Christmas, New Year and Adventures with the Mommy Bear

So this one is going to be long - again! I haven't had a chance to write since before my mom arrived. There's a lot of pictures too, cause we got some really good ones and want to show off how pretty our adventure was. So, here's time for a cuppa, maybe a sandwich or a piece of cake, and after that go for a glass of wine, we've definitely had a few on the way…

Here goes…

Part I

Seb and I eventually picked Mom up on the 8th December after a delayed flight and endless circling to avoid $$$ parking!! It was emotional! As we waited for her to come through the gates Sebastian said 'as soon as you see her you're just going to sprint across the room crying aren't you?' I did. 

We headed back to our airbnb in the Yarra Valley, which was high on the hillside with an incredible view over the valley.

We did a lot of exploring and hiking. It's such a beautiful region, lush and green and full of walking trails, a famous cycle track, rainforest, wineries and waterfalls. The weather was fairly cool, some days it was almost too cool, but mostly it was that nice temperature where it's warm but not too warm, good for Doing Things.

We honestly walked every boardwalk we could find. It's such a good way to see the natural scene without any one being able to tramp through it and ruin it. Australia has a huge problem with ecosystems as the Europeans brought so many foreign species which are invading and killing native plants. It's happened with animals too, rabbits, cats and dogs have massively messed up the native wildlife. So I'm glad there are places where people can't get to, to give nature a chance. 

It is SO beautiful.

At the top of Mount Donna Buang we climbed the HUGE tower for what could have been a really amazing view but was completely hidden by the clouds. 

We spent a day at Healsville Sanctuary and hung out with some of the natives. You have never experienced true happiness until you have seen a duck-billed platypus having it's tummy tickled!

We went to the Ada Tree Reserve where we saw trees that were so incredibly old and enormous. It was absolutely breath taking!

And we got up and close with some of Australia's most famous residents. When they stretch their necks and stand up properly they're as tall as me. 

We stayed on Phillip Island too, the island with the little penguins. 

Part II

Sebastian left us on Phillip Island to go and meet his parents in Sydney; they came out for an Australian Christmas too. Mom and I got the bus to Melbourne and checked into our next home, an old big rig sailing ship docked in Melbourne Docklands. 

And then we picked up our wheels. Meet Jucy, our camper. A little more upmarket than last year's Spaceship. A little more obvious too with it's green and purple body! 

It had a converting sofa bed in the back, and a kitchen in the boot with a sink, fridge and pull out stove. The stove was great but it was stuck to the shelf so you couldn't move it out of the wind. Without a wind shield the best we could do is turn the car around and hold towels around the outside...

We mostly stayed at free campsites. They are usually in national parks, or small town recreation reserves. They have toilets, though not always flushing one (yep, I'm talking holes in the ground), and that's pretty much it. It's great. Free. And no one else around. Though we did start missing showers after a while!

Christmas On The Road

For Christmas we stayed at Johanna Beach in the Great Otway National Park. 

We decorated Jucy with paper chains and fairy lights (thanks Aunty 'Nita and Toby!).

And I woke up on Christmas morning to find Santa had come to the car. I had 2 stockings, from Santa (mom) and Santa (Toby and Larlie), and cards and presents from England. Thank you so much to everybody. It was such a surprise to get such lovely messages from you all. I spent the whole day in happy tears!

All meals were held on the beach naturally. Though it was so hot - must have been pushing 40degrees - that we couldn't stay out there for long. Unfortunately the flies like the heat too so we ate lunch very quickly! 

The birds at Johanna, and along most of the coast were incredible. We saw superb and gang gang cockatoos, king parrots, lorakeets and the superb fairy wren. The fairy wrens at Johanna liked to dance on the car! The male with the bright blue heads would flit around flirting with the female, and he would try to scare off the other male in the wing mirror!

We rejoined the Great Ocean Road for more stunning views. This year going in the right direction. Our days soon formed into a bit of a routine. Breakfast outside in the sunshine then coffee on a nice beach before exploring the local area. We hunted out waterfalls, boardwalks and rain forests, and discovered some hidden gems.

This is how you do coffee on the beach!

Beauchamp Falls is the most incredible (I've used that word a lot now, I should learn some new words…) waterfall I've seen yet. It is so mystical, hidden deep in the rainforest. There's no one around and all you can hear is birds and the water… Eden.

