WWOOFing at WELUV Alpacas

Hello again to everybody all around the world! As you probably know, our first attempt at working here in Australia failed rather miserably and we consequently decided to try out the WWOOFing (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) system in order to relief our travel budget a little bit. So here goes our second attempt at trying to pause our travellers' life for a while:

The farm: WELUV Alpacas (nice wordplay) in Gympie, about 250km North-West of Brisbane, inhabited by 22 funny looking alpacas (I forgot all the names), 10 very shy cows, a dog, Apollo, that rather looks like a sheep and won't walk more than 20 meters per day for fear of overexertion (Ueberanstrengung), 10 very stupid chicken, a baby possum named India who loves to climb Ian's tummy, a cockatoo named Harlin who definitely prefers to sit on a girl's shoulder and loves to pick David, two baby wallabies, Missy and Limpy, who only slept all day long, and, most importantly one sheep, Lambert, who was the cutest of all!


The hosts: Ian and Laurelle, both about the age of our parents, and who finally grew sick of working 24/7 in the city and retired to a calmer country life. However, they have not yet managed to live off the farm and so Ian is out moving lawns for other people most of the time while Laurelle is busy cleaning the farm house over and over again or feeding her baby animals.



The WWOOFers: Angela, Frankfurt city girl, not very accustomed to farm life with animals and everything, not very practical as most of you know, but very inclined to like sheep!; and David, a Vendome country boy, much more experienced in farm and country life, very practical but not very convinced about sheep!


So, you wonder what this mixture ended up to be? Well, we have to admitt that we started out our week there more enthusiastically than we ended it but that is a long story. First, we were very surprised to find a farmhouse so very clean and orderly, it almost looked like nobody was living there at all. It was an amazing thing and nothing we would have expected. The farm itself was beautifully located near a dam, amonst soft hills, and surrounded by stretches of rain forest. I always loved to get up in the morning (around 6) and take my breakfast tea enjoying the view over this calm country and watching the numerous birds of all colors that came to be fed by our hosts.

Our work was not too bad either, even though we ended up working all day long and not just 4 hours as it should have been, which was very frustrating but also our fault because we did not complain. The everyday task was to get together the pu (kaka) of the alpacas and suck it up with a pu-machine. Of course that was not the nicest thing to do after breakfast but usually it turned out to be fun and not difficult at all. Other than that, our big project was to build a fence around a new pasture for the alpacas. This could have been quite exciting, the only problem was that Ian never trusted anybody but himself to do work well and so we only got the boring subworkers' tasks (Handlanger). I also hated the fact that he seemed to think that women are no good for hard work and should rather stay inside. Of course, I didn't stay inside but his attitude made me furious a couple of times; moreover, as it turned out that he was even less practical than I !!! and David usually ended up explaining to him how things worked!

In general, however, Ian was a fun guy and when he had woken up a little bit was usually all right to hang around with. Laurelle, for her part, took it rather badly that we did not agree on her definition of animals being not animals but human beings and that we wouldn't do all the "hutsy-tutsi-toos" that she did when talking to them and handling them. I think she probably started despising me when I refused to continue feeding the baby wallaby after having done it for a day or two. Although I really liked the cute little thing, I just couldn't get myself to talk to it like "oh, what a good girl, what a fine girl, how are we this morning, oh yes, you'll get your milk in a second, oh yes you are drinking like a good girl today, oh, don't you want to make some pipi, see how my good girl is growing, oh give those beautiful legs a long stretch....." aaaaaaaaahhhh! It just drove me nuts and so I fled the house to be out in the sun and do some work in the gardens, like weeding.

