It's best when it's West!

Somehow I was repeating the same thing but shorter on the West-Coast, I have been doing on the East-Coast:

First spending some time in the city (Sydney / Perth), then staying close to the beach in a smaller town (Newcastle / Yallingup) whilst discovering a bit the area around it and finally WWOOFing on an organic farm (River Flats Estate in Hunter Valley / Redtail Ridge in Preston Valley).

But when we look at the details, everything is soooo different... (if I didn't already give the Cambodia-story the title "same same but different" it would have fit here)

But first of all: no worries my dear train-loving friends, I will write a detailled story only about the train trips. Because after having travelled so much on such different trains in various countries I feel the need for special train-story. This will come up soon!

Well well, my dear readers, let’s see how attentively you had been reading my blog months ago – and I am really going a long way back – back to Beijing!! Because the people I met in China were the reason for me to come all the way to Perth: Trish was so nice to welcome me in her house and into her family. Furthermore, she introduced to me an important part of Australian culture I had so far not experienced to full extention: Aussie Rules Football (which is neither like soccer nor like rugby!! Don’t you dare comparing!!). 

So together with Trish, her friend John and her daughter Ros I went more or less straight after spending 3 days on the train to the AFL Match between the Fremantle Dockers (our team) and the Brisbane Lions. Of course our team won!! Oh man, I love sport emotions - and they are even better live in the stadium! Aussie Rules Football is so much better to watch live because the game is not easy to follow or to understand when watching on TV. You get a far better overview being in the stadium, whereas in soccer I tend to look at the screen in the stadium more often.

My few days in Perth were quite filled: I was having a nice walk through the overwhealmingly beautiful Kings Park with Trish, after which I enjoyed some schooners of beer with some Scottish guys in a pub near the swan river. 
The center is nicely set up with some major shopping streets. Everything seems nice and tidy.

To me Perth is like a big and rather quiet countryside town: it is really spread out and the section I stayed in (and everywhere I was driving through) reminded me of the suburbs you’d see in American movies: small houses (usually one, sometimes two storeys high) with nicely set up gardens, a car in the driveway and trees all along the footpaths. 
And of course – Perth has various beaches!! Don’t you ever forget the beach in Australia!!

One day I went to Rottnest Island, a small island off the coast of Fremantle. Fremantle is a small but really nice and sympathetic town South of Perth - and sympathetic not only because of the big and stylish brewery Little Creatures... 

Rottnest Island is car-free and the little holiday get-away for Perth citizens. Most people hire a bike and just ride it all along the island. It is definitely beautiful with salt -lakes in the middle, which look just as if there was snow along them. They are amazing! And beautiful bays all around the island. I definitely enjoyed this day in the green!

The island is called Rottnest because the Dutch sailors who came to it first in 1610 and named it after the quokka - an animal which is native to this and other islands off the coast of West Australia. For them it looked like a rat, so they called the island "rat's nest" - Rottnest.
You can easily spot these sweet little animals in their wild life on the island as they are really used to humans hence not afraid of them: 

After this far too short time in Perth I went with Trish and her family down to Yallingup close to the wine region Margaret River, where they had rented a holiday house for 4 days. And now I am for the first time talking about a beach without an ironic smile: the beach of Yallingup is AMAZING!! I have never NEVER NEVER seen such big waves in my life (and again, they don't look half as impressive on the pics as in reality)! It is simply terrific!! Wow wow wow!! 

I guess you didn’t overread the word “wine region”. So yes, of course we spent one afternoon wine tasting and tasting cheese (no story in Australia without that word…)! Guash, my heaven!

