Craig & Sam Down Under

Hello Everyone!  Sorry for the delay in writing a blog recently, we’ve been massively busy.

 Since we arrived in Adelaide about a month ago things have changed rather dramatically, but I think we’re almost sorted now and things are starting to resemble a normal life.  After the disastrous experience that was grape picking, we began to have big money worries.  Picking the grapes was hard work, long hours and very very poor pay.  We felt for the first time since arriving in Australia, as if we were really trapped.  Travelling has so much freedom and relaxation associated with it that it was hard to suddenly find ourselves miserable, broke and too poor to go anywhere! 

A couple of times we looked for work elsewhere but found few results as we were restricting ourselves to only wanting to work for a few weeks and having to live on caravan parks.  We called the harvest-trail hotline who’ve helped us to find work in the past, only to be sent on a wild goose chase into the outback North of Adelaide and come up trumps.  We were told there would be citrus picking and pruning on the grapes, but due to the massive increase of citrus imports in Aus, many farmers were refusing to pay out to have their fruit picked, as they weren’t sure if they would be able to sell it and preferred to save money and leave it on the trees.  The pruning on the grapes wasn’t due to start for a few weeks and we couldn’t afford to wait that long.  We started to consider the possibility of finishing our travels in Australia as quickly and as cheaply as possible, using credit cards and then to sell the van once we got back to Sydney to pay off the cards and come home.  It would have meant that we would be flying home even before Mum and Dad J were due to come out here on holiday! 

So, in sheer desperation, we bought a paper, shelled out a fortune to set up camp in an internet cafe over a weekend and sent out copies of our CV to every man and his dog.  We agreed that we would be willing to take a city job, work for longer than we had originally wanted to and be prepared to move into a hostel or something if there were no caravan parks near to whatever work we found.  There was a big ad in the paper for a Ski resort in New South Wales looking for people to do all kinds of jobs over the winter ski season so we applied over and over  again for as many of those jobs as possible, as well as everything else in the paper and every work agency in town.  Monday came and we sat anxiously by the phone.  We kept asking ourselves, have we done everything we can possibly do to help ourselves? 

We walked around town looking for ads in shop windows, called numbers in the paper and eventually agreed to call one of the marketing companies that was advertised.  We really didn’t want to  go and be door-knocking sales people, but we had to try something.  Out of two that we called, one had a really friendly, helpful receptionist and the other was a bitch (sorry nan).  So we went for an interview with the friendly ones and when they invited us to go out with a couple of their people the next morning to watch how they work and find out more about the job and company, we decided to bunk off the interview with the bitch and do this instead.  It turned out great, the girl was really friendly, the companty appeared to be legitimate and the opportunity was there to start immediately.  We went back to the office for a chat with the Managing Director and attended a training session the next day.  Ever since then (about three weeks ago) we’ve been working as independent contractors (so technically self employed, can work for as long as we want and quit at any time) for Viper Marketing.  We attend a morning meeting each day for training and motivational, erm, stuff, then we go out to shopping centres all around Adelaide and we stop people as they are walking past to offer them the chance to swap their home phone billing over to the company that we promote, who’re doing quite a good deal right now.  It’s not difficult to get sales, so we’re managing to earn a living based wholly on comission and we’re already working our way up the ladder through the company.  Craig got promoted this week to a leader, so when he recruits some more people he can run his own team and will start to get paid overrides (a percentage of thei earnings), I’m hoping to get promoted by the end of this week too.  It all sounds very promising and we’re enjoying ourselves for now.  We’ve got a good 5 months left on our visas and only a very small part of Australia left to see, so we’ll carry on working and see where this company can take us!

 Mum and Dad J are coming out on holiday this week and we’ll see them here in Adelaide the week after, which will be really nice.  It’s great to be able to put them up here now we finally have a job and a house – oh yeah!  We’re living in a shared house now with an Indian guy, a New Zealand guy, an Aussie woman and a German!  It’s cheap rent, the people are friendly and it’s far easier to keep our nice new business suits and work stuff neat and tidy now that we’re not living in the van any more.  The lease is for 3 months and our landlord and landlady live right next door, they’re lovely people too.  The van is up for sale and we had the first people take a look at it today, who were very impressed so it could actually be sold!  We’re going to get a little car with some of the money we get for the van, which will be more convenient for getting around the city and we can still finish our travels in it as there isn’t far to go in Australia that we haven’t already seen!

 I can’t think of anything else to say, although I’m sure I’ve forgotten a million things.  Happy Birthday to Danielle and Vicki for a couple of weeks ago!  Miss you guys.  We hope everyone back at home is well, we’re missing you all oodles of course.

email us if you haven’t and thanks for the comments – Sue & Gino, you will get the hang of it soon!

Love Team England xx

Hi guys!

Sorry it’s been a while since our last blog, we’ve travelled an enormous distance since you last heard from us and as always, there is much to tell…

We left you last time with the tale of our trip from Geraldton to Perth and how we stopped at the Pinnacles and New Norcia on the way, so really we saved the best stuff for this blog because Perth and Fremantle were two of the BEST places we’ve been so far in Australia.  For a start things were cooling down a lot and so the weather was loads more comfortable which made us lots happier.  Although Perth is the only big city in the West and we have a tendency to avoid big cities like the plague, this city was really special.  Fremantle is a town nearby where we set up camp and we used the buses and trains to get in and out of the town and city over a few days.

On our first day we did some exploring in Fremantle and sussed out the public transport ready for going to Perth.  Fremantle was about the same size of Hanley but obviously far nicer.  We went to the Motor Museum where we mooned over loads of cool cars, including one of Stirling Moss’s racing cars.  We visited yet another Maritime Museum on the harbour which was nice although Craig enjoyed it way more than me, I’d had a guts full of boats by then.  We also spent a little bit of time just strolling around the town, which you can’t really appreciate unless you’ve been there, so all I can describe is that it had a great atmosphere, friendly people ( not too many weirdos), clean streets and some cool old buildings, we felt like it would be a great place to live. 

The next day we went into Perth on the train and the city had pretty much all the same attributes as Fremantle only on a bigger scale.  We visited the Swan Bell Tower where we got some great views of the city plus a demonstration of bell ringing.  We were only just in time for the bell ringing and a crazy old lady let us ring a couple of the bells ourselves.  Then the official ringers arrived and we went up a couple of floors to see the bells in action as the ringers attempted a quarter peal, where each bell would be rung approximately 1200 times!  They were very good although there were a couple of false starts and we didn’t stay to watch the whole thing because it takes about an hour!  After that we went for some dinner and got all Sex and the City about it, supping coffee and munching muffins  -the city just has that effect on you, thank god we escaped!  Next we went in search of the Government House but only found the gardens! They were nice but you know… gardens.  Then we decided to find an internet cafe to do a blog and conveniently found a pub that had internet access and sold Guiness!  The internet was out of order but the Guinness was gooooooooood and it seemed so rude not to partake of a couple of pints!  The next stop was The Perth Mint and it was awesome.  We did a tour of the Mint and watched a gold pour take place, sitting about 5 feet away from $225,000 worth of solid gold bar!  We also weighed ourselves in gold on a funky machine, Craig’s worth about $2.7million and I’m worth a measley $1.9million!  The tour guide gave Craig a free coin with the Perth Mint insignia stamped in it and we also bought ourselves a personal one with the inscription ‘Sam & Craig * Great Australian Adventure * 2005-2006’.  It’s our new favourite belonging, we call it the precious and if you’re lucky we might just give you a peek when we get home.

