Craig & Sam Down Under

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

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006 at 4:44 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.