However: So many people have talked to me about Margaret River and told me that it was sooo beautiful, that of course I had high expectations and was not astonished or overwhealmed by the beauty of the region. And I must admit I much more liked the Hunter Valley, where I have stayed for my 2 weeks WWOOFing on the East-Coast. The Margaret River wine-region is of course beautiful (every wine-region is! I simply love the nicely set up vinyards). But the area around Margaret River it is rather flat. And even though I am not a mountain-freak, I am still too Austrian to find a region without any hills or mountains particularly beautiful…

While being with Trish and her family I learned a lot about the way of life in Western Australia. In this part of the country mining (gold, nickel, iron ore, sand mining, oil and gas off the coast...) is big. So were all the topics around mining. We were talking a lot about the nowadays typical fly-in-fly-out practice where miners would fly into a mining place usually for 2 weeks and fly back to Perth for the upcoming 2 weeks. Even though the wages are really high, it is now proved, that on an hour-basis they were not better than a regular job in Perth. Apart from that the effect of this practice on family- and personal life as well as on the life in mining towns is really bad. When living and working in a mining town, like it used to be before the fly-in-fly-out, people would socialize in the town, have a more regular work-life-balance. While now the people flying in and out would not socialize with the people in the various towns close to mines, as they are living next to the mines in camps and moreover their high daily working hours more or less don’t give them any more time to socialize at all. All this doesn’t really interest you,I know, me however I found it really interesting to be surrounded by people for whom the mining industry is part of their everyday life, and talks about it are. Maybe people in Linz, next to Voest Alpine, are more used to that, but me bloody naïve country-girl from Vorarlberg I’m not.

One more thing I found really interesting was Trishs experience in the Kimberleys. She used to work for the Catholic School as a consultant and visited many of the Aboriginal communities for her job up in Broome. She saw the schools there, learned about the problems the teachers have with the Aboriginal kids: their communal values are simply not compatible with the Australian type of school and their traditional walkabouts are even less compatible with the Australian school calendar. She explained me why these Aboriginal kids up in the Kimberly having completely different values would never want to become lawyers or doctors. All they want is to stay with their community. As a result they don’t see how they could profit from Western style education. They are living in a far less individualistic society, so being with the community is much more important for them than it is for us...
It was really interesting to me to see and understand this side of the medal as well – because the other side of the “Aboriginal medal” is not so nice. And other people had different stories to tell me: most of the Aboriginals living in the cities have big problems with alcohol and are in consequence causing a lot of problems. They do not fit in Western society. But well, I am not telling you anything new, do I? – they have the same issues in America with the indigenous.

But yes, back to the topic: with her photos, artworks (she's a brilliant artist - the two photos are in fact her paintings from the Kimberleys) and stories of her time up in the Kimberlys Trish nearly made me change my whole travel-plans within Australia and skipping what I had planned for a trip from Broome to Darwin right through the Kimberleys. But well, I can’t… 
It is simply too expensive at this stage. And as I still have up to 8 months to go till I get back to Austria, every cent is important – especially in an expensive country like Australia. I have a great train-ticket with which I can still see a lot of this huuuuuge country. So, sorry Kimberlys, I’ll come around next time I’m here.

What?!

Up to 8 more months?

Oh yes – I am not changing my travel plans within Australia, but I quite surely will concerning my entire trip: my plan is to continue like initially planned through Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, but then make a 180° turn and go straight back to Hong Kong, and travel west-wards through China (this time including Tibet), Central Asia: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan,  Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. I am really excited about that and am even looking forward to buying the Lonely Planet Central Asia - and to all the annoying visa-work that's coming up haha!!

But the biggest challenge will be to get the visa to Iran. Yes, after Turkmenistan I plan to travel through Iran together with Niku – the girl I travelled with in China for two weeks!! Wohoooo, so much looking forward to travelling with you again sweety!

(PS: guash, going through my old blog-stories from China was really weird just right now... it feels sooo long ago and still so new).

And maybe I will then end my trip Azerbaijan and / or Georgia… We shall see. But you will be updated on my travelroute...

So yes, you're right: all the information on this blog will end up being wrong: east-wards turns into west-wards, my travelmap is half-wrong, and “around the world” is not true neither. But no, I will not change my URL nor will I change the header of this blog! 

Alrighty then, all for now my dear readers. But you won’t have to wait long, because the next story about my second WWOOFing is already in the typewriter. I will publish this story in the upcoming days - after my trainride to Adelaide. So if you want to learn more about organic farming – and I did learn a hell lot of interesting stuff -, check this page again in the next days.

