday party for her youngest daughter, Sabrina. So we got to meet her brothers, sister and their families. They all welcomed us happily and loved getting to know us and our cultures. Three of them were teachers so we found a lot in common to talk about and Catherine's dad could not stop talking to me about Canada and North Dakota. He actually had a friend who had been to Regina. You do not hear that very often over here. People usually cannot even pronounce it properly. Catherine's sister in law had a confession to make to me. She was in love with the show North of 60 and she had all of the seasons on DVD.

Saturday was the first day of the markets. We had horse rides in front of us and camel rides behind us. So people had to come and taste the olives and oils when there was no wind. Otherwise they got a nice waft. David and I tried out a few strategies and in the end we did really well. I don't think Catherine makes as much as we did the first day very often. We had planned to double our makings for Sunday's market. Oh, as a reward for doing so well that day, Catherine paid for us to go on a Camel ride. It was pretty fun. There were four camels and David and I were the only ones on the ride. We each got our own camel.

Sunday we did not double our profit but we did beat our Saturday profits. We were pretty proud of ourselves. Catherine had given us some money, we had refused as we are wwoofers but she knew that David had been eyeing a proper Aussie farmer hat and told him that she would like him to use the money to get one. He's a pretty dashing farmer. We enjoyed the suppers that we had with Catherine and her three girls. They are shy at first but once they start they could talk all night. We had lots of fun with her girls. The two youngest spent a fair bit of time with us.

Monday, was an interesting day. I had gotten ahold of the Clerk's (of the W.A. Government) email and emailed him right away as we were going to be in Perth for Monday, Tuesday. It worked out for him on Monday. But he warned us that David would have to wear a shirt and tie. Uh-Oh...we only have backpacker clothes. Luckily, David had a shirt so we just had to pick up a tie right before meeting him. We got off at the station we were told to get off and tried to catch a taxi. There were none in sight so we started to walk down the street that we were told it was on and hoped that we would finally catch a taxi. After walking about 20 minutes, we decided to stop and ask for directions to the Parliament Building. We find out that we are totally in the wrong area. AHHHH...So he tells us to go back to the train station we got off at and take a bus up to the City Centre from there. We have now missed the tour and we had no phone credit or number to call. So, we bought credit, called Catherine and she told us to call 1234...the operator. I got ahold of Peter's secretary and she was able to tell him we would be late. Ah, what a headache. Finally about an hour and a half after we were supposed to be there we arrived. (We didn't make him wait as he told us to do the public tour and then meet him for lunch). I prayed and prayed that we did not make him wait. Luckily, he was just finishing up a meeting. He was sooooo nice! He showed us the chamber and then took us to the big lunch room where all of the Members of Parliament eat. Also, he was wearing the Saskatchewan's Red Lily on his lapel and wearing a New Brunswick tie. David and I both ate swordfish for lunch. It was delicious. Peter asked lots of questions about Canada and Wales (he has been to both) and what we were doing in Australia previously and in the next few months. He really enjoyed the time that he had spent with Uncle Don and had a few stories. He was so easy to talk to and it was such a good time. He also had two girls join us for lunch. I think he was rewarding them for a job well done in planning a conference. It ended up being a great day! We then met up with Juli and checked out the Harbour Town outlet mall... I refrained from buying anything..

Tuesday, we headed off to see King's Park, King's Park is the eqivelant of Sydney's Botanical Gardens and Hyde parked rolled into one. This place was beautiful. The Main area overlooked Perth city and it's surrounds. There was a monument to the Bali bombings in which a number of Australians were killed. On the 12th October every year (The bombings anniversary) the sun follows a path accross the sky. it's a sacred place for those who were affected by the bombings. The Street leading to the park was lined with sugar gum trees and enourmous fig trees. We spent most of the day in King's Park reading and exploring the Botanical area. Our friend Juli came and met us around 2 and we went and had a look around the gardens. The Botanical garden is made up from a heap of area's broken up into seperate areas from all over Australia. There was the desert region Katherine, Kimberleys and NSW. We walked over a really high bridge that spanned between two areas of the park and had some photos. It was a tree top walk and the views were awesome. We even saw the route we had taken on monday when we were trying to get to the parliament house.

As a treat for it being our last night at Catherine's house we went to a restaurant called Sizzler's. Which David had seen on a commercial and was salivating over. We went with Catherine and the Girls and had a fun filled evening spending around 2 hours talking and eating waay too much. Sizzlers has an all you can eat Salad Bar with has some hot items too. We ate as much as our stomach's could contain and rolled out. This was a fitting end to a very enjoyable few days in the city, it was great to be in a family environment again and a great change of scenery from the farm.

Catherine's family room had the best sunsets, the redness of the sky filling the house. It was all so great, nice to live a millionaire lifestyle for a while. Untill we go back ;)

I think that's it... I'm sure we'll remember something to add later.

Laters..

David & Holly

(A very belated Happy Birthday message to Dad (Mr Crompton) I didn't forget )

Just living out the Farm Life

And another night of listening to the kookaburras laughing at each other in the tree outside our house...Must be around 7pm again...

So it's been a little while since our last post. At present I'm sitting on this chair roasting hot. The air conditioning is on and it's still hot. Today was a beasty 36 degrees, we spent most of the day sorting olives and putting them into jars. We had to go outside a few times to fetch more olives and man it was hot!! We got pretty cold sometimes in the Cool Room but soon warmed up after a few seconds outside.

So The Heart, Kidney, and Liver we had from our slaughtered lamb provided us with a meal during the week. We cooked them into a casserole and with some mash, I (David) would prefer not to eat this again, though Holly seemed to enjoy it. It smelt good looked and seemed to taste nice, though eating heart is not my idea of enjoyable food. It was an experience though, I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't squeemish about what they eat.

Last night Daryll and Donna invited us out for Supper at the Tavern which is a nice seaside bar/restaurant by the bay in Lancelin. Donna is an animal lover and raises orphaned Joeys and on our way to Lancelin there was a kangaroo standing on the side of the road which she slowed down for, she honked at it to make sure it didn't run into the road. As we passed Holly and I looked back and the cheeky beggar looked like he was giving her the finger! He raised his arm as if to express frustration at her for honking her horn.
We had a great evening talking and laughing over drinks and some really tasty food. We had a great night view of the bay, the town and the aftermath of Australias biggest sporting/gambling event of the year. They Melbourne Cup. I can never understand the fescination of gambling and racing horses but it was fascinating to watch. We watched the main race during our lunch break and the winning trainer nearly had a baby I think.

