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Lets start with the very beginning:
My departure from Schiphol, Amsterdam. It was a twelve hour flight to Hong Kong. After I finally got through customs I could go and explore beautiful Hong Kong a bit. As it was still October, it was incredibly hot and humid. Lot’s and lot’s of skyscrapers. The whole city feels and smells weird. Particularly like money. Everything there is about three things money, money and money.
We especially found out that the next day on our city tour. But first we had to be picked up, which seemed a bit of a difficulty: breakfast was at 7.30 instead of 7.00 so we missed the pick up by a few minutes. So we had to wait a few hours for the next one. Now the guide was half a hour late. But yeah, highlight was Victoria Peak: very pretty view. The rest was the biggest rip-off in history. The guide wanted us to go on a little boat trip past the fisher boats. She said it was special, but yeah of course it was not. “ale they happy ol not” she kept on asking herself. She was really enjoying herself. Then we had to go to some jewellery. Cheapest item: US$100. Fortunately the drive was quite cool. But yeah: now we could go for AUSTRALIA… mate!
Of course another flight before that, and of course some annoying custom officers, who always seem to make you feel like a criminal. But yeah soon we went to beach. Nice! The sun is quite forceful, and I discovered it was in the north and not in the south as in any other civilised country.
It quickly showed though that the Land of Oz was just as blessed with some dubious characters as we are back home. My mates Stefan and Wiebe could both walk on their hands quite well. So during a nice night out, we decided to chill out and decide who was THE best. They both put their wallets on this hideout. After a while we got some attention of some locals. One of them left, had to do something else or something. I went for the loo. When I came back Stefan was in total panic. His wallet was gone! So everyone thought that weasel who left before did it. So we went to look for that dude. After a while Wiebe and me were talking to those locals. Stefan was gone, still looking. We found him a while later. What happened was after we had left, the local ran to the beach and were counting money. Stefan of course now saw what was happening, and just asked his wallet back. And that was what happened. Maybe Australia is not as “civilised” as I thought. Here in Holland you would be kicked to death. But yeah, we went on to party.
The next few days I stayed with Pieter, a cousin of my mother, and his wife Cecilia and their kids. From their home I “did” Sydney: harbour cruise, museums, Darling Harbour, Kings cross, the beaches etc. My hosts are both really good musicians: Pieter plays violin in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and his wife plays violin too, but in the Opera Orchestra. I went to a performance of Pieter. That was quite amazing. I’m not really into classical music, but I must say that was a great evening.
After that I went to this Jackeroo/Jilleroo school near Tamworth (about 6 hours north from Sydney). It was a bit of a show farm: they let backpackers get a bit of how life is on a farm, and teach them some skills. First I did the course myself, but at the end of the week the boss (Tim) asked me stay and help him out for a while. It was great fun: you meet heaps of people, you learn lasso throwing, whip cracking, mustering, shoeing, horseback riding etc. etc. Quite a low, that I had to castrate a lamb, with….. my teeth… yuk… poor me…and poor lamb.. and poor me.. Almost had to vomit.. But yeah, I’ve done it.. !
But the real low was that I was peeling a pumpkin, and I almost cut of the top of my left ring finger. The top was hanging on maybe 4 mm. Quite a nuisance. Quite some blood and all that. After a while I fainted for a minute or two(yeah loser I know). After a one-hour drive I finally was in town, and could go to a doctor. I got three stitches, of which I felt two of them, because the anaesthetics didn’t work. This poor gentleman doctor had to hear the f-word quite a few times. Ah well, I survived. After a few weeks I was riding the horses again.
The kids of Tim had found a little goat, whose mom had been killed by a fox. He was called Dinky, but it soon became Stinky for obvious reasons. He was very cute as he was very clumsy. Especially when he was exploring. We built him a walk about with games and all that. But he just fell of everything. He burnt himself on the campfire. Annoying because he wanted attention and food, and the staff had often other things to do. So he started screaming his head of.
One Sunday the guys went hunting! Oh yeah! It was time to give room to some basic instinct: kill! So we started spotlighting foxes. Was very cool. It was full moon, and the valley was filled with clouds, where we looked down up on. Gorgeous. We whistled at the fox, so he would look to us, and his eyes would shine up in the spotlight. We finally got one of the buggers. Very exciting.