We also had some problems with differences in opinion which, after a couple of days made conversation in general a little difficult. Can you imagine me in a household where people consider books (or anything related to culture) a waste of time?!? Yeah, you are right, that just couldn't work out! But seriously, Ian told us that we spent too much time reading and that we were wasting our lives with that!!! Of course, watching 5 hours of highly intellectual TV every night (like RTL news, soap operas, game shows, sensational murder discoveries...) is much better, we have to admitt that! Moreover, the problem was that David and I just would not understand what a chance we had to have come to Australia because that's just the best country in the world and Europe (although our two hosts have never left Australia in their life) is just really, really bad. Why? No idea, but that's just the way it is. We were also very ungrateful as we did not quite value that our hosts gave us the opportunity to see the most beautiful and unique landscape on earth (not that the whole Southern France kinda looks like where we lived, but we'll skip that fact).

Well, what can I tell you? Over time we grew quite tired of listening to the most stupid opinions and conversations you can imagine, to do work that was mostly unuseful because they just couldn't accept us being occupied with reading, writing letters... etc., or eating their terrible food (Laurelle could not cook at all!!!). The worst, however, was that we soon found out that our hosts very truly alcoholics. They started drinking beer out of cans (Ian) and wine (Laurelle) around 10-11 in the morning, kept going all day long (I don't think they know that water is actually drinkable) and in the afternoon around 5 o'clock, they would start drinking their own homebrewed whiskey, wodka, etc. Sometimes, in the evenings Laurelle would not be able to speak clearly anymore and their conversations just got worse and worse.

We ended up doing as much work away from the house and the two of them as possible. We spent the evenings quietly reading or playing cards in our room, and during the few free hours of the day we amused ourselves with dear Lambert, the sheep, who actually even convinced David that sheep can be a lot of fun even though they stink, or on the quad!!! That was truly the most fun, to take the quad and ride through the hills and have the wind blow into your face. Wonderful!

In the end, we did not spent neither a very agreeable, nor a totally terrible time at WELUV but we were very, very happy to get going again and to leave this farm behind! And on we went to Brisbane!

Wwoofing : première

Alors pour commencer, qu'est-ce que c'est-y que le Wwoofing ? hein ? je vous le demande... et bin je vais vous le dire : c'est un mot dérivé du mot "WWOOF", qui est lui-même l'abréviation de "Willing Workers On Organic Farms" et qui signifie, pour les non-anglophones, "travailleurs volontaires sur les fermes biologiques". Pour résumer de manière simple, c'est travailler dans une ferme quelques heures par jour (en général autour de 4 ou 5 heures), en échange du gîte et du couvert. Et bin nous, l'idée nous a bien plu, et du coup on s'est laissé tenter, et nous avons donc atterri (au sens figuré) dans la ferme "Weluv' Alpacas", chez Ian et Laurelle. La ferme était super jolie (cf photo ci-contre) et les Alpacas sont des annimaux vraiment sympas, et ont en tous cas une tronche à vous mettre de bonne humeur le matin au réveil. (cf photo plus haut dans le texte d'Angi)

La première question que vous allez me poser, je m'en doute, ça va être : "qu'est-ce que vous avez bien pu faire comme travail dans une ferme ??". Bin ma fois, quelques trucs intéressants. Par exemple, on a passé les deux premiers jours à monter une clôture avec Ian (photo dans le texte d'Angi, et résultat sur la photo ci-contre). Le "fencing", comme ça s'appelle ici, m'a vraiment beaucoup plus, et je peux mainenant vous monter une clôture ultra solide en moins de deux. Ensuite, c'était plutôt des jobs un peu chiants mais "pas pire" (pour les copains québecois ;-) ): Du genre de tondre la pelouse, ou nettoyer les prés avec un "aspirateur à caca" (traduit directement du terme anglais -_-), pour éviter les infestations de vers qui pourraient déranger les charments Alpacas.

Vous aller ensuite me demander (et vous aurez raison) : "c'était comment la vie sur la ferme, et ils étaient comment vos hôtes ?" bin la vie sur la ferme, c'était le bonheur. On avait asser d'espace pour bien s'amuser, surtout que Ian nous laissait faire mumuse sur le Quad (que du bonheur), et que rien que la vue le matin au réveil, le midi en plein soleil ou le soir pour le coucher nous suffisait à nous extasier. Là où ça s'est gâté, c'est en ce qui concerne nos hôtes... Ils étaient très étroits d'esprits (n'ont jamais quitté leur province, mais sont certains que c'est le plus bel endroit du monde, et pensent que l'allemagne nazie est encore en guerre contre la France - et j'exagère à peine é_è). Du coup ça a un peu gâché la semaine, et au final on n'était pas malheureux de partir.