On Saturday, we headed to our Irish friends' place for a small gathering before they left to continue travelling. Along we travelled through the winding bush road untill we arrived at SoulHaven. Dellis' place, we have heard so much about this lady and we finally got to meet her. We had the impression she was a battle axe but turned out she was quite a sweet and very sociable mature lady.

After work today we headed down to see lamby on the bike and had a little treck around the property. It was prime time for Kangaroo activity at Dusk and we saw heaps of them. There were families of them hopping around and some who just watched you ride by with their hands tucked into their chest. Cute as!! Funny creatures...

We're heading to Perth this week-end to work the week-end markets and joining in on some family celebrations at Catherine's house on friday. Her mum is looking forward to seeing us after we spent an afternoon with her when she brought Prince up to us.

The next blog will probably be when we're back at the farm next wednesday.

David and Holly

P.S. Tomorrow is November 5th for us which is Holly's grandma's Birthday.
SO, Grandma if you get a chance to read this: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Love you and miss you Lots!! I hope your Day is Special.

Rated R

So we woke up early Saturday morning (4:30am)to a thunderstorm. David had to get up and drive to the pump sheds that are at opposite ends of the farm and turn off the pumps. It is not the best job to do in the middle of the night where you cannot see the nasty big spiders.

Later on in the day we were invited to go over to Len Hinkley's (the man we tagged along with on the trip to Midland with the sheep). He was going to be slaughtering a sheep to give meat to a friend and he thought it would be a good experience for us to join in on the experience. Len's property is beautiful and his house is situated on the side of a hill (it was built by a polish, 1 and a half arm man). He took us over to the shed where he was keeping the Mutton..haha. We will not get into the detail of what happened as we do not want some of you to lose your lunch but it was actually quite fascinating to watch. If anyone is interested, I took a video because I am morbid and twisted like that...lol. David got to help out in the slaughtering of it by sitting on the back part of the mutton so that he would not jump up and make it harder and more painful on himself (The mutton that is). We also have lots of photos of Len skinning the mutton and all that. He actually made it very educational for us, telling us what he was doing step by step and why he was doing it. He even let David join in on the skinning. David was weirded out by the fact that it was still warm. It was really cool when he cut the insides out and then gave us an anatomy lesson of the sheep. He took the lungs and blew into them filling them up with air, I guess that is his little party trick that he likes to show off when other people are helping him out. When all the skin and insides were out I helped him bag the mutton and we took it to the cool room. He took the remains in a tractor and set them up high so that the foxes could not get at it. I had no idea that they even had foxes here. Len gave us the liver, a kidney and the heart home with us to cook and try. I have never had kidney and heart before so it will be interesting.

After our big exciting afternoon, Len and his wife, Judy, took us down to the end of their block where there is the Moore River (which is way Moore of a river than Catherine's). They reckon its the best part of the Moore River. Part of it has little rapids where we hope to one day go swimming. Back in the day, when there were no roads, this was a main crossing for men on horses. Now, during marron (big crayfish/small lobster) season they let people onto their block to fish and camp. In return they usually get gifts of marron in return for letting people use their land. Len figures this is easier than having people trample through the bush to find the river.

After a tour of the property we went up to the house and fed all their pet sheep/lambs. This helps them when wanting to herd the rest of their sheep. They also have an amazing sheep dog that does all the work for Len. I got to feed all the sheep and rams with Judy and learned about all of them and how they turned out to become pets. They will not be slaughtered anytime soon. We were then invited in for another yummy aussie bbq with some of Len's yummy lamb. They would like us to come over and help them again in the future. We look forward to the next time we can go over there. We have nice chats with them whenever we get the chance and have come to appreciate their company.

Yesterday we went over to Darryll's to help him move furniture in his house...He is getting Vinyl (?) floor that looks like wood getting put in today and tomorrow. When we finished that we drove his UTE into Lancelin to get some Gas (LPG...do we have that in Canada for cars?), watched the sunset, then headed back to Daryll's house where we watched Australian Idol with him (we are hooked to it...much more exciting than Canadian Idol...we actually know one of the guys on it as well). The lightning storm was coming our way so we had to get back to the farm in time to turn off the pump sheds. Oh, I might add..we had a hot 34 degreees day inbetween two rainy days...starting to seem like Saskatchewan weather over here..Random days.

Today is a rainy day and we have the day off ...so we cannot even go to the beach or anything. We spent the morning driving around and opening and closing fences for the horses and turning on the pump sheds. I am in the middle of reading a book about a famous dog in this area that Len lent us. Tomorrow Daryll has no work for us to do.....yet..... The work is getting pretty scarce...He even tried handing us off to the neighbour but he doesn't have any work either.

Ta ta for now.

Holly and David...

How Many Avacados?!

G'Day,

We met our next door Neighbour on Tuesday, Oscar. He's from Zimbabwe and was a victim of Mugabe and his army of angry farmers. He had a Tobacco farm on which he also farmed cereal and kept sheep & cattle. A very interesting man, we talked for a while as he regailed his life story and how greatful he was for Australia taking himself and his wife in. After our Zimbabwean experience we played with the Mango trees for the rest of the afternoon. Pruning and removing a disease called Anthrax Nose (I think) The branches of Mango trees smell like Mango's, just an interesting little observation.