During my time being injured, a cow was about to give birth, but it just didn’t happen. So my boss decided to help nature a bit, and to pull out the calf. After the cows’ water broke, Tim found out that the calf was lying upside down. Everything was tried to save calf and cow. We even tried to put hooks in the calf’s eye to pull up his head and at least save the cow. All in vain. There was nothing else to do, but give her bullet in the forehead. At least she didn’t suffer. Afterwards we had to bring her to the “dump”. There it stank indescribably bad. There was already a cow and a horse there, half rotten away. It stank that bad, you stop thinking about anything else but the smell. Anyway, we had to check her for parasites in her liver (the week before we had drenched the whole lot). As she was cut open it was decided we would take look at the calf as well. He was about as big as an other calf here who is about three months old. Not really weird we couldn’t save the poor thing. A vet was not an option: it would cost about the same the cow and calf were worth to just let the vet come. Not really good.
Every Friday night we always have a bit of a party with the whole crew and participants in Tamworth. That was always good fun. First we all went to this crap karaoke bar. All Kenny Roger, Lee Kernaghan look-alikes who think they can sing. Worst are two girls who utterly bored start moaning some boring song. Of course the dutchies (almost every participant is dutch) have to mess up such an arrogant bunch, as they start screaming “yesterday”. The girls are always magic with impression “I feel like a woman”. The whole bar filled with Australian rednecks was quite amused there. J . After that we always went to one of the three crap disco’s ( except the last night, then they actually opened a nice one). Australia is about 50 years behind on its music. But if you have a good group, or just a good group you would have a ball.
Just after I was totally repaired from the pumpkin incident, we did pasture improvement: basicly weed extinction but in a cool way: FIRE IT UP BABY! That was good fun. But afterwards we had to do some fencing: we had to repair the floodgate. So I was walking in my thongs (flip flops, whatever country you’re from ;)) Halfway down the river Tim saw some bushes who had to be burnt down. OK bas, of you go! Fortunately I had a British firestarter on my side. So soon the whole bush was in big flames. (cool!). Unfortunately the fence behind catched fire as well. So there I was in my thongs on quite a hill spraying this wood with this special fire fighting thing: a very heavy jerry can with a pump. First I had to through distels and all that. As you expect, the ground was still quite hot from the fires. Comfy is different.
The next day there we had mustering! Twenty calves who were now heifers had to be “served” by the bull. Lucky bastard! We had to pick them up from way the other side of the farm: about 7 km from the homestead. I had quite a fast little horse under me. Just after Tim picked the lucky twenty we had to guide them over this hill. After that there was a saddle, so it went down and up. The plan was a U formation. I would be at the front left leg. Those stupid cows cantered up that hill. My boss saw it coming and said I had to go faster. So I did I went in full gallop to chase those cows and stop them from not going uphill but downhill. I was just to late, and all the cows went into the bushes. My horse was having fun, and kept on chasing, not caring about her rider. So I was looking quite bloodily after this. And worse I lost my cool surf hat. Fortunately the rest of the ride was all right.
Next week had a bad start: going back from Tamworth there two kangaroos almost jumped into the car. Quite scary.
That week we had lots and lots of rain. The mud fight thanks to that was quite cool though. J
Every single person was covered in mud, completely.
Just before we had quite a nasty incident. One horse had an injury so he couldn’t be ridden for quite a long time. We shoe our horses ourselves at the farm. After such a long time not being in the running, he lost three of his shoes. The animal went total ballistic, so it was quite dangerous. He applied all kinds of tricks to teach the horse to hold up his feet when needed. One was to tie up the front leg, and pull the horse down. After a couple of times the horse reared up, and fell backwards. Crack! Her skull was broken. Blood out of nose. Dead. Horrible. I treated the poor thing quite a few times for his injury. I was standing about 15 meter from where it happened.
We had quite some horsey people around, but no one ever had seen anything like this. Probably this animal was just insane. Not really suitable for a farm like this. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise, that no one got hurt riding on poor 7-up.
My last week at Leconfield was quite special as well. We had floods. I was feeling quite hangoverish when Aaron (my best friend at the farm), came screaming in the laundry room, to tell me we had to leave, now! All my laundry was still wet, but we just put it a plastic bag. And just hoped we would be in time to cross our creek, which level was rising alarmingly fast. Tim and Julia (his girlfriend) were visiting a natural horsemanship show in Sydney, so we all had to jump in Aaron’s ute (pickup truck). The whole road was starting to flood. Our creek was already uncross able by car. So we had to cross the river, without any luggage allowed, on the floodgate. Some chicken wire spanned over the river. Quite scary. So then we were trapped as it rained more and more. Tamworth and the whole road from Tamworth started to flood completely. I was in an official disaster for the first time (except of course when I was bornJ). We didn’t really have a lot on that farm: just a couple of clean clothes, who weren’t that clean pretty soon. No toothbrush, no fruit. Lot’s of sheep and cattle though, so we had enough food. One colleague got her period, so that was bad. The other girl missed her cigarettes, which was bad. So we had quite a nice atmosphere going on.
