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Hi(-:
we finally have the time to translate parts of our blog into english and hope that for all the english speaking it will be easier to read than our german:-D
We just arrived in coffs harbour after a long night in the greyhound and are excited for the new part of our australian adventure(-: we hope that we'll be able to explain why we stayed for such a long time in sydney and especially on the hadden farm and found it so difficult to leave!
We started our stay at the end of october and spent our first 4 days in a hostel in kings cross.
Our first impression of the hostel was: Many Germans. At 7 am, having spent the whole night flyinge, we were greeted by a "Morgen" and decided to flee into the city.
And we were amazed by how un-citylike Sydney is! From the first moment when we saw the harbour, we were in love with this city.
In the next four days, we discovered Circular Quay, the botanic gardens, the Opera House and something none of the other backpackers knew about, something that even the tourist information didn't have maps on... something called North Sydney! ;-)
Walking over the Harbour Bridge, past Luna Park and watching the sunset over the city from a little bay became one of the many great moments we still remember from our first trip there. :-)
Our first hostel experiences became better, too: We eventually managed to meet a lot of people who weren't Germans- we won't forget the first Australian girl we met with whom we talked for a whole evening and who gave us a lot of tips for our next trip- we were slowly getting an idea of how nice Australians are! Another person we won't forget was an Italian called Andrea. We could only see a red piece of luggage in the morning one day, on which Anna spied a sign that said "Andrea". We left our hostel for the day afterwards, as every day, but were already talking of how this italian girl might look like... black, long hair? Red lips and dark eyes? When the door actually opened that night, though, a tall, black-haired, friendly-grinning GUY came in! He smiled at the misunderstanding and told us that it's actually a boy's name, too, in Italy. With new understanding of other cultures (or names) and a great time in central Sydney, we were a bit sad to leave it but took a ferry to Manly.
From Manly, we had already planned to go to Collaroy by foot, on a great walk which is just 10 kilometres along really beautiful different beaches, and were surprised by how quickly we did it even with our backpacks on! Just when we went to the last headland before Dee Why, we asked an Australian lady to take a picture of the two of us and started chatting with her. Her name is Althea, and she told us that she had been whale-watching- and when we were interested, she spontaneously offered to take us to a few spots where you could look out for whales and take us to our hostel afterwards! After a small tour through Dee Why, she lent us her binoculars at Long Reef, and we ended up actually seeing three or four whales, one of which was even jumping around with a little baby! We were so happy- even happier, if a bit unbelieving how nice people are here, when Althea gave us her number and invited us to a trip to Wollongong!
Grinning, we entered our second hostel for the first time- and were just a little underwhelmed.
The hostel itself was really nice, a huge place with simple and clean rooms, but not very crowded and the few people we met on that first day weren't quite in the mood to talk.
Still, we had our beach, free surf- and boogieboards provided, and as soon as we could we tried both (with medium success, but a lot of fun!) A few days after our arrival, we also met Tobi and Daniel, with whom we spent a lot of time and had a lot of fun!
The hostel itself turned out to become our second home, too, after the first three days (we did a little study of this and it turns out you have to spend exactly three days in one place in order to really warm up to it): our room, intended as a four-bed-dorm, turned out to be only a private room for the two of us. Soon we really felt at home and discovered all the hidden ways to save some backpacker-money: when we were innocently washing our hands in the bathroom, we were greeted by the sentence "oh- are you doing washing again, girls?" (Hey! After all we had espacially bought this great outdoor-washing-powder for our clothes that you can even use in the sink!) The room service, too, got used to loads of laundry hanging on lines in the middle of "our" room.
We stayed in collaroy for 2 weeks and just loved the relaxed beach atmosphere.
We went for many long beachwalks to narrabeen or manly, always searching for whales and shells.
Also we got boogieboard addicted, went on many great daytrips with our new found friends(palm beach was definitely the best place to visit!) and althea really took us on a great roadtrip to wollongong!