Next day we returned to Fremantle to explore the markets which are supposed to be some kind of extravaganza over the weekends but we didn’t really have the money to splash out on stuff so we just had a look around.  We did however, manage to scrape together some funds to visit The Candy Cow.  The greatest sweet shop in the world ever.  They had some many sweets your teeth ached just looking at them.  We bought some Caramel flavour and Baileys flavour Fudge and it was gone before bedtime.  Yummy.  We also went to Fremantle Prison and did a tour there.  Pretty much everywhere we’ve been in Australia has involved visiting prisons and museums, so those of you who think we’re just bumming around should realise it’s actually very educational.  The Fremantle Prison was one of the best ones we’ve been to and I think that’s mostly down to the tour guide we had, an Irishman who was very very funny.  He pointed out tennis rackets on the roof from when prisoners had rioted, showed us the tennis balls the townsfolk used to cut open to put messages and drugs in and then throw them over the prison walls, we saw prisoners cells where they had been allowed to put artwork on the prison walls as well as the prison chapel where there’s a waiting list to get married there – it’s a huge trend, but we turned down the offer of a brochure to take home.

We would have liked to stay longer in Perth/Fremantle (to be honest, we’d have liked to live there permanently) but it was a national holiday weekend as well as a beer festival and the caravan parks were booked out so we had to move on.  There were only a few things we wanted to do in the South West corner, the first being Busselton Jetty, the longest completely Wooden jetty in the world and we’ve got photos to prove it.  Next we visited a National Park near Pemberton where they have the Gloucester Tree. This is a 60m tall tree that they’ve built a hut at the top of, for watchmen to go up and keep an eye over the forests in case of bush fires.  There’s a kind of ladder going all the way to the top and Craig climbed up by himself.  Obviously since someone had to take photos, I couldn’t possibly go up with him and was truly devastated that I didn’t get to climb it… oh well!  Actually, it was quite shameful that I was really too chicken as there were 9 and 10 year old children bounding up and down like it was no more than a simple staircase.

Next we stopped over in Albany, and spent a few days just chilling out as with the National Holiday there wasn’t much going on, the Aussies aren’t fools who slog in the garden digging and planting and building away their bank holidays like we do, they go to the beach and chill out so everywhere was closed.  We had to wait until Tuesday to get any food shopping which meant we were forced to have a MacDonalds and a curry takeaway over the weekend.  Gutted.  Craig got to do some fishing from the jetty down at the harbour though and was thoroughly chuffed with himself because he caught at least twenty fish on his first day.  I went with him on the second day and at the first sight on fish-blood had declared myself a non-fishing fan.  My book turned out to be really good though.

Moving on from Albany we headed back inland quite a way to see Wave rock.  It’s huge, it’s stripey and it’s er, rock.  Not really worth the long drive but at least we can say we’ve been.  We also went out to see the rabbit proof fence (or State Barrier Fence), which got it’s nickname because of the rabbits it attempts to keep out of Western Australia.  Craig has seen the film about 3 Aboriginal girls who are taken from their families to a Government run school-house type place and escape, walking miles and miles along this rabbit-proof fence through the desert to be reunited with their parents.  Film sounds good, the fence is just a fence.  Do we sound bored?  Not really, but you’ve gotta remember that each place we go to takes at least a whole day’s driving (7am-4/5pm) and it’s hot and there’s literally NOTHING in between places, it’s vast and lonely so forgive us for being disappointed when we drive so far to see things and they’re just rocks and fences.

 Anyway, we had a really huge jaunt ahead of us and our last massive spate of driving across Australia and that was the journey across the Nullarbor.  Nullarbor is Latin and literally means No Trees.  And there aren’t.  No trees, no nothing.  It took us about 4 days from Albany to Port Augusta, we drove through plagues of locusts which Craig had to remove from the inside of the engine, they were plastered all over the radiator and stuck in the wheel arches.  It was truly disgusting.  From Port Augusta we made our way South passing briefly through Adelaide to a place called McLaren Vale.  We knew there was work here so we came to check it out and have now been here for about a week, picking grapes.  We have been into the city of Adelaide very briefly one day to look for other jobs because the grapes don’t exactly pay well, but we’re saving most of the sightseeing for when the Jontfam arrives. 

There really isn’t much left for us to do here on the mainland, we’ve already seen so much, all kinds of terrain, cities, outback, rural areas, small towns, every kind of museum you can hope for, beaches, forests, parks, rocks, so so much and yet we’re only half way through our time!  It’s been amazing so far and while we’re working the grapes we’re busy plotting trips to Tasmania, Kangaraoo Island and maybe, maybe New Zealand – but that’s pennnies permitting. 

Sorry there won’t be much for us to tell for the next few weeks, although we can probably tell you lots of funny stories about grape picking and more amusingly, grape pickers (we’ve met some real characters) but do keep checking the blog and please leave us some comments!

 Love to all, missing you bunches (no pun intended)

 Sam & Craig

Long time no blog!  Or maybe it’s not that long in terms of time, but because we’ve done soooo much stuff lately it feels like ages since we’ve left a blog – and this one’s gonna be fair hefty so get yrself a cuppa before you start reading…

When we wrote our last entry we were in Broome, which is on the North West coast of Australia and the hottest place we have ever been to.  We stayed there for three nights on a nice caravan park just out of town near Cable Beach.  It was really a lovely little town and our first experience of a Western Australia beach town, it’s true what they say, the beaches on the West are truly the most fantastic in Australia and far nicer than any we saw on the East coast (and some of those were pretty damn fab). 

Broome was a major pearling town and on one of our days there we visited the Pearl Luggers exhibition where a cer-ay-zee guy who knew all about the history of the town and its pearling industry did an hour talk and demonstration but at about 200mph.  He really knew his stuff and it was fascinating, especially the stuff about the divers.  While we were there it was out of season for most tourists because of the severity of the heat.  It was actually very uncomfortable most of the time we were there, literally sweating the whole time and never wanting to be out in the sunshine because it was so extreme, so the 17° temperature of the air conditioned gallery was lovely and there was only one other couple there for the talk.  Because we were such a small group, the guy let us hold two pearls from the safe that they have at the exhibition.  One of those was considered the most perfect pearl to ever come out of Broome, and the two together valued more than AU$150,000 (about 70,000GBP) – all in the palm of one hand!

We also went to the Sun Cinema in Broome, the oldest operating outdoor cinema in the world.  In the day time we had a nosey around the foyer looking at seriously old movie posters of the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart, King Kong and Marylin Monroe, all originals, as well as movie projectors and other memorabilia and antiques.  We went back after dark and watched the new Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe film and had mexican food and obviously some goodies.  While we were sitting there we saw a shooting star in the sky – magic.

We visited Cable Beach twice whilst in Broome, once in the day time when there was sunshine and heat and again at sunset.  In the day time was had a lovely stroll along the shore, Craig found himself a crab, some shells and a funky flat rock that he could ‘surf’ (pics soon – they’re hilarious)  He also got himself stung by a jellyfish whilst trying to convince me to progress into deeper than belly-button height waters, I returned to the safety of the beach at a rate of knots when he said he’d been stung – even though it didn’t hurt that bad.  In the evening we returned to see the sunset and tok some cool photos of the sky and the mad-funky effects the clouds were having.  It was amazing, all purples, oranges and navy colours going on, I even shed a couple of tears (big girlie).