WWOOFing in Broke

After two weeks in Sydney and Newcastle, seeing a lot of Australian city-life and their love for the beaches, the contrast could hardly have been bigger:
I went to the countryside into the amazingly beautiful Hunter Valley: a wine region quite close to Sydney.

Through the WWOOFing-Network I found a farm in Broke, where I could stay for a while and work in exchange for food and accomodation. I was really happy about this experience and about my luck with the farm:
I couldn’t have found a better place and more welcoming family! Marian, the proprietor of the Estate, is a really nice woman and the head of a family with big open doors. Aside from me there were two other WWOOFers on the farm – the Belgium guy Alan and the Irish girl Heyley, who accomplished her 88 days of work needed to get a 2^nd year work-and-travel-visa (which we Austrians don’t get at all!!! I wonder what we did wrong in the region, because in New Zealand we don’t get it neither. My dear Austrian embassadors in OZ and NZ: I see some potential for negotiations!).

The estate – River Flats estate – is an olive grove with over 3500 olive trees. They also have 3 cottages rented out for people on holiday or for wedding groups. 

But that's not all:
Not too far away from the farm Marian runs the little shop “Pickled & Pitted”, where she sells all the delicious products she’s producing: different sorts of olive oils and vinegars, different jarred olives, but also heaps of different chutneys, tapenades and of course cheeses (you knew, I'd be mentioning this, right...).

Marians daughter Michelle owns the shop “BARE  Nature'sKin” right next to it, in which she sells different kinds of soaps and kosmetic products, most of which she was making by herself with the olive oil from the farm or the goat milk of the goats she owns in the back garden. The smell in her shop is simply breathtaking – you feel like in a big foam-bath. I can’t tell you how lovely these two little shops are: You can see that all their love flows into them!

The work I had to do was really diverse and I was doing something different everyday. After all I was lucky to see most of the steps in the process from olives on a tree to finished pickled olives in jars:

On the first three days we were picking olives in the mornings – 12 boxes are needed for one big bucket. Unfortunately this summer had been really bad with a lot of rain, so most of the fruit is diseased and can’t be used. So picking was sometimes really frustrating: you stand in front of an olive tree full with olives and when you get closer you see that they are all rotten… So you are even happier for each healthy branch, which are really nice to pick then!

While Marians daughter makes cosmetics out of the olives, her also still on the estate living son Andy has his own company Olicare, which is working in the establishment, care-taking of olive groves and in harvesting. But no no, not hand-picking like we did – he’s more into mashines ;) 
I was lucky to see them in use once – 

and you are now lucky too, because I made some nice videos of it: cool, isn’t it?!

After Andy had shaken many trees we still had to get rid of all the leaves, that had also been shaken off the trees – we found a quite fun way of doing so. (yes, that's me lying down there...)

Ok, I reckon, you don't really get what we are doing here without seeing this clip:

When the olives are all more or less sorted out, they are put into big buckets and filled with saltwater (1:10) and closed. On another day we were checking the salt level of buckets which had been filled months ago: open the bucket (on the top everything is white because of the natural malt), get rid of the olives floating on the top, and then take your whole arm into the smelling liquid to mix it a bit and test the level of salt with a special salt-level-measurer.

The last step in the process, after the olives had been months in these big buckets, is the "jaring" itself: the olives are taken out, washed, the crappy ones are thrown away and then you heat them a bit, fill them in heated jars and fill the whole thing up with boiling saltwater. That’s it!

(On this photo you can see Marian - my WWOOFing-mama, and the two other WWOOFers Heyley and Alan)

However, I didn’t see how olive oil is produced due to the bad season – I guess I have to come back there next year when the harvest will hopefully be better!

Apart from the works connected to olives just described above, we were helping with whatever had to be done: cleaning the cottages and making beds, on another day we spend hours mowing around a fence that had to be put higher… There is always something to do on a farm! However, even though I enjoyed these two weeks and it was nice for a change, I know, that it is not the work I would want to do for the rest of my life…

I arrived in the week before the culinary festival “Little bit of Italy in Broke” was taking place – so I came perfectly in time to help out with the last preparations for this festival. During this festival many venues – mainly vinyards – of the region Broke Fordwich participated and prepared something in addition to their regular wine tasting. 

