Unfortunately from the day we arrived we realised we'd probably made a mistake! But due to various factors - lack of money for a hostel stay in an area we weren't particularly interested, no other wwoof hosts organised - we ended up sticking it out for two generally tense two weeks.

It was our host who was the problem, being generally an arrogant, money-obsessed person who seemed to see his wwoof-ers as free labour rather than volunteers on an exchange. This was demonstrated in the fact that 85% of our time was spent weeding, and that we worked 8 days without a day off, before awarding ourselves with a relaxing day when he went away for the weekend. Our host even boasted to a friend, within earshot of us, "Guess how much my workers cost? Nothing!" Charming he was not.

But enough of the negatives, despite the fact that it was, erm, mostly negatives!
There were positives, obviously. We got our own rooms, the house was nice, the wwoofers had their own bathroom and computer with internet. We had free rein with some things in the kitchen and could cook as long as we cleaned up (using our host's patented teatowel method), and were even allowed to compile our own shopping lists for food when our host went off working at the weekends. And once we all warmed up to each other, the other wwoofers there were ace - a French girl who was stuck at the house for two month as part of her international business degree language internship, and an Israeli guy.

And aside from the dullness of the almost-constant weeding, the lack of days off and the, erm, difficult to live with host, the property was pretty ace in itself. With 32 horses paddock’d and stabled there, often with two in the paddock that doubled as the front garden of the house, I was in my element. Often the horses – many of them gorgeous thoroughbreds - would wander over as we weeded, hungrily and curiously sniffing at us, the clippings, the secatuers, sledgehammer and our 3 litre water bottle. And there were chooks, eleven of them, with four young, friendly ones who would follow you about and even run after you if you ran. They would also try all manner of tricks to escape from their run, and occasionally leap flapping onto your back as you fed them or topped up their water. And there was a goat. Or should I say, The goat. He became my nemesis, from the moment I discovered him, his chain wrapped around the fence, his water empty. From then on I took it as my responsibility to top us his water and make sure he wasn’t tangled; he in turn liked to reward me by rearing at me in an attempted headbutt, or by pawing the ground and charging head-first at his just-filled bucket of water. A charming animal, but I could see where the rage was coming from – being chained up all day alone couldn’t have been good for him,

And there were kookaburras aplenty, cackling away in the trees, hawks circling low overhead on the thermals, blue skies and tall, white eucalyptus trees; mountains with low cloud in the distance, kangaroos and wallabies to be seen grazing and drinking from the pool formed by the dam at dusk. We took a walk along the creek that bordered the property on our ‘day off’. We clambered through the grasses and bushes, stamping and clapping (well, I was the only one clapping actually…) to scare away snakes, led by the intrepid Israeli guy with his bouncing afro. It felt free, and adventurous, though we were hardly a K/m from the property, because of the way we had to bash our own pathway, and the ever-constant threat of snakes hidden in the undergrowth.

So there were good times, but mostly only when our host was away. The fantastic and enlightening conversations with the other wwoofers, communally made dinners, watching films together, drinking cold beers in the front paddock under the mid-afternoon sunshine, our creek-walk…. If there hadn’t been other wwoofers, though, the place would have been kind of a nightmare! Suffice to say 'sticking it out' won't be a mistake we make again, but here's hoping one bad host is enough for one trip!

And then we left, in a cab... and headed off to the blissful peace and weeding-free Magnetic Island...

written by  LizIsHere on July 15, 2010 from Townsville, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Longer update coming soon!

p.s. I also got to see koalas in the wild yesterday! They're very cute, but when asleep mostly resemble 'grey motionless bundles', as the guidebook put it. But we were lucky enough to see some awake too!

written by  LizIsHere on July 23, 2010 from Magnetic Island, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Our original plan had been to chill out for a few days and then to go to a wwoof host on the island, but that all fell apart a bit (it's becoming a sort of theme of our wwoofing organising!) when this host had to cancel for family reasons. Fine, so we would chill out for five days, and then go to our next host near Mackay. Nope - these had to cancel too. Cue a day of frantic panicking and emailing, until we suddenly recieved a response from a vineyard near Childers asking if we could come on the dates we had been meant to go to our Mackay host. Ace, and it sounded like a lovely place, more to the point! And so what if it was...gulp... a sixteen hour bus ride away.

