I have not written a blog
for so long that people are actually starting to talk to me on facebook to ask
me, what I’m up to. So it’s probably time to write something to avoid this
terrible burden. Just joking. I am still happy to talk to you... but you will
generally have to be the person to start the conversation :D Usually when I’m
travelling I just get so sucked in by the ’here and now’ that I just don’t
bother keeping in contact with anyone. So it’s definitely me, not you. So don’t
take it personally - I literally do not make the effort to write to anyone.
Actually we lived about
5km out of town on Erik’s employers’ farm. We had an old small caravan, which
was inside a big shed, because it was so old, that it would have been leaking rainwater otherwise. The shed used to
hold 3000 rabbits, that our hosts used to grow. But now all the rabbits are gone
and it was occupied by us and about 30 round hay bales. So technically it is
the biggest place we have ever lived in. We had a little gas stove in the
caravan, a fridge and some kitchen space in front of the caravan and a sink
outside the shed. Our shower and toilet were outside so it was still a bit like
camping, but much more comfortable. The best thing, however was the view. When
you sit in front of our shed (which we very often did) you have a view over a
big valley, with mountains on the other side. In the evenings the whole valley
turns orange and pink, when the sun sets to the other side. In the mornings,
the valley is usually filled with fog, which slowly rolls away when the sun,
that rises from directly the
opposite side of the valley, starts
illuminating it with amazing colours.
I worked in a little eco-friendly
winery about 15km from where we lived. I was the only paid worker of the place
and spent my days doing various tasks in the vineyard or the winery. For
example in the vineyard I helped to prepare the vines before picking (moving
the wires that the vines lean against, tucking in the vines that had come out,
dropping bad fruit, cutting away the shoots, taking off and putting on nets).
In the winery I helped with the wine making, the majority of which is...
cleaning various containers. We move the
wine from big containers to barrels or sometimes smaller containers, from
barrels back to containers, from barrels/containers to bottles and so on. An
all the equipment needs to be hygenically clean after every use (with no
bacteria or other small creatures living there) because when you get someone
living in your wine that you don’t want there, then hundreds of litres can go
to waste. So pretty variable job actually with amazing views.
Most people probably
don’t know but I got my drivers license just before leaving Australia. And I
have happily let Erik drive the whole time, because I don’t really like driving
either. Or I have always been very insecure about it and not wanting to do it
at all. Well, on the cattle station I already had to drive a little. It was an
old ute, that didn’t have third gear, but it did not really matter because all
the roads were so sandy anyway that you would have gotten bogged if you tried
to use a higher gear. But it was a good practice for me, because I finally got
somewhat comfortable with using gears and driving in general, without having the
pressure of traffic. But when I started working away from where I lived, I have finally had to
start driving. It is still scary (although the road that I took to work is not
nearly as windy, narrow and steep as the other side of the hill), but I am
finally becoming a ’real grown up’ person who can drive a car, as long as I
don’t have to drive into a bigger town... I’ll get there but not just yet :D.
Anyways the views are just amazing all the way from home to work, with
vineyards and hills and fields and hot air balloons in the air almost every
morning.
Erik works in the forest
most of the days. He and his boss are doing forest regrowth surveys. That means
that they come back to the coup that has been harvested, about two years later to check if there is enough regrowth. That
basically means going up and down the coup, stopping every 20 metres and then
inserting the data into a gps-device, whether the spot is ’stocked’ or
’unstocked’, that means that they write down if there are enough of the
seedlings that they are looking for and if not, then what is the reason for it
(a quite simplified explanation, but he can tell you about it himself). I went
with him one day to see what he is doing and after two hours I was bright red
in my face and soaking wet. He did tell me in the beginning already that it is
not just walking back and forth, but I had to experience it myself to believe
it. Firstly, the ground is not flat or even reasonably semiflat – it is going
up and down steep hills all the time. Secondly, when a person generally walks
in the forest, he either has some small tracks of he will at least go around
bigger the objects. That is not the case here, as they went straight through or
over whatever they had in front of them. And thirdly (which I fortunately I did
not see), very often the plants are spiky and horrible and a much higher bush
than you are.
We were both very lucky
with our bosses . Mine were a bit posh
nature admirerers, who try to do things as naturally as possible. They have
travelled quite a bit (even had a very short stay in Estonia) and are sweet
people with a broad horizon. (it can sometimes be frustrating to meet the
Australians who have a very limited view of the world, eat only steak without
any seasoning and chips, and whose only
travels have taken them to Bali). Getting a bottle or two of good wine every
now and again adds a bonus (although, as I have mostly been more of a 5-dollar
bottle buyer, I feel like I probably can’t appreciate their 45’dollar ones
enough). Erik’s boss’s family, on the other hand, have travelled through almost
every remote place in Australia. They had a 4WD adventure company when they
were younger so they took people through the deserts and remote bushlands on a
regular bases. But they are not the kind of people who would just settle with
doing the same route the same way every time. So they always found challenges,
for example going to places during floods or driving 2WD cars instead of 4WD
ones on tracks (or very often without any tracks) that other people didn’t even
dare to take on. We invited our bosses and some of their friends to our place
for the independence day of Estonia and made them potato salad (the Estonian
version), sašlõkk, devilled eggs, lack bread with herring and offered them Vana
Tallinn (Erik’s bosses wife liked it so much that she ordered a box of it from
Estonia). So had a very nice night with bonfire and nice people.
