Troy Archie – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Well I spent a quick night in Geraldton and quickly headed out to an other farm north of town for an other wwoofing stay. I spent pretty much the entire day running around getting small tasks done and TRYING to make phone calls.

I’ve had major problems with the phones here and the major company Telstra who seem to be hated by everyone including now me. I must have wasted $5 on their pay phones trying to make calls but the stupid machines kept eating my money or the booths were located on the busiest street corner in the city and couldn’t hear what the other person was saying. I must of kicked 4 different pay phones that day. Finaly after one call I snapped and as I turned around I noticed Telstra regional office across the street from where I was standing. Trembling with rage I casually walked across the street and into the building where 4 people were cusualy working away. I was absolutey filled with rage and ready to snap but covered it with my polite Canadian demenor. The following conversation went a little something like this:
“Hello, how are you doing today? I would like to make a phone call, please.” I said.
“A phone call?” the young lady replied with a confused look on her face. At this time the other 3 people in the front office all stopped, turned from their desks and looked at me with the same confused look on their faces.
“Yes, a phone call. I have wasted nearly $5 on your shitty pay phones that either keep eating my money or are perfectly placed next to a busy street making it impossible to hear the other person.”
At this time everyone in the office turned back in their desks and burried their heads in their work.
“Oh, umm…I guess you can use that one over there…”
“Thank you.”

So now I know how to get free phone calls.

Back to the journey at hand. After having an amazing stay at the West’s farm I was eager for an other great experience staying with an other family. I picked out a farm that was a small operationg working with some cattle, sheep, turkeys, chickens, pigs and couple bee hives. They had a lot of neat little projects on the go and seemed like really nice people. Their names were Graham and Angela McKenny and were about in their mid to late 40’s. Angela ran their farm and Graham was a full time plumber here in town. They were pretty cool people and listened to some good music.

They had a number of interesting little hobbys and projects always on the go. With all the milk Angela collected she made cheese and creams, they collected honey from the bees and Angela was really big into homeopathic cures for them and all their animals using different herbs and such.

My first day was an early one where a sheep shearer was coming to the farm to shear the 17 sheep they have. My job was to take the sheep after the shearer sheared it and pull it back into the pen. They were pretty stubborn animals and some of them gave us some problems. A couple took Graham for a ride into his truck and into the tress but other then that things went off pretty smoothly.

Here’s the sheep shearer shearing away.

The next day we had to get the pigs to the slaughter house so we made a sort of ramp and walkway into the back of the truck where a cage was set up for them. Another farmer told them to leave up to 2 hours to load pigs up because they can be a major hassle.

Here’s them starting out.

And there’s the end.

Down the walkway they go. Graham and I stood behing an old pallet and slowly pushed it forward making the walkway smaller and smaller.

Just about there.

Finally into the back of the truck.

Not too many problems actually and I think it only took about half an hour.

Graham and Angela were pretty camera shy so I had to get candid pictures of them all the time.
It was pretty interesting to see and take part of these two tasks but the other job the other tasks pretty much sucked. Picking up cow shit and hauling things around for them were the order of the day and I felt that all I was doing was following them around holding the gate open for them as they drove through it with their trucks. I was never too sure when the day ended and I think they expected me to always be on call sort of speak, making the days extremely long. They really didn’t give very good instruction and seemed to rather want to do the main tasks for themselves.

Now for the bad. As I said before Angela was big on herbs and homeopathic cures. She had a big list on a desk of their in the kitchen detailing all the uses for many of the herbs and such. I thought it looked pretty interesting so I started to give it a read. She took great offense to these and accused me of snooping through her things and next day asked me to leave the next morning. This was after the first morning and after what I had seen of the them and the tasks I was more than pleased to leave. They were decent people but extremely flakey and seemed a bit too hippish. They were always spouting off about big buisness and the government and how they’re controlling peoples minds and blah blah blah. I think they smoked a little too much herb back in their day. They said people needed to get out into the real world more yet they were quite content to never leave the isolation of their farm unless they had to. They were also so uptight about medicine and homeopathic cures saying how evil hospitals and doctors were. She was always giving Graham and herself some weird herbs and such in hopes that they would reach opptimal health yet they were always hacking away and limping around. They talked about how healthy they were because they ate their own meats, eggs and milk that was free of chemicals and additives yet they would gussle down like 4 litres of Sprite and eat half a loaf of white bread a day. But now I’m ranting and picking out all their hippocracies and I am guilty of my own so I’ll end it there.

So after hitting such a great high after the West’s farm I’ve hit a hard low and feel a bit bitter and jaded after that wwoofing experience. I left their farm Monday morning, tired as shit as they slept like 5 hours a night and dirty as hell, got into town, had a nap a half decent breakfast and now I’m back at it dirty and reckless. I’m spending tonight in Geraldton and looking to take off to Kalbarri tommorrow afternoon. Kalbarri is a national park about an hour north of Geraldton where I hpe to just chill out a lot and rest myself up.

Well that’s that. A shorter entry this time around but for good reason. Here’s some more pics of my stay. There’s a couple pictures in there of a stay that I went to with them. Those are for all the farmers out there.