Putting such thoughts aside we settled down to enjoy our time on the island properly. This mostly involved either relaxing on the beach at Picnic Bay, the quiet (a whole lot quieter since the ferry terminal moved to Nelly Bay) township at the end of the island's paved road, wandering the jetty there, or catching the bus to explore other beaches on the island. The first day we were there we were lucky enough to see a turtle, just swimming in the sea next to the jetty - I didn't even get to see one of them when I was diving! We visited Arcadia to relax on the beach and pose by the sign (there's an Arcadia at Glastonbury festival, the sign of which we also have photos posing by... anyway).

But on our second-last day our mission was Koala Spotting! This required doing the Forts walk on the other side of the island, in the cool afternoon when the koalas, who sleep about 20 hours out of 24 due to their energy-low eucalyptus leaf diet, are most active (active may be a strong word). So before hand we took another walk which branched off the Forts track, walking in the midday heat and then relaxing with a picnic lunch at Florence Bay, an almost unbearably picturesque bay fringed by rocky cliffs. Then we took a short, slightly muddy walk through a stand of mangroves to Arthur Bay, an even more pretty bay, with a rocky outcrop on which perched, as if placed there by the tourist office, a little rock wallaby.

When the day finally began to cool down, we walked back up the hill to the start of the Forts trail, which weaves up a ridge through eucalyptus forest, passing through the site of an old WWII military encampment. The track finishes at the top of a rise, where the observation post and controls post, along with gun emplacements, still remain. It was fascinating to think of the troops stationed there balanced the mental pressures of being constantly battle-ready (though they neve fired a shot in anger, only in, as the info board put it, 'mild surprise', at an American ship paying an unexpected visit!), yet living in such a lush tropical environment.

And, yes, we were also fascinated by the koalas! Starting out the walk I expected to see one at best, they're famously hard to see when asleep - the guidebook described them as 'motionless grey bundles', a surprisingly hard thing to see in a forest of trees. The first two were saw were pointed out to us by other walkers - one, living up to the guidebooks description perfectly, was nestled in the crook of a tree, sound asleep - though this didn't damped our excitement at seeing it one bit. The next one actually stirred, probably roused by our (ok, just my) hissed 'Look, look, a koala', gave us a sleepy, slightly baleful look out of it's round, grey, furry face, and promptly settled back to sleep. The best koala sighting though was definitely when we were tipped off by a family coming up the track as we came down that a mother and baby had been seen, wide awake, in a tree on one of the side paths. It was adorable - the mother lazily reaching out for pawfuls of eucalyptus leaves as the baby, clinging on tightly to it's mum, gazed down at us curiously. We stared enraptured for about ten minutes before deciding to leave them in peace. And, finally, on the last stage of the track before the carpark and bustop, we saw a koala in action, moving more than a few languid millimetres and actually clambering up a tree. We were buzzing for hours - in fact I still am a bit - to see them actually in the wild, and going about their business careless of the dumb people staring at them.

written by  LizIsHere on July 23, 2010 from Magnetic Island, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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We'd decided to spend two nights in Agnes Waters, both to break up the bus journey just a little, and also to make ourselves feel less bad for skipping a quite hefty section of the Queensland coast. We weren't really bothered about missing the tourist spots, but Agnes Waters, a tiny beach community revolving about sun, sand and surfing, was probably the perfect place to recover from the bus journey and get ourselves sorted for our next wwoofing place. Our hostel, Cool Bananas was a leafy oasis - when we stumbled in sleepy eyed from the bus we were greeted with a peaceful hostel, hammocks, free tea (and milk! this is very important. very, very important!), and even two dreadlocked guys plinking away on an acoustic guitar and ukulele, respectively.

