Hello all,
This is Stephanie. Yes, the Adventures of Holly and Stephanie and David blog once again involves Stephanie!!
It was a long two days of travelling but I finally arrived in Perth early Sunday afternoon which was earlier than I was first scheduled to arrive. I lucked out when I arrived in Sydney and Qantas had some seats available on the earlier flight so they asked if I wanted to go on the earlier flight. I said yes and was in Perth at 2 in the afternoon rather than 6:45 in the evening. Thanks to Facebook Iwas able to communicate with Holly and she came and picked me up at the airport so everything worked out even better than expected.
On the trip to the farm we almost hit some kangaroos. Darryl managed to swerve at the last second and missed hitting the kangaroo by a few millimetres. This made me feel right at home as I’m used to seeing deer run out on the road at night…the only difference is that I usually hit the deer.
We’re working on the olive farm from Monday to Friday and then we’re heading off down the southwest Australian coast. I’ve been learning the ropes at the olive farm and meeting interesting people. Besides Holly, David and I, there are three Germans and a guy from England. They make the work interesting and it’s been fun getting to know everyone.
We spent Tuesday afternoon at Lancelin beach. It was fantastic to see the ocean again! There’s just no way that I can ever hang out at a beach in Saskatchewan ever again. I’ve been spoiled.
The olive farm is beautiful!! The house is on a hill so there are amazing views of the olive grove as well as the surrounding landscape. Holly and David took me on a drive around the farm today and we saw kookaburras and lots of wild kangaroos.
Holly and I are working on finalizing our plans for our trip down south. We’re hoping to take in a rugby or AFL game this weekend.
Well that‘s about all that‘s happened up to this point. We’ll try to update the blog as we travel down south.
Stephanie, Holly and David
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Bring on the Rain!!!
It’s about time for an update. It's a bit of a long one. We will start with last week. Monday afternoon, after mowing the lawn and getting rid of weeds, Stuart (our awesome housemate) and I headed down to the part of the farm with orange trees, lemon trees and nut trees to help Darryl and David plant some lime trees. Darryl sent Stuart to get some stakes to put up netting around the trees and Darryl had left David and I to finish off the last of the lime trees. About 15 minutes later, just as we were finishing up Darryl called out to us to come back in as a NURSE is needed. My first thought was, “uh-oh, Stuart has been bitten by a red-back spider.” Not being able to handle people being hurt or bleeding very well I sort of took my time (but ran) to get to the house. When I got there Stuart was sitting there holding his arm waiting for someone to drive him to Lancelin to get it looked at. It wasn’t a red back but a huge splinter lodged into his arm. I stayed back at the farm with Darryl while the boys went off. About an hour and a half later Darryl called up the medi-clinic to see how things were going. It looked like it was lodged in too far and he had to go to the nearest hospital in Perth, which was Joondalup. Since I was going to be home alone at the farm Darryl invited me over to spend the night with him and Donna. We found out that Stuart had to get an ultrasound (the x-ray didn’t pick anything up) and that he would have to come back bright and early the next day.
The next morning we got up to head back to the farm and Darryl went to check on his mango trees. He has had some bad luck with them, one year frost, one year heat, this year CROWS and sure enough a group of crows were surrounded the bottom of a tree.. Well we went right back to the house and I hung out with Donna while Darryl went to go hunting….he was unsuccessful. When we got to the farm we had an update on Stuart, they sat and waited for 3 hours to find out that Stuart would be having surgery that night around 9pm. Unlucky Stuart ended being told about 10 minutes before 9 that it was cancelled and after starving him all day they decided to bring him some sandwiches with the news.
Wednesday morning the operated on him and we assumed that maybe he would be let out later that day but they wanted to keep him an extra night. So what we thought would be just a little procedure ended up being a huge ordeal. Because he is British though, it was free. I would not have been so lucky. In the beginning Darryl had offered to take it out in the beginning, good thing that didn’t happen.
Wednesday is also the day that harvesting of olives has officially started. We now start work at 9 and work until 5. Hard life, I know. We have these huge upside-down umbrellas that go under the tree and then we hand pick the olives and they fall into the umbrella down to a box. After we have managed to get 2 crates worth of olives we head to the cool room where we dump them into the sinks and then sort them and remove the leaves and stems. They are then put into a barrel and sent into the cool room to wait until 2012/13 to be sorted and packed into jars or buckets. We then go out for the rest of the afternoon and repeat everything over again.
