I am not an art person but I like Melbourne anyway, this city has galleries on every corner and street art in every dirty little alley. Its pretty cool, in any other city the back alleys are places you go to get stabbed or mugged, here its a major tourist attraction! For coffee lovers, this is a must visit city as well, little cafes and coffee shops hidden in a maze of alleys and random little doors that look like they go nowhere but at the end of it, there is a quirky little coffee shop or pub. It really is a nice city though and it doesn't surprise me that it has been voted the most livable city a few times.
I am staying at the Hotel Discovery and despite the name, it is a hostel. I have met some great people here and have a small group that does a lot of things together. Like for dinner we often get together and cook a "family" dinner. It really is an international group with a frenchman, two germans, two Canadians, two Australians and a girl from Taiwan. But we have had a blast getting to know each other. Last saturday we went to see an Aussie Rules Football game at the MCG, it was great fun even though I still don't understand the game. Then we had a few days of just exploring the city and then Tuesday night we went to the karaoke bar, that was interesting lol. I hope none of those videos ever surface! But we had a really good time and might go back next week.
Thursday night Heather flew in to visit for a day so that was exciting, she got in at ten pm or so and then the two of us went to go find this one pub that is at the end of a creepy lane way. But it was worth it, this bar is called the Croft Institution and serves their drinks in scientific beakers or you get a syringe to help you drink your drinks. It really is a pretty cool little place.
We are planning to go to Phillip Island on Sunday to see the little penguin parade. I am pretty excited about that, I like penguins! I have to quickly do a few things over here since I am busing out on Wednesday heading back to the countryside to do some more work. I got a job near where I was before so thats nice, Ill get to see all the friends I made over there again and it doesn't hurt that Heather lives there to!
Thats me right now and I hope to hear from ya'll soon!

Its party time in the land of Oz! Got into Brisbane on saturday night after nine hours on the Greyhound. Believe me when I say that the buses are not designed for a guy my size, at every stop where we had even five minutes, I got out to try and get feeling back into my legs. Once in Brissy I wandered up the street from the transit center to my hostel, I think I need to dump some of my belongings, my backpack weighs a lot! If I want to do any kind of an extended hiking trip there will be some major modifications to what I have in my bag, essentials only!

But anyway, go to hostel and settled in, went up to the roof where the bar and the kitchen are and had the best burger since Canada. Met a few people and just spent the nights talking over a few drinks. Its one of the most interesting things about backpacking, you get to meet so many people from all over the world. Although to be honest, 95% of backpackers are either English or Irish, I have not met any other North Americans on my travels. I need to find me a Canadian and just talk for hours about the NHL or something, all this talk about rugby and AFL is getting old. 

Met up with my travel buddy Joe on Sunday afternoon, moved from the big party hostel to a small one in a residential area where there is a strict noise restriction. Its nice though, a change from the high energy vibe you get in the bigger hostels, here its all about relaxation. 

We didn’t really have a plan of what we were going to do when we got to Brisbane so we debated a few different things and decided on heading to Darwin. There is a chance that we will be working on a croc farm for a few days, that would be an experience! We are taking a rented campervan up there, we have 7 days to cover 3500 km. And a lot of that is just through remote barren desert/scrub bush so it could be pretty boring after we cross the great dividing range somewhere west of Rockhampton Queensland. I don’t really know what to expect or what I’ll need along the way but we’ll figure it out. Can’t wait to get to out of the city, I have spent so much money in three days its stupid! But I have the rest of the week paid for unless we do some touristy things, oh and I need to buy a sleeping bag for the trip. We were going to go to the Koala Sanctuary today but it started raining right when we were on our way to catch the bus so we decided we would wait until the end of the week when the forecast is more sunny. Since its raining we should have a lot of time to plan our road trip, good thing Joe is here, I would be quite lost without this guy. He has more contacts around the country than I do, which is what you need when you’re a backpacker on a limited budget. So thats me for now and we’ll see how this trip turns out!

Ahh, its my last week here in Walgett and I will miss this place! The people here are very friendly and I have made some great friends here. But, I will be back here in a few months for the harvest so that makes me pretty happy. 

