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July 7th – 20th. Townsville
- Thinking outside the box and finding weeds
It had been almost a whole week back in hostel land as such high time to return to WWOOFing. The closest big place (AKA the nearest place the Greyhound stops) is Townsville, which was a three hour and forty-five minute southwards drive from Mission Beach, including a half hour stop in Cardwell. There was a really beautiful view at one point on this journey though perhaps I would have appreciated it more had I been caught unawares instead of having Liz alternate between an excited ‘it’s just around the corner’ and a fretful ‘maybe we’ve missed it’ for half an hour before we reached it. Our host Craig and his teenage son Brody picked us up from the bus terminal and drove us twenty minutes to the suburb of Roseneath, where we quickly dropped our bags in our room and went for a look around the farm.
Well...farm isn’t really the right word, in spite of the WWOOF book entry making note of ‘tree planting and fruit tree maintenance’ this ides either hadn’t come to pass yet or perhaps had been abandoned entirely. What there were were horses. Dozens of them. Craig doesn’t own any of them but instead charges people to keep them here, as such we wouldn’t actually be working with them at all...they were a pleasant backdrop however! It was interesting how quickly ‘wow look – a horse!’ fell to ‘what? Oh you just mean the horse?’ To be fair it was almost like Craig was running a sort of total emersion therapy for people with horse phobias, it was literally impossible to look in any direction without seeing at least one, there was even a pair in the front garden that came right up to the house windows!
There was also chooks, 4 really friendly ones that would follow you around, chasing you in a ‘don’t leave me!’ fashion if you picked up the pace as well as 7 more cautious fellows. These weren’t laying properly (i.e. in their coop as opposed to all over the property) so were not allowed out most of the time...I still managed to add to my chasing chooks around tally however. They’re pretty hard to catch but its manageable with a few of you as you can herd them in the right direction.
More animals...a trio of rabbits. These are considered a pest in QLD but Craig has a licence to keep them as part of his act (oh yeah, he’s a clown, more presently.) Clearly they would be very destructive if they got out, and the alternative to them being kept here would be three less rabbits in the world, but it still wasn’t too pleasant to see their individual small cages, within a larger cage...within the enclosed chicken coop.
Finally, the goat. Liz’s favourite individual in the world, all that foul language she uses in his direction is actually concealed affection. He was far from the cheeriest of customers, moaning at you to come over and then bucking his water over the very second you put it down, rearing up and aiming those pleasant looking horns in your direction if you dared to cross the circumference of his chain. To be fair I’d be annoyed too is I was chained up all day...hopefully I’d be clever enough to untangle myself if I got the chain tied up though, something the goat did and seemed incapable of freeing himself from without assistance three times a day. Despite the anger you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the thing, especially as he mournfully wined as you walked past and you went over to find he had tied himself up so bad he couldn’t even move one step, thrusting himself forward again and again but being held stationary. I was never sure why Craig even had him, he certainly wasn’t put to task cleaning out fields...perhaps he’s part of some future plan.
That may sound like a reasonable number of animals but the man (or, if you like, WWOOFer) hours needed to care for them was non-existent. The horses weren’t ours, feeding the chooks took perhaps ten minutes, the rabbits included in that. The goat took the most time, mostly because we felt obliged to check on him every couple of hours to ensure he hadn’t actually throttled himself and to replace the of course knocked over water. Still, not much time overall.
Craig didn’t seem that concerned with any of the above (that’s putting it politely) or indeed the property as a whole. Unlike other places we’ve stayed the farm is not even his second most concern, he runs a whole assortment of businesses, then central one being his clowning with a disco and rope access cleaning amongst his other concerns (I think at one point he said he had eight in total.) He moved out to the farm two years back and, to be honest, you could easily tell he was a business/city person simply planted in the middle of his surroundings. I must confess I didn’t take to him...and that really is putting it politely. I won’t put too much on here but briefly, he almost seemed like a businessman parody, frequently going off into long (and I mean LONG...the sun actually fully set during one) speeches (oh yeah another of his businesses is motivational speaking) about how he became successful (apparently McDonalds is the best model!) Some of these were so cliché filled it was hard not to burst out laughing; standing out in my mind was a po-faced ‘think outside the box’ ramble. Monologues are not a particularly engaging form of communication and with the topic so inane there was a sinking feeling each time he approached. Also He constantly mentioned money (that’s not a ‘wheelbarrow’ it’s a ‘300 dollar wheelbarrow’, we’re in his ‘million dollar home’) and took every opportunity to big himself up as a ‘unique individual.’ In short, not the most agreeable of people.