Anyways, it was far far too hot to really relax in Broome, even though it was a nice town and we enjoyed all the things we did there.  So we couldn’t wait to head south towards cooler temperatures and our next stop was Port Hedland.  This doesn’t advertise itself as much of a tourist destination, it’s more of an industrial place with huge piles of salt heaped all over the place and loads of ships coming and going from the port.  We had intended to stop over there to break up the massive distances on the West coast, as the driving can get extremely tiresome and was starting to drive us mad.  We also had good intentions, everywhere we stayed to get the exhaust on the van fixed, but everywhere we’d been the garages had been less than helpful, scratching their heads and saying ‘ooh… it’ll take at least a week to get the part and then I don’t know how soon we can do it for you…’.  So when we found a place in Port Hedland that could order the part for us there and then and have it delivered the next day, even though that would be a Saturday and we’d have to wait until Monday to actually have the work done, he said he could do it in hour or so and it was the best offer we’d had so far.  So we went to the caravan park we’d booked into when we arrived, but left after about 20 minutes, it was a serious grot hole.  And with the problems of the heat, we had also gained flies.  You’ll never know how annoying they are until you’ve had at least half a dozen or so in every facial orifice you own  – all at once.  So we found a BIG4, the upper class of caravan parks and booked in for the long weekend.  They had a rec room fully equipped with TV, pool table, ping pong, subbuteo, chocolate machine, internet and most importantly, air con.  We camped out there for most of the daylight hours during our stay.  We didn’t do much but watch TV and read books until Monday when we got the van fixed and prepared to leave the next day.

Our next stop was Exmouth, a lovely town on the tip of Cape Range Peninsula off the West Coast.  Our main reason for staying there was to visit Cape Range National Park and see the Ningaloo Reef.  The reef comes so close to the shore that we were able to take our snorkelling gear and just swim out a few metres and we were right above the reef.  In the morning we swam off Lakeside Bay, which had beautiful clear blue waters and the softest, whitest sand ever, but unfortunately all the coral on the reef was dead and there were very few fish.  We did see a sting ray though!  In the afternoon we moved down the coast a little bit to Turquoise bay which was fabulous, the water was just as wonderful as before except this time the coral was alive, striking colours and tonnes of fishes to see.  Fishes that in this instance we managed to leave behind…

Whilst in Port Hedland Craig had managed to acquire for himself a fishing rod (I won’t tell you how) so when we got to Exmouth he found a great little tackle and bait shop where the owner was very friendly.  We spent ages in the shop chatting to the guy there who gave Craig loads of helpful hints and a basic beginners guide to fishing.  We bought a book, some hooks, weights, fishing line and stinky bait and set off for the marina.  It was lucky we had done our snorkelling before Craig got kitted out or he might have tried to catch some from the reef!  When we got to the Marina there wasn’t a soul about and signs everywhere saying ‘NO FISHING’ so he was pretty gutted and absolutely dying to find somewhere where he could try out his new gear.

The next place after Exmouth was just down the road (to us, anything less than an 8/9 hour drive is ‘just down the road’ so expand your imaginations a bit), Coral Bay.  And like the beaches at Exmouth, this was equally fantastic.  And better still that they had defined fishing areas and Craig stood out at sea for a couple of hours watching his bait get munched and munched and munched.  He caught a couple of tugs on the line, a piece of coral and a rock which resulted in the first lost hook and weight. Oh well, at least it gave him the opportunity to practise setting up his own rig for the next time.  And he had fun anyway.  Meanwhile, I sat on the beach with Steven King (not really) guarding the bait from the seagulls and getting myself an interesting looking tan.  As well as traditional bikini lines I got a pretty funky raccoon look as i didn’t take my sunglasses off all day (kinda like Robin’s mask from Batman) and sunburnt ass cheeks. Nayce.

The next place after Coral Bay was one that we had been looking forward to since the very beginning of our planning this trip.  Monkey Mia at Shark Bay.  When we had first tacked up the map of Australia on my bedroom wall and gazed in awe at all the places we might see, we hoped we would make it to Shark Bay even if we didn’t get to see anywhere else on the West Coast (how naive we were!!).  So you could say we had high expectations and our experience certainly met them.  The resort of Monkey Mia is the closest place you can stay to where the dolphins swim up to the shore and we stayed one night on the caravan park there.  The place was lovely, it was a shame that there weren’t more attractions in the area, but we were happy to spend the night and wait until early the following morning just to see the dolphins.  There was a surprising number of tourists there considering everywhere else we’d been had been out of season due to the intense heat.  A long line of people were gathered at the feeding area of the shore for the first feed of the day.  The CALM Rangers were there to give information and also ensure the safety of the dolphins.  The lady with the microphone had an annoying but amusing habit of holding the microphone next to her shoulder but turning her head to talk to the crowd.  Mostly we heard her say “And the name of this dolphin is hmm…hmm….” or “the really interesting thing about these animals is…hm..hm….hm”.  Oh well, we laughed.  Then there was the age old law of ‘the bigger the camera, the less the rules apply to you’, where the rangers would be telling us that if we stand in a very straight line in the shallowest part of the water, the dolphins will feel the most comfortable and come right up to the waters edge, but if you allow the line to curve in at the edges, they will feel enclosed and back off.  The people with the biggest camera lenses stood right in the water, in front of everyone else and snapped away regardless.  When it came time for feeding the dolphins, four rangers lined up in the water and asked the whole crowd to move back onto the sand.  Reluctantly the giant camera folk gave in after some coaxing and pointed commnts from the rest of us.  The rangers then proceeded to pick people out of the crowd to come forward, take a fish from the bucket and feed a dolphin… And they picked Craig!!  We were so chuffed, only gutted that the camera chose that moment to have a dicky fit and didn’t work.  It totally made Craig’s day and was brilliant for us both.

Geraldton was the next place on our list and was the first place we were truly comfortable with the weather, it was just right, hot enough in the day but lovely and cool in the evenings.  We stayed over a weekend and Craig got to do some more fishing, we saw a really good display at the Maritime museum which had all kinds of info on the shipwreck of the Batavia, the HMAS Sydney Memorial, the Geraldton Gaol Craft Centre. It was a nice place, not too exciting but enjoyable all the same. 

From there, on our way to Perth and Fremantle (where we are now), we stopped off to see the Pinnacles at Nambung National Park and the small town of New Norcia with its Benedictine Monastery.  We were tempted to run around the Pinnacles naked like Billy Connolly did on his Australia tour but managed to restrain ourselves!  New Norcia was a pain in the butt to find so our time there was limited but it was great in a holy kinda way.

I better stop now cuz my hands are aching and Craig needs a pee but I promise not to leave it so long until our next blog!  There’s still loads to tell you all.

Huge thankyous to people who’ve left us comments, without them we wouldn’t have had a clue that you were reading about our travels, thanks for the posts and thanks for being interested!  When it says ‘comment awaiting moderation’, you did everything right that you were supposed to do, but we HAVE to check all your comments before they go for public viewing these days so don’t worry and please be patient.

Much love to all, missing everyone as usual

Sam & Craig xoxxo

This is just a very brief entry with regard to comments on our blog. We very much appreciate all comments that are left by all our friends and family, it’s great to know that people are reading about our travels and are supporting us from the other side of the world. However, it’s also very rewarding when we find that random strangers and even old or vague acquaintances are also reading our blog and we’re happy to answer questions if there’s anything people want to know about what we’re doing or where we’ve been. We’re really very nice people and being on the road means that interaction with other human beings is often limited and we don’t get to chat as much as we’d like. So please, please please please, whoever you are, if you’re reading about us, leave a comment, introduce yourself, we really don’t care who you are, just say hello!

Sam & Craig

PS. Mum, yes your comments do count, but as you pointed out, I do get to talk to you every week, so really this appeal is directed at all our other “readers” (aunts, uncles, uni friends, work friends, Michelle B, Nick, Deb (& Husband) from HEBS, Central Networks folk etc)

20th February

Hi everyone, I’m adding an update to this entry to say thanks to ppl who have been leaving us comments but are unable to find them on the blog.  As far as I can tell, Bootsnall have added a feature to the website that allows us to vet comments before they go on for public viewing, so I have approved the most recent  ‘missing’ comments for now and will try to find a way to allow all your comments to be authorised automatically if I can.  Please keep commenting anyway for the time being, as we can read your comments from the admin area that only we hae access to.