So that was Tuesday and wednesday we were invited to Daryll's to do some garden work with him. So we spent much of the morning attacking rogue weeds, removing leaves from paths and pruning climbing vines. Daryll has the most amazing front garden, the previous owners planted a host of useful herbs and such. There is a Bay leaf tree, Verbagne (A lemon Sherbet smelling herb. Good in tea) Aloe Vera, Asparagus, Lemons inclkuding an orchard out back which has a heap of stone fruit trees, fig trees lemon and orange trees. Daryll gave us some oranges, we bit a chunk and emptied the insides. Just like a blast of orange juice. So yummy!
After our lunch we headed to se Daryll's Mango trees. After a frost a few years back his crop of 300 trees dwindled to just 40. Such a shame but his trees are flourishing and are much bigger and healthier than the ones at the farm. Daryll has a series of cave openings near his mango plantation. Limestone litters the ground and in a few areas there are openings which he thinks may lead into a chamber. This area has heaps of caves, 600 in Yanchep area and a load more around here in the bush.
We then took a walk back though his neighbours Avacado plantation. He said that we could take a few from each tree, there were heaps of trees! We have so many Avocados now, There are photos of how many we got. Interesting though, some of the trees were so weighed down with these fruits, it never occurred to me that they grew like that. After clearing his porch area of a rogue climbing vine to which we had to climb up to and over the roof. Yes Holly made it up too and was clearing the guttering. We rolled this vine over and threw it to the ground.
As a small thankyou for helping them out Daryll and Donna treated us to our first genuine Aussie BBQ cooked by Aussies. We had lamb from our farm which was killed and butchered by our friend Len. And a porterhouse steak from Daryll's own herd of cows. With some Asparagus from the garden and a great potato gratin. We had great fun swapping stories and putting the world right over a meal. Donna, who is the co-owner of a renound observatory and the Southern Hemisphere's largest telescope, treated us to a free presentation of the sky. She has this pointer which shoots out a green laser 22kms into the sky. She showed us Jupiter the newest and oldest stars, the fastest spinning star, the two galaxies that look like clouds in the sky. We learnt the differenences between Northern and Southern Hemisphere skies, also learning some basics of Aboriginal Dreamtime Story constellations. Fascinating....
As of our night last night Holly now wants a Kangaroo as a pet. Donna and Daryll raise Joey's that have lost their mothers due to being hit by a car. They take the Joey's home and nurse them, bring them up and release them into the wild. Donna says that they are like Human babies, they like to be cuddled and need to be fed every four hours during the night. We saw pictures of them lazing on the couch and cuddling the kids. They are very gentle and loving animals. They also had a pet Emu, which are very cure when they are young. But the Emu sadly died last year due to its curiosity. Curiosity did indeed kill the Emu.

Special Birthday wishes are sent from the both of us to Ken, (Holly's Dad) Happy Birthday we do hope you had a great day.

We had a slow day today doing some domestic work, preparing for Catherine's return tomorrow. We have an early start preparing black olives for packaging. And tonight is our last night with Prince who is sulking in his little cage. It'll be sad when he goes. I think he'll go home a little fatter and worse behaved than when he arrived (Nothing to do with Me :/)

I think that's it for now, we'll go and play with Prince and get some sleep to combat our early morning. Makes sense doesn't it? hehe...

Thanks for reading,

David & Holly

National Parks & guacamole

Good Evening Blog World,

So today was a tourist day and after a lazy morning of little productivity we jumped in our Ute and made the long trip (Long for David) and Headed to the beauty of Yanchep National Park just a little North of Perth. I'm not sure I was prepared for what was to come. Not in any bad sense only it doesn't resemble any national park area I've ever encountered before. This place had a hotel, a lake, Paddle Boats (awesome!!) and a host of cultural experiences to do with Aboriginal tribes.

We arrived at around 12:30 and headed straight to the Information area to book some tours get some postcards and have a look at some of the handycrafts that these places churn out. Some of the stuff was really good. After this we made the mistake of heading to their cafe area where they sold their own made chocolate. We made a hasty exit and didn't look back.

So we booked ourselves on the Crystal Caves tour and the Aboriginal Cultural exprience. We headed straight over to the caves and waited in the midday heat for our guide. Naomi came out and introduced herself and led us down to the cool humid cave below. This place was awesome, stalactites littered the ceiling of the first chamber and there was a cool damp in the air that condensated on your tongue. We headed through the caves stopping occasionally to look at the dwindling water table and so Naomi could show us some mineral formations. It was interesting to note that rather that just having pointy stalactites and mights, different water flows and surface tensions cause a huge variety of formations. Some look like Table cloth edges and some look like glaciers.

After our cave experience we headed over to the Aboriginal section to do our next tour. We were taken through a small garden and told the different uses for certain plants and seeds. We then headed back to a small amphitheatre to have a demonstration and a talk about Aboriginal tools, weapons and customs. The guy made some knives out of sticks of wood and some sharp rock. He glued them together with a mixture of Charcoal from the grass tree, Resing from the grass tree and Kangaroo poo. When he burnt it to soften the mixture it smelt like burning marshmallows and solidified into rock. Crazy stuff!! Of course we bought one from him.

After our cultural experience we headed to the Koala area for a chat about them. Not quite as detailed as the others but entertaining. Koala's aren't native to WA but their programme of breeding leads them to ship these Koala's to all areas of Australia and Japan. We saw some pictures of wet Koala's too, during the talk the lady touched on bush fires and extreme drought and brought out these photos. Cute and soo funny..hehe
We headed over to the BBQ area and cooked our chicken & vegetables sharing our meal with a parrot and a scavenging big black bird. Then headed onto a walk around the lake through burnt bushland. It was a beautiful afternoon. We stopped and watched Kanga's playing scratching and bouncing around untill it got cold.

After returning home we made guacamole and played around with the dog untill about an hour ago when the chocolate came out. Then it got serious...

Untill next time,

David & Holly

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot

The past couple of days have been pretty busy for us. So today was a wonderful day of relaxation.

We have finally finished up the irrigation that we needed to do for this week. We have been working in the heat...with flies that are very intrusive. But we finally wrapped it up and had the two Irish couples over last night and watched The Shawshank Redemption. They sat there and drank 24 beers between the 4 of them and seemed totally sober. I do not know how the Irish do that. I guess it could be their upbringing...But I feel that any normal person would not have been as calm and sober as them. It was a good night. We enjoy hanging out with them.

We are also babysitting Prince for the week. Catherine and her three daughters are in Tasmania for two weeks visiting their rellies (relatives). Catherine's mom dropped him off. She is a nice lady. We talked to her for about two hours and then had to shoot off back to work. Prince is a small version of Abby. But not really as playful. As soon as you reach out to him he rolls on his back sprawled out expecting you to pet him. We got a little stint of energy out of him tonight for about 10 minutes and that was it. He is now sleeping next to David on the couch.

Today was the hottest spring day that Perth has had in 30 years. It reached 37 degrees. David and I headed off to Lancelin to cool off in the ocean. (The farm has easterly winds that blow extreme winds that are hot...and the westerly winds do not reach the farm til late in the night.) It is the first time since I have been here that I have spent an hour straight in the water. It was marvelous! I spent most of the time at the beach in the water because as soon as I dried off the thousands of flies that were flying along the beach decided I would be a nice stopping point for them. It's actually 11pm right now and 20 degrees still. Apparently they weather is supposed to cool down though. Not enough to get rid of the flies though. There are spiders all over the house ...and I am determined to not get rid of any in hopes that they will reduce the number of flies that are constantly buzzing around in the house. haha.

