wwoofing!!

i have just succesfully completed my first week of WWOOFING! and it was GREAT! i ended up in the absoloute middle of nowhere on a massive sheep farm with an old guy called Bob, his dog Ginger and a random korean girl called something like Tsu Yeong (not too sure properly what her name was as she could hardly say anything and only ever had two responses, no matter what u said to her - "ahhh... yes... ahhh" and "oh really!")
Bob
Bobs place......and its view
we did such strenuous activities as making fences, feeding the sheep and shifting fertilizer! we seemed to get up unnecessarily early for these tasks and run out of steam each day by around 11 o clock. in the afternoons me and Tsu Yeong were free to roam around - bearing in mind there was nowhere to go apart from for monotomous mile after mile walking in the bush! we wandered to an amazing salt lake one day, and then to a deserted beach. another day bob took us fishing which was really fun. he told me that southern australian waters are the main place for great white sharks so it was a bit scary in his tiny little fishing boat but it was really cool. it officially confirmed to me though that i am absaloutely rubbish at anything practical as i was totally spastic and seemed to get caught up in my fishing line everytime i tried to throw it out, the hook catching on a different item of clothing each time! and i caught no fish at all. we stayed there until the sunset - which was great and gave me something to look at while bob and tsu yeong were busy catching theirs - which we ate for our tea! yum yum. cant get much fresher than that!

bob makes his own bread which we ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner! not sure what we would have done without it since the nearest shop was miles out of the way (i only visited a shop once the whole week - couldnt have spent any money even if i had really really wanted to) he also collects his own honey from hives on his farm, and i think he basically just eats whatever he can from the island... on saturday when me and tsu yeong (luckily) werent with him he later told me he had had to kill a wounded kangaroo but now it was "safe in the freezer"! eurgh.

he was a really sweet and generous old guy, and i was completely taken aback when he offered to pay for both of us to go on an organised tour of the island on saturday. i tried to offer him money for it, but he was adament that he pay for us both - which was like $200!! when i first arrived he had told me he would take me touring in his car (which obviously would have been much cheaper) but for some reason he then had decided an official tour would be better - and i couldnt figure out why since when he told me we were driving along a majorly bumpy road and i had got used to the fact that he generally just wanted to talk to me- not requiring me to talk back much, so i missed the part where he told me why he thought it was a good idea!

the tour was great - we visited a sea lion colony - just a beach where a permanent colony of like 4000 sea lions are just laid around all over the place - on the beach, up the hill, everywhere.

then we went on a koala walk, had a bbq lunch, visited some rock formations and seals and a visitors centre. we saw a tiger snake - which is the 3rd deadliest snake in the world, more dangerous than a rattle snake and loads of other wildlife - a massive kangaroo hopping along the road, loads of wallabies and echindas.

'remarkable rocks'wallabiesits not called kangaroo island for nothing. on the first night we were walking on a cliff top watching the sunset and i looked to my side and there was a MASSIVE kangaroo - literally as big or even bigger than a man, just stood there looking at us! i froze and whipped out my camera and then it plopped off down the hill.
it was great, definately different to being in Melbourne and Sydney! i got the ferry back to adelaide this morning (after staying there 6 days) and booked into my hostel before having a look around the city. Adelaide seems alright, more interesting than i thought but the shops (and people) that are around remind me more of Bradford, while melbourne was more like Leeds. Setting off on my 14 day safari on wednesday morning which will be amazing!!

my plans for the following month are as follows!

Monday 7th May - set off from Melbourne :[ on the overnight greyhound to Adelaide (yawn)

Tuesday 8th - Arrive in Adelaide at 5 am, and get straight onto the ferry at 6.45 to head over to Kangaroo Island http://www.tourkangarooisland.com.au/default.aspx where i will wwoof http://www.wwoof.com.au/ for a week

Monday 14th - Ferry back to Adelaide, stay there for two nights

Wednesday 16th - Head off from Adelaide on 2 week safari! woohoo!

[Monday 21st - Mum, Bea & Dot arrive in Melbourne!]

Wednesday 30th - Arrive in Darwin and fly straight out that night to Brisbane to meet up with Mum, Bea & Dot

Friday 8th June - Mum, B, D leave Australia... ill fly back to Darwin

at the moment im also trying to sort out my return flight to England because its seems to be really tricky to change the dates for it, which was not what Bunac told me... basically i can either stick with the flights iv already got and come back via Bangkok to be back in England on the 8th August, or change it via Singapore to be back in England around the 24th, at a cost of around 100 pounds.... which is way more than i thought! 100 pounds is like $240!!! totaly breaking the bank there. not sure what to do.

so im leaving melbourne on Monday which is really rubbish, i love it here too damn much. i finish work tomorrow, so may not be able to update this/photos/email for a while (not sure whether there will be internet access on kangaroo island or not) and wev now found a replacement for me in the house so even if i wanted to stay longer i couldnt do! hehe. mind u, as much as im gonna hate to leave melbourne, i cant wait to get back up north and get a bit of a tan again... me and lauren have totally regressed into pasty english folk again which was a look that in sydney we managed to just about fend off for the most part.