So I headed to Wollongong on Tuesday to sort out the original car I bought in Australia that kept breaking down. My friend Steveo had worked on it while I was away. He had replaced the clutch master cylinder and got a new battery. After all this the car still wouldn’t work so I met him to work on it. We eventually got it going; after zip tying the solenoid together. At least now that it starts I should be able to sell it. Steveo wouldn’t take any money for the labor so I got him a few gifts from Bali. He was such a nice guy to help out.
After this I met up with John and his brother Davo for a surf. The waves were small and the water was cold, about 60F. Typically the water doesn’t get much colder than 65F in this part of Australia, so this is probably the coldest of the year. It was good to catch up with John and his brother. Davo decided to take a semester off of his college, New Castle, and try to get into Wollongong University. He is living with John for now. The following day Davo and I went for a search for waves around the Wollongong area. Everywhere seemed small and I decided we would go to Fairy Meadow break, as that was where my old dorms were when I went to Uni here. After that I headed on the train back to Sydney Airport.
I would have been perfectly content staying in Wollongong for a bit but I had to pick up my good car I left in Cairns. I had left with my car with my road trip friends, Andrea and Riki. It worked out leaving it with them, as I didn’t have to pay for the airport fees. Andrea flew out of Cairns on Wednesday for Darwin, Australia so it actually worked out perfect as I was getting in Wednesday. I didn’t really know what I was going to do when I got to Cairns. I was considering staying for a few days there, searching for a farm stay in the area, and doing some searching for other jobs. I had sent a few applications to the mining engineering companies but haven’t heard anything yet. Just when I thought I was getting a little overwhelmed I got a message from Andrea telling me where to stay in Cairns and who to contact. I contacted his friend Jamie, who is from England. Jamie, a Swedish guy Matti, and I stayed in the same room in Gilligan’s hostel and got along very well. Gilligans was right downtown Cairns and close to everything. Andrea and Jamie had stayed in a hostel for a while in Sydney together and had reconnected in Cairns. I had gotten into Cairns on Wednesday night at midnight and didn’t even have a room so it worked out great when I met these guys and got the last bed in there room.
The following day I did some exploring in the city. It was a bigger city than Arlie Beach. It was the hub to get to the Great Barrier Reef so there was a port nearby. There were many hostels, restaurants, and tourist shops. It is a major tourist area. They don’t have any nice beaches but they have a lagoon pool similar to Arlie Beach. It is along the bay which consisted of mud flats at the edge of the waters. They have a nice walkway along the bay that leads to a great skate park. I was told it was the 12th best park in the world and best in Australia. I skated there with a guy I met at my hostel. It was a great concrete park with 2 bowls, several sets of stairs, curbs with steel to grind, and fun banks to cruise.
I stayed in Cairns for 3 nights and was ready to move on. There’s not much to do besides go out at night, and go to the lagoon and skate park during the day. Cape Tribulation is about 2 hours to the north and is a very scenic area that everyone recommends to go to. It has several rivers and is within the rainforest. I didn’t want to head any further north and wanted to try and save some money so decided not to go.
During my time in Cairns I called several people that take WWOOFERS or Willing Workers on Organic Farms. I had signed up for the WWOOFING before I came and hoped to try it out. With this you work about 3-5 hours a day on a farm and the family/owners gives you a place to stay and feed you. I had called about 20 farms in two days before I found someone that wasn’t full. Either, farms didn’t have any work or had people already. The place I found had domestic kangaroos, a library of Australian books, and was on the edge of the outback about 2.5 hours southwest of Cairns. The owner, Daryl sounded nice and we headed out on Sunday to his place. He said it was fine for Jamie to come as well. Jamie was ready to leave Cairns and hoped on board with me. I planned to stay a week there.
Our farm stay was just outside of Herberton near a small town called Irvinebank. The area is within the dry forest, just on the edge of the rainforest. It is also on the border of the outback. This place in Australia, because of its climate, has the most dangerous reptiles in the world; I mean deadly snakes, poisonous spiders, and several other insects that aren’t fun to deal with. He had 6-foot ant farm mounds in the back! I mean I never saw anything like it. If this place doesn’t toughen you up, I don’t know what will. Our cell phones lost service probably an hour outside of the farm. Our only contact with the outside world was with the landline telephone.
The owner, Daryl, had 50 acres of land. His place was made of sheet metal and wood. His house (if you can call it that) had a bedroom, a living room with couches, a TV with satellite, a library of Australian books and a kitchen. He had an outside area that was covered and had a fire pit, chairs, a couch, and a cooking station. He had 3 cabins outside. I only consider one cabin as livable at the time I got there. Jamie and I checked out the other cabin the first night we got there and there was a bat flying around, we told Daryl we would work on that tomorrow and sleep inside the living room for the night.
Now the first day we arrived around 4pm. Daryl was 55 years old and was very friendly. He had the flu when we arrived so I figured he would want to rest and maybe get some sleep. He kept saying that he was going to go to bed. Daryl is a big talker, more than anyone I probably have met in my whole life. He talked from the moment we got there till about midnight. He talked through two movies until Jamie and I closed our eyes on the couches, he probably talked for about 30 minutes after we were asleep. He had interesting things to talk about, like Australian history, places he’d traveled, but it takes a lot to listen for hours. Jamie and I cooked dinner earlier that night because we wanted Daryl to rest up. We made some eggs and toast. Daryl offered anything in his cabinets and fridge to us, so that was very accommodating. Also, he had about a hundred channels of TV and the wide selection of books. He gradually talked less as the days progressed but still it was hard to read a page in a book or watch a movie without him coming out and talking to us. I think he has been having a lot of foreigners staying with him so he probably has not had anyone to talk to in a while. I think it could also have to do with the 4-liter box of wine he would drink every night. Yes, that’s right 4 liters of dry goon! Australians call boxed wine goon, I don’t know the origin of that one. As he drank more he would talk more, and was more likely to repeat stories.