Another exciting job that we had the opportunity to do was work at the Gingin Observatory, we went there before Christmas, Donna co-owns and runs it. They were short staff so I offered my services to Donna and it ended up being a good idea. What a great night it was as well. David and I each got our own telescope and the lady who was working the telescopes (she is getting her PH.D in Astronomy) would point our telescopes to a certain star or nebula, tell us some info to tell the people and then leave us on our own. I learned soooo much in just a little amount of time…mostly because it was pretty cloudy in the earlier part of the night and the cloud seemed to like to follow around my telescope. So every time we had something to look at the cloud would cover it up and we would have to move to another location. I had to be on the ball with the names and facts. They may ask us back in the future! Fascinating, for anyone who knows my love of constellations and stars they would understand my excitement. I have my dad and Neil McCall to thank for that.
Last night, Western Australia has had their first rainfall/massive storm of the year. 80 some days of no rain. This happens every year. We spent the evening sitting on the porch watching lightning from all areas of the sky. The storms surrounded us. We were later on joined by a german couple and another german girl who will be spending a few weeks with us working at the farm. We enjoyed supper with them. The couple are looking forward to learning more English, we are looking forward to getting to know all three of them. It will be a fun couple of weeks. Stephanie also arrives in a week today!!! She is going to get to see the farm and work here for a week and then we are going to head off and see the beautiful South Western Australia. It’s going to be exciting.
Today we started work at about 9 am and it was hot and humid, we stopped for a quick lunch break and fit in another hour of work before it started to storm again. We knocked off at about 2:30 (The power went out so we couldn’t pick or work in the cool room.)and watched more storms clouds come in. At one point there was a cloud coming in from the distance. It was so low and massive (it started past the farm and went all the way down past Darryl’s house) and it was moving in really fast, even Darryl was impressed. We have photos of it, we will have to show you because I really do not know how to explain it. It was brilliant!!! So it is now 4:30 and we are sat here on the patio watching it storm and lightning waiting for the power to come on. I love the farm life.
I believe that is all for now, thanks to those who read. Some people tell us every once in awhile that they keep up to date. It means a lot to us. It is was keeps us motivated to keep writing the blogs.
Holly and David
The next morning we got up to head back to the farm and Darryl went to check on his mango trees. He has had some bad luck with them, one year frost, one year heat, this year CROWS and sure enough a group of crows were surrounded the bottom of a tree.. Well we went right back to the house and I hung out with Donna while Darryl went to go hunting….he was unsuccessful. When we got to the farm we had an update on Stuart, they sat and waited for 3 hours to find out that Stuart would be having surgery that night around 9pm. Unlucky Stuart ended being told about 10 minutes before 9 that it was cancelled and after starving him all day they decided to bring him some sandwiches with the news.
Wednesday morning the operated on him and we assumed that maybe he would be let out later that day but they wanted to keep him an extra night. So what we thought would be just a little procedure ended up being a huge ordeal. Because he is British though, it was free. I would not have been so lucky. In the beginning Darryl had offered to take it out in the beginning, good thing that didn’t happen.
Wednesday is also the day that harvesting of olives has officially started. We now start work at 9 and work until 5. Hard life, I know. We have these huge upside-down umbrellas that go under the tree and then we hand pick the olives and they fall into the umbrella down to a box. After we have managed to get 2 crates worth of olives we head to the cool room where we dump them into the sinks and then sort them and remove the leaves and stems. They are then put into a barrel and sent into the cool room to wait until 2012/13 to be sorted and packed into jars or buckets. We then go out for the rest of the afternoon and repeat everything over again.
Another exciting job that we had the opportunity to do was work at the Gingin Observatory, we went there before Christmas, Donna co-owns and runs it. They were short staff so I offered my services to Donna and it ended up being a good idea. What a great night it was as well. David and I each got our own telescope and the lady who was working the telescopes (she is getting her PH.D in Astronomy) would point our telescopes to a certain star or nebula, tell us some info to tell the people and then leave us on our own. I learned soooo much in just a little amount of time…mostly because it was pretty cloudy in the earlier part of the night and the cloud seemed to like to follow around my telescope. So every time we had something to look at the cloud would cover it up and we would have to move to another location. I had to be on the ball with the names and facts. They may ask us back in the future! Fascinating, for anyone who knows my love of constellations and stars they would understand my excitement. I have my dad and Neil McCall to thank for that.