All in all we just forgot one little thing..searching for work.
And after all the laying in the sun and boogieboarding we had to finally make plans for the rest of our stay.
A little hostel in the blue mountains offered cheap accomondation,free internet and laundry..all we could ask for!
We booked in 4 nights, planing on finally sending out our cv and searching for the next hostel.
It was really hard to leave collaroy, all the people and of course the beach behind and it didn't went without any tears.
Nevertheless we were excited to see the blue mountains!
The first impression when we came to Katoomba was: what a nice little town...but what were all the funny-looking old men with long beards doing here?
At first, we didn't really like this new atmosphere in the mountains... it was cold and there was no beach- problems we hadn't had in Collaroy! Add that we had to walk half an hour in order to get anywhere (one hour on the first day, because we'd been holding the map the wrong way round!) -yes, the three-day-rule applied here, too!
We first really got to like this place when we did our first long hiking tour and from then on, we were in love with the place! Unfortunately, due to the cold weather that day, we both got ill the next day...but while staying inside, we got to really like our hostel with its comfortable atmosphere, the fireplace and the freezer (we got ice cream!! :-D).
We ended up staying in Katoomba for three weeks and had a lot of fun there, doing a few more hiking trips, celebrating Anna's birthday in Wentworth Falls, baking tons of cookies and eating them with more tons of ice cream, going to the cinema (where they had to stop the movie because of a blackout), meeting great hiking friends and finding "ruined castle" /ruined stones.
After the first week, we realized that we had not come any closer to actually getting a job and we made the big effort of finally staying inside the computer room in spite of the good weather outside and worked on our CVs. Our plan was to search gumtree for jobs as waitresses, but first we decided to give our secret dream a chance, typed in "farm sydney" in google and called a few of the farms we found. And were surprised when one farm really wanted to take us! It looked like the dream destination to us, with big green lawns, cattle and horses, and we couldn't believe our luck!
A few mails later, we had to say goodbye to our third hostel in Australia and were excitedly sitting in a train that should take us to the Hadden Farm, where we were planning on staying about three weeks (one, we said, in case it was reeeally bad!)
When we arrived on the train station, we were relieved to see a friendly-looking woman waiting for us. We had the perfect arrival day with Bree driving us to the family's riverhouse, where we met a large part of the family, who all gave us a warm welcome and our first ride on the river!
When we arrived at the farm that evening, we had another surprise waiting for us: our accomodation was not a small room, as we had thought, but actually a whole house! With a pool! :-)
After this first day, we slowly got into the "farmwork" (and were surprised by how little real work it involved!). We did all different kinds of things, from helping Bree with housework and her candle business, playing with the cute kids Josh and Heidi, mowing lawns, to painting fences (which became one of our favourite jobs!!). And it turned out that we weren't expected to be the kind of workers who just pack and go home after our jobs were done, but that Bree and Rich really took us as a part of their family! We had so much fun driving Quads, eating BBQ with them, driving to a candle market with Bree, learning to waterski on the river, getting to know more of the family (everyone was just so nice!!), doing a little horseback-riding, watching typically Australian movies (we think), playing with the kids, jumping in the pool... and so many other things!
In fact, we were enjoying ourselves just too much to leave after one or even three weeks...or one month... and a week...
In the end, we stayed at the farm for one and a half months and didn't regret it even once! The family took us to their house boat at the Myall river, where we spent an unforgettable christmas water- instead of snowskiing and with a lot of fun!
On New Year's Eve, Neil and Darcy (Bree's parents) took us out on Sydney harbour for a great "Silvester" that we will never forget! We had even more fun than before (if possible) and, having stayed twice as long as expected, had a very hard time leaving our Australian family!
This was the first part of our english-blog, so we hope we didn't make too many spelling mistakes(-;
We'll write more about byron bay and our way up north soon!
Best wishes(-:
Anna and Vivi
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