The Redwoods are one of the most unbelievable places I've ever been in. Sequoia trees were planted in 1985 and they are already absolutely enormous. I felt so unbelievable small. It was incredible (there's that word again!).

We finally made it to the Twelve Apostles. It's been on my bucket list since I was about 12. We hiked up to it, and each corner brought a new INCREDIBLE view (couldn't help it) =] 

The coast is basalt and limestone, formed from ancient volcanos and sand dunes that turned to rock. The effect is hundreds of miles of awe inspiring rock stacks. 

Loch Ard Gorge is the site of a famous shipwreck in the 1880s. The Loch Ard sailed from Scotland carrying lead and a few passengers. After a 3 month journey they were wrecked along this Shipwreck Coast. All of the crew and passengers were lost, except for the cabin boy who found his way to shore through the tiny passage into the bay. He then heard cries and went back into the water to save a girl passenger. They then had to climb 100m steep cliffs to get help. 

The Arch

London Bridge. 

This used to have two arches and be connected to the mainland, but it collapsed. When it did two people were strange on the the second arch!

The Grotto

It was just unbelievable scene after unbelievable scene.

We tried boomerang throwing. 

We can't throw boomerangs.

Explored Tower Hill, an ancient volcanic crater, and did the Journey To The Last Volcano.

We headed up to The Grampians, a national park full of mountains. First we climbed Mount Sturgen.

Part III

In The Grampians we met up with Sebastian and his lovely parents, Hans-Jurgen and Astrid. We spent a couple of days exploring a place called Wonderland. It really was. The rock formations on the mountain were just unreal. It seemed to perfect to be natural. 

While we were in The Grampians, thankfully with the Graf family, there was a tragic accident. Driving through the forest at dusk, a kangaroo jumped out from the bush and straight in front of the car. We didn't see it until the moment of impact. It was horrific. Seb said the roo hit the car mid jump and bounced straight backwards, hit the floor and then dragged itself back into the forest really quickly. It's leg must have been broken. We were fine, just shocked and very upset. The front left of the car was pushed in so we couldn't open the passenger door after that - that made things interesting!

We called the emergency services. Being in the middle of a forest we didn't have signal so they were the only people we could contact. They got in touch with environmental ranger who sent a ranger out. We waited for him for an hour and a half, not wanting to leave the kangaroo, but as it got darker we had to move out. The next morning we found out that a ranger had gone out and the kangaroo had probably been put down. =[ 

Part IV

We split from the Graf's again - you can't organise anything with five easy going people who all don't mind what you do! Our next stop was Warrnambool, where we went to Flagstaff Hill, a replica 1880's town. There were buildings for the sail maker, the newspaper printer, a school.

We hunted out some creatures on our journey...

This big Huntsman turned up on the inside of the drivers door, just above the clasp where the door sits when it is closed. I thought I had chased him away until he turned up again on the drivers window - which was half open. Cue a mad run around the car with the important information folder in a busy car park!

One of the best nights was in Corroboree National Park. First we couldn't find the site. Googlemaps tried to send us up a trail that had grown back in and was impassable, and then up a gated service route. We panicked being lost in the middle of a giant national park as it was getting darker. But Mom found us a way in using the very badly drawn map we had.

There was just 1 other couple there, also in a Jucy camper!! It was a completely wild spot full of creatures - we saw wallabies, gang gang cockatoos, parrots, lizards, and woke up to a koala above the car! I named him George =] If you look closely at the picture you can see him top left.

We walked to a seal colony, expecting to see one or two on an island a couple of hundred meters out to sea. But we looked down and saw a couple of hundred lounging on the rocks below us, and more swimming and playing around in the water. It was unlike anything we ever saw. We felt so lucky to be able to see that. It was being inside an Attenborough documentary!

And sadly, Mom had to return to England. It was another hard goodbye at the airport, but we are both going to exciting places. Mom to her new house and me to somewhere else with Sebastian. The plan is to work for a while to save some money and then hit the road again.

It's been so nice to have my momma with me again. And I loved spending time with Seb's parents too. It was a real holiday, and now it's back to reality and the rat race. But at least I've got this beautiful land, beautiful boy and beautiful sunsets...