Thanks!

Hi there nobody, glad nobody’s reading our blog, it’s so nice when nobody leaves us comments, nobody’s a very good friend of ours.  So nobody, here’s the next slot…

The job in the Douglas Daly region turned out to be fan-bleedin-tastic. Stupendous in fact.  On Monday last week we met up with Greg our new employer and set out from Darwin to the Douglas Daly Tourist Park.  We made a breif stop off on the way as Greg had an appointment with a guy to discuss irrigation for his farm and so we waited for a couple of hours at the guy’s house while Greg talked his talk.  The guy (Pete) and his wife (Liz) were very hospitable, they had three lovely kids, an assortment of animals and an amazing home.  They made us cups of tea, fed us snacks and offered to let us swim in their creek.  The house was lovely but the grounds were the best thing, lots of space outdoors, a creek, pool, teeny waterfall and acres of land for the roos to play on (we saw about 50 in one field). After this we set off for our destination and the journey was pretty hairy, a storm came in as soon as we got on the highway and it went dark very quickly.  We’re not accustomed to driving in the dark as we try to avoid it, this time we encountered many squished toads but luckily nothing too scary.  When we arrived at the Tourist Park it was quite late but Wally, the chef served us all with a beer which Greg paid for.

 We had been told that all food and accomodation was included and Greg confirmed this in Darwin but it wasn’t until we reached the park itself that we realised that he was putting us up in a fully self-contained, air conditioned cabin!  Real beds! A private bathroom! Spacious seating and dining areas! AIR CONDITIONING!! WHoopee.  Needless to say we were well chuffed.  It gets better…  Greg told us to get up the next morning in time for breakfast to be served at about 8am.  Great, a lie in too (We normally start work at 6am)!  Arriving in the restaurant area, the lady who owns the caravan park popped out of the kitchen and said, ‘bacon and eggs?’ YES PLEASE! and two cups of tea if you don’t mind!  We eventually made it to work, chauffered by Greg in his air-conditioned hire-car, at about 9.30am.  The farm was a mahogany tree plantation and we were involved in the initial sowing of the seeds.  We started out laying out plant pots into trays and then Craig went outside to shovel potting soil into the trays and I stayed indoors putting the seeds into the pots.  Over the week we planted 101,000 trees (they mature in 16 years so if you’re buying a mahogany table in 2022 or so, we could well have planted the tree it came from).  The lady at the caravan park had prepared us a lunch that was as hearty as the breakfast she put on and there was free tea and coffee all day.  The other people there amounted to a couple in their 50s, Denise and Murray who were lovely and like having an extra set of grandparents, plus two other ladies, an American called Mary-Jane (nicknamed Peggy-Sue by us) and an Aussie country-bumpkin called Bev.

 On returning to the caravan park that evening, first of all we made the trip back by a 4wd Landcruiser that we were given use of throughout the week due to the rough dirt roads, and then Greg took us to the restaurant for tea and asked, ‘would we like steak?’ Would we? Would we?  I think so.  Craig jumped at the chance and ordered himself a TBone there and then, but after all the food we’d already eaten I felt too full and too guilty so I had lasagne and salad. Greg bought us more beers to go with tea because he was impressed by how hard we had worked.  This continued throughout the week, even after Greg flew back to Melbourne we were able to use the ute and his tab!  I even changed my mind about that steak! 

We got talking to Greg quite a bit and he turned out to be the owner of the company, a chuffin millionaire. He gave us loads of tips for setting up businesses ourselves and invited us to stay with him and his wife when we get to Melbourne “give us a call, we’ve got 3 spare bedrooms and even a couple of cars you could borrow”.  Champion.  He also mentioned that he’d insisted that Grunt labour pay us $17 per hour instead of the usual $15 rate, so we’re getting paid plenty for the experience too!

“You two could land in a bucket of shit and come up smelling of roses” (Quote Ma J) Don’t we know it!

So Monday of this week we left Douglas Daly with full bellies and happy grins and set out on the road again.  We had intended to stop in Katherine while we get the exhaust fixed on the van but it’s not a place we particularly liked so we decided to plough on and get to Broome.  We stopped over one night in Kununurra but unfortunately the attractions along the way – Bungle Bungle National Park and Wolf Creek Meteorite Crater – were closed as it’s the wet season, so poor timing meant we had to miss out on those places.  We’re now in Broome and are staying here til the weekend, when we intend to continue south down the West coast (and hoping it gets a bit cooler too – the heat here is stifling).

That’s all for now, more next time…

 Sam & Craig

Hello all,
First and foremost this will be the last blog that we write if no comments are left within 24 hours of this post, this is not a threat it is a promise. C’mon people we have written two blogs and NO COMMENTS! Do you not want us to come home, do you not care to keep in touch. Now with that out of the way……. we left the red centre to go to Katherine. The farm that we worked on in Dimbulah gave us the phone number for their sister farm in Katherine, however when we got there we rang Murray the farm manager and he told us there was NO WORK, DOH! So we went to Grunt labour who were very enthusiastic, they had work for us to start the next day……. picking lemons! We told them no and explained about Sam and the Mango episode and explained we didnt want to take the risk again. They were very unsympathetic so we decided to look for work in Darwin instead. They had a job for us to start on tuesday. We dont really have much info on the job we know its working in a tree nursery, we know we are working for a guy called Greg, we know its in the Douglas Daly region and we know its all food and accomodation paid for, so we are convinced. We are meeting Greg at four this afternoon (Monday) and he is leading us to the place where we will be working.

In the meantime we went to nearby Litchfield National Park, which was beautiful. There are plenty of waterfalls and bush walks to go on, which we did all morning and then in the afternoon we bathed in a beautiful natural spa. Buley Rockhole, it was B E A utiful. We just lazed around in the sun and then sauntered on over to the waterfall and lazed under that. It was fabulous crystal clear, cool drinkable water. Paradise. I even managed to get use out of my mask and snorkel. I lost my ring under the water and went snorkelling in three foot deep water to find it. People thought i was either (a) mad or (b) a perv. We took loads of pictures around the national park, and then spent the next day by the pool at a lovely caravan park.

Not really anything else to put so will wrap this one up. Congrats to Donna who finally dropped, hope you and bubs (sams word not mine, we dont know the name yet) are safe and well. Everyone else get leaving comments you lazy gits.

Love to all

CRAIG and SAM!

