Game over: 88 days ticked off
Door: Rolinda Stienstra
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Rolinda
16 Mei 2015 | Australië, Yorketown
The coach took us to Yorketown from Adelaide on wednesday the 17th of february. Many thoughts were fuzzing through my head. We had had such a wonderful experience in New Zealand with to many nice people who we hope to see again. Our way back to Sydney (plane) and from Sydney to Adelaide (plane) and from Adelaide to Yorketown (coach) was such a rush and with the new chapter 'farm work' in front of us we had to change our way of living again. For me it felt like getting to know myself in a very different way as I thought the whole experience would be hard in a number of ways. Let me point them out for you:
1) not many people around;
2) farm work is hard work;
3) time to think and
4) lack of (mobile) reception.
The main question was, how would I look back at these points at the end of this experience? Would I really have a hard time or would everything be allright?
The coach stopped in a couple of places and we had to get off halfway to step over from a big coach to a smaller one. During this drive I could watch the sun going down (see pic Fb) which made me feel like being in a country movie. Only the horses and tumbleweed were missing, haha. We arrived in Yorketown around 9:30 p.m. I think (I can't remember the actual time but who cares). What matters most is that it was completely dark, you couldn't see what Yorketown looked like. The scary thing was that we sat down together in the front of the supermarket with our backpacks, waiting for someone who was going to pick us up. After a couple of minutes a white ute (car) showed up. A woman walked towards us. This friendly woman introduced herself as Chris and checked with us if we were the persons she was waiting for. We squeezed together into the passenger seat of this ute. It is a 2 seater so it was pretty comfy (rolls eyes). Chris brought us to 'our' house and showed us around. It is a giant house for 2 backpackers to live in. She pointed out our bedroom which is a massive room with a queensize bed, a bunk bed, wardrobe and a tv on top of a tv stand/cupboard. We got a towel and she organized some food for us. First impression: wauw! Chris gave us the choice to start at 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning. After such a long travel trip we decided to start at 9am and finish at 1pm.
Farm work tasks
In my last blog I already wrote something down about the Ballywire farm and the first three weeks of our experiences so I won't tell you the same twice. What I want to tell you is a summ up from all the tasks we had from the time we started untill the time we ended this whole experience. Here it is:
During the week:
1) (a lot of) weeding
2) (a lot of) fencing (digg out holes, put in and line up the poles and hammering staples)
3) pick up and move rocks
4) chop wood
5) pick up poo's
6) paint a tree house
7) get the botflies from the horses
8) feed Fugde (the lam) and Lieselotte & Rolinda (the goats)
9) helping out with crutching
10) digg up potatoes
11) plant trees
During the weekends:
1) cleaning museum sheds
2) cleaning the tearooms
3) cleaning the sheering shed
4) cleaning the 2nd hand shop
5) cleaning the minigolf
6) moving the animals from one paddock to the other
The most excited task was moving the sheep to the neighbour's place where the sheep would be crutched. This means they get a short haircut and naked bums. In this way maggots can be detected and treated before they make wounds in the bum of the sheep. We helped with moving the sheep around in the cabins so the sheep sheerer didn't need to wait for the next one to come in. Jordan helped out with catching a sheep and dragged it to the sheerer. The technique is to stand behind the sheep, pull his head down to the floor so it stops moving wildly, grabb the front leggs and sit it down on its bum.
Four days of our farm work were a little bit different. Anna and I helped Joanne (Chris and Pete's daughter) out with her 3 kids. She had to work more hours because of circumstances. Lies babysits already during dinner time so we did it from 9:00 a.m. untill 3:00 p.m. One day we drove with her car (note that I drove on the left side!!!) to the next place (30minutes drive) called Minlaton to a skateboard park. And no, I didn't really had a go. Anna is definitely a star at skateboarding so she made the kids look suprised. The other days we went to Katoomba (1,5hour drive) to a different skateboard park, we had a chill out day and we took the children to the beach. That was good fun!
Two other things we are really grafeful for is the harnass driving workshop and the horse dentist. It was such an experience to meet those people.