La dernière question à laquelle tout le monde attend maintenant une réponse, j'imagine que c'est donc : "alors, comment vous avez trouvé le Wwoofing ?" ... je serais bien tenté de vous répondre : "en cherchant sur internet", mais je sais pas si tout le monde saisirait bien la blague :-p ... du coup je vais répondre plus classiquement : c'était mitigé ! l'endroit était vraiment agréable, et on y a passé du bon temps, les annimaux locaus étaient sympas (y compris le mouton, le bébé Wallaby et le bébé Possum dont s'occupait Laurelle, le perroquet, les alpacas et le chien - je pense ne pas en avoir oublié), mais nos hôyes nous auront vraiment laissé une mauvaise impression. Nous avons donc maintenant très hâte de recommencer pour essayer de vraiment adorer le principe.

Curiosities - Spring in Fall and Christmas

October has arrived - the woods have tossed
Their final leaves from naked branches;
A breath of autumn chill - the road begins to freeze,
The stream still murmurs as it passes by the mill.
The pond, however's frozen; ...
(Pushkin, From Autumn)

Am I wrong or is fall finally arriving for you guys, or at least for the ones amongst you living in the Northern Hemisphere? The wind is getting chillier, the days grow shorter and leave room for longer afternoons in front of the fireplace with a cup of tea, rain is pouring down heavily, kids are out in the fields playing with their kites; slowly, the colors of the forests and of the leafs of the trees change... and if I were in Canada now, we would get a canoe and spend a couple of wonderfully quiet days out on some forelorn lake with nothing but the blue sky and the sun above us and the burning colors of the forests during the Indian Summer around us and the wild geese slowly moving South. Soon, I would wake up every morning and run to the window, in the hope of seeing the first dancing snow flakes.

Well, at least, that's how I feel. That's how the world should be like!! You all know that I love autumn so very much and that I can't wait for the first snow to fall. However, my world here does not seem to fit with what I am feeling - there is just no autumn to be found even though David and I feel that it should be starting any minute now. No, here, spring is coming up and I can tell you, as much as I usually enjoy the first signs of green after the long months of lifeless nature and wish for the first colorful blossoms to show, here and now it just confuses me terribly. I took some pictures so you might be able to take a look at them and figure out if you feel like that right now! The worst is, with nature looking like that I would expect Easter to be coming up soon but no, wrong again. Here, the first Christmas decorations are up, when looking for postcards I stumble over Christmas cards, and in one shop I truely found the first Christmas Stollen!!! Help!!! Something is wrong here! I don't get it right!!! You want to know who we met on the street the other day??

Here goes the picture :





So, that's that. My world is all upside down and I am thoroughly confused!!! ;)

But I am sure that won't stop me from enjoying the last part of our Australian journey - the famous Sydney - and from writing to you again soon with some richer content! For now, I just wanted to share some curiosities of our travels with you!


PS: Dear Suse! Thank you so much for your long letter and also for the package of tea! I am sure it would have been wonderful! Unfortunately, your fears were quite justified, the whole package has been put into quarantine! The customs are offering me a heat treatment to kill any potential danger in the tea bags, only it would cost me $45. As it would also cost me $45 to have them send the tea back to you without any heat treament, I figure, you won't mind the tea being consumed by the customs officers, would you? :) ... I guess this will become part of our collection of tea stories now!

Fraser Island

Une île de sable, une grande dune qui s'est au fil des ans recouverte de végétation: Fraser c'est ça. C'est la plus grade étendue de sable du monde, et sous les différentes forêts et les différents lacs d'eau douce qui la recouvre maintenant se cache plus de sable que n'en contient le Sahara...