Hi guys! We’ve come a very long way since our last blog and had a huge adventure in the outback. Last weekend we said sad goodbyes to our friends in Dimbulah and then started a very very long drive to Alice Springs and Ayers Rock. It took us 4 days to get to Alice Springs, mostly driving from about 8am until 4pm each day and stopping in some unusual and frankly quite scary places along the way. We saw on average about 15 other motorists on the road each day, which isn’t a lot when you think how long we were driving and how far we’ve come! I think we actually saw more cows than people and the road signs over here are hilarious, all proclaiming BEWARE loose stock, with a funny picture of an enormous cow crashing into a tiny little car, we’ve assigned it a catch phrase ‘Beware, cows may eat your car!!’ complete with silly voice and many giggles. We’ve been travelling with Sven and Marie our German friends who have also provided many a laugh. On the first day we stopped at lunchtime for a roadside picnic and when we got back on the road, they drove off with the back door of their van wide open. We’ve got 2-Way radios in each van so we can talk to them as we travel and we had to tell them that their door was open – they hadn’t realised it was unusually windy. Funnier still, the next day we made another breif stop at the side of the road and when we set off again, we’d only been going for about 2 minutes when Sven came over the 2-way saying “please stop for a mintue, we must go back for our clothes”. ???? Confused? We were too. They’d only gone and left the sliding door at the side of their van wide open this time and with their clothes hooked over the windows to dry, there were t-shirts and boxer shorts all over the highway! Amazingly they found every item and they were all dry too! Eventually we made it to Alice Springs and after an early night and a good rest from all the driving, we set out once more for Ayers Rock. We wanted to visit both Ayers Rock and Kings Canyon but weren’t sure what the quality of some of the roads would be like on the way. The longest route was a safe bet, but with the price of fuel and the massive distance we’d already covered we were willing to consider alternative routes. And Sven, being a bit of a mad German thought it would be a great adventure to go off-roading. “only 100kms!” he said, “no problem!” So we ventured down what the Aussies call an ‘unsealed’ road, but which actually felt like driving along the bottom of a fish bowl. A corrugated fish bowl. I was getting really stressed out about all the bumping, pot holes, dust, rocks and general life-threatening road conditions when I spotted not one, but about a dozen….. WILD CAMELS! And from then on I didn’t really care about the state of the road, I was in raptures about the camels and just when Craig thought I was beginning to calm down and get over it…. BABY WILD CAMELS! The 100kms was the greatest adventure, even if it was a bit hairy at times. We passed through areas that were aboriginal freehold lands, over dried out creeks and generally through the bush. It was fantastic. And on the other end we came to a place called Kings Creek. This was the nearest accomodation/food/fuel place to Kings Canyon and as it was almost 12o’clock and the hottest part of the day we decided to check into the camping ground, have a snooze and then go to the Canyon later in the day. Kings Creek is a converted station where they do all kinds of fun stuff from camel tours to Harley Davidson adventure rides to Helicopter trips over the Canyon. We met a very nice Aussie guy working there who advised us to go to the Canyon the next morning ‘a sparrow-fart from sun rise’ to get the best conditions for climbing the canyon and also suggested a nearby lookout point that we could visit that evening. We had a nice relaxing afternoon in the pool, saw the lookout at sunset and did what he suggested, getting up at 4.30am the next day to get to Kings Canyon at sunrise. It was well worth it and we did a fantastic walk all around the Canyon, taking lots of pictures from the top. The first part of the walk was a steep climb to the top but we did it without dying and the rest was plain sailing and we had lots of fun taking the mickey out of all the tourist groups who stopped to photograph every rock and discuss its origin. We finished the walk after 2 hours (an hour short of the recommended time -get us, super fit) and so it was still only about 8am. We started the drive to Ayers Rock, which was going to be a couple of hours. At midday we stopped at a roadhouse to re-fuel and have some dinner, it’s been getting hotter and hotter out here every day, I think the hottest we’ve seen is about 42degrees and that’s too hot even to drive in. You’d think with the windows open at 100km/h there’d be a nice breeze but it’s more like having an industrial hair drier pointed at you the whole time. We decided that after an hour or so it was too unbearable sitting in the heat and we made a break for the visitor centre at Ayers Rock where we could sit in the air conditioning. We read every scrap of information and watched all the informative DVDs they had going while we basked in the coolness. It was actually really interesting and I’m glad we went there before we drove up to the rock itself. Learning about the aboriginal people and their culture, specifically how the rock relates to their history and their lives, made us appreciate what we were seeing so much more. The rock is phenomenal but the stories behind it make it more intertesting. It also taught us the reasons why the aboriginal people ask visitors not to climb the rock and so out of respect for them and everything we’d learned about their culture, we chose not to climb. On the first day we visited Ayers Rock it was quite cloudy and we couldn’t get the really great photos we wanted so we decided to stay at the camp ground at the Ayers Rock resort and make another early start the next day to see the rock at sunrise. It was ridiculously overpriced at the campground but we had fun knowing that we hadn’t paid nearly as much as all the silly Japs running around who’d paid $1800 per night to stay in the resorts fanciest accomodation – Longitude 131, glorified tents. We got up again ‘a sparrow-fart from sunrise’ (new favourite saying) and had our breakfast over looking Ayers Rock at sunrise. How many people can say they’ve done that in their lifetime? Not many. After that we made a brief visit to the Olgas (more rocks like Ayers Rock only a different shape – google it) and took some photies from a lookout point. Sven and Marie wanted to do a walk around the Olgas but Craig and I have had a few small hitches with the van and decided to drive back to Alice Springs that day to try and get stuff sorted. They joined us on the caravan park later that day (Saturday) but as most places were closed and we weren’t able to get all our stuff sorted, Craig and I have stayed in Alice Springs for a couple of days and Sven & Marie have carried on to Katherine, our next stop. It’s Monday now and we’re still here. The fridge is having a bit of a dicky-fit and isn’t getting as cold as it should be and we think we have a leak somewhere on the engine as we sometimes lose a lot of oil and other times none at all. Not major problems but things that we really need to get fixed before we venture on any more massive driving days. So here we are in Alice, at the mercy of mechanics and fridge-menders, hoping to be back on the road in a couple of days.

I think that’s all for now, can’t remember any more stuff so I’ll say ta-ra duck! Hope everyone at home is fit and well. I know I said good luck to Donna last time, but news has it she’s still hoarding that bloody baby – hurry up woman! Hope all goes well for you, we’ll have a huff and puff for you on the 8th if he/she doesn’t appear before then.

Much love to all

Craig & Sam

Helloo peeps!

I’ll try to keep this one short, as I realise that some of you only get a half hour lunch break in which to read my blogs!

Since we ran out of work up at the Oolloo farm with the baby Mango trees, our good friend Jeff stepped in to introduce us to some more local farmers so that we could find some more work. Although we’ve been here in Dimbulah since 3rd November 2005 and that’s quite a long time to spend in one place when we have the whole of Australia to visit, since we decided to go to Alice Springs and Ayers Rock with Sven and Marie, we agreed to stay a little while longer as they need to earn some more spendies to get some repairs done on their van (unless we wanna go breaking down in the middle of nowhere I-don’t-think-so!). As it is, we’ve managed to save quite a bit of cash over the last couple of months but every penny counts and the more the better so Jeff hooked us up with some work on another mango farm. This time with full size trees and actual mangoes!

Last Saturday we went out to Mutchilba which is a tiny little place between here and Mareeba, it’s even smaller than Dimbulah but with lots of farms and only about 10 minutes drive away from the caravan park. We met Aldo and Carmel De’Zen and their son Luigi, an Italian family in case you hadn’t guessed and they set us on at their Mango farm, picking and packing the fruit. As luck would have it the farm next door also had work for Sven and Marie and we all started work on Monday last week at 6am! The first day we found out that they work from 6am til 6pm everyday. They have a tea break or ‘smoko’ as it’s known out here at 8am and at 3pm with an hour and a half for lunch from12-1.30pm each day. A long 12 hour day and you might think it’s not so bad with so many breaks but in reality, it meant we were at work for all the daylight hours in the day and in the hottest part from 12-1.30pm, while the family scuttles off to their nice air conditioned house for a big cooked dinner and a snooze, we have to sit in the boiling heat in our little van with a couple of ham sandwiches.

Out in the field we weren’t so much ‘picking’ the fruit as what’s called ‘de-sapping’. They have a motorised machine with a trampoline and a conveyor belt that moves alongside all the trees. Aldo, the boss, stands on a platform above the trampoline and picks the fruit from the top of the tree while a group of pickers with clippers on long poles pick everything else from underneath. Craig had to stand on the back of the machine at the end of the conveyor belt and pick out any mangoes that came through with a bit of stem still attached, pull off the stem and throw them back into the machine for rinsing. I had to take fruit from the pickers and remove the stems from as many as I could before throwing them onto the machine. They casually informed us that when you break the stems from the fruit, the sap that spurts out (“like a cat pissing” is the phrase they use, sorry nan) can burn you so be careful. It didn’t take long for us to realise just how badly the stuff burns, but the bosses didn’t take much time to explain to us how to do it properly and avoid getting burned. And when Aldo is flinging mangoes left right and centre from the top of his platform, me and Craig were getting sprayed all over with the stuff. After only one day we both looked like we’d been in a terrible accident. There were spray burns on our faces and hands, necks, arms, legs – anywhere with uncovered flesh.