Spare time activities
In my spare time I worked on the horses. Especially Jim, the biggest horse in the herd (min. 170cm, I don't know his exact height). Chris showed us how to work on horses in a psychologicaly way. Basically you try to act like the instinct of a horse so they want to be with you, work with you and see you as a leader who they trust and respect. Pat Parelli is one of the guys who uses this technique with working horses. Chris went to his show once and was very impressed. Since then she receives a dvd every month with his new techniques. We have seen a lot of them in the beginning before we tried it ourselves on the horses. Next Chris showed us how to do this in practice. It was such a learnful experience to really know what you are doing with a horse and how you get them to do what you want in a gentle way. One of the results is for example that the horse you are training is following you out of the paddock because it is excited to do some games again. Imagine how it feels.. A horse that is willing to leave the herd to be with you!! I achieved this once with Jim and it was really awesome. Before I had my first ride on Jim I only knew he had been ridden before at the age of 5. He is 10 years old now. The first time on his back he didn't do anything and acted like he never had anyone sitting on his back. He acted like he didn't know how to respond to my feet and my steering. After a couple of sessions he got it. In the end we even had a ride down the road up to the beach (we haven't been there still). I have been there with him walking next to me but the sight of the sea is to overwhelming for him.
The other thing I started to do is reading a lot of books and keep up on my running. As Chris knew we were both working out she gave us a phonenumber of a guy who would like to give us some personal trainings or to have a couple of drinks at the local pub. In the last weeks we had his trainings twice a week, it was exhausting but good fun! We discussed about going to the Innes National Park on the bottom end of the Peninsula and decided to go there at Saturday the 2nd of May. We didn't have nice weather the last few weeks so we were pretty lucky that it was a dry and sunny on saturday. Perfect for some sightseeing. Brenton picked is up with his car around 1'ish. It took us around 40minutes to get there. We drove up to nice look out points, made funny pics, drank his beers, spotted some kangaroos and chilled out at the beach. Nowadays because of the daylight saving it is dark at 6 p.m.. We watched the sunset a little and decided to go the pub in Marion Bay for some pizza!
One day after I finished my 4 hours of farm work, Chris got a call from the vet. They asked her if she wanted to take on a lam. Chris asked me if I would be allright picking it up and of course I said yes! I had to drive up to Minlaton and she explained where in Minlaton I needed to be. First of all I had never been to this place, second I honestly didn't know what 'the vet' was. Chris told me something about a lam which a I needed to pick up. So third, I was not sure if I understood it right. Anyway, I put all the keywords together and I probably would figure out where I needed to be. Everything would be allright. I asked Lies if she wanted to join me and she was keen for that. Eventually in Minlaton I discovered what 'the vet' meant. Still insecure about being in the right place I walked into the building. A nice lady asked me if I was there for picking up the lam. I replied with a 'yes, I am from the Ballywire farm'. She said to me that I was right on time because it was already 'bleeding'. My face must have looked suprised and shocked as I thought they would bring out a lam completely covered in blood. And there it was, as beautiful as it could be, nice and soft, in my arms, BLEETING. I got back to the car and suprised Lies with this little baby lam. Imagine how I was supposed to drive with a lam hopping up and down in the front seat, haha. I was glad I had Lies's support. Back at the farm Chris took care of the lam and named it Fudge (as it was a boy, named after Jordan's last name (one of the other 2 backpackers who stayed with us). After a couple of weeks Fudge got 2 baby goat friends called Lieselotte and Rolinda. Oh yes, we feel honoured (rolling eyes)!! All three are doing well. Sometimes Lieselotte has problems eating and is acting weird.. for example she really seems to enjoy sitting on a fake pig in her paddock. And ofcourse I am behaving myself in every positive way :)
In the meantime my mum send my guitar all the way from Holland to Australia so I could play along the roadtrip. I already borrowed a very expensive guitar from Chris's parents so I was not bored at all. Pete (Chris husband) and I had a conversation once about making money from scrap and he made me think about to busk in front of the supermarkt in Yorketown. Next I asked the council and the supermarket for permission and I have done it for two times already! It's good money and I hope to continue this in small villages along my road trip.
