Good bye Australia

yes... I know... took me some time to come back to you...
But believe me, I didn't forget about the blog - I was thinking all the time what kind of subject I should talk about, which could miraculously connect everything I have done in the last three weeks. And guess what: yes, exactly! I did not find such a subject!

So, well, I can therefore only tell you a bit what I have been up to. And you'll find three albums with all the best photos of my nearly 2,5-month stay in down under...

After my last blogstory, the WWOOFing week at the Redtail Ridge, I took again the Indian Pacific from Perth back through the big empty Nullarbor Plain all the way to Adelaide, South Australias capital city.

South Australia

I was really happy to stay with Shebeen-quiz-player Steve and his wife Christa, who moved back to Adelaide last year. I really enjoyed their hospitality, their small cosy house with their nice garden.

In general, Australians really love good food and wine a lot. But nowhere else I have felt this love more than in Southern Australia. And I loved it :)

The heart of Adelaide is their Central Market, where you can find all the different kinds of food - from really cheap but fresh fruits and vegetables, heaps of deli food and some stores providing you with Polish, Russian or other European specialities.

Adelaide is the home of the big family owned Coopers brewery. I had a great afternoon and evening which started with a harmless guided tour through the brewery. We were guided through the different halls, seeing the whole process of turning the barley into the final produce, of which the botteling hall was the most interesting one.

And of course it all ended with a long beer tasting, where we had the chance to taste around 10 different beers - mhhhh

I ended up going for another few schooners with three australians who had also visited the brewery. We had a nice afternoon, playing horribly bad pool and finally going to the delicious Afghan restaurant Parwana (which somehow reminded me of my preferred restaurant in Vienna: Le Petit Maroc. Both restaurants were small but really cosy, offering only a few but really delicious dishes)

But more than the beer I of course enjoyed the wines in Southern Australia. Thanks to their sunny climate they have many different really well known wine regions here. And - no doubt about that - I tried to visit as many of them as possible.

Near Adelaide, easy to reach by public transport, is Australias little Grinzing: in the Adelaide Hills Lutherans, fleeing from Prussia, founded the small town of Hahndorf. Really, believe me, it is like Grinzing: tiny but really sweet, beautifully set up for tourists, many of which even speak German.

After walking around the nice little town I started with what I came for: wine-tasting! Believe me, Australian wines here are 1000 better than the crap they sell in overseas supermarkets. Forget Jackobs Creek, Hardy and Yellow Tail! There are heaps of vinyards, which produce great wine. And I was soooo surprised: one vinyard, the Hahndorf Hills Winery, even grow Grüner Veltliner and Blaufränkisch!!! (I was a bit dissapointed though that the GV was sold out, so I couldn't taste it) I had a great chat with the girl pouring me the wines. She was really excited to tell me that they are now also experimenting with Zweigelt. That's the only time I found our typical Austrian grapes in any Australian vinyard!! Wohoooo, home sweet home :)

But the Adelaide hills are not the only wine region where I checked the cellar doors... But before starting a trip through the various wine regions between Adelaide and Melbourne I made a short side trip up North.

The Red Center

From Adelaide I took the other famous train, the Ghan, up to Alice Springs. To bad that I was so dependent on the train times... The Ghan goes only once per week, so I had exactly two entire and two half days in Alice Springs. The first half day I was really lucky that my CS-host in Alice Springs took me and another couchsurfer out of the city in the MacDonnell Ranges to Simpsons Gap, one of the many rock formations in the big red middle of Australia.

But the next two days, were simply madness: I participated in two one-day-trips (the both connecting two-day-trip was 100,- more expensive): one going from Alice Springs to Uluru (aka Ayers Rock*) and Kata Tjuta (aka The Olgas), the other one going to the Kings Canyon. What's so crazy about it?? Well, it is like participating in two one-day-trips from Vienna to Innsbruck! Who would ever do this in Austria?? Right, nobody. So much about the feeling for distances in a country as vast as Australia!!

But I don't regret it at all even though I spent around 10 hours in the bus each day!

I was really happy with the travel agency Emu Run Tours: The busdrivers were all really funny and entertaining; talking a lot, telling us heaps about the region, the history, the Aboriginal culture...

On the first day we went to Kata Tjuta first, big red stone formations growing out of the big vast desert. The desert however was not as dry as it usually is. I was quite lucky to see a lot of green there...








Afte a short walk into the Olgas we went over to the famous Rock. On the base we had different base walks, where the busdrivers aka guides told us the various Aboriginal stories connected with the Rock, pointing out spiritual sites and also a lot of cave paintings.

After a few different walks at the base of the Rock - nobody of our group climbed the Rock - we went to the sunset lookout point. It was just brilliant: the drivers were preparing food - guess what - of course, barbeque. Accompanied with sparkling wine.