And since we are both the only worker of our
place, it is very easy to arrange and rearrange or working schedule. We can
basically always take a day off or start when we want. That does not mean that
we barely work or take advantage of it too much. On most days we still go from
8 to 5 but we do use the possibility to have some long weekends when we want to
do something. For example we had a trip to go surfing and to the Grampians
national park with two other Estonian couples. And last weekend we had a trip
to Tasmania. We actually, at one point, had plans to go there in January and
find a job there. But since we do not think ahead much, we discovered that it
would cost us 800dollars and a month of waiting to get there with our car. But
since we had heard so many good things about it and it was the only Australian state
besides Canberra that we hadn’t visited then we decided to go there as well.
Since we are all about
saving money (we actually spend money on other things, so we’re trying to even
it out) we found a couchsurfing family, booked a rental car and were off. We
were staying with a 60-something-year-old couple (Chinese and Aussie) just
across the bay from Hobart. So we actually had a view of Hobart and mount
Wellington from out bedroom window. And our hosts were so nice, that when they
heard that my birthday was coming up, then we arrived back ’home’ to the smell
of Rhubarb cake, that had been done following the same recipe as Estonian grandmothers
do (our host had searched for the recipe on the internet).
Anyways, we discovered a
small fraction of the amazing island (we only had 3,5 days) in our little
rental car which was a very different driving experience - the car actually picked up speed fast and
didn’t rock, sway and rattle like our own car. Tasmania has a very diverse
landscape (already in the small fraction that we saw), with hills and bays and
peninsulas and rivers and lakes. There is a big part of the island (almost a
quarter) that is totally inhabited, has no roads going into it and no people
living there. The rest of the population of the island, is shattered around in
small towns and villages, the biggest one being Hobart, with almost 200,000 people.
There are steep rocks sometimes hiding
caves and beautiful beaches, the peninsulas occasionally look like you
are in Sweden. That is, until you start looking closely, then you see that the
plants are very different. The colours are much brighter and fresher than in
the mainland and the climate is strange. Since the biggest known hole in the
Ozone layer is just above Tassie, then it is hot there in 18 degrees already.
We had heard from a friend
of ours that Hobart has a pretty good live music scene and he recommended us
two punk bands to go and see, if we get the chance. We found out that one of
them was performing on the Saturday we were there, so having no knowledge about
Hobart nightlife, we headed to Bristol Hotel (where the band was supposed to
perform the net day) on the day before, hoping to find likeminded people. That
had been quite hard in our travels because we have mostly been in country towns
(or out of towns) with occasional visits to Melbourne, which has just been too
big for us to find our place. Bristol Hotel was a mixture of Zavood,
Genialistide klubi and Kroks. It had this unpolished and rugged look (many
Aussie places just do not have a nice atmosphere) but it was cozy. The floors
were a bit sticky, the people were a bit strange (a healthy mixture of people from
alternative styles), the security guard did not pay much attention to what you
were doing unless you were causing trouble and the atmosphere was to our
liking. One room had a black metal concert going on (faces painted white and
black and all) and the other room had live hip hop performances. We left just
before the bands were getting better because the beer was starting to taste too
good considering that we had come with our little car (it is theoretically
allowed to have one mid-strength beer an
hour is Australia).
The next day we came back
with high hopes. The concert was taking some time to start. We took saw a band
come on and decided that it was probably not the band that we came to see,
because it was more of a college pop-rock band with slight hints of punk music.
And I thought I was being paranoid when people were gathering before the gig
and I didn’t even see even one mohawk (there had been at least one the previous
evening) and people seemed to be a bit too ’fashionably’ dressed. Well... it
turned out that the ’college rock’ band was the punk band that we had come to
listen. And the main performer, that I had been pretty excited about too
because they had been described as mixing punk music with country and emo music...
they were the living copy of Foo Fighters. Not that I have anything against Foo
Fighters... but that was not what I was expecting. It was still a fun night and
all but I was looking for something more raw. The night was still fun and
Hobart does have a pretty colourful night life and different options. I was a
bit annoyed by a gay guy, who was a bit too absorbed by being gay. I think it
is a bit sad, if your sexual orientation is the only thing that defines you
enough so that you have to mention in in every third sentence and only talk
about that. Yes, thanks. I already understood you are gay the first five times
you mentioned that, would you like to reply to any topic without bringing it
up.