Almost enough character assassination...but...one last moan. Cleanliness. It’s a good attribute...but there are limits. Example – T-towels. These are to be use to IMMEDIATLY clean any imperfection and are to be folded in the following manner (actually I forget the specific anal-retentive design but fully expect I’ll live a full happy life devoid of such knowledge) as to give 16 distinct surfaces that must not be used once the slightest speck of dust has touched it. We’d go through at least ten towels each day...they are simply perfect for every job. Drying up? Use a t-towel. Wiping up a spill? T-towel. No oven gloves? Rely on your old friend T-towel. Need a bath mat? Here comes your saviour, the almighty towel of T. Goat looking less than sparkly today? Flex that T-towel ready for action. That’s just one extreme example but there were rules and strictly to be adhered to orders of doing things for ever tiny aspect of life. This meant you were constantly on edge thinking you were doing something wrong...incessant self-examination and analysis is far from the ideal route to feeling at ease.
Sharing in our experience were three other WWOOFers during our stay, two when we first arrived, then up to three, then back down to two when one left a few days before we did ourselves. At first we didn’t really relate well, partly because of the general dissatisfaction with the whole situation and partly through lack of effort on our part, but things thawed towards the end of the first week and in the end it was really cool to have other people there, joking about the situation took some of the strain off it and, simply enough, it was just good to talk with and get to know some new people.
The work itself...weeding. And...no...that’s it. Weeding. Ok, let’s be fair, we did do a few minutes animal care, move sprinklers and water areas but at least 80% of the time...weeding. Pull out the ground, pile in wheelbarrow, take to burn pile, use the pickaxe to extract tough plants (with only one pickaxe between all of us it felt stupid when we did fields with almost nothing but tough ones...not fun pulling plant after plant after plant to no success.) For three days I also did a bit of whipper snipping but, surprise surprise, it eventually broke (in a new and novel manner, you couldn’t turn it off apart from burning through the fuel) so such a wide variety of tasks was short lived. Weeding. Weeding today. Weeding tomorrow. Weeding till the very end of time. At first I was able to put some energy into it but found even the slightest motivation short lived as the days ticked over into double figures...after all Craig doesn’t have a day off so why should we? It was hard to avoid the conclusion that we were just free labour (not helped by Craig bragging to a friend ‘guess how much my workforce costs?’ in front of us...not a master of people skills.) I don’t mind the work on occasion being repetitive but SOME variety is needed, if I just saw it as work I’d get a job and get paid, I’d like to learn some things along the way, new skills and knowledge about how farming, permaculture in particular, works, not just...weeding...weeding...weeding...
Something good: Ollie! That’d be a dog. He was the most unfarm farm dog I’ve encountered so far, being confined to the fenced in back garden all the time. Fairly young but not a puppy, he ran in circles around the garden most of the day, it was a pity to see such an energetic creature so confined but at least we managed to take him for one long walk during our stay...something tells me it’s the only one he’d had for some time! He was very well trained, coming instantly when you called him and with a near fatalistic phobia of entering the house...the hilarious combination of him and a sprinkler certainly sticks in memory!
One day that Craig wasn’t there (thankfully these were frequent, he was away both weekends we stayed) we all went for a walk into the forests backing onto the property. It was cool to wander through such overgrown surrounds, carefully down a steep bank to a creek. It was a little challenging constantly navigating around and over things, even though the pace was far from frantic...but exercise comes in all forms!
Out two week stay eventually drew to a close...almost. We had intended to leave on a Wednesday...that is until Craig returned Monday evening. He was unhappy with the amount of work done and...oh, a thousand other things he lets us know about at length across a pair of mammoth speeches. On reflection he had one or two fair points but ultimately it was very insulting, we had been working (him alternating such allegations with winding stories about how drunk he’d gotten over the weekend and name dropping didn’t help my opinion) plus...ah I probably shouldn’t go into it. Needless to say there had been an unpleasant atmosphere whenever he was present beforehand, after this his threat of ‘you’re more than welcome to leave tomorrow’ sounded an appealing suggestion. So, one more ramble as we walked down the stairs to leave (oddly the fact we’re leaving was never mentioned) and a forty dollar taxi for the pleasure of leaving twenty-four hours early...kind of says it all really!
Summary: Though there were good memories, mostly owing to our fellow WWOOFers, it was an uncomfortable couple of weeks; we probably, defiantly, should have left after giving it a few days chance at the start. In a way there was bound to be a bad WWOOF place on the way...hopefully we’ve got it done and out the way now...
End on something light: One morning I headed out of the house and sat down to put on my trainers. I put my foot in, as is my custom, but it didn’t go as far as normal...in fact it seemed to stop only halfway in. Odd, I thought. I held the show up to my face and looked within...hmm, that’s a cane toad there alright...a few taps on the side of the bench later and it had grumpily fell out...followed by a second, baby toad. So it turns out my trainers are considered an appropriate home for cane toads...right...I don’t have those trainers anymore...
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