On the second day we only had to go picking until 10am and then spent the rest of the day packing the fruit that we’d picked since monday, ready for market. Packing is a much nicer job inside the shed. I was given 6 bins to pack from, all the 2nd grade fruit with scratches on and they showed me how to use different plastic templates for the layout of the fruit to fit all the mangoes nicely in the boxes. Craig was making up box lids, sticking stickers on all the mangoes when I’d packed them and then stacking the boxes onto palettes and putting them in cold storage (just like being back at Mozzers!).

We battled through the week getting increasingly tired and narky with each other. Each afternoon there was a massive rainstorm which carried on through most of the evening, ripping a big hole in our little tarp with the weight of the water collected in it and the force of the wind. The camp kitchen was constantly inhabited by a very arrogant French couple who’re living in a sopping wet tent and do their best to get in our way when we try to cook tea. The shop closes at 6pm every evening so we have to drive back from work during lunch hour in the day to get bread and milk etc. costing us petrol and mileage on the van. We couldn’t do any washing cuz that would mean leaving it out to dry all day and risk getting soaked in the afternoon rain and everything was just one big stink. By Thursday we were barely talking to one another and then we found out that the I-tI’s intended for us to work these crappy 12 hour days every day until every last mango was picked and packed – could be up to another 14 days! After much griping on Thursday night we decided to ask for our wages on Friday as we still didn’t know how much we were getting paid and they weren’t planning on dishing out any money until all the picking was done. On Friday lunchtime Carmel paid us for the 4 full days we had worked from Monday to Thursday and we decided that the Friday morning that we had worked without pay would do to settle our consciences as we high-tailed it from the farm and never went back. It earned us a pretty sum of just over $1000 and we were happy with that. With sore fingers, aching feet and big hugs to each other in forgiveness for the all the snapping and bickering of the previous few days we looked forward to food shopping, clean knickers and a big snooze! Ahhh! In the mean time Sven and Marie, a much tougher pair of cookies than us (or maybe just stupider?) carried on working at their farm until Tuesday this week, 9 days straight! Although they didn’t have the sap burns that we had as Marie was packing all day and Sven was given one of those clipper-poles so they never came into contact with the demon stuff.

So, a happy ending you might think? Think again! By Saturday night I had started to develop a nasty red itchy rash around where the sap burns were, which spread and got worse over the weekend until I woke up on Monday morning with big swollen eyes and a swolled top lip. Having had experience of nasty allergies when I was little, we decided I’d better go to the hospital. We looked them up in the phone booked and rang before we set off, the receptionist told me I would be seen by a triage nurse and then have to wait for a doctor. The address said Lloyd street, so when we got to Mareeba (40 mins away) and found Lloyd street, the first thing we saw was a medical centre. This must be it! We went inside and waited ages while all the receptionists and nurses flapped about all denying having taken a phone call from me. For God’s Sake! We eventually figured out that we were in the wrong place and that the hospital was around the corner. By the time we got there and I’d filled in a shed load of forms I was so stressed out that the first nurse who came to me had to deal with me bursting into tears and explaining what a long way from home I am and how scared I was that I was gonna choke on my own tongue! She was very sympathetic, apart from the moment when she shoved a massive great needle in my hand and sucked a load of my blood out! Within 15 minutes of finding the hospital I was lying on a bed, telling my sorry story and the nurse decided I must be allergic to the mangoes or the sap or some chemical used on the farm and was just having a bit of a delayed reaction. The doctor came very briefly and told the nurse to give me an injection of Phenergan. It made me dozy and I slept a couple of hours in the hospital while they kept an eye on me but the swelling started to come down very quickly. I was happy with the results and so with a prescription for some more Phenergan tablets and a cream for my rash in hand we buggered off back to the caravan park.

Happy ending? No, sorry not this time. By Tuesday morning I was all swollen up again, worse than before and not a happy bunny. A quick read over the phenergan tablets showed me that they were nothing but glorified anti-histamines, a drug I’ve taken every day for most of my life. I knew exactly what I needed to put me right, a steroid called Prednisolone (unfortunately one that can only be prescribed by a doctor), so back to the hospital we go. The nurse we met on this occasion was much less sympathetic and as I was a lot calmer this time and clearly not about to drop dead as I had thought I was the previous day, she told me to go sit down and wait. So wait we did. . . . . For 3 and a half hours. By this time I’d taken so many anti-histamines that the swelling had started to subside a bit, at least it wasn’t getting any worse. So I said we might as well go home and wait and see what would happen next. Poor hungry, sleepy Craig obliged and then put up with me drifting in and out of doziness with the tablets for the next 24 hours. By the middle of Wednesday, 5 days after the symptoms had started I was still no better and our neighbour Bruce suggested that I go to Dimbulah hospital. It’s more of a clinic really, with only a nurse and no doctor, but she has been known to dish out medication where she sees fit and might just be able to help me out. She was a very lovely lady and although she couldn’t bend the rules quite so far as to give me the steroids I needed, she did manage to get me an appointment with a local doctor the same day who would be happy to prescribe it to me after a breif consultation. Back to Mareeba we go. The appointment itself cost me $51.50, as well as the $28 for the previous days’ medication and another $14.50 for the steroids but I got what I wanted, the wonder drug that I had used so many times when I was younger and now (Thursday) I seem to be on the mend. Thew swelling began to go down yesterday and although I’m a bit puffy and bruised around the eyelids, it’s mostly all gone now. The rash is still with me but hopefully another couple of days will see the end of that! And the great thing is that with all this medication I’ve paid for, I’ve got a plentiful supply for in case it happens again – not that I’ll be going near anymore mangoes for a long long time! So there you go, first and hopefully last visits to an Aussie hospital, sorry, no photos this time! Craig’s burns are also starting to heal now, he managed to avoid any kind of allergy, the little splashes on his arms and face are mostly gone but his hands are still a bit messed up – he’s got photographic evidence of that for when we get home! Dont worry about us, we’re tough bunnies and doing our very best to take care of one another.

In the meantime we went back to our old farm with the baby mango trees as they had said we could go back around 18th Jan if we still wanted to work, helping them with the pruning. Unfortunately their bosses have told them to hold off the pruning for another month. We’ve been discussing things with Sven and Marie and they’re spending the next few days getting everything hunky dory in their van, so all being well we should be off to Alice Springs very soon! Yay! We’re not deciding on an actual departure date yet, as sods law every time we make a plan something comes along and buggers it up, so it’ll be a spur of the moment decision I’m sure, such is the exciting life we’re living! You can breathe a sigh of relief that there won’t be any mammoth blogs for a while, it’s gonna take us about 5 days straight to drive to Alice so there won’t be much opportunity to get on the net or much to say probably, but we’ll be back in touch soon.

Hope everyone at home is well, Donna we’re thinking of you lots and hope all the huffing and puffing goes well (and fast!)!
Love to everybody, missing you all lots

Itchy & Scratchy xoxox

Hi Guys! Prepare yourselves for a long read – so much stuff has happened and Sam is back in the driving seat!

