WWOOFING - Bee Farm, Fish Farm and Wildlife Sanctuary 60
I was excited for this next part of my travels; I have done so much research into organic farming over the last few years and couldn’t wait to get started…
Peter from the Bee Farm, kindly picked me up from Midland train station. Back at the farm one of the first things I saw was a pregnant kangaroo, I was told it was a rare sight around the farm because of their dog Jess. After helping with tea we walked around the property around the fire-break, stopping off for drinks with the neighbours and getting an insight into the real culture of Australia.
In the morning I was introduced to Richard an oyster farmer from Tasmania who originally came from Sunderland but had spent time in Ireland during the unrest there. He was such an interesting guy. We visited the local park together later, which was very busy due to a lovely day at the beginning of spring – it was nice to feel the heat from the sun as previous days had been quite chilly. Having drinks in the back garden later reminded me of home and I have to admit filled me with homesickness for a little while, it is so long since I have seen family and friends.
Peter and his wife are well in to their 70’s and have run the farm for over 40 years. Unfortunately now because of his mobility he is trying to sell and split up his business. I feel it is such a shame that all that knowledge and passion will be lost forever. Peter shared with me his participation in the great documentary ‘More than Honey’. He spoke to a guy that originally came to Australia to do research into termites which proved quite difficult. Many people persuaded this guy however to turn his research towards bees. The guy explained his research and the worldwide bee community to his Uncle Markus Imhoof whose hobby was movie making and the film was a huge success.
I loved spending time with Peter, labelling jars and filling them with the exact weight of honey; Peter made it look a whole lot easier than it actually was. I had a go at cleaning the hives of the old honeycomb with special tools and helped out doing other maintenance tasks around the hives. It has been a long time since I worked with electronics so I was super pleased with myself that one day I managed to fix the safety switch on a heater. I even had a look at Peter's other occupation farm painting.
Richard and I spent some time at the farm alone while Peter was working at home; I attempted to do the cooking for both of us but not being very domesticated I was thankful when Richard came in to save my meals. One day I listened to five answer phone messages about an arrest for tax avoidance, I fully expected the FBI to come busting in like in the film ‘Into the Wild’. I think I may have been on my own too long, my imagination is running riot!!!! It turned out to be a nothing!
With Richard owning his own van and me not having any transport it seemed a good idea to do a car-share for the next part of our journey. So we hit the road towards Badingarra taking in the beautiful green landscapes in this vast vast country, with only very few houses visible along the way.
Our next stop was Alandi Ponds – a fish farm.
We were welcomed with a lovely, very typical English tea as the owners were both from the south of England having come over as 10 bob poms, years ago. Albert took us for a quick look around the farm before we started work and we were rewarded later with a delicious meal straight from the garden including freshly squeezed orange juice. You can’t get better than that!
It was great getting to know another family and learning about different lifestyles and connecting with people. Linda’s daughter was in to horses and competitions and travelled thousands of miles including to the Mongolia Darby and America.
Distance here takes on a whole different meaning than back home in England!
The following morning my work consisted of digging kangaroo grass and re-planting it in an area suffering from erosion. WWOOFING jobs are usually for a set number of hours per day and also allow quite a bit of free time so I spent the afternoon taking photos around the place. I found an old VW Campervan that had done 800,000 miles and a nice Austin Ute.
More cake and more photos followed before we fixed Richard's radio and fed the silver perch. We then took one from the tank, descaled it on a scrapped tyre and threw it on the BBQ – awesome. These fish are quite oily with razor sharp fins when catching but taste really good.
I am learning such a lot from these farmers- and loving it! I helped net the pond, getting it just right so that we could sort the fish in to different sizes. After a late lunch Albert took us out in the Ute (pick-up truck) for a tour of the farm – he had owned 3000 acres of cleared bush and farmed 10,000 sheep. The sense of freedom here is amazing, I was stood in the back of the Ute with the dogs and surveyed the vastness of the place. Great as it is for a tourist like myself and very rewarding I can understand just how hard actually living here long-term could be.
It was soon time to leave and head to Geraldton to Waminda – a Wildlife Sanctuary for our next job. We stopped a few times along the coast to take in the views and soak up the sunshine, chatting along the way. I didn’t realise it at the time that it would be the last drive with Richard.
Arriving at Waminda Farm we met the neighbours and lots of Ian's friends before sharing fish and chips with them all – a great beginning to our stay.
The following day I was up at 7.30 to feed the animals including 60 chickens, ducks, kangaroos, emus, dingoes and a range of birds it was only then that we humans could have our breakfast! Next job was to plant trees down the road taking care to give them as much help as possible to survive the harsh conditions of sand and the intense heat that was on its way. One afternoon Richard found a stimson snake in the wood pile and Ian released it into the shed to catch the mice.
I loved the variety of jobs on offer here; helping refurbish the front end of a 4x4 Toyota Hillux, a timing belt on a truck, clearing rust from a truck and putting up a fence around the caravan. There is a converted bus and caravan here that are rented out through airbnb.
On Sunday we went for a wander to the markets, so different to those I had visited in Asia, and we met up with other WWOOFers.
This place was great with loads of visitors and I could have easily settled here for much longer but I have so many plans for my time here in Oz I thought I had better be moving on. Richard on the other hand decided he would like to stay for longer and so I advertised on Gumtree for a car-share to get me out of Geraldton. Jess a German girl answered my advert and as she was planning an epic road trip around the north of Australia we decided to share some of the miles.
The night Jess arrived there was 11 of us sat down to eat together but I managed to show her around the farm and say final goodbyes to the guys before leaving early the following morning.
We hit the road in her Mitsubishi Challenger excited for the next journey.