It was another beachy-stop... we spent most of our time on the long sandy main beach, walking down it, spinning poi on it, reading on it. We caught a nice sunset at the historic town of 1770 (the first place in QLD that Captain Cook struck upon in...1770!) too.

...And that was it, really... very nice to do but fairly boring to read about, probably!

From Agnes Waters were moving on three hours further south, to our WWOOF hosts in Childers, and perhaps justifiably nervous about it, after our last experience!

written by  LizIsHere on July 25, 2010 from Seventeen Seventy, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Anyway, we arrived in Childers at long last, and Marianne from Vintner’s Secret Vineyard drove to the bus-stop to pick us up. Almost immeadiately upon meeting her our worries were dispelled – a chatty, warm, retired school-teacher, she put us at once at ease. And when we arrived at the property, a large house with pretty gardens, 5 acres of vines, three large cattle pastures, and a shimmering dam (a small man-made lake, in Pom-language), and were greeted by her son Matthew, and three other WWOOFers in the warm, bustling kitchen, we realised we’d found a place, and hosts, who would be the perfect cure for all our Townsville-ingrained negativity. After a tour we sat down to steaming bowls of home-made pumpkin soup, and everyone had a little meeting to discuss current projects happening at the fledgling business (bought the couple two years ago and revamped with new cellardoor, cafe and shop). We also got to meet Theo, their cheerfully scruffy white 'bitsie' ('bit of this and bit of that') dog, who likes to sleep wombat-style with all four paws in the air.

In addition to Marianne, Ed, and one of their grown-up sons Matthew in the house, there was also a Venuezelan WWOOFer, Anna, and a French couple, Elodie and Sebastian, who were staying in their van outside until Anna left and there was bedroom free. So the house was always busy and alive; either Anna or Marianne, or both, always seemed to be cooking something, whether for the cafe downstairs, for dinner that night, or for morning tea (Marianne’s much more civilised name for ‘smoko’), and our meals were taken round the large table in the diningroom/library/living room area, with much tasting (read: drinking) of the new seasons wines. Our room was at the front of the house in a converted verandah, meaning that half the walls were windows, giving the room massive amounts of sunlight and fantastic views over the gently rolling grazing fields of Vintner's and the opposite property, far away on the next hill. It also gave us a close-up view of the birds which sometimes flew unsuspectingly into the glass - and we could hear, perfectly-high-pitched, the crows of the three cockerels kept in the chook pens out back, at varied hours between 2am and 7am. (The chooks vary from the normal russety-brown types, to insanely fluffy things with 80s hairdos, to polka-dotted varieties that would provide the perfect accesory for the glamourous greenie with an eye on co-ordination their egg-layers with their outfit. There are even minute baby quails - the quietest and most retiring of all the fowl on site).
Thankfully we were spared the noises of the two boisterous and highly anti-social geese who lived on the other side of house, beneath Anna and Marianne&Ed's bedroom windows.

There is always something to be done on the property - from simply raking leaves, weeding and general upkeep to maintain the large grounds of orchard, cafe area, lawns and flowerbeds for visitors to wander and picnic in, to bigger projects such as the establishment of a raised veggie garden. But the biggest project in the coming days after we first arrived, and the reason so many WWOOFers were present at one time however, was pruning - preparing Vintner's 5 acres of vines for their spring 'bud-burst' by removing all the old, dead or surplus wood. We had to wait for a 'master pruner' to arrive to tutor us in the art of pruning, so in the meantime we raked the lawns, weeded (easy, hand-weeding this time!), planted cover-plants in various empty beds, collected the chook eggs, and, in a massive all-farm team effort - inside the shed during an epic rainstorm - unloaded hundreds of bottles of wine which Ed had recently brought back from their winemaker, located a few hours away in Kingaroy. It was a little disappointing that we wouldn't get to see any wine-making facilities on-site, but since it's completely the wrong time of year for that anyway, it didn't really matter either way. Nik and I also spent one morning hand-labelling bottles of white wine, spurred on by...let me say...interesting music on the local radio station (one stand-out lyric: "Are you a rockstar, or do you party in a gaybar?"). The music was mostly popular old classics and songs which had topped the UK charts four or five years ago, but the DJ was even so daring as to play a single by the Hoff himself. Strange.