Celebrations
During these 3 months we had a couple of celebrations. First of all at the 11th of march it was Lies's birthday. We went out for dinner with Chris, Pete, Lies, Anna & Jordan and Joanne's kids (Jordan, Brodie and Lylah) at the Yorkehotel. This is the pub where Joanne works as a chef. As she had to work as well she was our chef for te evening. Next was little Jordan's birthday, he turned into a 10 year old boy. We joined his birthday party with all his friends. The last birthday was on may the 7th. Now it was Brodie's turn. He turned into an 8 year old boy. Joanne and the kids and Chris her parents came over to the farm to celebrate it in the sheering shed. In the meantime Ruth (English backpacker) joined our group for a couple of days already. Together we played a fun game of twister. I won! Yay! The next celebration was not really something to celebrate, it was the goodbye dinner party for Lies and me at the Melville hotel in Yorketown. With Joanne and the kids, Chris and Pete, Chris's parents, Ruth, Anna and Jordan and us present. It was such a natural and lovely evening. The last celebration is the massive bonfire in our backyard/paddock. The bonfire is made out of all the weeds we pulled, wood we collected and old beds that can be burned. It stands for the harsh work we put in. We have our bonfire on our final day of work, sunday the 17th of May (day 88), just before we head out for our roadtrip.
Donation
Some of you might have seen the notification from Lies on Facebook and some of you I have asked personally if you would like to make a donation for this beautiful farm and people who are taking care of these rescued animals. Every bit helps and we got a lot of positive responses. In total we collected around $400 (the exact number we put on Fb tomorrow). We would like to thank you all for this! Chris and Pete are so grateful for this! The Ballywire farm has a facebook page. If you like this page it is the easiest way to keep yourself updated about how they spend the money.
Looking back
I asked myself in the beginning of this experience how I would look back in the end. In the beginning I had a rough time settling down and find my way around here but after all I truly like the people over here, the silence, all the animals and the small population of people living here. They helped me out where they could. I realized, especially in this period of time, that I really appreciate my friends back home. Not because I don't like the people around here but more because you guys know me already for such a long time. I wouldn't want miss you in my life. The counterside of living in such a small town is that everybody knows everybody. I really look forward to not being recognized. Even if some people don't know me here they do recognize me as a stranger or one of the backpackers staying at the Ballywire farm. It would be nice to be an ant in the crowd again but I will never forget the beautiful people I got to meet here. Thank you all for this wonderfull experience and I would like to say: see you in a couple of years!
Roadtrip plans
In the last few weeks Lies and I tried to prepare for our upcoming road trip. The first step was buying a car and the second step was to load the car with whatever we need. The car's purpose is not only to move us around through this massive country. We are also going to spend our nights in this car. At Brodie's birthday party we chatted with their karate teacher. He and his friend are going to camp at Mount little Flinders station. The plan is to do walk tracks, chase and shoot animals and maybe even ride a horse. We are leaving on monday the 18th of May at 8:30 a.m. They drive up to Port Wakefield so we can park our car over there and jump in in their massive camper van. Friday morning the 22th we drive back to our car and head out to Adelaide. Here we stay at Joan's boyfriend's place for probably a couple of nights. After that we are travelling to Victor Harbor to meet up with the guy from the Harnas driving workshop. His job is to facilitate the tram pulled by horses. He offered us a place to stay, to have a look at his ranch and ride two of his horses. The next main destination will be Melbourne. To arrive at Melbourne we take the scenery route 'the great ocean road'. One of the destinations along the great ocean road is Apollo bay. This place is the home to some friends of my dear friend Julia. We hope to stay at their place for that night but we will see how that goes. In Melbourne we probably stay for a week and from that point on we are heading out to the east coast all the way up to Cairns. When we hit this point we drive back inwards to face our last destinations 'Uluru' and 'Alice Springs'. Halfway September (2 weeks before our visa expires) we take off to Bangkok to travel Thailand, Laos and Cambodja (or even Vietnam) untill the date of 24th of December. On this day we will fly back to Amsterdam so we have time to spend these christmas and new years eve days dark, cold and cosy with our beloved families and friends.
