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Blog 12 - We live in Heaven
After our million-star dinner and a rather peaceful night at Wallabadah, we motored south.
Through the Workabout Australia book we made contact with the owner of Bunna Bunnoo Olive Grove, Vacy (in the Hunter Valley). This beautiful 60 acre property has 40 acres under olive trees, (almost 4000 trees). They have a very good website www.bunnabunooolives.com.au which shows you how lovely it is here. We plan to stay here for a few weeks, up to a couple of months, helping out with the harvest, working across all areas of the farm, in Irma’s kitchen, processing and bottling olives, oil and so many related products…and whatever else comes up. Wendy has been busy helping Irma make and bottle chutney, preserves and tapenade. Irma is also famous for her take-home meals. Customers can enjoy leek and zucchini lasagne, eggplant rolls, polpette (meat balls) and pea and ham soup, just to name a few. Yum! The culinary skills are rubbing off. Wendy has been inspired to make some tomato and chilli jam, and some lemon butter. Chris and Irma take their products to local markets and on a recent weekend they were busy at Tocal
(Agricultural College) Field Days. Although Wendy grew up not far from here, she had never visited this annual event. 2010 was the year for that to happen.
We are well and truly ensconced into Bunna Bunoo Olive Grove. We sometimes look after the farm for a brief time and we are part of the daily happenings in many ways.
The van is parked next to the driveway, the shed and the olive trees. It is truly beautiful country here. We have our own amenities /camp kitchen. The family is very hospitable, and we really feel at home here.
We are doing all sorts of tasks - mowing lawns, gardening, packing and labelling olive jars, helping out with a bus tour of 42 people, preparing olives for oil pressing (blowing the leaves and sticks away from the fruit in the harvest bins). We have also been providing assistance to Irma who is undergoing extensive medical treatment and injured her ankle and shoulder, and has broken her wrist since we have been here.
We have a verbal agreement that we’ll work 2 days each per week (very flexible) and for as long as we like. It’s all very casual
The Road Gang
We spent a few hours filling in pot-holes in the gravel road on the property (seen in background). The building in the picture is an old school on an adjoining property, now used as a Girl Guide Camp. though.
The bus driver of the tour that came here a couple of weeks ago used to work with Peter at Ells’ (later Angus & Robertson) Bookshop in Newcastle (Peter’s first job out of school) 40 years ago! You should have heard them, rattling off name after name of fellow work mates. Amazing memories! Geoff assured Peter that there are plenty of bus-driving jobs out there, and offered to give him a hand in future attempts at securing some transport work. (It’s not “What you know, it’s who you know!”)
Chris and Irma's 2 sons assist on the farm - one is a mechanic and does the mechanical harvesting, while his older brother does most of the looking after and maintaining the grove, shop, grounds etc. Both sons are in their 40’s and eligible bachelors????
In April we visited the Sydney Caravan show, and then made our way to what seemed like the end of the earth (Kogarah) to visit our very good friends, Robyn and Ronnie who had just welcomed their darling new daughter, Jarah Ivy Rose into the world.
Talk about stress! That trip really demonstrated that we no longer want to live in traffic and dense population. However we are open to any invitations to visit, if you are unlucky enough to be live in such place. We really do feel sorry for you. Peter has been telling everyone that the best thing about our trip so far is getting west of the traffic and the hills.
Peter’s Mum (Trixie) is now in permanent residential care, after much stress and strain on the family over past months. Now we can and are visiting the Central Coast to visit her, and assist with cleaning up and selling her house. Peter’s sister Judy and her husband Ron have been extremely helpful over the past months looking after her, and we are very grateful.
Now that Trixie is in care and settling down, we can look a little forward to the wider phase of our adventure, that is after spending some time back on the Central Coast in June, and dog sitting for our daughter (Melanie) and son-in-law (Gareth) in July/August. We are planning that stage so we will keep you posted.
Peter has once again been sorting computer issues for our hosts. It’s becoming a habit! He has also been doing some consulting and coaching work along the way, in addition to the new skills that we are picking up. We expect to be pretty expert at the Olive Industry before we leave here.
We still do our market stall business, and we have been to Hamilton, Singleton and Maitland. Markets are great fun, sometimes we make great money, and we usually meet great people. Sometimes we drive for over an hour to get to the market in the early morning on a weekend when most people are in bed sleeping…Why? Because we can!
We hope to see some of you over the next couple of months.
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Lucinda
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Very Jealous!
Hi Peter Wendy, Well i know what you mean about the traffic!! Nathan and i just took a trip up to Port Douglas and we are now itching to travel again. It will all have to wait as we move into our little apartment in the city in less than two weeks and were both very excited! Lots of Love Us xxx PS: Wendy can you send me that recepie for lemon butter??