L'île est déjà magnifique en elle-même et vaut largement le déplacement, mais ce qui en fait une île particulièrement appréciée des touristes est qu'il est impossible d'y circuler autrement qu'en 4x4; pour faute de route. Et nous, bin nous n'avons pas pu résister :-). Donc on a loué un gros "4 wheel drive" (cf photo plus haut) et on est parti sur les pistes de sable le long de la mer (toujours turquoise, cf photo ci-contre), et sur les pistes déjà beaucoup plus difficile pour la conduite à l'intérieur de l'île.

Quand je dis "difficile pour la conduite", c'est un euphémisme... conduire un 4x4 sur du sable, c'est un peu comme conduire avec des pneus lisses sur de la neige... ça "chasse" :-p et ma petite Angi a mis quelques minutes à bien maîtriser le gros 4x4. moi à côté, j'ai mis quelques minutes à m'adapter aussi... et puis une fois le style de conduite à adopter acquis, ce fut le bonheur. On s'est fait plaisir à tour de rôle sur la plage, et on s'est moins fait plaisir à tour de rôle aussi sur les pistes fôrestières, parce que celles-là... c'est moins marrant : vitesse moyenne : 5km/h, ça secoue comme pas possible, on est chahutés de tous les côtés, et on en prend plein le dos. On a en plus peur de rester bloqués à la moindre racine ou à la moindre montée un peu raide et un peu sablonneuse, et on est souvent bien content du mode 4x4 de notre pick-up. Pour finir dans les réjouisssances, les pistes sont à 99% prévues pour un seul véhicule, et on a peur à chaque virage de se retrouver nez à nez avec un plus gros que nous :-p

Par contre, l'intérieur de l'île vaut largement la plage... la forêt tropicale et les différentes forêts d'eucalyptus sont magnifiques, et les lacs.... des petits coins de paradis cachés, à se demander comment ils ont bien pu atterrir là. leur eau est turquoise (à croire que c'est la couleur de l'eau standard sur les îles australiennes), ils sont bordés par endroits de plages de sable fin et d'un blanc à faire pâlir une mariée, et dans quelques recoins, par des mangroves et des côtes un peu plus sauvages. Devinez quoi, il y en a une qui n'a pas pu résister : Angi a fini à l'eau, comme à l'accoutumée (cf photo ci-contre)

On aura finalement passé 2 jours et 1 nuit sur Fraser Island, et on va en garder le souvenir encore longtemps. (ouais ouais je sais, vous vous dites : "il a déjà dit ça pour la grande barrière de corail et pour Ayers Rock et pour Kakadu etc...." bin j'y suis pour rien moi s'il y a tellement d'endroits superbes en Australie :-p )

The Islands - the second

Yep, this is our favorite pastime at the moment, exploring the islands along Australia's eastcoast is just so much fun. This time, however, we did not just end up on a beautiful sand beach, the whole island, Fraser Island, is just a large sand dune. Some people say, there's more sand than in the Sahara; well, we did not examine that in detail, but we sure saw a lot of sand and found it even days after we left in the most impossible places you can imagine. :)

The tricky thing about Fraser is that there are no roads on the island, the only way to get around is by hiring a 4-Wheel-Drive and have fun. So that's what we did and I can assure you, we did have a lot of fun and also got shaken through very thoroughly! The best part was driving on the beach, which just goes on for miles and miles and miles. You can drive up to 80km/h and keep going for hours so that gives you in impression of the size of that beach. It's just amazing, the white of the sand, the blue of the sky and the water (when it was not raining!!!) and the 4WD sliding off in all directions. At first, I was a little afraid because I did not have the slightest clue of how the car would react, but after a couple of slides, I managed quite well and it actually can be as much fun as driving and sliding on snow! David, of course, enjoyed himself immensely and we can say that we only got stuck in the sand once, and that was only for a little tiny moment, until David pushed the car a bit and we got out of it again. However, we had to help another German couple to really dig out their car, the poor guys were stuck sooo badly...