Anyways, Tasmania is the
first and probably the only state in Australia that I would actually like to
live in. I am not saying that it is my favourite, because I still love the wildness of the North West
of Australia a bit more. But I would never want to live in the West for the
rest of my life. In Tasmania with its rugged and gorgeous nature and just the
right blend of culture in the Capital... I really would not mind.
We planned to depart Kinglake
on the Easter weekend. I am actually glad that we didn’t because the roads were
just so full of people who were all going Easter-camping that the main highways
had the average speed of 20kph and all the lunatics with their trucks, boats,
caravans and different vehicles that did not even look like they were supposed
to be on roads. Anyways we had to postpone our departure mainly because a very
important bolt in our engine decided to break into two pieces and in order to
get it out, the whole engine had to be taken out. So while Erik spent 3,5 days
(starting with the sunrise and finishing way after the sunset) days getting out
the engine and putting it back (with the occasional help of his boss/our host)
and I drove around a rental car, earning just enough to cover our living-costs,
the repair costs and the price of the rental car while doing so.
Leaving Kinglake was a
bit sad because we had to leave all the
animals behind again (and well... the people also). We had a little (it took us
almost 24 hours) d-tour to buy some moonshine for the road from an aquaintance,
went camping on top of the Great dividing range (which we had to go over at least
five times on our way north), spent another night with our former hosts and
left Victoria behind us. We tried to meet some friends in Sydney (th guys that
we lived with when we were in Sydney four years ago) - started making the arrangements almost two
weeks beforehand and told them that we were only stopping in the city to meet
them. When we got there then the two of
them that we had managed to contact were out of town camping so we decided to
wait one more day. The next time we did not hear anything from them so we
decided to leave, feeling quite down.
Moving up north we
visited some Estonian friends, Guide, Kaari and Raimond,who live currently in Tamworth
- gave them a call the previous day and just arrived the next...no problems. We
spent two nights at their place, catching up and just enjoying living in a real
house for a while.
We met up Jaanika and
Karl near Byron Bay – they were renting a room in a very hippie house. I love
hippies and all but sometimes things can be a bit too much as well. In addition
to the three actual bedrooms, there were people living in front of the hous in
a van, in a ’room’ that had been crated at the back of the living room with the
help of some cupboards, one (in the end two) people were living on the terrace
under some mosciyo nets and all the children (at least four of them but you
never know), were sleeping on the living room floor , the door of which, that
was leading outside to the terrace was always open, even during the night, because
one of the head-hippies, who was also the mother of most of the children, said
that the energy does not move otherwise. Jaanika cleaned the house three times
a day (I can’t even imagine what that place looked like before she moved in and
started cleaning), if you left your food in any of the common areas (the
kitchen cupboard for example) then it had a big chance of disappearing. And
they even asked if we could contribute to make up for our living there (we
slept in Jaanika and Karl’s room, Erik made some video editing for one of them
and when we took J&K with us for two days then they also took new people into
the room that had already been booked for in addition to all the wine and other
stuff that we shared with them), which we really didn’t feel they deserved.
But
near Byron we went surfing for the second time...the first time I probably didn’t
even write about.... But to sum things up: I managed to get one nice long slide
on the board a once each time of surfing but I was on my hands and knees... no
sign of getting up on the board. Erik got up a few times the first time already and therefore did
even better the second time. We visited Nimbin again as well and stayed a few
nights. Nimbin is the first and only town that I have been in during my life,
where the main place in the town that has any action (people and music etc) in
the evening does not serve alcohol. Imagine a place (a cafe? A bar?) in Estonia
that is popular in the evenings without serving alcohol... Nimbin was created
when in the 70s (maybe it was 60s) the local greenies celebrated the fact that
they had successfully managed to stop logging in the region and decided to
celebrate it with a festival. Instead of the festival ending, more and more
people came and in the end there were some people who decided that they will
stay for good.
We went camping again for
a few days with J&K. Of course we had to choose a camping place with
questionable road conditions as the rain clouds were gathering so we had to
pull their car out of the muddy road when we wanted to leave. Right now we are
in Moree caravan park and started looking for a new job. We are in a bit of a
hurry because our visa ends at the beginning of July and we do not have much
time left here.
By now we are getting a bit tired of the easiness and the level of control in Australia so we are already looking forward to South America a lot. Our second year in Australia has also been good because we already know how things work and it is quite easy to find our way here. I have learned about myself a lot and have learned to analyse myself and discovered some new things about me. I guess the relative easiness of our travels here have made it possible - there is no actual question of figuring out the society and life out around here. With that I am not saying that I would not like to discover Australia more There are surely more amazing places here that we have not seen . it is just such a big country. But South America will be full of challenges again. At first we were planning to buy a car in Chile but now we decided that we are distancing ourselves from the locals too much if we do that. Without a car we will have much less possibilities to discover some places by ourselves but I do believe that we will get to know the people and the culture very well and we will get to go to some places that we couldn't even find without some local tips.
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