Since you last heard from us on the 17th December, I’ll start from there! It started out as a fairly normal working week on the 18th, I have been spraying herbicide on the weeds and Craig was spraying a pesticide on the trees to get rid of some caterpillars that were eating all the leaves! By Wednesday it was too windy to spray much and so I was helping Marie tie up the taller trees to the stakes so that they don’t bend over and then we had a lovely afternoon of weeding. It was a bit tough on the old back, especially the small area where my shorts come down a bit and my t-shirt rides up a bit and I’ve now got a lovely tan stripe. A couple of local guys who had been “working” up at the farm (a very lazy pair who tended to stand around smoking and watching the rest of us do some real work) were laid off and we were very pleased as it meant that we could work there for longer when really we expected to be the first to go when the amount of work there began to dwindle. We were also very excited to receive the parcels sent by Craig’s family, the photos really made our day and we spent most of the afternoon pawing, shaking, squeezing and sniffing all the parcels (and I had a bit of a sniffle over the Christmas cards too – thanks everybody, and Donna thanks for the pic of Alicia!).

The rest of the week was spent pruning the small branches off the young trees, this gave me lots of time to chat to Marie and even learn some German for myself (my favourite phrase so far is ‘Do the dishes… now!’). She’s a big animal lover and showed me a baby Kangaroo nest that she found out on one of the fields – she told me how an eagle had swooped down to try and take the joey and she had flapped around to frighten it away and ended up scaring the joey off into the bush. We hope it found its mother eventually. On Christmas Eve we had great fun in the supermarket planning our Christmas dinner and stocking up on treats for the 4 days off work. We split the cost of Christmas dinner with Sven and Marie and promised them a traditional Christmas dinner for the next day – it seems that the boys conveniently forgot about their plans to hunt a wild bush turkey, thank goodness.

On Christmas morning we were awoken by sunshine pouring in through the curtains on the van and had to get up pretty quickly as it gets like a sauna in there about an hour after the sun is up. We had bacon, egg and cheese butties with a nice cuppa for brekkie and then ploughed into the pressies! We were well chuffed with all the things people sent, especially the games that kept us entertained over the holiday! We started a monster game of Monopoly with Sven and Marie until it was time to start cooking dinner.

Our kindly neighbour John had let us borrow a small roasting oven that we plugged in to the camp kitchen to roast a chicken (unfortunately the turkeys were all too massive and too expensive so we had chicken instead!) and we had a plethora of veggies boiled, roasted, chopped, mashed and mulched as well as taters and gravy. We pulled Christmas crackers and party poppers and all wore the silly hats while we ate! For pud there was chocolate mudcake with custard and a slice of lemon cheesecake- in the same bowl, yummy!

So not quite a BBQ on the beach but still much fun and all the cooking and present opening stopped us from maudlin away Christmas day missing the family. We all had a few to drink and decided it would be a great idea if we all (Me, Craig, Sven and Marie) go to Alice Springs and to see Ayers Rock together when we’ve finished working and so now we are constantly planning and re-planning our next adventure!

Boxing day saw a massive van clear out – it’s amazing how much crap we’ve collected now we have a bit of space to store it in, I’ve no idea how we’ll ever put everything back into our backpacks! We made space for our new toys and games and so began a massive Monopoly/Pub Quiz/Boggle/Connect 4 Tournament – cracking! Back to work for 3 days on Wednesday and it was a fairly quiet week, two of the bosses off on holiday and we just carried on pruning. Craig bought a carton of beers for all the workers (it’s a friday afternoon ritual that someone buys a carton each week and we decided it was our turn) and we managed to blag some wood from the farm to help finish off our roof rack (we need the space for all the crap! – just kidding, it’s really so we can carry cans of water and fuel when we go to Alice Springs).

On New Year’s Eve we went into town again and this time Sven and Marie took over the shopping for our New Year party, so we had a bbq with steaks and salad as well as some potatoes cooked in the embers of our camp fire (it’s a regular thing now for us to sit around the camp fire in the evenings with a few beers, chatting to Sven and Marie). The first lot of potatoes ended up cremated but the second batch were very nice! We also had some of Craig’s favourite ‘beer onions’ with the steaks and toasted marshmallows on sticks for afters! Unfortunately since we’re so used to waking up when the sun comes up at around 5am each day and then going to sleep at about 8.30pm each night it was pretty difficult trying to stay awake for the big twelve o’clock count down! In fact Craig, Marie and Jeff (who invited himself along to the festivities) all fell asleep in their chairs and had to be woken up at about quarter to twelve. Needless to say it was a fairly quiet celebration and we were all in bed 15 minutes into 2006. Happy New Year!

We went back to work on Tuesday and were disappointed to hear that Sven and Marie might only be able to work until the end of the week. They’ve been having some problems with their van overheating and were relying on working until the end of Jan to pay for repairs. We began to think of ways to get the van fixed pronto so that we could all go to another Mango farm belonging to the same company up in Katherine (in the Northern Territory not far from Alice Springs) where our boss said they had work planting trees for three weeks for all four of us. Then on Wednesday our boss broke the news that there might only be one or two more days work left for us all- we’re just too damned fast and efficient! So as Craig and I really wanted to visit Port Douglas, the Daintree and Cape Tribulation further up the East Coast before we leave for Alice Springs we decided to cut our losses that day and do the trip over Thursday-Saturday while Sven and Marie sort out their van. We took Sven into Mareeba, about a half hour drive from here on Wednesday afternoon to take the radiator from his van into a repair shop to see about getting it cleaned. Even though we rang ahead and they said they were open until 4.30pm, at 4.05pm it was already closed. We were very frustrated by the wasted journey and offered to drop it off the next morning on our way out to Port Douglas, Sven would just have to trust us not to agree to too high a price. The next day we turned up at the garage only to be told that it was closed down and we would have to take the radiator to Cairns. This wasn’t a problem as we had planned to stop off in Cairns anyway to buy a two-way radio and the jerry cans for fuel and water that we want for our trip to Alice. So with much ado we eventually got the radiator dropped off and arranged to pick it up again on our way back on Saturday.

Next stop was Port Douglas, a town I had been longing to visit ever since I had sat eagerly researching Oz on the internet back at home. The further up the coast we went the hotter and more humid it became, the coastal highway had som gorgeous views and we weren’t disappointed by the landscape, it was utterly beautiful. The town of Port Douglas itself was just like any other coastal town however, the shops and restaurants and pubs were very samey and a little bit pricey for our budget! We sat for 15 minutes on the beach and were lucky to see a couple of dolphins playing out at sea. They jumped once and Craig spotted them…he nudged me to look and they jumped again… we grabbed the camera and they buggered off. Typical! The caravan park we stayed on was a bit grim, there were signs everywhere with the parks rules and regulations, a 40 point list of ‘you must not’s’ all thoughtfully finished off with “…or you will be escorted off the premises. The Management.” It was $25 for one night – shocking compared to the $65 per week we pay back in Dimbulah. We found ourselves ironically longing for the comfort and familiarity of what has been our home for 2 months! Since it’s my birthday next week we decided to go out and have a nice meal for a treat and so on to the “Star of Siam’ we descended. Not quite the meat and spinach balti with fried rice and poppadums type of establishment I was hoping for, Indian restaurants are a bit scarce out here, but it was a very nice Thai place and the food was gorgeous, well worth the money. After that we went to a little pub where there was a guitarist and a singer playing. They were a bit sombre (putting it politely) and Craig was the only person to clap after each song for a good half an hour, and this only because he felt a sense of loyalty to the guitarist who was actually quite good but just couldn’t sing. Eventually a few people joined in the clapping, I sat sniggering behind my beer at his Stevie Wonder head movements hehehe and we left when they stopped to take a break.

The next morning we got up very early to make our way to Cape Tribulation. On the way we passed through a town called Mossman and briefly visited Mossman gorge where there was a gorgeous section of the river twinkling and sparkling in the sunshine as it passed through heaps and heaps of smooth and shiny rocks in the river bed. We had to get on a small ferry to cross the Daintree river which cost us $16 (return), was no more than a slab of concrete on a pulley wire and lasted less than two minutes. All the same we took loads of photos and hoped to see some crocodiles but they must have been busy munching tourists elsewhere that day. In the Daintree Rainforest we stopped for a couple of hours at a Discovery Centre where they have a boardwalk both at ground level and in the canopies of the trees going through a section of the rainforest where they give you information about all the flora and fauna as you go around.
In the middle is a canopy tower where each level explains more about the variations in the forest the higher you go and looked freakishly like the area where Ant & Dec stand on ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ and one of the walkways is called the ‘Bush Tucker Trail’.

