After 3 months of my trip I have found myself mowing the lawn in searing heat for a couple of pensioners - not exactly the Australian adventure I initially had in mind, but, it's a means to an end! So yes, I was greeted back onto the farm with open arms, and a long list of chores. Not really half as bad as I am making it out to be as I am paid for all of them, and the worst thing on the list is lawn mowing, however, here I was, busting a gut on the front lawn of a house in the middle of no-where. I did consider to myself what the overall point of mowing the lawn was - it looked nicer when it was longer, and it just went dry and spiky after it was cut, but, I was just bitter as I was the one getting eaten alive by the mozzies every time I dared to go near thier territory, which seemed to be the whole garden. Anyway, enough bitching and moaning - I came here for the hot weather (amongst other things!) so I may as well just roll my sleeves up and get a sickening tan! In the afternoon of my first full day back on the farm my host's son came over to continue with the mammoth job of hay carting, which meant I could ditch my domestic duties, and go and play on a tractor - much more fun! At one point as I was trundling down the track, I saw a massive snake across the path, (probably wasn't really massive, but, as far as I'm concerned, anything longer than 4 foot is massive!) and curiously enough, in my panic, tried to run it over - I'm not really sure what came over me at that exact moment, but luckily enough, the snake was considerably quicker than me, and it got away before I crushed it. Hmmmm, I shall endeavour to not run over any of Australia's wildlife from this point on. And so, I spent the next few hours driving the tractor about, and really enjoyed myself in the process. Dinner that night was once again consisted of an odd mix of ingredients, resulting in us having a pizza with everything on it, including pumpkin, leeks and zucchini , but surprisingly it was pretty good, despite it's rather un-pizza like appearance.
The next day was again dedicated to carting some hay about, but, this time, for the first time, I dared to use my i-pod whilst I was doing it. I did not however think of the logistics, and ended up with it up my sleeve as it kept falling out of my pocket. And then it started to rain. And rain. And rain. Within about a minute I was soaked to the skin (including my i-pod up my now sodden sleeve!) and we temporarily decided to stop work, only for the sky to change again and give us some beautiful sunshine. This was short-lived though, and when the skies opened for the second time we headed back quickly so we didn't get stuck in the mud. My hosts and their son all went out that afternoon, leaving me to hide from the weather in the house, with newly cleaned carpets. That night, whilst heading out to the verandah for a smoke, I noticed that one of the dogs had decided that it didn't like the clean carpets, and it had left a giant shit in the middle of the room. Lovely. So, after cleaning that up, I went outside, and noticed the biggest spider I have seen in my life. Not a good couple of days in regards to animals, but, it was two more days ticked off my fortnight.
The next day I had a new task - to clean the second house they have on their property as the last guy who lived there left it in an absolute state. And, although it was absolutely foul, it was quite nice to just have something to do myself and get on with. So, with my bucket full of cleaning supplies I headed off down the driveway. So, after cleaning for good few hours, it was lunchtime so I headed back to the farmhouse to get some grub. My plans of continuing my job after lunch went out the window pretty quickly when my host said she was going into Shepperton to do some jobs, and I jumped at the chance to get off the farm, so went with her. So we did everything she needed to do, all in torrential rain, and headed home down a road which was a few inches underwater. As it was Wednesday, it meant we were all off to the pub for dinner, and the weekly gossip. As the people at the pub now new I would be joining the motley crew of elderly folk, their chef went a little silly with creativity for my veggie dish, and I was served a plate complete with edible flowers on it. Not really knowing what it was I delved in to find that it was a whole eggplant, baked with cheese and herbs inside it, and it was fantastic, and beautiful at the same time. It was a lot of eggplant to eat though. As we headed home we found out that whilst we had been eating, there had been another massive downpour, and the idea to take the ute was fantastic, as we drove through water about a foot deep.
New day, old jobs, Yet again I was set to work cleaning the house, and once again, mowing the lawns - I really started to think they were taking the piss slightly, but I got to it, simply thinking of the fact I was getting paid to do it. It really was the only thing that kept me going as I got eaten alive by mozzies, despite my many defences. All in all, not exactly a great day, but oh well, I'll survive!