Also, after 4 hours of patience. I have been able to upload an album of photos. They are the last photos from Sydney. I will not try to work on another album..so stay posted!

Last Week in Sydney

UPDATE: Here is another Album...This is it for a few days...

Indian Pacific...away we go!

That's all for now.

Holly and David

Baby Joeys!!!!!

Yesterday, approximately 11,500 trees have had their irrigation systems flushed, small pipes and big pipes with some really really big pumps. David has sore wrists and I have blistered thumbs. It was good for us to finally get some hard work on the farm. We also came across the emus again and chased them through the grove until we could at least get a photo of them. They run so funny. We also listened to a lost lamb whine for awhile. We do love nature. haha. Daryll had the day off to get some errands done in the city, so we had the farm all to ourselves.

After we were done all the hard work for the day (a full 8 hour day), we went down to visit Lamby. David wore him out. His idea of playing around is butting. So he chased David all around the field trying to butt him over and over. Videos available on request (David seems to laugh like a girl when he is being chased by a sheep). After the fun and games we retired to the farm house and were properly exhausted for the first time.

Today was a HOT day! It got to 27 degrees. We don't even have to have the fireplace going tonight. We spent the morning finishing off the irrigation system and the afternoon picking Paddison's Curse. This is a weed with purple flowers that is a weed that farmers do NOT want to spread through their paddocks. So, because this is an organic farm, we got to have the fun job of going out and hand picking them all off. We finally finished a whole road of them after 3 days of working on it. I also relearned how to drive a standard and drove the UTE (aka truck..lol) around the farm by myself...

We called it a day at 5pm sharp so that we could head over to a wildlife reserve to see some people that we have met (2 irish couples). We arrived there just in time to feed the kangaroos...not just any kind of kangaroos, CUTE red ones! They were very small. About half of them had little Joey's in their pouches. We hung out with them until it got pretty dark out. Pictures did not turn out to well but we got some good video footage of a joey hopping out of the mom's pouch, hopping around, goofing around with him mom and then hopping back into the pouch again! SOOOOO CUTE! When we left the reserve we could see kangaroooos everywhere! We also got our first glimpse of a Western Australia sky. The milky way was shining nice and bright.

Finally, we just finished watching an Australian "The Secret Millionaire" and he just so happened to go into a place called Redfern. This was a suburb close to where we lived back in Sydney. We walked through there when we walked to Hillsong. He went to a women's shelter and a children's drop in center. David and I now know where we will be volunteering when we go back to Sydney! We have been encouraged! It has been a great night all in all, feeding kangaroos, seeing the beautiful night sky, and getting excited to go back to Sydney and do some volunteering! :)

Tata for now!

Holly and David

Emmmmmmus

So the weekend didn't totally turn out how we had planned it. When we arrived at the campground it poured all afternoon. While we were staying dry, David forgot that he had left the lights on in the car and so when we went to take a little trip in the evening the battery was dead. We tried to get help from the others but they could not help us. Long story short, from my experience of leaving the lights on in the car, haha, I knew that they were not putting the cables on properly and so the next morning they tried it the way I offered the night before and sure enough the Toyota Hilux 4x4 off-roader came back to life.

That afternoon David and I were due to visit Yanchep national park and have a walk in the Bush but the weather wasn’t playing our game so we opted to come back to the farm and cook a thanksgiving meal.
David- I never knew that the Canadian’s celebrated it on a different day to the Yanks but it was Bloody good!!Pumpkin Pie is the best! We had sweet potato’s with Marshmallow, Roast chicken and heaps of veg. It was like Christmas. I’ve been eating it for lunch every day since and every time I get the need for a nap afterwards.

Yesterday when we were driving into the house from the olive grove we finally saw the three emus that live on the farm. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera but we saw them off in the distance again today when we went for a morning run! Yay!! They run very funny. They actually reminded me of the duster girl from Beauty and the Beast. The sheep were also in the groves today. It is so funny seeing tons of lambs with long tails on them. When they are running away their tails glide along behind them....haha.

Tomorrow, the big boss is away and we’re cleaning the irrigation systems, so lots of turning on big machinery turning on big taps and racing around on motorbikes. I'm excited! We will see how it goes.

The days are warming up here which is nice. I think I got a little bit of a burn today. Also, we think we can start uploading pictures...very slowly...so we will do that in the next few days!

Bed time,

Holly and David

I have lots of mango trees....in my backyard.

There is a song that I love that I learned of being over here by Angus and Julia Stone called Mango Tree. It talks about having a mango tree in the backyard...and well..I have about 60 mango trees in my backyard at the moment. Unfortunately, they will not be ready by the time I leave to go back to Sydney.. Boo.

This week was pretty basic..nothing to spectacular happened. Chris and I spent a few days in the cool room labelling and jarring while the guys spent their time outside digging and rolling up electric fence wires. It is finally nice and hot out. One down side to it getting warmer out is the flies. They warned us about them when we started to get them a little bit. But everyday it is like they triple in numbers! We thought of maybe getting some sort of catcher but Daryll says its not worth it.. We just have to suck it up and let them crawl all over us while we are working. Ah, Last we I did lots of bottling and I had very sore wrists from turning all the lids onto the bottles. The four of us went pruning with Darryl and I was in charge of twisting the stakes out of the ground. I tried not to complain but I think my lack of enthusiasm showed in my efforts. I will never live that day down. Daryll's nickname for me is now Canadian Princess. We had a nearby farmer working with us for the week and Daryll introuduced me as Miss Canada 2005. Psh. Luckily, yesterday I had a few hours to redeem myself digging trenches to stick wire into all over a paddock.

Some sad news, Daryll has two beautiful huskies. He usually keeps them chained up when they come over to the farm because they do not stay or listen very well when off the leash. These two huskies happen to be sisters...and you know what happens when two sisters have to spend the whole day tied up to each other...So one of the dogs, Fatty, is well behaved enough to come off the leash...While China moans because it is not fair. Well last night Fatty kept running away on us and this morning Daryll woke up to a phone call from his neighbours saying that his dogs had mauled half a dozen of his sheep. Fatty and China were no where to be found. David and I ended up having the day off and Daryll waited around only to have China return home. Sounds like if a farmer hasn't already shot Fatty, he will have to do it himself. It's sad really, Fatty was the well-trained one of the two. We will see what happens.

Tomorrow David and I are off to check out Yanchep National Park (click on this to check it all out), just 45 minutes south from where we are. We are really looking forward to it. There are a bunch of different walks and caves. I bet its going to be beautiful!

