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!