It is not without a reason that people pilgering to Uluru say that there is something magic or spiritual about it. It definitely is impressive and I was really happy to have seen it in real! The colours of it change within seconds when the sun goes down - from orange to burning red into a blueish brown when the sun's just gone:

After the great dinner and sparkling we had a long way back to Alice Springs, where I arrived at midnight, and was picked up again the next morning at 6am - this time for a tour to the famous Kings Canyon.

Again a lot of time in the bus driving past red land, green bushes and sometimes some camels. The camels had been brought to Australia by Afghan people who built the railway track - hence the name "The Ghan" for the train connecting Adelaide with Darwin. They freed the camels once they didn't need them anymore, thinking they would die out anyways. Alas, they really like the climate here - so now there are big populations of camels in the Northern Territory.

Unlike the day before, this day we were properly hiking. The Rim-Walk around the canyon takes around 3,5 hours and are a nicely exhausting walk, starting with the "heart-attack hill"...
The canyon itself is really impressive! See it yourself:

Even though this trip up to Alice Springs and the tours cost me quite some money and I spent a loooooot of time in the bus, I don't regret one cent nor one minute! It was simply impressive to see the red vast center of this huuuuge country, feel the distances, hike through the canyon and see the sun go down giving Uluru this amazing burning colour!

If you want more pics from the vast empty red middle, just check this gallery.

Great Ocean Road Trip

Back in Adelaide
I started a road trip. Through the
(in Australia and NZ really useful and much used) internet forum gumtree I had found Karim: a guy from Egyp, working and living in Adelaide, who wanted to make the same road trip to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road.

After having bought all the necessary food at the Central Market, filled up his car and squeezed his tent and a matress in the trunk, we were off! Luckily I had my word to say considering the route - yes, we went through many different wine regions! On the first day we tasted many different wines in the McLaren Vale region. The second day we passed through the Langhorne Creek region, whereas we started the third day with wine tastings in the Coonawarra wine region.

I can't repeat it often enough: wine regions are simply beautiful!!

The fourth day we were hiking through the Grampian National Park, going up the Pinnacles.

This was for once a real mountain, not one of the many hills they call mountains here in Australia ;)
What an awesome view!

Within the Grampians National Park is a lot of wild life, and of course many many kangoroos! And those in the small town at the entrance of the park are completely tame:

And Koalas? Oh, I saw heaps of them on the next day on the Southern coast. They are lazy indeed! Sweet and lazy:

Only on the fith and last day we were finally taking the Great Ocean Road.

A nice drive with many curves along the coast - with many signs for the tourists remembering them to drive on the left :)








It's not without a reason the road is called great. It is a really great road indeed, just next to the beautiful coast line, with it's many limestones in the water, beautiful beaches.

Want more pics?? Here you'll find the best pics from the countryside, nature and animals.

Melbourne

I arrived in Melbourne on the evening of our fifth day and stayed there for a few days with another really nice and welcoming CS-host.
What should I say - well, everybody told me that Melbourne was simply amazing...

I must say, it was alright, but being back in Sydney I admit: I love Sydney, I have many friends now in Sydney. Melbourne is for sure a nice city, maybe I didn't discover it enough, but at the moment it is just another city to me, with another nice Central Market, anothe China-town, and again many bars and cafes...

I loved their grafitti though!!

And last but not least: one album with photos from the various cities I visited here in OZ.

Sydney

So yes, here I am, back in Sydney since a few days - this time staying on the lovely North beaches, leaving tomorrow to New Zealand. I managed to meet all the friends in Sydney again: my friends up from the Hunter Valley, Jean-Marie and of course all the crazy artist from the TAP-gallery...

Sydney, you'll see me again!!
Or should I say more generally: Australia, you'll see me again!!

*Uluru is called by the Aboriginals since thousands of years. It was called Ayers Rock by William Gosse in 1873 - the first Westerner to have sighted it. A double-name policy was introduced in 1993: "Ayers Rock / Uluru", which was turned into "Uluru / Ayers Rock" in 2002

organic this is!!

So, you were all really waiting for my story from my second WWOOFing experience with impatience, as I announced it to be online soon?! I hope so, because there is some interesting stuff to come up now!

I spent only one week on the Redtail Ridge farm: an organic farm with cattle and an olive grove. My experience on this farm was completely different to the one on the River Flats Estate. I loved both sojourns but for completely different reasons. I will mainly remember the first farm because of the overload of delicious food and the great wines I had the pleasure to drink. The second farm however I will definitely remember because of what I learned about organic farming. And I really learned a lot!

Peter and Robyn are typical organic farmers – or at least now I will always think of them when talking about organic farming: On their estate they are growing, beside 2000 olive trees, many other things: they have one line of wine: 64 vines (mainly Shiraz, a bit of Cabernet Sauvignon), only for themselves. They get out around 300 bottles of delicious sulfite-free wine per year! We used to drink one bottle of it each night for dinner.

They do produce really delicious organic raw honey. Furthermore they have many different veggies in the garden, mainly for their own use. And they have ten chickens which lay around seven eggs per day (I asked my parents how many chickens my grandmother had on average and how many eggs they lay every day - one chicken lays around two eggs in three days… Yes, for those who don’t know it: I grew up with chicken on our property and was used to fresh eggs from happy chicken).