The sun came out properly on the 30th July - perfect since the master pruner was coming that day to tutor us. We all went down to the vines, to the verdhello grapes, and had a lesson on pruning, before trying it out ourselves (Ed seemed remarkably relaxed about us practicing with actual sectauers on his actual vines!). It all seemed very complex to start off with, but the basic rule is to leave the best and newest wood on each spur coming off the vine. This meant the wood had to have very little bark, ideally, and be very green inside. Also, the pruner explained, though it would be possibly to make a slightly-less-good decision over which bit of spur to cut, there was only one real BAD DESICION to be made in terms on pruning on each spur, and as long as we could avoid leaving the very worst, oldest bits of wood in place, the vines would sort themselves out in time for bud-burst in spring. Still, it was slightly nerve-wracking knowing we were dealing with at least a part of Marianne & Ed's livelihood! Afterwards the pruning team repaired to the cafe off the cellardoor, for capuccinnos and some of Marianne's tasty homemade cake.

written by  LizIsHere on July 27, 2010 from Childers, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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In between pruning we take time to be shocked that it's August already. It's August. It's winter here. And yet it's hotter than summer back home. I'm not complaning!

In between our third and final days of pruning, we got to go on a day-trip to Brisbane with Ed. He was going there for a dental appointment, and also dropping Anna off at the meditation retreat where she was WWOOFing next. It's a 3-hour journey so we get up early for the drive, carried along by 60s classic pop and Ed's fascinating collection of country music - ranging Creedence to Cash, and from the weird and creepy to the downright crass. It's brilliant, and I laugh quietly to myself in the back seat at some of the lyrics.

Ed dropped us at the CityCat ferry stop furthest our of the city centre so we could enjoy the (windy! a skirt was not a good choice...) river journey into the city. Although Brisbane could be any-city, any-where, it's pretty enough, being on the river, and after so long in small country towns and on rural properties it was nice to be somewhere cosmopolitan again - although the sheer volume of people baffled us for a little while, as did negotiating road-crossings!
We wanderered along the cultural SouthBank area, past the museums and galleries, the faux-lagoon and beach area on the riverside, and then cross over the bridge to check out Queen's Street. This is where we ran into two of Nik's friends from Busselton. We were all bowled over by the coincidence; similar to when he ran into another of his friend's in Tully - although this was greater since we weren't even staying in Brisbane, just passing through for a few hours!

In the afternoon Ed picked us up again and took us up to Mount Coo-tha to check out a panoramic view of the city. You could see as the conical main-peak of the Glasshouse Mountains, and to New South Wales to the South. It's always interesting to see a city from above, so to speak, to get a real idea of the scale and layout. We'll be back in Brisbane in a month or so, to explore it properly, but the day-trip gave us a taster, and a welcome dose of city-life to make us appreciate arriving back, late in the evening, at the rural peace of Vintner's.

