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.

Tags: Australia

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