1) not many people around;
2) farm work is hard work;
3) time to think and
4) lack of (mobile) reception.
The main question was, how would I look back at these points at the end of this experience? Would I really have a hard time or would everything be allright?
The coach stopped in a couple of places and we had to get off halfway to step over from a big coach to a smaller one. During this drive I could watch the sun going down (see pic Fb) which made me feel like being in a country movie. Only the horses and tumbleweed were missing, haha. We arrived in Yorketown around 9:30 p.m. I think (I can't remember the actual time but who cares). What matters most is that it was completely dark, you couldn't see what Yorketown looked like. The scary thing was that we sat down together in the front of the supermarket with our backpacks, waiting for someone who was going to pick us up. After a couple of minutes a white ute (car) showed up. A woman walked towards us. This friendly woman introduced herself as Chris and checked with us if we were the persons she was waiting for. We squeezed together into the passenger seat of this ute. It is a 2 seater so it was pretty comfy (rolls eyes). Chris brought us to 'our' house and showed us around. It is a giant house for 2 backpackers to live in. She pointed out our bedroom which is a massive room with a queensize bed, a bunk bed, wardrobe and a tv on top of a tv stand/cupboard. We got a towel and she organized some food for us. First impression: wauw! Chris gave us the choice to start at 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning. After such a long travel trip we decided to start at 9am and finish at 1pm.
Farm work tasks
In my last blog I already wrote something down about the Ballywire farm and the first three weeks of our experiences so I won't tell you the same twice. What I want to tell you is a summ up from all the tasks we had from the time we started untill the time we ended this whole experience. Here it is:
During the week:
1) (a lot of) weeding
2) (a lot of) fencing (digg out holes, put in and line up the poles and hammering staples)
3) pick up and move rocks
4) chop wood
5) pick up poo's
6) paint a tree house
7) get the botflies from the horses
8) feed Fugde (the lam) and Lieselotte & Rolinda (the goats)
9) helping out with crutching
10) digg up potatoes
11) plant trees
During the weekends:
1) cleaning museum sheds
2) cleaning the tearooms
3) cleaning the sheering shed
4) cleaning the 2nd hand shop
5) cleaning the minigolf
6) moving the animals from one paddock to the other
The most excited task was moving the sheep to the neighbour's place where the sheep would be crutched. This means they get a short haircut and naked bums. In this way maggots can be detected and treated before they make wounds in the bum of the sheep. We helped with moving the sheep around in the cabins so the sheep sheerer didn't need to wait for the next one to come in. Jordan helped out with catching a sheep and dragged it to the sheerer. The technique is to stand behind the sheep, pull his head down to the floor so it stops moving wildly, grabb the front leggs and sit it down on its bum.
Four days of our farm work were a little bit different. Anna and I helped Joanne (Chris and Pete's daughter) out with her 3 kids. She had to work more hours because of circumstances. Lies babysits already during dinner time so we did it from 9:00 a.m. untill 3:00 p.m. One day we drove with her car (note that I drove on the left side!!!) to the next place (30minutes drive) called Minlaton to a skateboard park. And no, I didn't really had a go. Anna is definitely a star at skateboarding so she made the kids look suprised. The other days we went to Katoomba (1,5hour drive) to a different skateboard park, we had a chill out day and we took the children to the beach. That was good fun!
Two other things we are really grafeful for is the harnass driving workshop and the horse dentist. It was such an experience to meet those people.