Safe Travels.

First off, give me some feedback people and not just, “Looks like your having fun” crap. Comments of something I did, something I should try, perhaps a bit of advice or insight into my journeys, critisism is also good too. If it’s a bit personal or whatever email it to me.

Well it’s been a bit and I figure it’s time for an update. It’s been a pretty interesting week plus and I really feel my travels have gotten underway but I guess I’ll start at the beginning.

I spent a couple more days in Perth having gotten back to town on Monday night and finally left on Thursday morning. I figure I was in town for about a week with a little get away down to Narrogin in the middle of it all. I was pretty damn glad to finally get out of the damn city, onto a bus and finally heading north.

Getting ready for Christmas in Perth.

My first stop was Jurien Bay where a farmer was picking me up for a “Wwoofing” stint on his fish farm. I had some problems getting a hold of the people as their cell phone had really bad reception and plus they were a couple minutes late picking me up so I was a bit worried that we didn’t get our messages straight but they showed.

The beach at Jurien Bay.

Albert and Diane West were the people that I was staying with and they run a fish farm halfway between Jurien Bay and another town called Badgingarra. The farm is probably about 30 minutes from the closest town so it’s really out in the woodworks. They had just moved into a new house so some stuff was at the old house, which was pretty dilapidated, and some was at the new house, which was so new some of the rooms still had no windows, like the one I stayed in. If you add in the fact that the first night we had no power it was actually a lot like camping. It may have been extremely rustic but it sure did beat sleeping in another room with 9 other people, 4 of which snore like lawn mowers, that was next to a street with a car that had an alarm that went off every half hour, in a bed that I got wicked bed-bug bites from; of which I’ve gotten over. Ah hostels…

Along with them there was their 15-year-old grandson Troy who had just gotten home from school for summer and Kate their 18 year-old granddaughter who just graduated from high school. Now Troy and Kate are children of their adopted daughter Tracey who is an aboriginal and like a lot of aboriginals, has a lot of problems so Diane and Albert managed to adopt Troy and his sister Kate.

Kate was in town for only a couple days and was there to have a get away with a couple of her friends for graduation so I really didn’t get to know her all that well. She’s a nice girl and is a normal person, her friends on the other hand were a bit inconsiderate. When you’re staying at someones place for free and being fed for free you could at least help out instead of just sitting there watching a 65 year old grandmother with a gimped knee limp around the kitchen cooking for you. Some peoples kids…

Needless to say, another Troy created a bit of confusion at times. Troy is pretty restless, has a bit of a short attention span and from what I’m told has a bit of a learning problem. Seemed like a normal kid to me at first but as time wore on I could see what they were talking about. In the span of an hour he could be seen chasing around the family dogs, playing video games, watching a movie, chatting on the internet, having a bite to eat and riding around on his motorbike. Very restless, not all quite there with some things and had a tough time just staying in one spot to do a task so he pretty much was a nightmare to try and get work out of. By the end of my stay he was starting to drive my patients. Albert and Diane’s patients with him amazed me.

Troy cracking the whip

Albert

Diane

Work consisted of a whole plethora of duties. I had to water the plants a couple times, which was a good time to listen to music and stop to smell the roses. Albert and I dug a trench one day and buried some pipe in it, which as shitty as it sounds I rather enjoyed; after years of sitting in front of a computer, I had forgotten what some good hard work felt like. Those were pretty much the little side jobs that I did but since I’m such a nice guy and the lady of the house had a knee problem, I usually did the dishes, emptied the dishwasher, helped make dinner and little crap like that. I’m such a fricken gentleman, huh?

33 hanging baskets. All me baby.

I went a little overboard on the orange picking.

Now that stuff was a small portion of what I did as the bulk of my work was working the fish farm, which was the cool part. Now you’re probably thinking, “a fish farm in Australia that’s no where near the ocean, huh?” Well since the soil here is pretty much all sand and doesn’t absorb water very well, when it rains the water just puddles everywhere and flows away, so what Albert does is, with his backhoe, digs these big ass “damns” which are essentially just big holes and lets the water fill up. There’s about 30 of these damns all around the farm and I think he said about 28 currently have fish in there. The fish he raises are Silver Perch and goldfish.

Damn

Duties for the fish farm were things like moving around the paddle wheels, which put oxygen in the water and minor maintenance jobs like that to the big fun job; netting, counting and sorting the fish. This was the cool job. What we would do is start off with a damn like above and set up a net next to it ready to go. Albert would start off on one side and pull the net through the water close the shore while I would pull the net off the trailer. When he got to the other side I would start walking my end of the net down the other end of the shore.

Here’s Albert pulling the net through one side.

Here am I pulling it along the other side. It’s amazing how at first you’ll be a bit apprehensive about going into the water but 2 minutes later strip down and get right in there. Albert wasn’t kidding when he said he sucked at taking pictures. I’m way on the left.

After that we would pull the nets closer to the opposite shore that we started on and trap the fish in the net. From there Albert would start netting the fish in a handheld net and pass it up to me on top of the “Ute” (Utility Vehicle, aka car/truck style vehicle) where I would throw them into a big tank on the back of it.