But of course their main source of income is the beef. The cows were taken care of in a completely different way to what I am used to in the village I grew up. Where I grew up the farmers all had dairy cows which stayed in the stalls all winter and in autumn/spring nights. The farm-work in summer was all about getting enough hay for the winter. Guash, the hours I have spent helping out on my oncles or my best friends farm when the various fields had to be mowed. But on this farm in Australia it was completely different – of course first of all because of the weather and secondly because their cows are for meat production. Weather: they don’t even have a stall. Meat production: the milk is only for the calves.

They have a few bulls and some mother-cows, which get pregnant once per year (9 months pregnancy like humans). The rest of the many cattle around the farm are rather young (and won’t get too old). The bulls are always among the cows and can choose the cows by themselves when they are in heat. And the cows foal their calves all by themselves too, the vet is only coming when there are some complications. Every morning when we went to feed the cattle we would have a look if there was maybe a new calve. All nature, hum?! And yes, the meat was DELICIOUS!!

Both – Pete and Robyn – are organic farmers with all their heart. Check out their 10 reasons for organic farming. They really stand behind their believe that this way of farming, letting the nature do it’s job by itself and not use herbicides, pesticides or GMs, is the right way, best way and more sustainable way of farming. I really loved Peter’s attitude towards his land and his farm. I talked a lot with him, was really interested in what he was doing and he was really willing to tell and to teach me a lot. So I ended up learning sooo much in just one week:

I drove their tractor distributing huge hay-balls for the cows, tried to drive their quad-bike backwards with a trailer (I wrote “tried” not “learned” because I didn’t manage…). I learned how to correctly prune an olive tree (Pete’s answer to how many branches should be taken out of the tree at the final pruning after the harvest is “Imagine that there is a naked girl staying on the other side of the tree – you should see her tits.”)

And I was explained how red-wine is made. I loved what Pete said: “Wine makers tend to behave as if they were one step below God. But making wine is really easy in fact.” 
So one day, when I have my own garden I will make my own wine too!

I learned that honey can only be called organic if within the bee’s flying distance around the hives are only organic farms or woods or any other kind of unused land. And they fly up to 8km if they need to!

The reason why I learned so much more than on the first farm, which was also an organic farm, is that not only was I doing much more work connected to farming but also that when doing this work Peter was always with us doing the same work. On the other farm I had been picking olives only with the other WWOOFers, who of course could not teach me anything about organic farming. Oh yes, on this farm as well, there were two other WWOOFers beside me: Tom from Wales and Aisha from Italy. Pete would always explain us why we are doing what we are doing, and how we should do it best, and so on.

He talked a lot about politics concerning farming as well. For example how the subsidies on farmers in Europe influence farmers in Australia. Well, surprise surprise: the subsidised olive growers in Italy swamp the Australian market with cheap olive oil and the Australian olive growers can’t compete with them. (The photo shows the neighbor farm: they have 84.000 olive trees!!!!)

What was really scary was what he told us about the international corporation Monsanto . I knew this company already through the film “Food Inc.” which I had seen a while ago. It is the worlds biggest producer of GM seeds. Even though there is still not enough knowledge about the effects of GM on our organism and on nature, Monsanto manages with various methods to force farmers  into using and whole countries into legalising their GM crops. The big problem with these crops is though that cross-contamination is not stoppable: as soon as one farmer uses these crops the neighbour farm is affected as well because the seeds fly with the wind… Or just imagine: a truck with the seeds loaded driving past fields – and all the fields will be affected because of the seeds flying around. And that’s how the company ends up suing all the farmers in the US whose fields are affected with this cross-contamination: they check the fruit on non-GM farms and if they find their GM crops among them, they sue these farmers for violation of intellectual property. But many other methods of Monsanto are listed in this really interesting executive summary.

Many of the negative effects of globalisation I had already heard about I now saw on the farm and learned about it from somebody who is really affected by it. Scary...

One can see here in Australia, like it is the case in Europe as well (Bio), that more and more people are willing to pay more for locally grown fresh organic food. There are more and more farmers markets in each town. So Pete and Robyn are really busy during the weekends, as they are selling their products on three different markets each week: Peter is on the Manning market (where me and Trish visited him) and Robyn on the Subiaco market on Saturdays. And on Sundays Robyn is on the Growers Green market in South Fremantle too. And as if they didn’t have enough to do, they are delivering food-orders for free to the doorstep on Fridays. So the last day - Friday -I went back to Perth and spent hours with them at the butcher where they were preparing everything for the deliveries and for the three different markets of the weekend.

Yes, a farmer never rests. There is always something to do! Whereas I had written recently that it was nice to work on a farm for two weeks but I couldn’t imagine working like this for a living, I now – after this experience – really want to have not a farm, but my own little garden with various veggies, maybe vines and a few chicken. Thank you for this great experience!