I’ve been talking about WWOOFing for weeks. I was starting to get discouraged - every host family I called near Toowoomba and Noosa either didn’t have enough work or already had a full roster of wwoofers. Finally, while in Brisbane for the second time, I made a list of interesting looking hosts near the Newcastle area. Lucky for me, the first family I called said that I could come the following Tuesday, which was about a week later. This was fantastic! I had a week to visit Byron Bay and Nimbin and then could start making my way south towards Newcastle. The basis of the WWOOFing experience is an exchange relationship between the wwoofer and the host. As I said some weeks earlier, WWOOFing stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms. Hosts across Australia, and around ... read more

The moment I see my hostel at the top of a hill, I’m already in love with this town. I arrived mid afternoon and checked into the Halse Lodge, which is a former Queensland farm house, similar to those from the southern United States. The first thing I do when I check in is sign up for a surf lesson with Merrick’s Noosa Learn-to-Surf. For $45 I get a two-hour surf lesson and two free hours with a kayak. I had only booked two nights, so I was going to make the most of it. Noosa is divided into several sections, but the hostel is in Noosa Heads. Noosa Heads is a little ritzier than the rest of town and the main street is filled with sidewalk cafes and clothing boutiques. Within my first two hours ... read more

My last day in Brisbane it rained. It’s starting to look like a pattern. So that meant I didn’t get to go to either the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary or the Mt. Coot-tha Reserve. Instead I spent the day at the library, doing internet related things, and then went back to the hostel where I spend several hours talking to other backpackers on the veranda, including a guy from South Korea who says that he’ll meet me in February and show me around. I checked out fairly early Saturday morning. Not early enough to be on time, however, but early none-the-less. I was meeting Simon in the city centre that morning and he was taking me, along with his girlfriend Lauren and another one of his traveling friends, Lea, to the Australia Zoo for the day. ... read more

Jetlag is a nightmare. Once I got to my room the first day, I immediately fell asleep and stayed that way for a good five hours. I didn’t wake up until a new girl came in to drop her stuff. Good thing she did though, because it meant that I finally dragged myself out from under the covers and took a shower (desperately needed). I took a little stroll on the streets around the hostel, mostly in search of food. When I couldn’t find a full-out grocery store, I settled for buying Mr. Noodles from the 7/11. Three hours after getting out of bed, I climbed back in and slept for another 11 hours, not including the moment I woke up at 11:45pm and was convinced that it was morning. It was not. I thought that ... read more