Besides the fun of driving a 4WD for two days, Fraser also had a very impressive ship wreck to show and some incredibly clear inland lakes. The sand of the island filters the water and that's how those lakes end up crystal clear. Although it was raining whenever we got out of the car to visit one of those lakes (that was a mean game: we get out - it starts raining, we get into the car - it stops raining...)I kept up my reputation and went swimming in one!!! (photo coming soon) Actually, that was the best idea ever because the water was warmer than the air, it was all soft and clear and I did not want to get out anymore. :)

Well, as you might have figured already, it's actually been a couple of days since we were on Fraser and we are right now spending our second week of WWOOFing, but we had some problems to find Internet access and so our posts are a little late. However, you'll soon get some more news on how I am looking after sheep, how well we chop off the heads of chicken.... and on what it is like in general for a city girl to live on a farm!

Les whitsunday's

South Mole Island, c'est :

• du sable blanc
• une mer turquoise
• des animaux (surtout des poissons) de toutes les couleurs
• un emplacement pour la tente sur la plage, tout juste protégé par quelques palmiers
• un pur moment de bonheur !

... et c'est là qu'on a passé 3 jours géniaux. Si si, je vous assure !

D'abord, le lieu : Les Whitsunday's sont un archipel de 74 îles sur la côte pacifique: South Mole Island est une des îles les plus grandes, et c'est là qu'on a planté la tente, à 30m de la mer, sur le bord d'une plage toute blanche, avec une vue d'enfer le matin au levé du soleil et le soir au coucher. (cf photo dans le post d'Angi).
Ensuite, le temps : on a vraiment eu beaucoup de chance avec le temps vu que comme d'habitude, on a eu du très beau temps (cf toutes les autres photos). Ca nous a permis de faire de la plongée avec tuba sur pratiquement toutes les plages de l'île, au dessus des massifs de corail ou dans les mangroves, de quoi voir entre autres un requin, 2 petites raies, une raie manta, une tortue et des centaines de petits (et moins petits) poissons. On a aussi eu la chance de profiter d'un paysage magnifique, avec une vue sur les 73 autres îles de l'archipel, de couchers de soleils magnifiques et d'un soleil à vous changer en écrevisse. Au final, on a passé 3 super bonnes journées à nager partout où c'était possible, à bronzer, à marcher, à regarder la mer (c'est notre passion) et pour finir, on a eu droit à un spectacle magnifique : deux baleines qui sont venues s'ébattres juste dans la baie où nous campions, à quelques mètres du bord. On est restés scotchés.

Seule fausse note dans ces quelques jours de vacances, on a faillit rester plus longtemps que prévu : le bateau qui nous avait déposé et qui devait venir nous chercher a pris 3 heures de retard, à tel point qu'on y croyait plus quand il est arrivé. C'est pas que ça nous aurait dérangé beaucoup de rester plus longtemps sur ce coin de paradis, mais on n'avait pas prévu de rab de nourriture pour pas trop nous charger, et on commençait à avoir peur de mourir de faim. Finalement tout s'est arrangé, pour le grand plaisir d'Angi, et on est bien rentré au port; même si c'était avec un poil de retard sur l'horaire prévu.

The Islands - the first

The whitsunday's...

The fine, white sand stretches as far as you can see to the right and to the left. It is so white that it almost dazzles the eye. Above, the palm trees move languidly in the light breeze that runs along the beach coming from the ozean. The crystal clear water shimmers light turquoise close to the beach and slowly turns into deeper blue when the eye sways to the horizon. It is possible to observe some fish whilst walking along the beach but the dark stretches of coral just three meters off the shore promise much more staggering views. Suddenly, the lound blowing of a whale shooting a water fountain into the air disrupts the absolute calm of the place. About 50m of the beach, the mother whale with her little one play around in the current for a couple of minutes before they decide to let themselves be drifted off into deeper waters. After a while they dive, turn up in front of the beach again and repeat their game. It seems to be their only occupation for the afternoon....