Anyways, nighty time! Will let you know how the weekend goes when we get back.

Holly (and David)

Take me to the Show

So after a wonderful weekend in Perth we are finally settled back at the farm. We just finished a yummy Sherwood Pie (Vegetarian Sheperd's Pie, lentils instead of beef...very good)

Ok, so our first week-end back in the city....

We were told on thursday night that we could have a lift to the city and Catherine would pay for us to go to the perth Royal Show. Good deal we thought, so we did a short days work on friday labelling and headed off to the city. We were dropped off at Joondalup, the place we originally met Catherine and got the train to the city.
We wanted to get a mobile broadband deal so we could use skype etc.. from the farm, but the only providor that works in our area is one called Telstra. Now Telstra charge you $60 a month for 750mb, you can pay a similar amount with say 3 Network or Vodaphone and get around 10gb. Crazy people...

So when we arrived in Perth we met with Juli and went to find a Hostel to stay the night. We decided to stay at a hostel for the first night and asked if we could stay with Juli for the second. So the Hostel night was a first for Holly but it wasn't a bad hostel. Very tame and relatively clean. Nothing like the working hostels of Northern Queensland. Shudders....

Saturday morning was spent eating a Picnic Brunch by the Swan River in Perth met up with Juli and relaxed in a park for a few hours. We spent some time in the Bell tower after our Brunch. The Bell Tower contains 12 of the oldest bells in Australia and rung constantly during the day. We played cards and ate Olive's in the shadow of Perths Skyscrapers. We headed to the Perth Royal show around 3 and joined the queue. To entertain the waiting customers the show hired a guy to play the Didgeridoo and Bongos. He was an Asian with Long Dreads and only stopped smiling when someone walked past and threw him a compliment, he laughed and smiled even broader.

The show was as Holly says a mixture between Agribition and Exhibition from back home. For me it's like the royal Welsh but very Australian. We had a great time looking around the stalls for the agricultural part of the show, then hit the animals section where Holly had a connection with a Wombat. There were heaps of Animals there, baby ducks chickens, a new born calf, Crayfish and a whole section dedicated to dogs. We saw tonnes of different breeds of dogs and even some of those poodles that have the bad haircuts. They're really ugly!! But the stealers of the show were the glorious Golden Retreivers.

After leaving the Animal section we headed towards the pavillion to see where our boss had her stand during the week. On our way David noticed a friend walking by, this sounds relatively ordinary but he comes from my home town which is Tiny (There are less than 2,000 in my home town). And this was the second time I have bumped into him in Australia. THe show ended in a fireworks display with neon glowing horses which we watched huddled under a towel to keep us from freezing. We then joined the crowd to catch our train back to the house, we met some lovely people on the train for me putting a perfect end to an awesome day.

And so this morning we took a trip to Scarborough beach and spent some time relaxing with Flat stanley. Yeah...he was there. We only spent a little time here because we needed to get back to Joondalup to catch our lift back to the farm.

Bed time now though guys, thanks for reading :)

David & Holly

Olive Oil Atomic Bomb (Almost)

Hello Again,

So we've spent the past two days bottling Olive Oil. We learnt that the Farm has two types of oil, Mild &  fruity and the Moore River Blend. This was a good job for yesterday (Tuesday) as it rained crazy all day. The rain rattled and the wind rocked the shed while we listened to Ballad CD's and the Corrs. Holly spent most of her day filling and twisting the caps onto the bottles, she told me to say she had very sore hands, but she's not complaining. I however spent my day between the shed and the farmyard. Making boxes filling them with Oil bottles and stacking them in the shed.

After doing the boxes Daryll and I were outsideto herd the farms sheep. They were being given some medicine so I had to usher them towards him while trying to avoid any of them deciding to make a run for it. One did escape by jumping a barbed fence so we left the herd in a gated area to chase the escapee.

We had more WWOOF-ers arrive yetserday. Erni and Chris, a more mature couple. They're travelling around Australia, they're from Melbourne and have just arrived from visiting Northern Australia  and are planning their southern Australia adventure.

So we spent today doing some pruning of the Olive Trees. They need to look like vases we keep getting told. We're given little hand saws and instructed to put our topiary skills top the test and shape the mis-shapen bushes into beautiful fruit bearing masterpieces. What we seem to be doing is hacking away at the bushes with no certainty that we are doing the right thing.

So after our day of pruning, and some weeding we all sat around the outside fire with some other people from nearby and had a really nice evening. Chats about politics, yes even Canadian Politics, Australia and about a mini mount rushmore in England somewhere. Even I (David) have no idea where it is. We had a vegetarian curry cooked by Chris which was outstanding, some beers and kicked back for the evening.

We are heading to Perth tomorrow with Catherine and Hitting the Royal Perth show. It's gonna be Awesome!!! Chain saw Ice sculptures and heaps of fun and random things to see. But No rides that spin round too fast or go upside down for David. The carousel is my limit I think. Cotton candy too!! Fun Fun Fun...

Ok, Holly is alseep on the couch with Abbys replacement and I am in need to some ZZzzz's people. Thanks for reading,

Blog Soon.

David & Holly

Kanga-Roadkill

Ok, Here we go again.

So we had two days off over the week-end, and I guess monday too as it was a public holiday, and all we did was sit in a truck all day.

Saturday we headed to Lancelin, the closest town to the farm to see what it had to offer. The town is a seaside town. It has everything you'd need to survive and no more. A pharmacy, Grocery store and LJ's burgers, best steak burger ever! We of course had to look at the clothes shops while we were there, so David was watching the AFL final on any tv that was available in these stores. Naturally.

We headed to the beach and were not prepared for what we saw. I guess we had the idea of Sydney beaches in mind, packed and rocky. We were pleasantly greeted with the sight of white sandy beaches, turquoise water and not a sole insight. We far prefer these beaches to those on the East coast.
We walked up and down the beach both at Lancelin and the other nearest town Ledge Point taking in the sights, sounds and washed up coral. We stopped in at Ledge point and hit the beach there were more people here.

By Lancelin there is an area where the dunes are crawling with 4x4's, quad bikes and heaps of little kids on annoying little baby quads. You can hear them from the beach and all over town looks like a crazy good time!

We went to Daryll's house to take him up on the offer of a BBQ and some beers after our trip to the beach, we were sure it was number 12. When we arrived at his house however we were not so sure. We couldn't see his car anywhere and the friends he said he was having over to watch the game didn't seem to be making any noise. Daryll's place really is what I imagined a typical Australian outback house to be. Sparse, heaps of out buildings and surrounded by bush, we looked around and couldn't hear or find anyone. So we started to wonder whether we had the right house, scary thought...So we drove home. Later we discovered it was his house but they'd gone to see the cows when we came to visit.