We at the "Pickled & Pitted"-shop were doing a big effort to offer the customers more than the everyday offer: apart from the normal shop, we created a small veggie-garden, where fresh veggies were sold. Furthermore we had live music and other stands joined us in the garden:

A food-stand with fresh pumkin pie, a coffee-car, a pizza-car, a stand with hot olives and a small stand of a guy, who made new furniture out of old timber wood. So the preparation work was big, and the cleaning afterwards as well. But we were a big bunch of people, all helping out together and enjoying the time together with good food and wines once the big rush was over!

On the second day of the festival, when it wasn’t too busy, Alan and I had the chance to make a tour to the other venues to see a bit of the valley and of the festival. So we were driving around to the different vinyards, enjoying the region and tasting their typical vines (some of which I had never heard from before, like Verdelho for example – ever heard of that before?).

The whole festival ended of course with big celebrations in one participating vinyard. The people all know each other –  surprise, surprise: Broke has only 400 inhabitants – and know each other's wines and products. You can see that the people in this region are proud of and do really want to preserve their cultural and culinary heritage.

And it is definitely a beautiful region too, don’t you reckon:

It is scary to know that all this could just disappear: the energy company AGL is researching in the region for coal-seam-gas (CSG) resources. What is now a wine- and touristic area could become a unpleasant area with a big network of pipes for CSG-mining. I was so positively surprised by the cooperation of the people in the region, and  therefore even more shocked by what could happen to it if AGL gets through. I learned about it because in many places - so as well in front of the "Pickled & Pitted" and inside Michelles "BARE - Nature'sKin" shop -  you can see the signs of the association "Lock the gate" fighting against it, or simply “AGL – go to hell” signs. You should check this website to learn more about it - I don't know enough about it but I felt I have to mention it here!

I was so lucky with this farm, because the mix of working and reward (food and accomodation) for it was simply perfect. And even though I was often working longer than the from a WWOOFer expected 4-6hours, I was highly recompensated for it: Marian and her family definitely know how to celebrate life every day: we had great meals every day, freshly cooked with only really high quality products, always accompanied with great wines.

By seeing and living their way of life, I can even more say that for me the pleasure of life often lies in the simpliest things: It is such a high pleasure to drink a good glass of wine after a hard (and also after not so hard J) day and enjoy a great meal in great company. And this is what I loved soooooo much about their attitude to life: to celebrate life every day! It is more or a less a continuation of what I already wrote about the Australian way of life in my last blog story…

Nearly every second or third day Marian had friends coming over for dinner and on these occasions the dinner would be even bigger and more celebrated. In the back of their house they have a big dining area with a huge barbeque and even a pizza-oven! I can’t tell you how social a pizza-evening can be! Yes, I do like the idea of celebrating life everyday like this… I only have to learn to do it better: because now my goal for the next few weeks is to get rid of the few  additional kilos of celebrated life...

In the beginning I had planned only to stay for around one week, but then I changed my plans and ended up stayin 2 weeks in total and not going up the East coast at all. For Easter a big party was announced at one of the cottages. Oh, big it was indeed: it was a huge and never ending drinking-and-eating-orgie, starting on Thursday and finishing only on Monday evening (I heard they continued on Tuesday). Many friends came up from Sydney, and even me I invited Jean-Marie and his house-mate Jean to come up for that occasion. Oh my god, what should I say?! The first beer was opened before 9am each day and the last one was drunk around 4am…

Welcoming as the Aussies are, we – Jean-Marie, Jean and me – were invited by Andys father to drive around the Hunter Valley and go for wine tastings in the different vinyards. So I ended up seeing and tasting wine of many of different vinyards I hadn’t been to so far. It was really so generous of him: he spent the whole afternoon with us, driving us around and tasting wines. I still can’t believe how welcoming these people are: I now have invitations to going sailing in Sydney from 4 different persons I got to know on this very farm…

So like one fellow Austrian would say: I’LL BE BACK!!