So we got a good night sleep and got up around 10 am on Monday morning. It was nice that he was very casual on working. It was also somewhat comical to me. Most farm stays work from 6am in the morning, our work started whenever we got up. That first day we had some coffee and relaxed. Eventually Daryl got the energy to give us our first task. He had us do some forest fire prevention. There are a lot of brush fires in the area. He had us rake all the dry brush surrounding the outhouse. It was quite peaceful work; we just had to be aware of all the potential dangerous wildlife. After this we collected firewood and then started to clean the cabin with the bat. We pulled everything out and cleaned the bat guano out. There were holes in the cabin and that’s how the bat would get in, I think. Also there were lots of ants, just small ants here. All the bedding smelled a bit foul as well. Daryl didn’t seem too pushy of a boss, as he would just kick it in the living room watching TV. We decided to check out the 3rd cabin in the back. It was a bit further, past a pond. It looked better than the 2nd cabin so we decided to work on this one more. But when Jamie pulled up the plywood under the mattress he nearly freaked when he saw about a thousand large red ants underneath. I mean these looked like some mean ants. That was enough for the day.
Daryl was happy if we worked 4 hours, but to be honest I think he just wanted company around his ranch. Later that afternoon he took us around his property. He had all types of fruit, plants, and animals. He had a few chickens and said he had about 100 kangaroos that hung around. He had one tame kangaroo, Rosy, that would come inside and would let you pet her. He had mango, banana, mulberry, lemon, lime, avocado, cashew, and coffee trees just to name a few. Most of them seemed dry and weren’t regularly irrigated. He did manage to grab a few lemons.
That night we hung around the fire and read and watched some movies. Daryl cooked us a pork stir-fry that tasted very good. I decided to give the cabin a try this second night. I killed 3 small spiders above the bed before climbing in. I used my own blanket, sleeping bag, and pillows. Jamie stayed inside and decided that’s where he would stay the rest of the time. I figured I would get my tent out if anything inside the cabin bit me.
The following day we woke up to help fight a brush fire. Daryl had mentioned if it didn’t get contained the night before we would help out, as he volunteers with the local brigade. Jamie and I didn’t really didn’t know what we would be doing, so we just followed Daryl. He had a proper fire suit, but no mask or water in his truck. We stayed outside the main portion of the fire and put out small pieces of wood that were still flaming after it passed by. Daryl gave us rakes and we went to work. We did our best to through some sand on the smoky portions and break up some of the wood. We walked around mostly to check to see if the fire looked contained in the area. It was nice to hike up some good bush hills. The ground was mostly granite rock with a small layer of topsoil, small trees and brush that had already had been burnt. It was a great experience to be out there. The fire department gave us sandwiches when we returned and invited us to the firehouse for a debriefing. They weren’t too happy that Daryl didn’t have a radio. But they were appreciative that we were there to help. Daryl grabbed a new box of wine, and had me drive back. When we got back I decided to clean my cabin with disinfectant. While doing so I had to fight off hundreds of tiny ants coming through some small holes and a few more spiders.
This experience is definitely one that I will remember. I wouldn’t be doing these things anywhere else.
The next day, Wednesday, Jamie and I did some more brush clean up around the home. We also adventured into the bush and checked out some of the old structures, old trucks, and the big ant farms. The anthills were taller than us, I mean over 6 feet tall. We also took a look in the pond to see if we could see any of the fish or turtles Daryl said he had. We didn’t see much as the water was muddy. There were large creeks that ran through his property, but they were dry at the time.
I took a drive into the closest town, Herberton, to get on the internet. The town is small and has all the essentials; it has two bars, a restaurant, a library, hardware store, post office, and some food shops. Everyone probably looked at me twice since most people drove 4-wheel drive trucks and nobody else had surfboards on their roof, as the nearest surf is about a 20 hour drive to the south.
The following day, Thursday, we headed to these hot springs about an hour and a half away. There are natural springs but the ones we went to were in a campground in several different concrete pools. I expected more of a natural setting but it was man made pools. The water actually is hot from the water in faults that warms up from the magna deep below ground. The water in the natural springs I heard was too hot for comfort. After that we went to see a few scenic spots. Each landmark we went to had a famous fig tree. The first one was named a cathedral fig tree for it’s enormous width. I had seen a few figs in Costa Rica and in Balboa Park, San Diego but this one was the biggest I had ever seen. You could actually climb your way up it too. The next site we looked at had a curtain fig tree. It grew around another tree, caused that tree to fall into another tree so it was at an angle and then grew down to the ground causing it’s drape or curtain shape.
On Friday Daryl took us to a couple more scenic areas. We went to two lakes that were formed from water explosions from craters in the earth. They were called Lake Eacham and Lake Barrine. We saw sawback turtles in Lake Eacham. We then drove to the closest big town, Atherton, which was about 40 kilometers away. There they had faster Internet and cell phone service. Jamie and I were keen on looking for some farm work for a week or two and met with the work agency there. I here from a lot of people that farm work is big up here but the agency and another harvest company I talked to said it has been to cold to harvest at the time we got there. So we are going to have to pass on that experience for now. I thought it would be good opportunity to try something new and make some extra cash.
On Saturday we took a ride to the closest town, Irvinebank. It is a historic mining town with only about 100 people living there now. They used to mine tin but there are several other things they have mined out here, like copper and iron ore. I am pretty sure they stopped mining in the early 1980’s. The town is very nice, it included a lake with a dam, museum, post office, pub, and local store. They have a free campground across from the pub. That was the first free campground I have seen advertised. Although I have heard there is a book on free camping around Australia.
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