After this we drove on to Cape Tribulation which although very beautiful does not deserve to be described as a town as there are only four buildings and the ‘supermarket’ is no bigger than a ‘Spar’ shop. The camping dround seemed to be a bit of a posh ‘resort in the tropical rainforest’ type place and so after a brief visit to the beach where you can see the Reef and the Rainforest side by side (the only place in the world where you can see two protected World Heritage sites together) and took some photos we decided to make our way back to Cairns for the radiator and then ‘home’ to Dimbulah where the rent for the week was already paid and much much cheaper!

When we arrived back Sven and Marie had to replace the newly cleaned radiator and try a combination of things on their van to see if the problem was rectified. This was a long and complex process which involved Sven ignoring the advice of several people who know what they’re talkign about and just taking stuff apart anyway. While this was going on, Craig and I had another tidy out of our van and were just about to cook some tea (Craig was on his way to wash his hands to start chopping the veggies) when Craig found a little teeny puppy lying on the concrete underneath the washing line on the caraven park, right by our van! He went over and gave the little fella a fuss and a tickle and asked a couple of people nearby if he belonged to them. It turned out he’d been at the caravan park all day, someone found him this morning sleeping in one of the gents shower cubicles. Eveybody had just ignored him all day and the poor little bugger was starving and so hot. We gave him a couple of slices of sandwich chicken and he wolfed it down so fast we were worried about giving him too much in case he got sick. Over the next couple of hours we gave him more food and water and played with him lots. The general feeling amongst the residents on the caravan park was that he had been dumped by someone passing through town, an unwanted Christmas present from a family who couldn’t cope with him, this had happened before with a cat who has now been adopted by John. Marie made him a funky little harness and a lead out of some rope and we clipped it to our van for the night as it was getting dark and gave him an old towel to sleep on. The next day we went to the shop and checked the notice board for posters to see if he was lost but there was nothing and no-one local seems to know anything about him. We bought some puppy food and dog chews for him and gave him a de-flea bath. He’d got an ear full of ticks which we painstakingly removed using the flea-killing soap on a cotton bud to kill them before we pulled them out. He’s a very happy little pup, reasonably healthy looking and he’s a very clever pup who knows not to poop where he eats -he whimpers if he’s tied on the rope to be let off to go a few feet away from the van to do his business and always comes back. Craig takes him for a ‘walk’ around the caravan park, we don’t need a lead, he happily scampers a few paces behind Craig, ‘hunting’ his ankles. We’ve all been entertaining the idea of making him into a travelling dog and then bringing him home with us later this year but he doesn’t cope well in the heat and we think it’s only fair that he should have a nice home with air conditioning and a loving family to keep and feed him so next week we think it’s off to the pound for little NUPWE (No Useful Purpose What-so-Ever).

In the meantime our mate Jeff from the farm has been rallying around his farmer mates and managed to find work for us, Sven and Marie on one farm and Craig and I next door for at least one week (more sodding Mango trees!), so for now the money is still coming in and as soon as the German guys have their van fixed and enough funds we’ll be off to Alice Springs!

I think that’s all for the excitement now, Craig has just informed me that he’s got the 2-way and the new radio-cassette player all sorted and installed in the van, Maxine’s (lady who owns the caravan park) husband has been giving him a hand and has lent us some tools and the roof rack is also ship-shape and ready to rock. As great as it is to go travelling and we’re very excited about our next trip, we both feel that the best thing so far about being in Australia has been living and working here. The people are so colossally friendly and helpful and genuine, we’ve never known such kindness and it’s amazing. The weather is beautiful, the countryside is your office and we’ve made some great friends.

I hope 2006 brings many more amazing adventures and wonderful people, both for us and for all you guys at home. We love and miss you very much, and are looking forward to seeing you later this year.

I want to pay a little tribute here to those people who are no longer here to see the New Year in with us but I’m not sure what to say except, we know you’re watching over us as we travel, so thank you.

Sam & Craig

PS Craig’s email address is not working at the moment so please send his emails to Sam’s address at ahtnamas84@aol.com

Hello all! Sorry about the lack of Blogs we have both been working so hard and earning our spendies. We are still at the Mango Plantation and its lots of fun, HONEST! There is plenty of work to be done and the people we work with are still really friendly. I (Craig) have been driving the tractor all week, its a hard life driving an air conditioned tractor with a CD player and radio in it when all the other working folk are slugging it out in the 37 degree heat. HaHa!
Any way since our last blog not much has been happening just lots of working and very little playing. Two weeks ago all the investors and owners of the farm we are on put on a dinner for all the workers and planters, basically anybody who had anything to do with the setting up of the farm was invited. They had a half hog roast and loads of really nice food set on and then we went to the pub and the farm owner showed up , started a tab behind the bar and we had free drinks as well. Smashing! He was a Yank but since he paid for the ale we can let him off for that.
The only travelling we have done lately was last weekend. We went to a place not too far away called Atherton and then onto a place called Yungaburra. Atherton was nice, we went for a walk around the shops and town, it was much busier than Dimbulah but still not much going on. It was nice to get out of town and just see somewhere different. Yungaburra was like stepping back in time. A very small but very very very very old town. All the buildings were made of wood and the whole town looked like it was from some western film. But it was all spruced up for the tourists so it was nice. There was an aboriginal woman who came walking out of the pub balancing a crate of beer on her head. There were three people sitting outside the pub and us walking past and we all couldnt help but stare. From Yungaburra we went to Tinaroo dam which was beautiful and there was a wake boarding competition happening as well which was cool to watch. Unfortunately the cameras battery was flat so we have got to go back to get some pics.
This week at work both of us have had a change of scenery at work and we went and planted some trees, so now our T Shirts the owners give us that say “Ive Planted one in Dimbulah 2005!”, actually make some sense. They also give us a photo they had taken from a plane so you can see just how big this place is. There have been two new people who have started at work called Sven and Marie and they are our age, THANK GOD! The average age of people round here is well above forty and although they are friendly they dont have much more to talk about but farming. The other night all the people from the farm who live on the campsite including Sven and Marie came and sat out around our van and we had a really good night sat out drinking and having a laugh. Terry one of the fellow sprayers (thats what we do most of the time, spray the trees or weeds) wandered off around the caravan park in a drunken state , only to be discoverd by me about an hour later asleep under a tree
Probably the most important news is that CRAIG HAS GOT A GUITAR!!!! YEY!!!. When we went to Atherton we found a music shop that was really cheap so i spent my christmas money. We went to Cairns this weekend where Sam spent her christmas money on a pair of jeans and a purse. The parcels from sams family have arrived with all our christmassy stuff in. The tinsel has gone on the shelter to decorate our caravan park. The little decorations are plastered over the fridge along with pics of the pups in the snow. The cards have been opened which got us all teary and the presents are being saved for christmas day. We have already been tempted to open them and lie and say we did open them on christmas days but so far we have remained strong. Me and Sven have decided we are going hunting for a wild bush turkey for christmas dinner, this was a drunken idea i might add and neither of us have mentioned it since sobering up. Looks like christmas dinner might be just a BBQ after all.

Thanks for all the cards and prezzies.
Thanks for the comments as always. Especially to Nick. Well done i had my money on it taking you at least six months.
Missing everyone loads.
Merry Christmas.
Lots of love and kisses

Craig and Sam.