Fortunately the raining stopped on Monday. Tuesday the roads were open again. But our creek was still to high, and the floodgate was gone. But they made a wire over the river. So that’s how they got everything on the other side.
Yes! Clean underwear! We only had a bit of a nasty thing to say to our boss: almost every horse had rainscold: a fungus infection on the back of horses if they get very wet. We didn’t have any stables or something.
My last night in Tamworth was quite spectacular. My bus for Sydney left at 5.20 am, so I stayed up all night long (thanks to Abbe ;)) Travelling with a hangover is quite rough, I discovered.
After a few days Sydey, I catched a train to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Quite a beautiful National Park about an hour from Sydney. It’s quite amazing how fast you make social contact in a hostel. In a few hours I knew quite a lot of people, with whom I made some great hikes in the area in the next few days. Of course also around the famous Three Sisters.
Then the real tour of Australia still had to start. I jumped on the Oz Experience bus. Quite a cool service who brings you all around Australia. Unlike an express bus like the Greyhound or McCaffertys, they go off the beaten track to show you a lot of what beautiful Australia has to offer. You can jump off at any point at any time, and be picked up a few days later.
So off we went: from Sydney along the South Coast, with fabulous Pebbles beach, where you can pet the kangaroos and feed all kinds of beautiful parrots. The Australian capital Canberra is absolutely crap; very boring, very symmetrical, very political. Whatever you don’t stay there longer then one night, or else you become a political zombie as well. Fortunately we could leave for the Snowy Mountains pretty soon. I was dropped off in this tiny town called Cooma where I spent my most boring and lonely night in Australia. No one else from the bus wanted to get off the bus, and it was low season. The Snowy Mountains is the centre of skiing in Australia. Since it was spring, it was dead empty. I was in a totally empty hostel. Like in NO people, none. The next morning I went with school bus (you saw all the kids think:”who’s this dirty old bastard) to Jindabyne, right between all the biggest mountains of Australia, of which Mt. Kosciusko is the biggest with its 2228 meters. The area was amazing. Very cool to stay there for a few days. Beautiful mountains, brumbies (wild horses), cool people with whom I hitchhiked up the mountains: life is hard.
It was absolutely a no-no for me to stay to long on the oz-bus. One day later I jumped out of the bus again, now not alone but with two other dutchies. We went to Wilson Promontory National Parking to make a 4-day hike. We could rent camping stuff with the hostel over there. Highlight was Waterloo bay: we arrived on this 7km long white beach, alone. I thought I found paradise…
We were so stupid to take to little gas with us. Bad. The first days someone could help us with some heat, but the last one, there was no option but to eat cold noodles. YUK!
Next was Philip Island. I was stuck there for a day: a double booking, so I had to do paper scissors rock, and I lost…L Really boring. Finally that night I arrived in Melbourne. I stayed for a week or so with Arthur, another nephew of my mother, and his wife Michele and children Lionel and Alice. Melbourne rocks!
I got on the OZ bus again, and had a fab time: we were “doing” The Great Ocean Road, with it famous surf beaches and of course the Twelve Apostles. The Grampians, a great National Park also had to be visited, and rock climbing on Mt Arapiles. And it was suddenly Christmas! Yeah!
As you may have noticed there are no pics from Tamworth till I left Mount Gambier. That’s because I lost my camera on the bus. It was never found back. Long story… I tell you later everything about it.
I spent X-mas with my family in Mt Gambier with cool bachelor Herman as organisator of the party. His godson Ben was also there so we could make MG a bit of an unsafe place, Herman showing us all the places to go. After the rest everyone left after Christmas Herman and I could go and party a bit around. We went to see some friends in Adelaide. Adelaide is not half as nice as Melbourne or Sydney. When I was there was some Le Mans wannabe in progress. For new years we went to this place called Robe. It’s a bit of a out of Adelaide party place. Some friends had rented a place. There were no fireworks, but there was some mad gunman. This dude had a bit of a problem with his (of course beautiful) wife. He had beaten up his wife and kid with the gun. He ran outside and started shooting. Fortunately he didn’t hurt anyone but the church. He ran away into the dunes. And stayed there during new years. A rather unfortunate situation since our house bordered those same dunes. There were all helicopters flying really right over us. It was a bit uncomfortable that this moron could clean up the terrace where we were eating. Anyway, the parties (plural, Herman is a good guide ;)) Robe has a mega cool beach where you can drive on with you car. So the next morning we could survive our hangover.