I did something this weekend that I had never done before, and before your imagination goes wild, I went to the horse races. It was a good time, mostly its just an excuse for everyone to get dressed up and get together. Some of the women did the whole fancy racewear thing with the big hats and such, there were a few hats that made me do a double take and try not to laugh to loudly! But it was a good way to see everyone before I head off to Brissy.

We got another backpacker here yesterday, Mike from England. Haven’t chatted a lot but he seems like a nice guy. He did the same program I did but he came off a lot worse, fell off a horse four times and now has a bruise on his hip that looks a lot like mine did in February after my hockey injury. Good luck to him sitting in the tractor for twelve hours straight! We are going to have to go hard this week to finish the sowing, still have 700 plus hectares to go and its going pretty slowly right now. 

But regardless of how far we get, I have a bus to catch Saturday morning so if its not done, Oh well! 

I really don’t have a plan after going to Alice Springs, but im sure something will present itself. There are a lot of ways to amuse oneself in this country, its just hard to find out which ones you want to do. But anyway, take care everyone and Happy Fathers Day dad!

Hiya mates, its been a while since I’ve let you know whats happening down on the farm so here goes, June 10th update. We have come to a standstill in the sowing department, rained last weekend so its pretty wet right now. So this week we really didn’t do any work, just a little bit of puttering around on the yard cleaning stuff and really not doing much productive. But at least I got to watch playoff hockey so that was great. I went on skype on monday to wish my mum a happy 50th birthday, I would have liked to be there but it just wasn’t to be. I have spent a lot of time watching tv this week since we didn’t have much to do and went over our internet data limit for the month again and therefore had super slow connection. Pete left this week to go on his honeymoon, three months after his wedding, to Thailand. So while I’m about to get back on the tractor and go hard, he is kicked back on the beach with a beer. Oh well, im two weeks away from doing some traveling myself! And on friday it was my birthday which is not a big deal but I had a really nice time celebrating in town. On friday we went for a drive in the LandCruiser to see how the livestock was doing. That involved doing some bush driving and well, we got bogged trying to cross the worrumbool. So then John, Richard, Ella (Richards daughter) and I got to make the 5km walk back to the house. It was a nice walk lol. I got to do a little bit of pig shooting the other day, chased it down with a quad and shot this boar on the run, good times! Later that day some guys that hunt pigs professionally came down and in six hours had shot 22 wild pigs, but there are a lot more that need to be taken down. they are very destructive animals and can wipe out acres of crops in a very short time. 

So thats whats been going on here lately!

I love rain days. It means I get a day off to just sit around and watch North American sports like  the Stanley Cup Playoffs! This last week has been pretty busy for me, sowing chickpeas and wheat. I started on Thursday and spent four days straight planting a 900+ acre paddock of chickpeas. Then right after that we switched from the tine planter to the disc planter that has the sweet name of “The Bullet”. Its called that because you can sow at pretty high speeds. We were going 8.5 kph with the tine planter but with the Bullet we were going 17 kph. You definitely cover a lot of ground when you’re going that fast. 

Once the chickpeas were done we started planting wheat on the promise of rain. Put in just over 1500 acres of wheat in 27 hours, we went at it pretty hard! The rain came this morning so the boss man was happy about that, the forecast is for 2 to 4 inches of rain this weekend. Terry took off for town this morning so that she wouldn’t be stuck out here for a week or however long its going to be. So it looks like John and I will have to make our own meals for a few days, oh well I think we can manage that. 

I had been looking to get a nice backpack to replace the wheeled luggage I came over with and on monday I bought a trekking pack online, hopefully it gets here next week sometime. I think its a really nice one, the video advertising it was very convincing anyway! I will have to donate some of my clothes to Mission Australia because I won’t have space to pack everything I brought. Now I just have to decide which I really don’t need, but since I am planning a trip from tropical Darwin to snow and sleet Adelaide, I am going to need a range of different clothes. I made a bucket list the other day while I was on the tractor, I won’t say whats on it but it does involve me conquering some of my fears thats for sure! But thats what this year is all about isn’t? All I need is a enough money to do those things, which is easier said than done at times but I think I’ll get it done. I do wish that I didn’t have to make car payments but that is something I have to live with I guess. Unless someone wants to buy my car! I might buy a car with the guy Im traveling with, see what we can find.