written by  LizIsHere on August 4, 2010 from Childers, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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The next morning Marianne took us on a trip - a mystery trip. She wouldn't breathe a word of where we were going, just got all us WWOOFers into her car (with cameras, she told us cameras were important) and drove us through Childers and out of town. I ventured to suggest that she might be taking us all away to ditch us at the bus-stop, but luckily the reality was somewhat different: she was treating us four to a trip to Snakes DownUnder, a reptile park near Childers, run by snake-expert Ian Jenkins, who kept a taipan as a pet (taipans are the most deadly snake in Australia - well, the Eastern Brown is deadlier per unit of venom, but the taipan injects much more venom and strikes prey multiple times. Anyway, a bite from either would kill you pretty fast. Luckily anti-venoms are widespread and taipans are rarely, if ever, seen.) It had a much better feel - and much, much better crocodile pens - than the Port Douglas place, and many of the snakes on display were caught by Ian when they were found on domestic properties.
Because we arrived early, we got a private guided tour by one of the handlers, round the reptile pens, holding blue-tongued goannas, turtles, frogs, and lizards of the desert, tropics and garden. Understandably, it being a cloudy day, the desert lizards were sulking under rocks in the below-par heat. There were also two snake shows, one packed with irrepresibly noisy pre-school children who were absolutely focused on what was in the biggest box in the small arena (the handler made them wait and wait. It turned out to be a baby crocodile), and one, hosted by Ian, with the Six Deadliest Snakes In Australia, including, of course, the taipan, and Eastern and Western Browns, as well as tiger snakes, which are incredibly well-camouflaged and also, not unexpectedly, pretty damn poisonous. Even those domestic-bred and oft-handled snakes frequently shot out of their carrying bags at a terrifying speed - Ian explained that if they had been wild-bred, they would "have bounced off each wall [off the arena] in under three seconds".
Given the turn of speed that snakes have, then, the advice of how to avoid a bite when confronted with one is quite against all instrincts: stay still. Snakes see by movement, so if you stay as still as possible, an agigated, confronted snake will [hopefully...] slowly relax and move awat, Easy to say...probably quite hard to do, unless fear is freezing you in place. Luckily, the only time we've seen an Eastern Brown (on our mountain hike... in the future, coming soon), it was slithering away from us at quite a speed, saving us having to do anything at all.
After the shows we got to hold the resident boa constrictor python, Kit, and the rather grumpy baby croc (I'd be grumpy too if I knew I'd be going back to the crocodile farm when I got too big - I didn't ask what the crocs were being farmed for, but I'm fairly certain it's not for a life of frolicking in swamps). The croc had an amazingly hard back, and a very soft underside, which is probably the way round they'd want it, in the wild, when they have to defend themselves from bigger crocs (often their parents!) looking for a snack.

Lastly we saw the crocodile feeding, which was dramatic - even Ian, in the pen with a giant adult male croc lunging at him, seemed a little disconcerted by 'Macca's' energy on that particular day. He couldn't have been hungry, since crocs need very little food, especially when they don't have to exert energy hunting for it. Maybe he was just playing....? Well, luckily no one lost any limbs that day. It's a risky job, that's for sure, but I suppose if you're confident enough to keep a taipan as a pet, then you have to pretty sure of your animal-handling skills. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I think he's mental, personally!

written by  LizIsHere on August 5, 2010 from Childers, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Marianne was nice enough to give us a lift to 'Bundy', where we had a good part of the day to explore the town. I think in reality all you'd need was about an hour and a half in the slightly red-neck-y large town, but we filled the time with cafe wanderings, a visit to the BRAG art gallery, which had a digital media exhibition on, and by - of course, it's what we do best - sitting in parks.

Catherine, our new-short-term host, picked us up from the bus station in the afternoon and we drove the 30 km or so out of town to her olive and mango-growing property, Blue Gum Grove. Our host was English; she had moved out to Australia with her husband in 1973, though she still retained her London accent and devotion to Arsenal. The front of her property looked down a gentle slope to her 20 acres of olives groves and mango trees, and the dam, while out the back (well, the front really, but almost no farm people seem to use their front doors, so the back-door essentially becomes the front-door), was a domestic orchard, which grew an array of exotic fruits, including figs, 5-star fruit, mulberries, breadfruit (me neither), chocolate pudding fruit and the glorious custard apple (sadly not in fruit), and some others that I'd never heard of and unfortunately now can't remember. We also met her large, exciteable collie-type dog, Jess.