Albert netting some fish and bringing them up to me.

The tank full of fish, no the fish aren’t dead, they’re “sleeping”. Seriously they are. Albert puts in a bit of clover oil into the tank and it pretty much knocks them right out or at least makes them extremely docile. Oddly enough, fish farming doesn’t smell like fish but smells of clover oil which is kinda cool because everytime I smell clover I think of my stay there. I think there was like 200 in the tank here, which from what I’m told was a good haul.

From there we take the full tank to a larger tank out by the sheds and start sorting and counting them. We’d sort them by type (gold fish & perch) and size. The big ones would go into the fresh water tank and the small and medium ones would go back into different ponds to grow more. Again, you’d be surprised at how quickly you can get over your apprehensiveness of touch and handling live fish. The silver perch were pretty much out cold but the gold fish would put up a fight and sometimes get away and by get away I mean you’d drop them off the side of the Ute and have to pick them up.

Now the best part of fish farming and farming in general as far as I’m concerned; eating what you grow and raise.

Albert getting lunch ready, I ate that fish like 10 minutes later.

A turtle we pulled from one of the damns.

It doesn’t get much fresher than that and that’s only part of it. Fresh eggs that were still warm from the chicken or “chucks” and being able to pick an orange off of a tree and eat it was the order of the day. I swear I just about burnt myself on the orange’s juice it was so dam hot and fresh, bet you’ve never tried that before.

“Chucks” as they’re called down here. I had fresh eggs ever morning from these fellows.

So yeah, that was pretty much my duties out on the farm. I’d usually get myself up at 6:00, make breakfast for myself, start work at 7:00 and finish work by about 1:00 with lunch. After that I did whatever I felt like. I spent most of my time working out, reading, listening to music, driving around on the quad and just chilling out. Yeah, I learned to drive a quad, how about that.

This is a bunch of pics of their house. It wasn’t finished yet and is a work in progress but is a pretty cool design. I think it’s called a mesa style of house; it was very Mexican style anyways. Pretty much all the house was made with recycled wood taken from other houses from the area that were tore down. They don’t have wells down here so they have to gather all the rainwater into a big drum for drinking and pump other water from the damns for everything else.

This is Diane getting lunch ready. That’s an old wood stove in the back ground and again on Monday the power went out again for the whole day and we ended up having to light it to make dinner.

The entire kitchen was made with wood that was floorboards.

All of the ceiling beams used were a really heavy hard wood that they recycled.

A really nice hardwood clock of theirs.

The entire house was designed to keep the cool air in and hot air out during the summer, and hot air in and cold air out during the winter. It got up to 34 a couple days but it was a nice 24 inside the house, all without an air conditioner. 34 sounds hot but it actually didn’t feel that hot as it’s pretty much always windy here and in fact the nights could get pretty cool. 28 in Perth felt hotter.

One of the views of the area.

So I ended up spending 7 days with the West’s and I honestly feel like a changed person. You really don’t know how other people live and even really get to know them untill you live with them and be a part of their family. You see their weaknesses and their strengths, and I must say Diane and Albert have plenty of strength. Their patients with Troy was amazing and I don’t know how they managed to do it for so long especially after raising 5 of their own children. Their generosity, kindness and humor through hardships was inspiring. Albert’s work ethic and knowledge also amazed me and now has me with visions of having my own small acrege some day, growing and raising my own food.

I started to get a little bored and eager to leave by about Monday but found that after working the mornings I was still eager to do more and felt I had learned and accomplished something. I had forgotten what getting your hands dirty felt like and what some good hard work felt like; fufilling. That said, I think my next farm stint will be only about 4-5 days unless I feel otherwise, 7 was just too long.

My last day Diane took me out to the Pinnicles which were by there place that are suppose to be a big tourist draw. Kinda borring to fish farming I thought. I’d write more about them but there isn’t too much to write about them.

That’s me

As for now I’m in a city north of Jurien Bay called Geraldton, chilling out and listening to the Oiler’s game Vs the Canucks (Torres just score, man I’m hurting for hockey). It looks like I might be going out to another farm here tonight but I might hold off until Sunday or Monday unless I get my little tasks done today. This farm is a cattle farm so it should be interesting and hopefully I can get some good beef for dinners. Geraldton is a bit of a hurting town so I don’t want to stick around in town too long. The two hostels that are in town are pretty crappy from what I’ve seen.
I’m finding hostels to be rather borring and rather empty but I’m thinking it might be bacause most people are headed south not north. They say it’s too hot up north, it was 24 in Perth yesterday; not hot enough for me. I’ve yet to stay in a party hostel despite my serching.

I guess some people would ask what’s the point this work without pay and whatnot and say aren’t you suppose to be on vacation? Well just like that Irish bloke who had gotten drunk everyday for 6 months straight, each to their own. I’m out here for a cool experience and that’s what I’m getting. That said, if you have any comments, critisisms, input or insights into my travels throw me a line, I would really appreciate that.

Here are a couple more pics that I took.

Safe Travels.

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