I stayed for quite a while at Herman’s. In this time we did heaps of cool things, as a weekend trip with his boat on the Glenelg river, a horse race and some cool parties. One time I was invited at this party of some friends of mine. They rented this place above a pub. At 11.30 pm the owner of the place comes in and kicks us out. Some had done a bit of damage on the toilets. Damage would have been about 15 dollar. The one who organised had paid about 350 dollar. He was quite pissed of…His brother had invited some of his friends, and they got the blame. Suddenly there was a bit of aggression. Very cool: a real Aussie fight. J. Afterwards we went to another place and had a ball.
An even weirder situation was when I had a bit of a interlude with a aussie girl. The problem was the bloke who introduced me into this group of friends was her boyfriend. Mmm, it was time to leave…
I went with Herman’s godson Ben to Victor Harbor, a surf town south of Adelaide. It was very interesting to dive a bit in the surf culture: lot’s of good looking babes (unfortunately also quite a bit of competition) and big waves. Ben was South Australian Champion boogie boarding under-18. So we went to his hangout. Wow, he ‘s good! That looks cool! Then we went to a quiet beach where I could try my hand at this. FUN! After that we went back to Knights. I nearly died… I was dumped like a zillion times in 5 minutes. It’s very tiring to be pulled apart by a 3m wave. I didn’t get even to think about to catch a wave. It was a cool scene though, with great parties.
Again on the Oz bus, we headed for the most famous wine area of Australia: the Barossa Valley. We didn’t get on to test our taste buds that evening, but the next morning. At 10 the whole bus was quite tipsy, which had funny effects on the rest of the day. Good fun! And for the first time in my life I got out of the “bush” (farmed land, Tamworth was a classic example) into the outback (desert). We went to this bizarre “town” called Parachilna. Parachilna has about 7 inhabitants. The only reason it exists is the pub, where everyone either works or spends their time. It was founded as a stop of the first Adelaide-Alice Springs Railway. Since they changed the route, the town is kinda collapsed. They live on us backpackers swimming in the pool (very nice in the middle of the desert). As you might expect of a railway stop, it’s right next to the railway. Now it’s used to bring coals from Leigh Creek (Parachilna nearest town, 100km north, 2000 inhabitants max.) to Port Augusta. It’s the world longest train. 2.5 km long.
The next day you remember why backpacking is so cool. I packed all my packs, and chucked them all in the bus, when a couple of aboriginals drove into “town”. They made their money by introducing whitetrash like me in the aboriginal culture. The people who left this camp, and we’re about to board on the bus were crying. They didn’t want to go. Alrighty: I grabbed all my stuff out of the bus and chucked it on the 4wd of Iga Warta, how this aboriginal thing was called. The next few days I learned more about aboriginals then in the whole trip together. Way cool! Whatever you in the Land of Oz, go there! It’s magic! The area (the Flinders Ranges and the Gammon Ranges) is magnificent
Back in Parachilna to be picked by the Oz bus 4 days later. We went to Wilpena Pound. Just see the pics. In the next few days we would really go to the Red Centre. Alice Springs! It was summer, so we got up early to evade riding in the heat to much (the bloody bus would prolly explode). Four thirty am was just inhuman though. The Stuart Highway is absolutely amazing. It’s description is very short: long and boring. Every 400km you’ve got a “town” with a fuel station, and maybe 20 inhabitants, and further nothing, zilch, nada. Flat, boring quite extreme. See and believe. Cooper Pedy was our overnight place. It’s the biggest place between Alice Springs and Port Augusta (the beginning of the Highway) with it’s 5000 inhabitants. It’s the world’s opal centre. But also the world’s crazy people centre. Lunatics from 45 different cultures are mining there. They’re just there for while to make their fortune and then piss off out of that hell hole. It’s a wild west place: dusty, hot, weirdo’s, annoyingly drunk aboriginals (quite a different kind of aboriginals what I had seen at “Iga Warta”) It’s the hottest place in Oz: a lot of building are underground. We slept in a basement hostel. Pretty nice. Next morning we went to see sunrise @ the breakaways. Just see for yourself.
The Red Centre is green! The Alice Springs region never had so much water in 25 years. The whole desert was looking gorgeous during all my months there. Yep I stayed 2 ½ months in Alice. I worked with this dude called Harry, wit