But anyhow I am running out of things to say even though Im really bored with this baseball game Im watching until the hockey comes on a 10 am. 

Its a different world over here. I’m sure you all knew that but figured I could tell you again. We tried to sow chickpeas in a few different paddocks today but everywhere it was far to dry. The seed was about six inches down and still not in the moisture, very different from at home. We did finally find a paddock where it will work but we need to spray it first and then wait a few days before we can sow there. But the beans we planted a few weeks ago are up so thats good, just enough good news to keep my boss happy.

I have been learning a lot about Australia while I’ve been here, there are a lot of similarities to Canada. The government structure is the same and we both are commonwealth nations. But the Australians have kept the English traditions much more alive than the Canadians, still have tea instead of coffee breaks. The aboriginals here are often on welfare and have a lot of drug and alcohol problems. Its really sad actually how they just seem to have no ambition to better themselves, but why should they? the government buys them new cars!  That information was for the people who have been studying Australia lately, you’re welcome. 

I went to the Walgett show this last weekend and had a really good time! Its a small show but they get a lot of horses and other livestock out from all over the state. They also had a couple of rides for the kiddies and such. One of the vendors made wood fired pizzas, they were amazing! I hadn’t had pizza in a few months so that could have had something to do with my amazement haha. I met a whole bunch of nannies this weekend, so many of the farmers have nannies for their kids! That was something that I did not know about these Aussies. I haven’t heard from Englishman Joe in a while, he has very limited service where he is so its kinda difficult to plan our trip. I also have a real beef with MasterCard, I can’t do any online purchases! I called them and was told that there is no problem with the card and I should just buy from different sites. But the real problem is that I am trying to put more minutes on my phone cause I ran out a week ago, and the Telstra site doesn’t take my card! Of course I could just go to the nearest Telstra shop and do it in person but, its over 200 km away! So that is my big issue this week. 

Smells like dinner is almost ready to go, lamb chops, potato, pumpkin and some other vegetable. Apparently Australians like to have three veggies and one meat for dinner every night. I could use a Flamethrower burger from DQ by now, haven’t had fast food since I was in Dubbo two months ago, I miss it! Although I’m sure its good for my health to not have any fast food. But, looks like its time to eat so I gotta run. Later everyone!

Ahh rural Australian life, four hour blackouts because a tractor ran over a power pole in the  middle of a paddock somewhere. How is everyone? I am fantastic now, was a little down for a bit but I’m good now and ready to continue this adventure I am on. The last little while has been pretty busy but busy is good. The shearers finished on monday afternoon so thats one big thing off the to do list. It took them only three days to shear just over 1600 sheep, that is a lot of work for four guys! The money is good doing that but its backbreaking work in the dust and sheep poop, not my idea of fun. On monday Richard and I brought the cattle down into the yards to wean last years calves. There has been an awful lot of mooing around here but its getting less and less everyday. There were eight calves from this year in the mob as well so they needed ear tags and castration for the little boys. We tried to put them in the cradle to work on them but some of them refused so I got to play cowboy for a bit and throw em to the ground the old fashioned way! Those little guys never stood a chance when I got hold of them!

We are going to finish harvest tomorrow, still have a few hundred acres of sorghum that needs to come off. But that will be a days work tops so then we have to find something else to do. Hopefully we get some rain here shortly so that we can start sowing some more crops, its to dry for sowing as it is. 

Went on a bus trip with the rugby team last weekend, went over to Bourke to take on the Rams over there. Which is kind of funny since the Walgett team is also called the Rams, I guess that tells you how big sheep farming is out here. The Walgett town show is this weekend so that could be interesting, everything is agriculturally oriented. There are fast shearing competitions and things like that, snake man is coming to show us all about the creepy devils that live in the grass around here. Richard killed a huge red-bellied black snake yesterday and narrowly missed killing an even bigger one, at least six foot something. 

Now that we have internet again I can update my blog! Last month we went over the limit so they cut us off for almost a week. When you’re this far from everywhere it seems pretty isolated even though I’m not that far from town. 

Anyway, thats me right now, hope to hear from you all real soon!