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July 27th – August 10th. Vintner’s Secret Vineyard, Childers
-Back to the grape life
We left Agnes Waters and headed further south to the small town of Childers. While I felt a momentary involuntary twitch as I once more stepped onto the Greyhound thankfully this journey was much shorter than the mammoth last one, at only around 3 hours (and 40 minutes of that was a rest stop in the appealingly named Apple Tree Creek...though it would have been more appealing if it hadn’t transpired that Childers was only another 3 minutes up the road!) I spotted a signpost for our next WWOOF host, Vintner’s Secret Vineyard, just before the coach pulled in to stop, so reasoned that it couldn’t be too much of a trek away from town. This assumption proved accurate as one of our hosts, called Marianne, came and whisked us the less than 5 minutes up the road to the vineyard. In spite of being very near to town it felt as if it was the middle of nowhere, there was the occasional sound of a car passing by and if you stood at one side of the property and really tried you could make out the edge of town, but the stillness, clarity of stars and a hundred other little peaceful things made it feel anything but urban.
After the less than fantastic previous WWOOFing experience I freely admit that we were a touch apprehensive about what this one would be like...if it proved even half as bad as the last I was in a good mind to spend the last of my cash on a hostel/touristy final month down to Sydney and then jet off home. Thankfully we needn’t have worried as it quickly became apparent that this place was going to be fantastic...what a relief! Marianne was endlessly kind; constantly ensuring you didn’t even feel the slightest pang of hunger (I forget how I coped without several cakes a day...it’s hardly healthy I suppose...but...erm...oh well!) and generally just being ace. Her partner Ed was more the no-fuss Aussie male type but this was also great after its own fashion. Both made us feel very welcome and the weeks flew by as they have the annoying tendency to do when you’re enjoying yourself.
In case you somehow haven’t worked it out by now the crop was grapes, the product wine. There were five acres of vines on the property and also a cellar door with attached cafe which people would occasionally drive up with the intention of visiting. The gardens all around the house were amazing, masses of colourful flowers and decorative touches everywhere and there were a small number of fruit trees in the back garden as well. The house was on three levels, the lower comprising the cellar door and cafe, the middle the bedrooms, laundry, bathroom and shower and at the top was the kitchen, living room, dining room and converted veranda, which was where we would be sleeping. It was a great place to call home a while, with stunning views over the surrounding fields, which seemed to have an almost English countryside feel to them. There were no curtains, so with two sides of the room completely made of glass you can imagine that we roused more or less in sync with the sun rising...though kind of early this was a very pleasant way to wake up...much better than my ear splitting phone alarm!
Actually we’d be awoken before that, usually several times in fact. The blame for the travesty falls with the cockerels, which would simply insist in loudly crying in the middle of the night, 4AM seeming to be a firm favourite of theirs! There were lots of chickens, and as such loads of eggs, including some really odd looking exotic breed chickens and also some quails...which are very tiny and very cute! Also representing on the animal front were a pair of geese (there was once a third but he got bored one day and flew off...he’s still nearby however and is occasionally sighted) that try and look threatening but then totally ruin the image by splashing around in their paddling pools, 5 cows grazing in a paddock next to the vines and a small dog who goes by the name of Theo (or Theodore if it’s a formal occasion) who when you approach him would expectedly roll onto his side and lift his feet and look at you with a ‘you know you’re going to’ face until you scratched his belly. I’ve got really used to being constantly surrounded by animals during my travels...it’s going to be very odd when I return home!
There were also other WWOOFers when we arrived, one Venezuela/French girl who’d been here a couple of weeks and a French couple who had arrived only a few hours before us. They were all very friendly and it was good to be in such a large household.
Work wise the main reason we’re here, certainly why there’s so many people here, is that it is time for the grape vines to be pruned. There’s an expert coming to explain to us all exactly how to go about this but due to poor weather (yes, believe it or not that does happen occasionally) he couldn’t arrive as originally planned and so we spent a few days doing other tasks; raking up loads of leaves in the front and back gardens, unloading this year’s newly made wine from several trailers into boxes in the garage and also labelling some other bottles. The weather cleared eventually and the expert arrived to teach us what to do, it seemed a bit confusing at first but I learned before too long, confidence seeming to be an important factor, not staring at the vines thinking which ones are best to cut (as this will make the job take actually forever) but actually cutting them. After this point all of the work was pruning until the five acres of vines were done...this was fairly slow going but after 4 long days we reached the end...which certainly felt cause for celebration! It could perhaps be a bit of a boring job at times, moving fairly slowly along each line endlessly cutting (till there were blisters on my hand!) but once you’d done it enough to stop thinking so much and just go with the flow of it, and perhaps more importantly once I decided that listening to some music as I went was a mighty fine idea, it was in fact not the most unenjoyable of work possible.