Last night, Western Australia has had their first rainfall/massive storm of the year. 80 some days of no rain. This happens every year. We spent the evening sitting on the porch watching lightning from all areas of the sky. The storms surrounded us. We were later on joined by a german couple and another german girl who will be spending a few weeks with us working at the farm. We enjoyed supper with them. The couple are looking forward to learning more English, we are looking forward to getting to know all three of them. It will be a fun couple of weeks. Stephanie also arrives in a week today!!! She is going to get to see the farm and work here for a week and then we are going to head off and see the beautiful South Western Australia. It’s going to be exciting.
Today we started work at about 9 am and it was hot and humid, we stopped for a quick lunch break and fit in another hour of work before it started to storm again. We knocked off at about 2:30 (The power went out so we couldn’t pick or work in the cool room.)and watched more storms clouds come in. At one point there was a cloud coming in from the distance. It was so low and massive (it started past the farm and went all the way down past Darryl’s house) and it was moving in really fast, even Darryl was impressed. We have photos of it, we will have to show you because I really do not know how to explain it. It was brilliant!!! So it is now 4:30 and we are sat here on the patio watching it storm and lightning waiting for the power to come on. I love the farm life.
I believe that is all for now, thanks to those who read. Some people tell us every once in awhile that they keep up to date. It means a lot to us. It is was keeps us motivated to keep writing the blogs.
Holly and David
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Perth & All It's Glory
Followers, It's been a while since our last update. Forgive me...
A few things to add to previous blogs First. While on the train we, or rather Dad met a guy who was very worldly and was obviously well educated. Our first knowledge of this man was Dad calling him Yeti man, and saying he spent their entire conversation trying to locate his mouth underneath his Immense facial hair. His moustache extended down past his bottom lip. We never saw him eat and wondered if he could. He had a bottle of coke at some point but never managed to see him consume it. He had an aroma of salt and vinegar crisps/chips, and was very difficult to understand.
In the Territory of South Australia recycling is a major thing. You pay 15 cents for a shopping bag and at recycling centres you can get 10 cents per plastic bottle. This is quite a good scheme as it provides money and an objective for those who live on the street. It was also cool to see everyone in the grocery store with reusable bags.
While in Perth after our experience in the $20 a night hostel we moved to the Exclusive backpackers just down the road from Dad’s hotel. We tried to fit in as much as possible, King’s Park Perth City and the joy of Dad putting his white British Body in the Indian Ocean. He sailed on it as a young man centuries ago and it was one of his main goals to do while being here.
We also headed to Mindarie to see some of Dad’s old friends. Two ladies Louise and Heather who he worked with during his Caravan selling years. We had a great afternoon between two houses and swam in the pool had a barbeque and met some great people. People to definitely keep in touch with.
Our final day with Dad was spent partly in the bank trying to organise things, having a haircut and at night we had a nice Meal in a Chinese Restaurant served by a fraught young lady who we presumed was having a bad day. But we loved her.
Dad came with us to the farm, we thought it would not be right for him to come all this way and not have the opportunity to see some Kangaroos in the wild and not see the real Australian Outback.
We came up with Catherine and spent the day running Dad to the best areas on the farm to see the Grove the river, the sheep and Cows and he got to meet Darryl. A very fitting end to a great trip was having Dad be with us all day. I think you enjoyed your trip here, didn’t you dad? I Know you love it when we mention you on here. He flew back a few days later after having a few more days in Perth leaving us to begin the next part of our journey.
I think we can both say Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the time and memories you spent with us and the help you provided in getting us back to Perth.
This will be a slightly long Blog as I will be condensing the past week-ish into the next few paragraphs. Any more elaboration is of course available upon request ;)
We met our fellow WWOOF-ers Stuart and Ida, Ida from Sweden and Stuart from Sunny ‘ol Shresbury in England. Ida left us a week later but Stuart still remains. We’ve had some fun times so far, we headed to Lancelin for some Fish and Chips, had food at Darryl’s one night…and another. Did heaps of pruning and just did our first barrel of Olive packing. We went to see Donna AND Darryl race at Speedway and went back to their farm to celebrate a good race. Holly and I were in our own beds by 12 as I was coming down with a cold and Holly was getting what we think was Gastric Flu. We could be wrong though. Needless to say we’re both more than recovered now and fighting fit. Yay!
