15 – 25th October. Wingham.
- Pickaxe, wallabies and literature, I’d visit that shop.

And so the ever delightful Greyhound bore us five hours south from the industrial banality of Grafton to Taree which, if anything, looked even worse. Needless to say we’re beginning to appreciate why the majority of backpackers jump straight from Sydney to Byron, if not Brisbane. It’s with great pleasure , and not a little relief, that I can report we only remained in Taree exactly the length of time it took to drive away from it, a drive that took us through the sleepy looking town of Wingham and then a rocky 14k up an unsealed road to my eleventh and final WWOOF host.

Our hosts were Rodger and Mary, a South-African couple who had previously lived in Melbourne until they moved up to the farm four years ago. Both work, Mary as a part-time substitute primary school teach and Rodger from home, and so the farm resides somewhere between a hobby and a beautiful place to live…even the long dormant sun came out to illuminate the deep green valleys and sky-piercing mountains. There was a small, enclosed veggie garden next to a chicken coop, six geese made daily investigation of the dams and modest fruit tree orchard, four white goats grew their beards and an indeterminable number of cows gormlessly let themselves be herded from paddock to paddock each evening. There was the run-down old house that came with the property, now destined to sit idle with the completion of the impressive new, very modern house a year ago. We had a room within, with an unbelievable view through the roof to floor windows (part of the solar passive design of the house, they’d use the sun to heat the floor and provide heat during winter), as well as our own toilet and shower…a pair of real towels pushing the luxury to excessive heights.

We arrived Friday evening and over the weekend we did a few jobs around the place, as well as exploring the 100 acres. Rodger and me spread out and (slowly, painstakingly, frustratingly) levelled out a whole load of gravel that a water tank will presently sit on, we all picked some broad beans, boiled and bagged ‘em, weeded around the base of the fruit trees and made a start weeding the area of planned new veggie garden, where cardboard had been laid down to kill off the grass but high winds had proved uncooperative.

Across the weekdays we worked independently, crossing tasks off a list. Well, I crossed them off; Liz drew smiling faces next to them. Things fell into two camps, hard sweaty work with the pickaxe and dull, monotonous weed work, the weed in question being fireweed, it’s utter invasion of the property meaning it would take us approximately two years to strike that done-with-it line through its place on the list. And then a whole new lot would probably grow next month anyhow.

Owing to the at times oppressive heat (it actually feels like Australia again!) we got into the pattern of getting up reasonably early, putting in a couple of hours of pick-type work, devouring a cup of tea and then doing another two/three hours of weed work before having lunch and calling it a day. Pick-work was thus:

1.Redirecting the water tank trench

An excavator had dug in a trench down to where the new water tanks would be… the only problem being that the angle was utterly wrong and the pipe would in fact hit solid earth after a couple of metres. So, lots of pickaxeing to correct this, up to almost a metre towards the bottom and then much shovelling of dirt over to the other, useless, side of the trench.
Sweat rating – 4 buckets.

2.Water pipe trenches around chicken coop

There was a solitary tap at the top left hand corner of the chicken coop/veggie garden complex (imagine it as a rectangle.) While this works alright for watering it would be far more convenient if there were two taps, one half way along the top line and another at the bottom left hand corner. Enter the pickaxe, up comes the soil and soon enough a pair of trenches from the existing top to the new positions. Rodger removes the original tap, lays out and puts together the new pipes and before long we’ve filled the trenches back in and what was once but a dream of eased watering is now a reality.
Sweat rating – 5 buckets.

3.Fruit tree hole.

Or, giant fruit tree hole. Mary informed us that the hole had to be 75cm by 75cm by 75cm. Like fools we took this at face value and set to it little knowing she would return later and own up to an exaggeration. Ultimately the joke was one her as it was only 75cm, by 75cm by 65cm one side and 55cm the other, that last pair being the depth. At first it wasn’t too bad digging down…then came the clay…then the shale…then the stone. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been due to a simple division of labour, me whacking the hell out of it with the pickaxe, stone flying everywhere (those initially overkill looking safety glasses proving their worth) and then collapsing to pour water down my throat whilst Liz got to burrowing all the loosened dirt and stone out…which made for a mildly comic moment when Rodger entered the orchard and wondered where Liz was only for her head to rise out of the ground below.
Sweat rating – 5 buckets and a medium sized paddling pool

Overall effect of having a prolonged grip on the pickaxe – blisters, afternoon naps and an unusual feeling that after examination turned out to be masculine satisfaction. I had dug a giant hole, after all.

As well as the fireweed we also slashed a whole paddocks of thick thistle (Liz with a blunt machete, me with the side of a spade), finished up weeding the new veggie harden area and picked some more batches of broad beans. We also collected the chook eggs and the suggestion that I once absent-mindedly allowed the, to escape, resulting in a worried call of ‘Liz…chickens!’ and some frantic herding, is of course nothing more than slanderous rumours concocted to damaged my good name.

Our 2nd weekend saw us planting a Quince tree into our big hole, it was almost a shame to see it filled in but I suppose one of the geese would do themselves foul in it eventually (really, really not the brightest of animals) if it was forever left as a tribute to our bloody minded desire to follow instructions. Later in the day (after a prolonged weeding interlude) we carefully drew both out names and the date of our stay in green paint onto a rock which we placed by the foot of the tree, all of the dozen in the orchard were planted by different WWOOFers and have such stones besides them, it’s a nice way to remember people’s visits…though it does also slightly unnervingly give the impression of a graveyard!

When there wasn’t a pickaxe demanding my attention we found time for some slightly less physical work – baking. Flapjacks, biscuits and a South African concoction called Crunchies. Fun to make and needless to say even more fun to eat…well, when you’ve brewed a cup of tea its rude not to isn’t it!?

On our last Sunday a pair of Mary’s teacher friends came round for lunch…so the morning was dedicated to cleaning around the house! The challenge of the mountainous food made it more than worthwhile of course!

Perhaps the highlight was the presence of wallabies; they’d calmly wander right up to the windows of the house, seemingly oblivious to our presence. The highlight of the highlight would be the ones with babies, which fed leaning down from the parents pouch and very occasionally went for a quick hop around before return to the pouch…very cute indeed!

It was all very nice…and in that reasonably banal statement lays the only niggling problem with the whole thing…it was nice, I read books (a history of Australia, two Steinbeck one – Cannery Row and The moon is down), ate good food, watched TV in the evening, went to see a film one night, played cards, even a game of Scrabble (which reminded me that I hate scrabble!)…all very nice…but not really a whole lot different from what I’d be doing at home in a weeks time…whilst before the surrounds (which were very beautiful) would have easily made it worthwhile but I…I dunno…this was the eleventh WWOOF place we’ve been…maybe it’s just not as novel as it once was…it was still great for the most part but I soon found myself looking forward to our next destination a whole lot so perhaps it is a good time to call a close to the WWOOFing phase of my travels…it has been an amazing way to see so much more of the country than we would have ever been able to do by ourselves and we met so many great people (plus the odd lunatic) and did so many memorable things along the way…tonnes of great memories but not its time to push onto Sydney and then…home…home after nine months on the other side of the world…I bet it’s gonna be bloody freezing!