Having forgotten our bathing suits and sun tan lotion on saturday, we decided on sunday to do a beach day in style. Bathing suits, lotion hats even a picnic!! We decided on our way back from the Beach on sunday to take a gander at the Moore park Nature reserve, which is not so much a reserve as it is an area of vast bush. We drove along the fire breaks stopping at the crest of a hill overlooking the sea of green scrub to watch the sun set. It was immensely fun ploughing through nature in a huge vehicle though we must have brought half a tree back with us, along with a smouldering break pad :/

So monday...We weren't sure if we were working today so we played it lazy. Watched tv and had a late breakfast. Daryll turned up around noon and asked if we wanted to take the sheep to market. We helped separate the sheep and load them onto a truck, Len who is Daryll's friend was driving the lambs to the market in Perth so we hitched a ride. Len is such a nice guy! He had so may jokes about how slow his truck was, Like if the headwind was too strong, we'd have to turn back and try again next year. Aahh Len...

We had an entertaining and informative trip to Midland, Just east of Perth, where we dropped off the sheep and had a look at how the market was run. Holly particularly Enjoyed watching the sheep dog running on top of the sheep and jumping big fences to herd them all in the right direction. We watched the dogs for a good half hour  before deciding to leave.

So we jumped back in the truck and drove the 1.5h journey back to the farm. It's a very long way when you have drunk around 1.5 litres of water. Due to the holiday traffic during the week end, our trip back was littered with Fresh Roadkill. Gutted Kangaroo littered the roads, it really wasn't a nice sight. So after we got back we had a beer (Holly a Port & Lemonade) with Len & Daryll and heard some great stories about Roadkill, some moaning about tourists (us...Uncomfortable..) City dwellers and prices of land (fyi...the man who owns the most land in this area is a man from Texas). Then got told about some Emu's that were living on the property which we will scope out tomorrow. They left, we made burgers and are now writing this for you.

Ciao For Now,

David & Holly

Abby's Replacement

I joke, hehe

So yeah. Today...

We had a lazy morning waiting for Catherine to arrive she had gone shopping for food for us before she came out to the farm, after putting all the food away Holly spent the morning with Catherine labelling the bottles of olive oil. I was tasked with spraying the Mango trees with a copper solution to prevent a pest from feasting on the young trees.

After we finished our working day we came back to the house and met the boss's daughter AND her maltese/shitsu dog, Prince. Now Holly was thinking that it would be a cute little white fluffy puppy. But not only was it that it was a spitting image of Abby, smaller of course. It didn't have Abby's personality but it definitely looked like her.

Daryll came back after his time in the groves and over a beer we decided that we would go with him to take a look at his cows to make sure they were all happy as they are calving. So we drove into the sunset and along a few km's of road and off onto this small country lane which turned into an off road track, this tested the 4x4's off roading capabilities. After some time we saw a field full of black cows and as we drove towards them some ran and some walked towards the vehicles. We got out and the cows came to greet us before being terrorised by Daryll's huskies.

We watched the sunset from the field before setting back to the farm, after nearly running into a kangaroo we pulled into the farm and settled down for the evening.

We have tomorrow off along with monday as it's a long week end here. There's a big AFL game happening too which should be a fun watch

Bye for now

Olives, Olives, Olives

If you are a faithful reader to the blog you are pretty lucky to find a blog everyday! Right now I am sitting down for breakfast with some olives. I am hoping that by the end of this 3 month stint I will be an olive enjoyer. Catherine makes different kinds of olive concoctions, Basil and tomato, chilli and garlic, etc. I really like those ones. At the moment I pick out the little olives with lots of seed so I just get a little bit at time. We also drench all our cooking in olive oil. Seems to be the thing to do.

When Daryll eats lunch here, whatever he is eating, gets about 5 seconds of olive oil poured on it. So we have olives (or oil) for breakfast, lunch, and dinner here. Our snack is home-made bread (that I make in the bread maker) with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Yummmmy.

Yesterday was a day of labelling and packing. We put labels on the jars and then packed them in boxes. I am hoping that helped a bit in getting rid of my chicken wing arms. haha. (Check it out, the finished product) I have taken lots of pictures but the internet here is sattelite and it barely loads the internet sometimes. I think we will go in the city on the weekend and get a mobile internet so we can skype and load pictures. Ah, big news, maybe you have heard, but there was a huge dust storm in Sydney yesterday! Shucks that we missed out on it. Jonathan said that he was at Circular Quay and he couldn't even see the Sydney Opera House from it. Usually when you see our picture of the Bridge and the Opera house they were taking from Circular Quay (in between both of them). That sounds pretty crazy, and it was all over the news here. So sucks that we had to miss out on that experience. Oh well.

After we were done 5 hours of labelling we decided to take a tour around the farm. So we hopped on the quad and drove around. She has a lot of land, I will have to ask Daryll for directions, I have forgotten. We took a visit to the staring cow and lamby and visited the baby lambs. We thought one was dead because it was just laying there and it let us go right up to it without moving...which is unlike sheep. Then all of a sudden it jumped up, freaked out and almost rammed right into the quad. It repositioned itself and ran to the rest of the herd. Poor lamb, we probably gave it a heart attack! We also saw many kangaroos and joey's hopping around and I think that there is every variety of cockatoo out here. So we hear the annoying squawking all day but also get to see the beauty of all the colours!

We are to put chook poo (chicken manure) around the mango trees this morning. Daryll is a late starter so he usually doesn't get here till about 11:00. It is 9 now and we are awake and ready! It is supposed to rain today so hopefully we can get everything done before then.

Holly

We Live Among the Gumtrees

We've finally made it into a popular Australian Folk song. Where he sings of living among the gumtrees. We have four just outside the door...Living the dream.

So today...We slept in. Watched some tv, and were then told we weren't starting untill the afternoon. So we decided to take a stroll along the Olive Groves and to the river that borders the property. Or creek as it is known here.

As we arrived, and found the river to be little more than a trickle, we decided to walk up it trying to find a more substantial area. We met a cow...a scary cow.
The cow stared at us from a distance. It was like a horror movie, only with a cow. As we walked, trees would block its view of us, so it shifted and moved closer, so we backed off to a safe distance. We decied to give it another go and couldn't see the cow, untill Holly jumped and said it's on the other side of the creek.

