This last week has been spent at Humpty Too farm in Bauple with Ian and Nicole Duncan and their two peerie lasses Rayne and Chantal. We got aff the bus from Noosa in the peerie toon of Tiaro where we were meant to be meeting Nicole. Unfortunately the bus stop had recently changed so we both ended up waiting an hour for each other a couple of hundred metres apart without realising. We got a lot of funny looks fae drivers and locals just standing on the corner for an hour - no the kind of place you usually see backpackers. Eventually a fine motel owner telt wis about the bus stop changes an we walked up the road and found them.
We got to the house and were introduced to the whole family then shown where we were to be staying. We slept in a peerie cabin, just next to the hoose, called Le Donga (Nicole is Swiss) After a brilliant nights sleep, the Monday started with being shown around the farm. It was a really boannie place. They owned about 40 achres of land, both parks an bush land. We were shown around all the animals, the 3 horses, the sheep and the chooks. The stay with the family was organised through the Helpx website and the idea is, you work for a few hours a day for your bed and food. The first days work was just trimming some lime trees. No sure trimming is the right word though, we hacked most of them off pretty severely. The rest of the day was spent playing with the lasses. They both did trampolining and were delighted when we told them we used to do it too. They had a really good trampoline in the garden so we taught them both back and front somersaults. On the Tuesday morning, Ian was going back to work. He worked 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off as a helicopter engineer in Western Australia. Ian and Nicole had to get up incredibly early to drive to Maryborough for an early flight so me and Karis were left we the job of getting the lasses up, fed an aff to school! Thankfully it all went absolutely perfectly. I even managed to cook Rayne (and me and Karis) fried eggs for breakfast! They were amazing! After that it was just finishing trimming the lime trees and then relaxing until the lasses got hom! We were amazed by the amount of wildlife we saw! Hundreds of birds - kingfishers, parrots, cockatoos, peerie black wans we white bellys an fanned tails (no idea what dey wir) and lots o idder things I canna mind. Dat wis just da birds, dir wis also loads of different kinds of lizards, giant green frogs and kangaroos!! None o the jobs we had to do were too difficult or took too long, it was mostly peerie bits of fencing, cleaning things, sanding and spending time we the lasses. Karis gave Rayne and Nicole a couple of riding lessons while me and Chantal gardened and played on the trampoline. Wir lack of work meant we had quite a lot of free time so we went kayaking down the river, played on the trampoline and in the pool, on Friday night we went to a beach cinema in Hervey Bay and watched "The Adventures of Tin Tin" which was really good and on Sunday we went for a pub lunch in Tiaro. All in all it's been a really good week! The last night was quite sad. Me an Karis cooked them mince and totties fur tea (quite a new concept but they all loved it!) By the time we left they were trying to work out the possibility of comin to Shetland to visit wis! Sitting on a bus to Hervey Bay now, for wir trip to Fraser Island! Canna wait for that! I'll try to write a bit less, a bit more often now cus these things are getting longer and longer!