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Published: December 30th 2008
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and we wish you all the best for the New Year! Although it doesn't really feel like Christmas time without our families, friends, and winter jackets, it has certainly been a Christmas we won't ever forget! Here's what we've been up to:
Whilst in Canberra we realized it was time to put the "work" into our Working Holiday, and we started looking for a job - after a month and a half on the road, and our third country it was about time. Looking up the National Harvest Trail website, we searched for a place we'd be interested in staying in for a few weeks. Our second phone call was to an apple orchard in South Tasmania. Calling on a Wednesday, we were told we could have the job if we could get there by the weekend. Quickly looking up bus and plane schedules, we booked our tickets and left on the midnight bus for Melbourne. A terrible nine hours later, after being stuck in the immobile back seats near the leaky toilet, we arrived in Melbourne in the morning with the day to pass before
our nighttime flight. We relaxed in the park for the day, napping on our packs and watching helicoptors land and takeoff at the nearby landing pad before heading to the airport for our flight. It seemed like we were preparing to land as soon as we got in the air, a drastic and welcome change from our trans-Pacific flight.
The Island State of Tasmania is renowned for it's wild and rugged beauty - isolated from the rest of the country by 429 kilometers of ocean across the Bass Strait it's a unique destination that even many Australians have yet to visit. Since we needed to start our job right away, we headed straight down to the Far South region of Tassie, to the quaint and picturesque town of Dover. With a population of about 600 the towns primary industries are orchards (apple and cherry) and fishing - there's even an Atlantic Salmon fish farm fenced off in the Pacific Ocean! The weather in this southern region of Australia is quite dramatic. Much cooler than the mainland, there's not much between here and Antarctica! Everyday we prepare for the rain, sun, wind, and cold. Yesterday was warm and sunny with
clear skies, and windy and raining - all at the same time! Our job of the moment is apple thinning. Evidently, too many apples grow on the trees, so we have to thin them out so the apples can get good and big! Maybe that's why the apple trees at home always had small apples... It turns out it's the perfect harvest job to help my back, it involves lots of reaching and stretching but very little lifting - the apples don't need to be packed anywhere; just thrown on the ground (or at each other!) Surrounded by amazing scenery and spending all of our time outside, the job is actually quite relaxing rather than monotonous. All was going well until Andrew sprained his ankle when a snake darted out of a tree and he fell off his ladder - or maybe he just stepped in a hole - either way, he's off work for a few days but should be back at it soon enough.
We're living on the farm - there are very basic living quarters set up for cooking, sitting, and showering, and we've pitched our tent to sleep in. Living in relative isolation, we have
to walk 20 minutes into town to use the phone or Internet. All the workers staying in the accomodation are fellow working travellers, so we enjoy many interesting nights after the work is done! We've even had an oceanside beer-b-que where we spotted some whales from the shore! On Christmas Eve one of the farmers took a few of us up a nearby mountain in search of a Christmas tree. We found a good one, cut it down, and brought it back to the accomodation to be decorated. For Christmas we had a multicultural celebration where everyone contributed a traditional dish from their country - it was quite a feast and a welcome change from the standard backpacker diet of rice, pasta, and bread. Celebrating Christmas with people from around the world, at the bottom of the world, with dinner and a campfire was definately a unique experience!
Goodbye for now & Happy New Year! (Happy Birthday Jessa xoxo)
Cass & Andrew
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Kim
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Happy New Year!
It's great to hear you guys are doing so well. And especially since Cassie has a way to stretch out her back! It's like this trip was in the stars. I hope your travels can only get better from here on in! We miss you so much! xoxo