After wandering around Melbourne for about 2 weeks it was time to do something different again. Firstly I met up with a guy I happen to “know” through the internet for many years. He invited me to come and play poker with his friends on friday night. Since I’ve only played poker twice in my life, I wasn’t really sure whether it would be a good idea to join in, but he assured me he and his friends were not really good at it either. He picked me up from my hostel friday night and we went to one of his mates’ house. There I met a lot of his friends and friends of his friends, which was really nice as I got to meet a lot of the locals. I spoke to a guy who did a Europe trip last year, which was nice, since he had been to Amsterdam, Zandvoort, Bloemendaal etc.. Then we went to play poker. I decided I wanted to play for money, as we only had to pay 5 to play. Ten guys joined in, so the price money was about 50. After a few roiunds I won a lot of chips, which gave me the chance to do play a bit more with the chips I had. From then on one after the other started to lose their chips.. And finally I won!! The third game of poker I ever played in my life.. I was really delighted, especially since i’ve been a little tight on money lately. The guys didn’t believe it was only the third time I had been playing poker, but they were happy for me.
The day after Mark, the guy I met in Sydney at the start of my trip came back from Tazmania. Me and him were going to work on the farm the next week, so he came to stay at the same hostel I was in. After a nice night out saturday night in Melbourne, we went to buy a busticket on monday morning to get to the farm which is in Stawell.
We got there in the afternoon and Cath, the farmer’s wife came to pick us up from the station. We got to a massive farm with loaaaaaaads of sheep. The farm is about 8000 acres big and they have about 9700 sheep! We didn’t believe our eyes. In this part of the year they tend to shed all the sheep for the winter. We looked in the shed how 10 people were busy shaving all these sheep, and we both looked at ourselves and were convinced we wouldn’t be able to do that. Later on we met the farmer George and his daughter Sue. Cath showed us our room which is seperated from the house with ensuite toilet and bathroom. That night we had dinner, we went to bed early as we had to start working on the farm the next day.
The next day we got up early and had breakfast. We had to wait for George to come back, who didn’t come back until about 10 that morning. The day didn’t start as early as we thought it would. George told us he needed us to build a new fence to fence of an area on his land. He told us we had to put poles into the ground with an iron thing. We had to do it by hand, which wasn’t as easy. Especially because Australia is in a big draught at the moment, which makes the ground really dry. By the end of the day we managed to get all of the 80 poles in, but we nearly had blisters on our hands and were really tired. That night we went to bed quite early, as we had to get up early to get to work again.
Wednesday we got up at about 7 o’clock. We had to start working at about 8. After breakfast George told us we were going to feed the sheep with hay today. We loaded up a big block of hay on the truck and we went to the different area’s where the sheep are staying. The feeding is quite simple. Me and George were standing on the back of the truck to throw the hay off the truck, while Mark was driving slowly through the field. We did it through the whole afternoon which was quite a nice experience. Then at the end of the afternoon George asked us whether we were able to drive motorcycles. We both grabbed us a motorbike to help Sue get the sheep from one area back to the shed for the sheep shedding. It felt a bit like driving my scooter again, although now I had to switch gears and drive on off-road terrain.
Thursday we had to finish the fence we made the day before. Now we had to put the fence across the poles and stitch them with wire to the poles. It took us all morning and a bit of the afternoon to stitch all of the fence to the poles, but the endresult was brilliant. Also George was really happy with it, which was of course a good thing as well. The day we finished early and had a few beers together with George and the people sheering all the sheep. That night George brought us to his shooting range where we met his son, Guy. Then we went shooting targets from 20 meters away with the rifle. The first few times I was not looking through the scope the first few times and I managed to shoot a hole in the lamp of the shootingrange. Later on it went better, but as my sight in the distance isn’t all that brilliant, I wasn’t as good as Mark was.
Friday, the last workingday of the week I went on the motorbike again together with George. We went to move some sheep from one area to another. Later that day I went to feed the sheep together with Sue. They’ve got a big yellow feeder which can be attached to the back of the truck. The feeder is filled up with grains etc. for the sheep. Then with a switch in the car the feeder starts to spray the food onto the land. It’s quite magical how the sheep all start to eat the food as soon as it comes out. They form a big line of sheep, exactly at the spot the food is at which is quite a funny site to see. My task was to open the gates for Sue, so she didn’t have to get out of the car everytime to open it herself. At the end of the afternoon George was going to kill one of his sheep because it had an infection. He slit its throat and started to cut it open, it was not a pretty site to see, still a big experience to see.
That night we went eating out at a local restaurant which was really nice as well. After dinner we went to Guys’ place to meet up with the daughter of George, Manny. She offered to take us out to the local pub to have a drink. She just came back from London, so it was quite nice to talk about the differences between Europe and Australia. We went home early though, since we were too tired to stay up any longer after this week full of new experiences.
Saturday we were able to use one of the spare cars from George and Cath. Me and Mark went on a roadtrip to see the Grampiens. The grampiens are the mountains not too far from the farm. When I did my trip through the great ocean road we drove through them,, but we never stopped anywhere to actually go and see some of the spots in the mountains. It was a really nice roadtrip and we got to see a lot of nice scenic stops and walks. It was a nice day out and we were really thankful we were able to use the car.
Sunday I’ll be doing some webdesign for my boss back at home. We’re also going to do a thing sundaynight called “spotlighting”. You could also define it as “kangaroo-hunting”. As there are too many kangaroo’s around here in this area, George has a permit to shoot them from time to time. Tomorrow night we’re going to experience what it feels like to shoot the most famous icon of Australia. Monday will be my last day on the farm. I’ll be heading back Tuesday to Melbourne to continue my travel up on the east-coast. I’ve got about 7 weeks left to get to Cairns so it’s definatly time to start moving.
I’ll get back to you all soon with new updates!! Stay tuned!
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