If I tell you now that this is where we put up our tent for four days - are you going to be mad at me? South Molle Island, one of the smaller Islands of the Whitsunday Group was our way of avoiding the regular touristy way of exploring the region: buying a 4-day tour on a yacht together with about 20 other people and being very poor afterwards. We found a nice little boat that took us over to the island and dropped us right on paradis beach with enough water to survive for four days. And there we were: laying in the sun, snorkling in the crystal clear waters, hiking all over the beach, star-gazing at night, ..., and all this basically all alone because there were only three other camper families there. It was truely paradise, especially when the whales turned up or when we went out snorkeling and saw the most beautifully colored and shaped fishes!

But of course, even South Molle Island is part of dangerous Australia and we encountered some more animal friends in our paradise. After two days of sorrowfree snorkling we woke up on the third morning, seeing our French neighbors running out of the water after only a couple of minutes. Why? They had seen Jellyfish (Quallen), which, as everything in this country, are life-threatening with their poison. You have about 20-30 minutes till your heart stops when you get toughed by them. So we thought we'd just hike to the other side of the island and go snorkling there. The advantage was that while hiking we had more than enough time to revise all first aid procedures which resulted in me being really relaxed when arriving at the deserted beach and getting into the water without any worries at all!

While getting prepared, I saw a small grey fin cutting the surface of the water... doubts....no, that was just impossible. There couldn't be any sharks in the water that close to the beach. So I told David there was a fun fish in the water pretending to be a shark and he just laughed and went into the water. About 3 seconds and one underwater look to the left later, he came running back telling me there was a shark in the water!!! How comforting! So now I was to go snorkling with a shark and jellyfish in the water and still remain relaxed. All right, let's do it the Australian way: easy mate, no worries! There we go... but just for about 5 minutes before we saw the first jellyfish ourselves and rushed back to the coast.

But of course, events like that cannot discourage us anymore, now that we are Australian wildlife prooven, so we decided to do some rockclimbing and get to some other beaches well of the beaten tracks to do snorkling there. Having a lot of fun scambling around the rocks, we thus reached the most beautiful sandbeach you can imagine and in the shallow waters we were able to watch some rays (Rochen) for quite a while before they got scared! Of course we tried to go snorkling again but were also frightened out of the water by more jellyfish.

When the sun dropped low, we figured it would be best to start our way back and off we went, on the rocks again. This time, however, we had not climbed for more than three minutes when I saw a long grey snake run between David's feet! Hmpf! As we did not have a choice, we moved on along the rocks, only to meet another nice spicimen of the same kind 5 minutes later... In the end, we saw three greyish brown snakes and one black and yellow, which was just 10 cm from where David put his hand while climbing up a rock. Of course we later found out that this one was a snake with deadly poison but with our luck we should have know that the minute we saw it!

To round the day up, when we got back to the campground, our French friends told us that they had run into a saltwater crocodile only about 500m away from the camp. So: jellyfish, shark, snakes, croco... for me that was enough to get a little worried about our security on our paradise island! But fortunately, the next day was supposed to be our departure day from the island. Or at least so we thought.

The idea was that the boat was to come in on high tide around 1pm and pick us up. Well, 1pm, no one there. 2pm, no one there but... no worries mate! 2.30pm, decending water, no one there, Angi starting to get worried. I finally called the guy from the boat service but no one answered the phone. 3pm, still no one there and water decending faster. We start to calculate how long we can survive on 2 carrots and 10 liters of water... 4pm, still no one there and first plans are developed on how to get to the Resort hotel on the other side on the island... Finally, at 4.30pm the boat shows up and we, after having to wade out there with our equipment as there was not enough depth left, were able to leave our beautiful island and get back to the mainland.

We figured that having been stranded on an island of the Whitsunday group was not the worst that can happen to you but the next time, we'll still bring some extra ratios of food!