The cow was staring at us from the other side of the fence and creek. Scary!!! Horror movie material.
So to get away from the cow, we walked up a hill to the Olive groves and were excited to see Kangaroos hopping around among the trees. We began discussing this movie we had seen about killer sheep and how the cow reminded us of the movie. Then a sheep starts running towards us from nowhere, stops right in front of us, breathing heavily and butting David. We decide to walk away and the sheep starts to follow us, bucking and butting as we go. Holly decides that the sheep needs to be petted and gives him a little pat on the head. So the sheep comes over to David, and decides that his butt needs to pet him. Needless to say we were both pretty scared of this crazy friendly sheep, and jumped over a barbed wire fence to escape the poor friendly sheep.

We then decided to go see the horses. They ran over to greet us and allowed us to pet them before running off to the other side of their enclosure.

We then got back to the farm to see Daryll who showed us some work that needed doing for the day. Weeding!!! We weeded the gardens around the house for the rest of the day. Daryll took us out and showed where we could go for a walk, or ride on the quad. We asked him if any of his animals were missing as we'd had an encounter with two of them in the morning. He said aaaahh, wild cows. They're fine. And Laamby, he's my pet. Thanks Daryll!

So we saw some beautiful yellow fields and dense bush forests, saw some lambs. One had been born the night before Daryll said. Very cute. Then as we drove on, we saw tons of Kangaroos all hopping around in the trees and trying to get away from the quad. One of the Kangaroos got himself stuck in the barbed wire and fell as he was trying to get away but shot off quickly.

After our exciting day we had some drinks on the veranda with Daryll while swapping stories and eating some freshly made bread with oil, and wished Daryll a good night.

Untill next time,

Holly & David

Regan's Ridge

I guess we're now officially farmers.

We got picked up just after 10 this morning and were driven around an hour into the West Australian Bush by the owner of the farm, Catherine. She drove us to the Shire of GinGin, Sounds like Lord of The Rings. Gin Gin I think is the name of the nearest town which is about 20 minutes away.

We arrive at the house which has 4 rooms and a Bath!!! Finally a bath!! A huge lounge and really sweet veranda area that overlooks 23,000 olive trees. And a back garden that overlooks a bush forest. This place is stunning. Except for it rained all day. Poo...

So we started work after some lunch. We went to the 'cold room' which is a stones throw from the house and transferred a container of fermented Olives to another container to rinse them. The olives are fermented for around 10 months in Brine, then jarred with Olive Oil. We sorted the Olives, and put them into jars which also had some garlic and chilli in them. We did this for around 3 or 4 hours listening to a fantastic medley of Abba, Sting and Delta Goodrem songs.

So after our afternoon of work Catherine thanked us for our help and left to go back to Perth, so we headed back to the house to get settled. I thought It'd be a good Idea to get a fire going as the house was freezing. Holly made the coffee while I attempted to retain my basic manly instincts by trying to create a small fire. I failed...MISERABLY...so I retreated to a corner with some chocolate while Holly also attempted to make a fire. She belted out demands for KINDLING...I NEED MORE KINDLING..I had no idea where to find it, or what it was, then Daryll arrived, showed us where the kindling was.

Daryll is the farm manager. A great Ozzy Bloke if you ever saw one. We will be spending a lot of our time with him over the next few months, he seems like great fun. After helping us with the fire he showed us where all the olive products were in the house. Oil, table olives, Olive Tapanade...so many olive products! All very good with cheese too :)

So we're going to settle down for the evening now. We just ate some pasta with Mint Peas that Holly made (With Olive Oil of Course) Very Nice and will watch the Pursuit of Happiness.

Take Care,

Holly & David

Perth

Hey Guys,

This is David. I've Hi-Jacked (with permission) Holly's blog.

Though I don't really have much more to say on the matter of our mammoth journey accross the country, other than my bum was flat and I couldn't stand sitting down for the whole of yesterday. It was amazing!!

Ok, so Perth. For all of you not in the know, it's Australia's third largest city I think. Maybe even fourth. But nothing here is on the scale of Sydney. Sydney is to Australia, what Toronto is for you Canadian's. Huge...

Perth Sits as one of the worlds most isolated cities and very different from what we have already seen here in Australia so far. The streets are very wide and the city has a far more welcoming feel than Sydney did.

So yesterday we arrived at our friend Juli's cousins house. It's in a small complex with a pool at the centre. I think we'd have both been excited to sleep on a couch after our ordeal on the train. Sleeping upright on a chair for 3 days, but she gave up her and her cousins beds for us along with their en suite bathroom. I have never been so excited to see a shower and soft toilet paper.

We stayed around the house most of the day. Relaxed on the balcony and waited for the computer as Holly uploaded a lifetime of photos to facebook, to check on my family and friends. My sister had a baby back in May and I get weekly updates from them.

So we had a trip around the city yesterday. Did some shopping, good shopping. Not the bad expensive kind. Came back to the house, talked to our old house mate Jon over Skype and while the girls did their girlie things all night, I snuck on to my bed and woke up at 7a.m.

So today we had the intentions of being up and snappy making the most of our last day in the house and in Perth. But it rained, and rained....and rained. So we mooched around, talked to some friends and finally left to see Freemantle. So, I heard that Freemantle was this haven of a place, with glorious beaches and something very similar to the Bondi area. What a Scam! This place looked like a cheap British Seaside town, smelt like it too.

And where was the Beach?! We could not find it anywhere.

A guy we met on the train travelled to Perth purely to see the Beach at Fremantle before travelling the coast. He didn't find it either.

So after this, we hit a chocolate bar called San Churros. Had some Churro's and chocolate strawberries to hide our disappointment.

So now, I'm sat on a lovely couch, nice and warm and drifting off to sleep with the joys of an early morning ahead. I'm hoping for us both that the trip will be good, and that we get everything out of it that we need. Though, I may be sick of Olives in a few months.

So that's the other side of the story for you.
Until Holly lets me on the computer again, thanks for reading :)

David

(P.s from Holly)
I have caught up on the photos a little bit. But still have a bit more. Our last week in Sydney and our train trip. Hopefully we will get those up sometime this week. But enjoy these for now.

Japanese Supper, City2Surf, Etc...

Touring Sydney and some...

