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Published: February 28th 2011
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Suzie
Suzie shows us the other 26 horses that she owns living on another paddock WWOOF! (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) So Hillary and I have officially left civilization - we're in the bush. We arrived at Port Douglas, population less than 300, in the early AM on wednesday the 23rd. It was hot, humid, and sticky. We were picked up by Suzie and her girls and taken up a winding road through beautiful, lush, tropical mountainside to their farm, the Black Mountain Hideaway. As Suzie says, it's "five star camping" up here. We live with 26 horses, 4 cows, 9 going on 40 cats (they breed constantly), 7 dogs (Blue Dog, Red Ted, Max, Tiki, Dot, Pearl, Mini, potentially more..), a million chooks (chickens), occasional bats, free flying parrots (Carlos the green one has taken a liking to Hillary), plenty of spiders, and butterflies the size of birds.. oh yeah and some people! Suzie and Saxton have been on the farm around 15 years, running a horseriding business. However, since the cyclone tourism has died completely and there's no money coming in whatsoever. The last wwoofers they've had on the farm were in december - since then they've had no money to pay workers to help, and they've been struggling to clean up the mess
Suzie
loves her animals with the small contribution money from. Side note: wwoofing is a volunteer program where food and accomodation is provided in exchange for 4-6 hours of work on the farm. Anyways, since we've been here we've worked doing different things every day from weeding and raking, fixing up the tourist cabins (which is where we discovered the bats), feeding the animals, picking fruit and veges, scrubbing the walls (where we have become immune to spiders living in webs - the ground ones are still scary), to cleaning up the horse poo in the paddocks. After work Hill and I help out with dinner and do the dishes, afterwards we are usually left alone. At night we mostly read, write and chat, and watch one of the 2 channels on tv. Hillary has done over thirty crosswords since we've been here - I'm ball-parking, but if anything I underestimate. Right now we're living with Amy and Suzie, and a few girls come and go on the weekends to ride the horses and help out around the farm. Suzie is quite the character, with more stories than a library and an attitude to boot! She's and ex-model who quit the life of luxury
The bunk room
this is where we sleep! to start the farm and take in kids with troubled home lives and whip them into shape on the farm. Amy is 19 and bakes like no other - she's actually cooking something up in the kitchen right now! We sleep in a converted shed room in bunks side by side that is attached to the shed with all the saddles and hay. Everything is under a tin roof cover so we fall asleep to the sound of the rain, which is actually quite peaceful - plus it cuts out the sounds of all the animals. In the morning we wake up to the roosters, "cock-a-doodle-doo!" And trust me, it actually sounds like that. Life on the farm is pretty simple, and after our 5 weeks of hectic travelling, we couldn't be happier. We've got another week in this reality until we're back in civilization: next stop Brisbane! PS: since the internet barely works here I still haven't had a chance to upload any photos, but next week there are tons coming from Perth and Cairns!
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Dad
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AMAZING!!
Get to the big reef yet?