On to the next thing

We’ve both been working hard for the last month. I have been packing oranges while Sebastian has been building a giant shade house to grow plants in an aquaculture format. I’m still not quite sure what that means. So far what I have figured out is that the plants grow in fertilised water with no soil, but I can’t get my mind around that futuristic technology. What I do know is that he’s been doing some back breaking heavy lifting, lying on his back and bolting things above his head for hours on end, painting with tar (if you wondered, no, it doesn’t ever come off the bed sheets!) and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Meanwhile I have been surrounded by huge hot machines and sweating out my entire body weight. I’ve mostly been grading oranges for either juice or fruit, and packing fruit by hand. Hand packing is a lot of fun (!) where you get covered in the wax they spray on the fruit, and stickers which don’t stay stuck.

We’ve lived in a great little place called Myalbangera Outstation which is a big share house. There’s a lot of people there we love. My girlfriends, Jana and Hannah, Tim, Jana’s boyfriend (he and Seb have a bit of a bromance!) Andy from Essex, and our little brood of kittens. There’s 10 teeny ones, with 2 mommas who share feeding and cleaning duties; it’s really quite remarkable. One mother will stay with the kittens while the other goes off and does her own thing, then they switch places. They are wild cats so live in the lavender bushes near the deck. I love coming home from work and having a cuddle as the sun sets.

It’s getting really hot again – we’re reaching mid to high 30s most days. It’s pretty humid too. And that means bugs. Thousands of them. The little black thunderbugs are nothing compared to the buggers we get here. They are small enough to slip through the flyscreen on the windows, and the gaps between the door, and they head to the light in their millions. The kitchen gets it worst, as we’re cooking you find bugs on your plate before you can dish up, your drink is never safe, and you’re more likely than ever to throw your whole meal on the floor as you swing it around trying to get the bugs away from you. It’s great. Really.

So it’s getting warmer, work has finished, it’s almost Christmas, and that means only one thing. MY MOMMA IS ON HER WAY! Well technically she leaves the UK the day after tomorrow, but she will be with me the day after that. And I cannot wait! It’s definitely not enough to see your best friend once a year.

It’s going to be a crazy ride, where she gets to meet Sebastian, and his parents! And they get to meet me for the first time. And my mom. I’ll let you know how it all goes down…

Myalbangera Outstation

It was a bit of a challenge to fit all of our stuff in the roof box, but we did it. And we set off on our 1250km, 17hour journey from Federal to Yenda.

We stopped very little but couldn't resist pulling in to see Wollomombi Falls, the second tallest waterfall in Australia.

We drove through a patch of land that was severely flooded, fields and fields under maybe 2 or 3 feet of water. And with the water came the bugs. We drove to bodies hitting the windscreen like hailstones. The windscreen wipers were completely ineffective so we could barely see. We had to stop at the first gas station and use the windscreen cleaner before we could see again! 

We finally arrived at 10:30pm. So we are on a farm. Again.

Myalbangera Outstation. It's more a big share house than a working hostel. The people are really great - mostly French, and German. There's only one other English person, and he grew up in the village next door to my cousins! It's a big wooden building with a deck running all the way around so you can sit and stare at the nothing-ness that surrounds you. 

I have started work in a Pack House, packing oranges on a MUCH larger scale than at the Fruitshack. When I was packing mandarins there we would do around 20 bins a day with 6 of us working. Here there are about 15 or 20 people and we'll do 40 bins before lunch.

I'm a grader. At station 1 the oranges get tipped from the bins and roll up onto the conveyor belt where I will pull out the mouldy and rotten ones.

Then they go on to station 2 where the fruit is split into those going to the store and those being squished for juice. 

The fruit for juicing goes into a big truck and off to the juicing factory, while the oranges for the stores carry on along the belt and either drop into the big cardboard bins or are packed by hand.

On my very first day we ran a load of lemons that had been sat in the shed for 2 months. There weren't mouldy ones as such, there was just mush. There were 4 of us just dragging handfuls of slush from the belt. The machine got clogged up and stopped about 4 times, and wouldn't start again until we had hosed it down. 

Every time a bin was tipped onto the belt a green haze wafted up, so we all looked great in our masks! Plus the ear protectors we always wear because the machine is so loud.

The Supermoon was incredible from the Outstation!

But we get oranges just as big at the pack house!