Wwoof #4 - Panunka

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Nar then!

Before arriving at our 4th Wwoof hosts we stopped off at Surfers Paradise. Not many surfers. Not much of a paradise. As we were only spending one night there we decided to make it a big one! Ended up being a small one as I got absolutely smashed on wine (i.e - going out of the clubs and downing a couple of bottles so save on moolah!!) We met up with the same lads with spent Australia Day with which was cool although Amber had to take me home at midnight after I had lined the main strip with vommit. All was not lost, however, as Amber bought a pair of high heels (she was on cloud nine!) and i've caught her staring at them occasionally throughout the week. Originally $100, down to $80 in the sale and she waited and waited to chance that they may go down again. She got them for $40. Bargain. She's becoming a proper Northerner now!!

So, post not-so-Surfers Paradise we headed to a little place called Landsborough, about 1 hour out of Brisbane. Our host has 2 children and an adorable little White Labrador called Sammy who's certainly kept us entertained all week! Our host is a book editor, a property developer, runs a childcare centre in town and also runs a womens entrepeneural society, so she's a very busy lady who amazingly still has time for her children and her Wwoofers! She's a very inspirational woman and after listening to her success story we felt like we could take on anything! But she had (and still has) lots of fun - she travelled for 14 years before settling again and was once arrested for exposing too much of her body, she believed it was her right to be naked! A hippy at heart! We all clicked straight away. The house they live in is named Panunka which means "of the earth" and it has the most beautiful surroundings we have experienced yet - you can see it's becoming more tropical as we head north. It has been lovely - every time we finished work we could jump straight in to the swimming pool overlooking the palm trees and tropical bush!!

Work-wise, this week has consisted of mending a chicken shed to make it free of guanas, snakes and possums, pruning and weeding the front garden, mowing the lawn (which I loved! Dad you would've been proud, looks like a bowling green mate!), painting (again!!) the daughters room, mending a bedside table, putting an ironing board up, cleaning the windows, de-cobwebbing the house, Amber learning how to make Sushi, me making Cappucino's and cooking my famous Jollof Rice! Amber's absolutely sick of it because every time a Wwoof host says 'Can you cook?', I pipe up and say 'Yes of course I can!' but Jollof Rice is the only thing I've cooked! It's gone down an absolute storm every time I've cooked it though, so those of you (including Dad and Linda, Steve and Liz!) who haven't indulged in this amazing dish will be doing so very soon! Our host is very flexible in terms of the work we do, we work 5 hours in the morning and then we can work a bit extra so we can have a day off to do whatever we want to do. So the plan was to go in to Brisbane on our day off, but we scrapped this as a lot of the main attractions have been flooded in the Queensland Floods last month. We thought about going in to see the extent of the damage but decided against it in the end. Instead, we decided to head to a neighbouring town of Maroochydore to mooch around at the beach and in the big shopping centre! We went to half a dozen 'op shops' (or charity shops), they are amazing out here - if only we could carry more but Amber can't carry her rucksack as it is!

Today we had a little bit of an episode. Let me start at the beginning. On Sunday we had a BBQ and our host had some friends over, it was a lovely afternoon and the food was amazing. Bloody hell the steak - I think we consumed half a cow between us. Moving on, our host had a few too many champers and forgot to put the chickens away. The next day "whitey" (the only white chicken who was introduced to us as having a few race issues!) was found dead and the one-eyed brown chicken was gone. We were trying to work out what had happened and were at a bit of a loss. Until today that is, when Amber stumbled accross a python. We were heading to the 'chook' pen when we saw a snake with a huge bulge in it. The bulge was the one-eyed chicken. R.I.P. We thought our host was joking when she said we have to remove it. We laughed it off. She wasn't joking! Watch the video - especially the bit where the snake it all bagged up and I make a run for it.

We're both discussing our plans for when we return home and we're talking about missing our families more and more, so for the record, we miss you all so very much and can't wait to see you all! As I write this blog, it's now 28 days until I arrive back home, and 48 days until Amber arrives home. How time flies!!

Next on our list is Noosa Heads. We'll be staying there for a few nights then we'll be heading up further up the East Coast after that.

Love to all!

Mat and Amber

xXx

P.S - Video's on it's way... Stay tuned!

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Photos

PYTHON!
With one-eyed chicken inside

Sushi...
Amber's are the three fat ones in the middle!

Python strangling himself with his big belly
This is the position he ended up in when we chucked him out of the bag

Little bit of sightseeing
Post freeing the python

Spider with yellow web...
...Very poisonous so we were told on our final day

Comments

[rena]

surfers
hey kids, wow it looks amazing do these families accept 45 year old visitors?? stay away from the snakes and spider splease i would like to see you again! big hugs and much love xxx