It felt odd to no longer be working in the vines after spending so long in them but we couldn’t very well just sit in them doing nothing so other work had to be found. An ambitious veggie garden structure was being built in the back garden, the male half of the French couple had experience with that sort of thing back home so for most of the time he helped out with that (while Liz and myself kept busy weeding, watering, raking...the million little upkeep things that constantly need doing) but after he (and she) left I did my best to give a hand with this. I’m not sure I was that helpful really but I did a couple of things of the holding and passing nature so at least there was a vague feeling I was doing something. With those two leaving, and the other WWOOFer having left a little earlier in the week, it meant we were now the only two WWOOFers left. There was obviously a different feel with the household being almost halved, one physical difference being we now ate at the table in the kitchen/living room area as before there would have be too many of us to do this, but both were good and I guess people have to leave at some point!
One day a friend of our hosts, Warren, who was an ever present presence on the farm (helping out with the pruning, veggie garden and everything in between) needed a bit of help himself over on his beef cattle farm and so I headed out to lend a hand. He was baling up hay to feed the cattle during the winter period and what Ed and myself did was follow his baling machine (an amazing thing which seemingly magically turned lines of hay into bale, tied up and everything, as it drove over them) putting the bales into piles, later to stack them up on the ute, drive over to the barn and restack them there. There were just fewer than 200 bales in all and it was really hard work, the hardest I’ve done so far, basically spending the afternoon lifting whilst your eyes near bled from the constant bombardment of hay. Still, we got there in the end and it’s not as if it’s something I have to spend my life doing so I really can’t complain all that much!
Getting back from all that baling action I spent an enjoyable half hour in a chair staring blankly into space before heading into Childers with our hosts. One of their friends was heading over to study in America and they were having a relaxed get-together meal at a social club in town which they had kindly invited us along to. It was a nice evening, everybody really friendly, far too much food (taking full advantage of the help yourselves system) and a touch of rum...it’s just a pity really that I spent a lot of it fighting the urge to doze off in my seat. I certainly slept well that night!
Mid-way through the pruning Ed needed to head down to Brisbane to get some dental work done and was good enough to offer to take us both with him. It was an early start and three hour drive but coming up to mid-day I found myself on a city CAT boat heading into the city centre (as you may recall Brisbane had a massive river running through it and these feline things are a type of bus on water.) I’d last been on one of these things when I first arrived in the country almost six months ago and it felt a bit surreal to be back on one again...and even more surreal to back in the city where I started this whole journey...I actually knew where things were! However this slight surrealist edge was pushed into utter madness when walking down Queens Street (the ultra busy central street of the city) we walked right into two people I’d last seen in Busselton, over on the West Coast. They’d just arrived back in the country, having been in NZ, and were set to be working at a farm festival/event in the city over the next week. The odds against running into them in such a fashion, especially considering we were only in the city for a few hours, must be rather high...yet this type of thing keeps happening...again, madness! We followed up such unlikelyness with some food and chai on the still very attractive south bank before meeting up with Ed once more and driving up to a lookout above the city. I’ve never seen a city from such elevation before and it was certainly a sight, a small cluster of a dozen or so sky scrapers in the middle and then masses upon masses of buildings stretching off just into the horizon...the scale of it all was what was most memorable. It was only a very brief city visit really, perhaps best seen as an appetiser for when we’re there properly in early September, but it was enjoyable none the less.
The day after the pruning was done and dusted Marianne instructed us to be up and ready by 9.30 the next morning as she had a surprise for us. We were none the wiser as we got into the car and drove off but it was soon revealed that as a thank you for the work done we were heading out to a Reptile park in Childers. It was a smallish place, there were not many other people there meaning we got a brief private tour from one of staff, telling us about various lizards and holding them up for us to feel. Mostly the place dealt in snakes and crocodile, it was a lot better than similar, more well known place, in the cities (the place in Darwin immediately springs to mind), offering all the same stuff but not charging you for things like taking photos and not being one of a million others really can totally change the experience of a place. OK, so a group of 30ish pre-school children showed up after a while, but I suppose you can’t have it all! We watched a couple of snake shows, watched the crocodile be fed (which didn’t exactly go to plan, resulting in the park owner looking a bit scared less than a metre away from a giant crocodile!) and I held both a snake and a juvenile crocodile...yes there are photos...no there not online yet.
One of the French couple had a birthday whilst here...the other’s had been only the week before. They both tried to keep these facts quiet but clearly didn’t try nearly hard enough, resulting in the making of cake, writing of cards and giving of wine. Its good evidence of the warm and positive atmosphere here that such effort was made, it really feels like we’re part of the place as opposed to just guests. Whether having a BBQ (the meat explaining why there’s one less cow here now than last year!), trying out the new vintage over yet another amazing meal or just relaxing in the hammock with a book (but not the pool, as Liz found out to her shivering cost) after the day’s work is through, it’s all great!
I think I might have forgotten a few details, but all the big bits are in there so I guess this’ll do! These two weeks flew by really fast, I had a wonderful time and , you never know, we might come back for another visit some day...
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