Our First WWOOF placement is booked!

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So, Exciting times!
It's been a while since we blogged, and we have news!
We have booked our very first WWOOF placement, its 2-3 hours drive North of Perth City. They re-plant trees, and look after orphan Kangaroos as well as other animals that have copped an unfortunate one. It's a small not for profit family run project, the website is Here
We start there on 15th June, for an initial 2 weeks, with an option if all parties are happy, for a further 2 weeks.
We've also booked our first weeks accomodation for when we arrive in Perth, at The Ozi Inn Backpackers Lodge
They have a free pick up from the Airport service, air conditioned rooms, and the clincher for me....All you can eat pancake breakfast thrown in.
We had initially planned to start by going south of Perth first, but we spoke to a couple of people who said the weather is a bit grim in that area, at that time of the year, so we are making a big sweep of Western Australia, first heading North as far as Geraldton, then as winter moves into spring, we will head back through Perth, and down as far as Margaret River, and back up again. We will try and and stick to the coast as much as possible. Although it is going to be the rainy season for the first 2 or 3 months we are there, so we are not sure there will be much sun and surf to be had.
I'm trying to plan it so that we are not far from a big town/football screening bar for Englands world cup games, kick off will be early in the mornings, so I think it's going to be tough finding places, although there is hope as one group game is against the "Socceroos" Australia's national football side, and easily the daftest name for a football team........Ever.
On the home front, we are really starting to panic as the countdown to the big departure draws ever closer. We still appear to have more stuff than when we started selling everything, not quite sure how that happens! We've decided to sell all of our CD's and DVD's rather than store them. A huge decision for us both, but with shipping costs how they are, it will probably work out well in the long run. And so I began the immense task of ripping my 1000+ CD's to the 1 terrabyte hard drive I bought recently. For the uninitiated thats 1000Gb. It will hold everything easily, however precious as our Music is to us, we wont be stopping there. I will also be copying all the files to the laptop, and to an additional external hard drive, that we will leave at home, in our loft, triple back up, how can anything go wrong??
If I thought the ripping was a big job, how about listing, selling and packaging up all those CD's? Quite time consuming I can tell you! I bought 1000 jiffy bags from Ebay for £65, thinking, over 1000 cd's, that will do for a start. However I failed to factor in that quite a lot of people would buy more than one CD from me, some bought 2 or 3, some bought as many as 10 or 12. So I had to buy bigger jiffy bags, for the larger orders, as well as squeeze 2 into one jiffy bag where possible. The upshot of all this is that now having done the bulk of the selling, I still have 500+ jiffy bags sitting in the dining room. If anyone needs any let me know!
The long cold British winter seems to be on its way out now, and the boot sale (garage sale for the US subscribers) is getting underway. We will most likely be going most weekends between now and when we leave. This will surely start clearing some space...wont it?
We've started getting out and about a bit more, having lots of little catch up's and spending time with people. I'm really looking forward to this weekend in Cambridge, with some old VSO Namibia friends. I bought 48 bottles of Namibian lager off the internet, especially. *disclaimer....only 24 will survive to see this weekend* The sad goodbyes are looming though, but they are something we try and keep to the back of our minds for now.
All of our little lunches, evenings out and our working lives mean Verlie and I are like ships in the night lately, but as she said to me tonight, "we are travelling together for 2 years in May, we'll be sick of the sight of one another"........sick of one another.....Never! Although it should be noted that the only 2 times I've managed to annoy my best friend of 37 years, Spence, enough for him to shout at me, call me names and throw my CD's out the car window, has been while we were travelling together, so If it can happen to us..........For the record Spence, Verlie and I have already agreed that whoever drives, chooses the music!

We've had a huge stroke of luck in that the very nice couple who are renting out our house, also want to buy most of our furniture, and the Plasma TV. Saving us loads of time and hassle. Finally, big thanks to Verlie's colleague Sarah, for taking in our cats Buckley and Hendrix, we will miss them, but we're so happy that they will be going to such a good home. Thanks also to Verlie's boss Mike, he's been a true gent....thanks mate!

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