Day Three & Arrival - Indian Pacific

After a much better sleep we wake up to a beautiful sunrise over the red flat land what we foreigners would know as the proper outback. The train slowed down so we could all take pictures of a random house near the tracks the was built by a man named Iggy made out of tin sheeting and wood. After 12 hours of travelling from Adelaide we entered the Nullabor Plains. It is an area in Australia that is flat and red with random bushes but trees cannot grow in this area. So like Saskatchewan but Saskatchewan is more colourful….well different colours I guess. We stopped in one of the only towns around. The town of Cook. It is pretty much a ghost town. It has a row of houses, a school, bathrooms, two little sheds known as the gaols, and a souvenir shop. Most of these buildings are not in use anymore. There are 5 people, 2 dogs, 1 cat, 30 dingos and 20 CHICKS, pet goanna. I am assuming one of their only incomes is their souvenir shop for the people that come off for a rest stop from the train. It used to have 130 people back in 1975 when one of the ladies lived there as a child. It used to have a post office, hospital, tradesmen and the main thing in the town, the railway. It is approx. 1000 kms from Adelaide, approx 1300 kms from Perth, 875kms from Kalgoorie. The outback is north of them for many kilometres and 200 kms south is the Ocean. This small little ghost town has had telestra come and set up internet, fax, phone, and mobile. So even though they are in the middle of nowhere they are pretty in tune with the rest of the world. In the summer time it can get as hot as 50 degrees, cooling down 20 degrees at night time.

In the 1850’s 10,000 camels were shipped over to Australia from the Arabic Nation. It ended up being perfect desert living conditions for them. When men wanted to discover the rest of Australia or build rainways or towns in this area they would use camels instead of horses because they could handle the hot weather and the workload better. Apparently camels can go for many days without water and have long eyelashes to protect their eyes from the sand. We saw a couple camels randomly in the Plains. They had a little information playing about them as we saw them. Apparently they have populated so much that they are starting to ship them back.

Around 8:30 pm (but with the time change it ended up being 6:30 pm) we arrived in a city called Kalgoorie (Aussies pronounce it without the R, of course.). This city is a mining city. For years they have been mining gold. It has Australia’s biggest open cast mine. We got to go up to the Super Pit and see them working. It is 1 ½ km wide, 4 km long and 500 meters deep. It was a pretty cool site (sight) haha. The towns history is a pretty dirty one. It was a mining city full of single men so it had many brothels and the bars used to attract the men with their topless bar maids. Today they actually still have 3 brothels running. They are on the same street the police station so that they can be monitored. We actually drove by the brothels and girls came to the door to wave. And the bars still have women, not topless, but scantily clad. There is one bar that has four pictures of the top skimpy bar maids on the outside. Each month it changes. On a more nicer note, the city is much more family oriented. It has one of the best schools in the world for mining and there are about 30,000 people that live there. They also have one of the biggest races in Australia (that is actually going on at this moment.) Sounds like it as a typical western town back in the day.

Last night was a very good sleep! We woke up at 5:30, watched the sunrise and got excited to finally arrive in Perth in 4 hours. I finished reading My Sister's Keeper. Good book. I also tried knitting and messed up horrible and now I have to undo everything I did...grrr. Now, David and I are finally with Juli. We will spend the next two days with her and her cousin. Then on Monday we leave to go to the farm for three months! Nice time for change!! David and I blogged everyday of the trip and I seperated the days into their own blogs. So look at the blogs previous to this.

Anyways, time to upload photos and catch up with Juli!

Day Two - Indian Pacific

After the worst sleep ever, we arrived in Broken Hill at 6:55 am. The ground is red with green bushes everywhere. It reminds me of a red Saskatchewan. It is very flat with random hilly areas. Just before we got to Broken Hill it started raining. Apparently, it never rains here. The outback is supposed to be really dry and our first experience of it is pouring rain. David and I hopped off the train and got on a coach to get a tour around the town. It reminded me a lot of Moose Jaw. The size of it and the buildings and their history. The town has a lot of history with the war and mining. They mine silver and zinc. They have two high schools here. One is called Broken Hill High School and by it they had fields of different plants and cows. The students are taught agriculture and how to take care of cows. It seemed random that there were 3 cows just sitting in a school ground in the middle of the town. I had a little giggle at that. Then we got to the other high school in Broken Hill nicknamed “Alcatraz.” It started off as being built as a correctional center and then when they were half way done they decided they didn’t need another one in the city and turned it into a high school. So, you can imagine what the school looks like. It has no windows. Apparently, they have the top marks in the state, though.

Our last stop of the trip was at the Art Gallery that is the home of “The Big Picture.” It is the largest acrylic painting in the world. It took up the walls of a huge building. Krisin got a painting for her birthday of a town by Broken Hill called Silverton. We found the painting in this gallery. I would have liked to get one of the paintings in that gallery. Very beautiful.

Until it got to dark to look outside we saw a few kangaroos hopping a long, LOTS of sheep, cows and crops. Very much like Saskatchewan minus the sheep and kangaroos. Took a few picture to show the similarities but I didn’t go overboard because I thought I would get teased. “Holly, you don’t take pictures of the scenery like this back home.” There have also been some proper outback houses along the way. Unfortunately, I never got good pictures of them.

After what felt like forever we made it into a sunny Adelaide at 3 pm. I realized that this was only a hiccup in the journey that is yet to come. We got off the train and hopped onto our tour bus. The tour guide told us it never rains but like Broken Hill had been raining all day! Luckily, we got some sun, otherwise we would have seen this area like it’s really supposed to be. Adelaide is beautiful and full of parks. I remember going by one park and seeing that it was Park 14. I am sure it had more than that though. When Adelaide was first built they made lots of parkland around the city so that during the war it would be hard to get to and people would get caught before they actually got there. It is interesting to me how war has shaped the history of all of the towns and cities in Australia. The past two towns had huge histories built on war. Adelaide is a lot more friendlier than Sydney. You can actually smile at people on the street and they will smile back. We saw the Adelaide Oval - largest cricket oval in Australia. I would like to come back here and see it some more. When we got back to the train station ( a bit outside of Adelaide) David got a taxi ride to go grab some food quick. Because he nor the taxi driver knew where to go for food the taxi driver gave him a free taxi ride to where they found a store. Another thing we noticed would never happen in Sydney. While waiting for our train to be ready to board we chatted to an older couple who made the train lively the night before with their jokes and laughter with fellow men. They were a really nice couple. Everyone on the train stops at their seats for a quick chat when they walk by. Apparently they have done this trip a few times as they enjoy the scenery. I do not know how people older than me can sleep three nights on a train. My body definitely feels it!