We did a market a Capricorn which is near Yanchep national park yesterday (saturday) and did very well. Catherine will be pleased. I also had my first day at work today starting at 7am, a bit of a shocker. But it turned out to be good, a nice place to make my mini fortune for the next few months. I had forgotten to mention Holly’s work too…She had her first day at Lancelin school after a headache of applying to various institutes for the pleasure of working for them, but was told that she wouldn’t be able to work or get paid for that days work untill she got her ID number with the DET which she can get in 3 Weeks!! And Breathe……
So that’s the past few weeks in a nutshell. We’re planning on doing much of the same thing over the next few weeks/months. If you are reading this and are not sure who is writing this blog at the moment My name is David. Holly employs me at $5 per hour with no overtime. I can be found on face book as the one who keeps popping up in her photos David Crompton.
Thanks for reading. We’re going to go and find some more things to do so we can write about them.
David & Holly
P.S. The last album of the New Zealand Trip....
SKYDIVE
A few things to add to previous blogs First. While on the train we, or rather Dad met a guy who was very worldly and was obviously well educated. Our first knowledge of this man was Dad calling him Yeti man, and saying he spent their entire conversation trying to locate his mouth underneath his Immense facial hair. His moustache extended down past his bottom lip. We never saw him eat and wondered if he could. He had a bottle of coke at some point but never managed to see him consume it. He had an aroma of salt and vinegar crisps/chips, and was very difficult to understand.
In the Territory of South Australia recycling is a major thing. You pay 15 cents for a shopping bag and at recycling centres you can get 10 cents per plastic bottle. This is quite a good scheme as it provides money and an objective for those who live on the street. It was also cool to see everyone in the grocery store with reusable bags.
While in Perth after our experience in the $20 a night hostel we moved to the Exclusive backpackers just down the road from Dad’s hotel. We tried to fit in as much as possible, King’s Park Perth City and the joy of Dad putting his white British Body in the Indian Ocean. He sailed on it as a young man centuries ago and it was one of his main goals to do while being here.
We also headed to Mindarie to see some of Dad’s old friends. Two ladies Louise and Heather who he worked with during his Caravan selling years. We had a great afternoon between two houses and swam in the pool had a barbeque and met some great people. People to definitely keep in touch with.
Our final day with Dad was spent partly in the bank trying to organise things, having a haircut and at night we had a nice Meal in a Chinese Restaurant served by a fraught young lady who we presumed was having a bad day. But we loved her.
Dad came with us to the farm, we thought it would not be right for him to come all this way and not have the opportunity to see some Kangaroos in the wild and not see the real Australian Outback.
We came up with Catherine and spent the day running Dad to the best areas on the farm to see the Grove the river, the sheep and Cows and he got to meet Darryl. A very fitting end to a great trip was having Dad be with us all day. I think you enjoyed your trip here, didn’t you dad? I Know you love it when we mention you on here. He flew back a few days later after having a few more days in Perth leaving us to begin the next part of our journey.
I think we can both say Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the time and memories you spent with us and the help you provided in getting us back to Perth.
This will be a slightly long Blog as I will be condensing the past week-ish into the next few paragraphs. Any more elaboration is of course available upon request ;)
We met our fellow WWOOF-ers Stuart and Ida, Ida from Sweden and Stuart from Sunny ‘ol Shresbury in England. Ida left us a week later but Stuart still remains. We’ve had some fun times so far, we headed to Lancelin for some Fish and Chips, had food at Darryl’s one night…and another. Did heaps of pruning and just did our first barrel of Olive packing. We went to see Donna AND Darryl race at Speedway and went back to their farm to celebrate a good race. Holly and I were in our own beds by 12 as I was coming down with a cold and Holly was getting what we think was Gastric Flu. We could be wrong though. Needless to say we’re both more than recovered now and fighting fit. Yay!
We did a market a Capricorn which is near Yanchep national park yesterday (saturday) and did very well. Catherine will be pleased. I also had my first day at work today starting at 7am, a bit of a shocker. But it turned out to be good, a nice place to make my mini fortune for the next few months. I had forgotten to mention Holly’s work too…She had her first day at Lancelin school after a headache of applying to various institutes for the pleasure of working for them, but was told that she wouldn’t be able to work or get paid for that days work untill she got her ID number with the DET which she can get in 3 Weeks!! And Breathe……
So that’s the past few weeks in a nutshell. We’re planning on doing much of the same thing over the next few weeks/months. If you are reading this and are not sure who is writing this blog at the moment My name is David. Holly employs me at $5 per hour with no overtime. I can be found on face book as the one who keeps popping up in her photos David Crompton.
Thanks for reading. We’re going to go and find some more things to do so we can write about them.
David & Holly
P.S. The last album of the New Zealand Trip....
SKYDIVE
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