Spare time activities
In my spare time I worked on the horses. Especially Jim, the biggest horse in the herd (min. 170cm, I don't know his exact height). Chris showed us how to work on horses in a psychologicaly way. Basically you try to act like the instinct of a horse so they want to be with you, work with you and see you as a leader who they trust and respect. Pat Parelli is one of the guys who uses this technique with working horses. Chris went to his show once and was very impressed. Since then she receives a dvd every month with his new techniques. We have seen a lot of them in the beginning before we tried it ourselves on the horses. Next Chris showed us how to do this in practice. It was such a learnful experience to really know what you are doing with a horse and how you get them to do what you want in a gentle way. One of the results is for example that the horse you are training is following you out of the paddock because it is excited to do some games again. Imagine how it feels.. A horse that is willing to leave the herd to be with you!! I achieved this once with Jim and it was really awesome. Before I had my first ride on Jim I only knew he had been ridden before at the age of 5. He is 10 years old now. The first time on his back he didn't do anything and acted like he never had anyone sitting on his back. He acted like he didn't know how to respond to my feet and my steering. After a couple of sessions he got it. In the end we even had a ride down the road up to the beach (we haven't been there still). I have been there with him walking next to me but the sight of the sea is to overwhelming for him.
The other thing I started to do is reading a lot of books and keep up on my running. As Chris knew we were both working out she gave us a phonenumber of a guy who would like to give us some personal trainings or to have a couple of drinks at the local pub. In the last weeks we had his trainings twice a week, it was exhausting but good fun! We discussed about going to the Innes National Park on the bottom end of the Peninsula and decided to go there at Saturday the 2nd of May. We didn't have nice weather the last few weeks so we were pretty lucky that it was a dry and sunny on saturday. Perfect for some sightseeing. Brenton picked is up with his car around 1'ish. It took us around 40minutes to get there. We drove up to nice look out points, made funny pics, drank his beers, spotted some kangaroos and chilled out at the beach. Nowadays because of the daylight saving it is dark at 6 p.m.. We watched the sunset a little and decided to go the pub in Marion Bay for some pizza!
One day after I finished my 4 hours of farm work, Chris got a call from the vet. They asked her if she wanted to take on a lam. Chris asked me if I would be allright picking it up and of course I said yes! I had to drive up to Minlaton and she explained where in Minlaton I needed to be. First of all I had never been to this place, second I honestly didn't know what 'the vet' was. Chris told me something about a lam which a I needed to pick up. So third, I was not sure if I understood it right. Anyway, I put all the keywords together and I probably would figure out where I needed to be. Everything would be allright. I asked Lies if she wanted to join me and she was keen for that. Eventually in Minlaton I discovered what 'the vet' meant. Still insecure about being in the right place I walked into the building. A nice lady asked me if I was there for picking up the lam. I replied with a 'yes, I am from the Ballywire farm'. She said to me that I was right on time because it was already 'bleeding'. My face must have looked suprised and shocked as I thought they would bring out a lam completely covered in blood. And there it was, as beautiful as it could be, nice and soft, in my arms, BLEETING. I got back to the car and suprised Lies with this little baby lam. Imagine how I was supposed to drive with a lam hopping up and down in the front seat, haha. I was glad I had Lies's support. Back at the farm Chris took care of the lam and named it Fudge (as it was a boy, named after Jordan's last name (one of the other 2 backpackers who stayed with us). After a couple of weeks Fudge got 2 baby goat friends called Lieselotte and Rolinda. Oh yes, we feel honoured (rolling eyes)!! All three are doing well. Sometimes Lieselotte has problems eating and is acting weird.. for example she really seems to enjoy sitting on a fake pig in her paddock. And ofcourse I am behaving myself in every positive way :)
In the meantime my mum send my guitar all the way from Holland to Australia so I could play along the roadtrip. I already borrowed a very expensive guitar from Chris's parents so I was not bored at all. Pete (Chris husband) and I had a conversation once about making money from scrap and he made me think about to busk in front of the supermarkt in Yorketown. Next I asked the council and the supermarket for permission and I have done it for two times already! It's good money and I hope to continue this in small villages along my road trip.
