Blogs from Gympie, Queensland, Australia, Oceania
January 5th 2012
Spent New Year up at Borumba, near Gympie in Queensland. Stayed at the Borumba Deer Park. Great place to camp. The creek was fantastic for the kids and the 4WDing in the state forest was excellent and heaps of fun. The deer park has wonderful facilities with hot showers and flushing toilets. The owners run regular activities for the kids such as deer feeding, face painting and a disco. Dogs on a lead are allowed. Heaps of people bring their boats to go water skiing or fishing as the dam is only 2 minutes up the road. We had a great time and enjoyed the company of some really great people. The creek was really good for all age groups as it had a long section that was quite deep - deep enough for the older ... read more
June 11th 2011
Since saturday the 28.05. I´m WOOFING at Brooloo Park. Means, working for food and sleeping. Brooloo Park is a farm with eco campgrounds, so actually natural camping with simple bush toilets. My work includes feeding the animals, as there are 13horses, 3ponys, a pig, 3dogs, guiny fauls, chicken and cows and a Brahmen Bull. You can fearles walk in his paddock, he is not interestet! While the horses and some of the cows are searching for food at you. I also do general farm maintenance, so as fencing, fixing the trailer, slashing with a tractor, collecting firewood(otherwise we don´t get a hot shower). A couple of days ago we had to shoot an old horse. Since then it is my job, to keep the fire burning, so twice a day I´m in the bush to collect ... read more
April 23rd 2010
Our last day in Noosa was looking like it was going to be wet, wet, wet so we decided to take the Valley Rattler steam train which used to be a big railway station during the gold rush but since the gold has run out Gympie (yes this is the name of the town) is now a sleepytown dedicated to the history of the gold rush era. The train itself was very old and had the traditional wooden carriages inside, it reminded me of the Harry Potter train. It ambled along at a slow speed and everyone who saw us on the way stopped to wave. When we reached the destination the train had to remove its engine and drive it onto a turntable thing. Then the drivers had to push it round so that it ... read more
November 8th 2009
DAY 366 Now that was a night’s sleep! I did have a 3.00 wake up which took me a while to drift off again but overall that was a magnificent nights sleep. We again needed to have a fairly early get away as like we have previously posted, we wanted to be on the Sunshine Coast early as possible this morning, to get our cooker replaced and sort our fridge problems out. On went our whistling friend and soon Caroline was out of the trailer, she too had enjoyed a great nights sleep also with a 3.00 wake up, we both commented on the additional vehicles that had pulled in, but were gone by daylight, the only remaining campers were those of us that had pulled in for the evening. I could see that again today ... read more
November 7th 2009
DAY 365 This is the second time we have had to type this document, the first one was finished this morning all 4100 words saved then word crashed and it was lost. Again I was up at silly o’clock this morning, we had a big day in front of us driving, we stayed the night in this wonderful free camp site at St Lawrence Rodeo Ring, we had been advised and true to words, it was excellent. This morning at about 6.15am I asked Caroline if she wanted her tea now or leave it a little while, I really did want to get a good start on the day, as I wanted to get back as far as we could tonight so our run back to the Sunshine coast on Sunday would be a fairly short ... read more
February 24th 2009
Forced by lack of employment opportunities, we signd up for a farm training scheme which 'guarantees' you work for the length of your visa once you have completed the vastly overpriced week long course. They sent you a list of things you would need for the course, but after much to-ing and fro-ing with the school maam style organiser of the course we felt that if we purchased the boots in Brisbane they would for sure be wrong by her standards. We didn't understand why they had to be as specified (and we still don't). I think it's more of a farmer uniform than anything to do with safety. We took a Greyhound bus to a hick town called Gympie, where they picked us up and took us to an even hick-ier town called Goomeri for ... read more
October 17th 2008
Hello, hello, hello, I hope everyone is well in England. Ill apologise for the poor quality of this blog in advance as I am pretty drunk after some drinkies in a country pub in Gympie :) Today we have been mustering cattle on horseback, great fun... we then had to seperate the cattle which was actually fucking scary, theyre big and they charge which we found out pretty quikly when one ran at us and we had to jump up on a fence. Dont worrry mum, im fine, no injuries today :) We then had to give the calves vaccines, ear tags, brands and castrate them.... I had a go at all of these which was good fun. We also got to see some puppies being born last night! Very, very cute :) we were holding ... read more
October 16th 2008
Hello again everyone, Before I begin, it has been brought to my attention that I may have scared a few people (namely my mother) in my blog yesterday. Sorry mum :) I am bruised, infact my entire left breast down to my left bottom rib is covered in the blackest bruise I have ever seen. There are photos of it to prove this :) which hopefully will be up here soon...HOWEVER mummy, I am fine, and this place is damn unreal! So anyway, I got given a job last night. I phoned up a lady called Leanne at Phenros Station in Julia Creek, Queensland. She seemed pretty great and her farm sounded great as well as the en suite, air conditioned room ill get (hehe), theres about 20 other people working on the farm, including an ... read more
October 15th 2008
Howdy y'all, Today was dirt bikes, tractos and 4-wheel drives. Now I am going to get straight on to the good bit, we went out dirt biking at around 9 this morning until around 12, we went through some SERIOUSLY rough terain on these things and up and down some hills you wouldnt imagine! Ill admit, I was crapping myself for the entire thing, my heart was pumping at a mile a minute and I was having the most awesome time! However, around about half hour from home I got slightly too big for my boots and we went down a steep hill and up the next which had a small lip at the top of the hill... Now mother, you may not want to read on :) Unfortunately I used the throttle slightly too hard ... read more
October 14th 2008
Hello again everybodyyy!!! Today has been a freaking day-and-a-half! Seriously one of the most memorable and awesome days of my life so far :) Today started off at 6.30, and we woke up at around 5, yes thats right mum, I was up at 5 happily getting ready for work! We all went down to the farm and got the horses ready for work after a quick lesson on horsemanship, and riding in the Australian stockhorse style! So we mounted up, I was on a little chesnut called 'rocket red' who was just that. After adjusting to the interesting stock horse saddle and the rope rains I was away! So we go out on about a 2 hour treck which included galloping around and generally riding around the outback, all good fun! I obviously had to ... read more