On Friday I once again cleaned the house and B&B, but this time people were actually coming to stay, so there was a reason for it at least. I actually got quite excited about the prospect of new company, as sad as that sounds, but it was just getting a bit boring with the three of us. And so, after cleaning bathrooms and bedrooms, a car pulled up. I'm not exactly proud of the fact that when I saw them I immediately assumed he bought his wife. In my defence, it was an older, wealthy, British gentleman, and a younger Vietnamese lady. It turned out that they had met 20 years ago and were pen-pals for years before they met up. Or that's the story they told people anyway. They did endear themselves to me though, as they had a beautiful labrador puppy, who was just great. The fact they treated this dog as part of the family really showed itself at the dinner table that night. Me and my hosts had spent ages in the kitchen cooking a huge meal for all of us, and, half-way through their plates they stopped eating. At this point they explained that they were saving the rest for 'Diesel' the dog, and proceeded to chop up the massive steak for him. I was amazed that they would do that, but my god the dog enjoyed his meal that night! We all went to bed early that night, with full tummies, ready for a good night sleep and to wake up at 4am.
So, I once again decided to go to Bendigo with my host for a change of scenery, and a little look around. Which again meant a madly early morning,b ut by 4:30am we were off, travel mugs of tea in hand. And, after setting up and making a start at cheese selling, I went for a wander round Bendigo again, in the modd to look for Christmas presents. And so, my first port of call, was a cute little shop I saw advertised in 'Frankie Magazine' but, being the arty-farty kind of shop it was it didn't open till 11am, so I had a couple of hours to kill so continued down the street. A few hours later I returned back to the cute shop, having spent my time buying stuff for myself - not exactly the plan. But, I went to have a look in the lovely little shop to hunt for potential presents. Although everything was really cute and kitsch it also came with a hefty price-tag. I managed to get a couple of things for stocking fillers, but I was hoping to get more. I spent the next couple of hours selling cheese to the masses of Bendigo, and made a rather silly mistake, when asking a little girl if she wanted to try some tasty cheese. However, 'Tasty' is a brand of cheese over here, and I quickly realised we were talking about different things, and from then on, referred to it as 'yummy cheese' to all kids. I did buy some goodies for Christmas though, and walked away with a bag of beautiful little christmas puddings. We once again frequented the 'Cold Rock Ice Creamery' on the way home, and headed off down the back-roads back to the farm. We spent the afternoon packing and labelling cheese for the market the next day, and packed up the vans again.
Rutherglen was my market on choice on Sunday and I spent most of my time there just in the book shop and antique shop, which are both full of such great stuff, but, once again, nothing Christmas present worthy, but I did have a lovely morning just wasting time, and then got a coffee and a cookie for my elevenses. What a treat. On the way home we stopped off the the Stanton and Killeen cellar door, and this time I didn't wimp out and bought a bottle of their beautiful Muscat. I did decline the bottle which was older than me, and about $100, and went for the 'cheap' 12 year old stuff! But, I was pretty pleased with it, and now I just have to try and keep it till Christmas. On the way back we seemed to stop absolutely everywhere possible doing a number of little jobs, and safe to say, I was watching the clock slightly as we were meant to be going down to Melbourne for the night, but as we pulled into one of their friends pig farms I almost resigned myself to not going. I'm still not really sure why I was taken there to have a look at the pigs - they were all being taken off to slaughter - just what every vegetarian wants to see. When we made it back to the farm I packed my bag for the night, ready to go. And then we packed cheese for 3 hours. This meant that my plans of going to the cinema when I got to Melbourne had gone out the window, as we didn't leave till about 8pm. Safe to say I was just mildly pissed off at the whole situation as we were heading back on Monday morning and it all seemed slightly redundant. When we eventually arrived in Melbourne my host asked me if it was too late to come to Will's and offered for me to stay at her daughters house. Precisely what I didn't want at that point in time, and I insisted that it would be fine and got dropped off. And then it was beer o'clock, and I went to sleep knowing I would be going back in the morning. Dammit!
So, another week on the farm, only really got a few more days to go and then it'll almost be Christmas!! Muchos excited! So, here's hoping I can survive the final week...
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