Celebrations
During these 3 months we had a couple of celebrations. First of all at the 11th of march it was Lies's birthday. We went out for dinner with Chris, Pete, Lies, Anna & Jordan and Joanne's kids (Jordan, Brodie and Lylah) at the Yorkehotel. This is the pub where Joanne works as a chef. As she had to work as well she was our chef for te evening. Next was little Jordan's birthday, he turned into a 10 year old boy. We joined his birthday party with all his friends. The last birthday was on may the 7th. Now it was Brodie's turn. He turned into an 8 year old boy. Joanne and the kids and Chris her parents came over to the farm to celebrate it in the sheering shed. In the meantime Ruth (English backpacker) joined our group for a couple of days already. Together we played a fun game of twister. I won! Yay! The next celebration was not really something to celebrate, it was the goodbye dinner party for Lies and me at the Melville hotel in Yorketown. With Joanne and the kids, Chris and Pete, Chris's parents, Ruth, Anna and Jordan and us present. It was such a natural and lovely evening. The last celebration is the massive bonfire in our backyard/paddock. The bonfire is made out of all the weeds we pulled, wood we collected and old beds that can be burned. It stands for the harsh work we put in. We have our bonfire on our final day of work, sunday the 17th of May (day 88), just before we head out for our roadtrip.
Donation
Some of you might have seen the notification from Lies on Facebook and some of you I have asked personally if you would like to make a donation for this beautiful farm and people who are taking care of these rescued animals. Every bit helps and we got a lot of positive responses. In total we collected around $400 (the exact number we put on Fb tomorrow). We would like to thank you all for this! Chris and Pete are so grateful for this! The Ballywire farm has a facebook page. If you like this page it is the easiest way to keep yourself updated about how they spend the money.
Looking back
I asked myself in the beginning of this experience how I would look back in the end. In the beginning I had a rough time settling down and find my way around here but after all I truly like the people over here, the silence, all the animals and the small population of people living here. They helped me out where they could. I realized, especially in this period of time, that I really appreciate my friends back home. Not because I don't like the people around here but more because you guys know me already for such a long time. I wouldn't want miss you in my life. The counterside of living in such a small town is that everybody knows everybody. I really look forward to not being recognized. Even if some people don't know me here they do recognize me as a stranger or one of the backpackers staying at the Ballywire farm. It would be nice to be an ant in the crowd again but I will never forget the beautiful people I got to meet here. Thank you all for this wonderfull experience and I would like to say: see you in a couple of years!
Roadtrip plans
In the last few weeks Lies and I tried to prepare for our upcoming road trip. The first step was buying a car and the second step was to load the car with whatever we need. The car's purpose is not only to move us around through this massive country. We are also going to spend our nights in this car. At Brodie's birthday party we chatted with their karate teacher. He and his friend are going to camp at Mount little Flinders station. The plan is to do walk tracks, chase and shoot animals and maybe even ride a horse. We are leaving on monday the 18th of May at 8:30 a.m. They drive up to Port Wakefield so we can park our car over there and jump in in their massive camper van. Friday morning the 22th we drive back to our car and head out to Adelaide. Here we stay at Joan's boyfriend's place for probably a couple of nights. After that we are travelling to Victor Harbor to meet up with the guy from the Harnas driving workshop. His job is to facilitate the tram pulled by horses. He offered us a place to stay, to have a look at his ranch and ride two of his horses. The next main destination will be Melbourne. To arrive at Melbourne we take the scenery route 'the great ocean road'. One of the destinations along the great ocean road is Apollo bay. This place is the home to some friends of my dear friend Julia. We hope to stay at their place for that night but we will see how that goes. In Melbourne we probably stay for a week and from that point on we are heading out to the east coast all the way up to Cairns. When we hit this point we drive back inwards to face our last destinations 'Uluru' and 'Alice Springs'. Halfway September (2 weeks before our visa expires) we take off to Bangkok to travel Thailand, Laos and Cambodja (or even Vietnam) untill the date of 24th of December. On this day we will fly back to Amsterdam so we have time to spend these christmas and new years eve days dark, cold and cosy with our beloved families and friends.
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
