Working? on a Farm

The bus ride to Mt. Molloy (where we are wwoofing) was miserable! The bus left at 7 am, it was hot (no ac or open windows), a lot of the people on the bus smelled BAD, the little girl sitting behind me had snot running down her face and she kept coughing and it was the windiest roads we have been on yet. I spent the two hour bus ride trying not to vomit. Thankfully we made it there throw up free and were greeted by Will (our new wwoof host) in his Yute. This property was completely different than the last place we wwoofed at. Where were this time was in a place called Maryfarms and it is was extremely rural, no internet and no cell phone reception. Maryfarms is also west of the great dividing range so they don't really get any rain in winter so it was extremely dry and extremely hot. They said in the summer it can get up to 120 degrees F. The property we were on is very flat and very brown but it surrounded by mountains and extremely beautiful. Our Wwoof hosts were a couple, Will and Jo who are in their late 30s/early40s and they have a 4 1/2 year old son named Sam and a dog named Chucko who is blind in one eye. They live on 250 acres and just opened a camp ground and a B&B. They expect to get mostly bird watchers staying because there are these huge Bustards that are everywhere on their property. Our accommodation here was really nice. We stayed in the B&B which is separated from the main house, but not very far, and we had our own very nice bedroom.
The first night we were there they had some of the neighbors come over for a sausage sizzle over at the campgrounds. They also had their first guests ever stay in the B&B so that was exciting. The B&B guests were a father and daughter from New Zealand, the 9 year old daughter Teal was very talkative and I think glad to have two girls in their early twenties to hang around with. The sausage sizzle was really delicious and it was great to meet the neighbors and some other wwoofers that they had with them.
The next day, our first full day wwoofing, Lindsay and I were eager to get to work and see what they would have us doing, but we soon learned that they were more interested in having us as babysitters for Sam than actually putting us to work. It was fine but we kind of felt uncomfortable that we weren't actually doing any farm work. We spent the morning playing with Sam, he is really into carpentry and has his own giant tool box. I was shocked that a 4 year old is allowed to use a real hammer and nails and a saw, Im pretty sure at times unsupervised. He was surpridingly very coordinated for a four year old and it was funny that he was teaching us how to hammer nails, he would say things like "ok ill just get this nail started for you". He was pretty cute he pronounced my name Waura and
Lindsay was "winsey", but he ran the house and controlled his parents. At times it was really uncomfortable when he was acting out and his parents were making excuses to us.
As far as the actual work goes we didn't do much as I said, we mostly babysat, one day we did some weeding, and we made dinner one night. While we were there we went on a hike with the neighbors and their Wwoofers. It could have been a really fantastic hike, the whole time we were in the rainforest we wanted to hike to a waterfall but the closest one was a day and half hike away, so this was finally our chance. Lindsay and I put on our jeans and sneakers for the hike but when we went to get in the car we told to put on shorts and flip flops. Lindsay and I assumed we must be driving to the waterfall because who hikes in flip flops, but oh no we hiked, not on a path, through long grass with stinging green ants, and over boulders. Neither of us were too thrilled about walking through long grass, especially after hearing snake stories for the past couple of days. We eventually got to the waterfall and it was really beautiful, I just wished I had been wearing sneakers the whole time. After the hike when we were all back in the car and driving through the woods (that had recently been burned) back to the farms, I noticed a large snake out the window. We pulled over and it was a ten foot black headed python, it was amazing, I had never seen a snake that big in the wild. Lindsay of course waited in the car, but was still brought to tears (she has been a very good sport about being in situations that make her very uncomfortable). The people that took us hiking who described themselves as "a bit alternative" (and they really were), told as that the black headed pythons are very aggressive so they thought it would be smart to throw rocks at it. Lindsay and I also encountered quite a few little creatures in our bedroom, such as the nightly huntsmen spiders (they are huge), and even a bat one night. We were supposed to leave on Friday but we found a cheap flight to Sydney on Thursday morning so we left a couple of days early (and we were glad to).
We left Wednesday evening on the same terrible shuttle we had taken a week earlier we got into Cairns around 7 pm and had 12 hrs to kill before our flight. We didn't want to spend the money on a hostel so we saw the Harry Potter movie then went to the airport around midnight. It was really creepy to spend the night in the airport because absolutely no one was there. We didn't get much sleep but we were excited to be going to Sydney!!
Cheers,
Laura