It was a little strange to land in a strange place to WWOOF for just two and a half days, but Catherine was friendly and understood the importance of regular cups of tea, so we all got on well. On our first day we rose at the fantastically leisurely hour of 8ish to begin work at 9am. Since the torrential rain which had begun on our first evening hadn't abated by the morning, we set about sweeping, scrubbing and tidying up the two large front and back verandahs for the morning. Then in the afternoon we spent an hour or so filling up water containers from an excess-water storage tank, and stacked these up. It was hardly back-breaking work.

The following day we spent a full day working alongisde Catherine mulching her domestic orchard with cane mulch (the bits left over after the cane has been cut. Did I mention that almost everywhere we've been the rural landscape has been crammed with cane fields? Endless, endless cash-crop sugar cane). That day left us all pretty tired, and we could only summon the energy to watch the legendary (well, probably only to us) Aussie music-comedy show Spicks and Specks before going to bed.

And that was the end of our Bundy WWOOFing. Catherine gave us a lift back to the bus station the next morning and we caught the Greyhound back to Childers, walking the thirty-minutes along the wide grassy road verges, past fields and farm properties back to Vintner's, our adopted Childers home.

written by  LizIsHere on August 13, 2010 from Bundaberg, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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sunset at the vineyard

On our first day back we had an early start to visit the nearby Apple Tree Creek market, a very country affair, with plants, homemade crafts, some frankly disgusting fudge, chooks, farm implements and one or two hippy-esque stalls.
During the next week we did a variety of tasks: from planting strawberries in the the new veggie garden raised beds, to removing old christmas lights around the swimming pool on an extremely wobbly ladder; painting windowsills in the cafe toilets, assembling ikea-style shelving units for the shop, leaf-blowing, herding the frequently escaping geese, and general garden stuff. In between we managed, of course, to spent much time lying in the hammock or on the lawns, eat cake, consume ice-creams in the vineyard as the sun set, and cook a bit (me, mainly - I made scones, muffins and a pretty decent spaghetti bake; who knows, maybe I'll actually be able to cook a bit by the time I come home!).
Marianne and I also made a trip into the old country charming town of Childers to get our haircut. I expected, from the general vibe of the town (bar the two or three hippy stores that seem to present in unexpected places all over QLD), that the salon would be a blue-rinse and rollers sort of place, but it turned out to be as funky as anywhere you'd find in Brisbane and Sydney, although much, much cheaper. Perfect! Nik and I explored the town a little more afterwards, including visiting the art gallery which housed the photographic and mural memorial to the 15 travellers killed in the 2000 Palace Backpackers blaze.

We also went on a hike! Ed's cattle farmer and ex-schoolteacher friend Warren had floated the idea of a hike up Mount Woowoonga, a small mountain about 30 km away from Childers, with us before we went to Blue Gum Grove, and we had agreed. Little did we know what awaited. Maybe our first warning should have been that Warren was an extremely fit and experienced hiker - only last year he completed the by all accounts 'fairly tough' 93 km, 8 day Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea. (Part of his training programme, incidentally, had been to climb Woowoonga four times per day with a 13 kg rucksack.)
Our second warning should have come the day before the planned hike, when Warren turned up with a selection of walking poles for us to select from. "More for going down than going up", he explained. Clearly this was going to be a steep one.

On the day we set of with water, hats and our walking poles, and arrived in the small, deserted carpark at the foot of Woowoonga, the peak of which had loomed at us slightly ominously for most of the latter part of the drive. The first 800 m or so of the path was a fairly steady but gently climb, with our sticks feeling more like impediments than anything else. On the way we passed over markings on the ground which Warren identified on the return journey as the scrapings of the large goanna lizards (relations of the Komodo dragon) which live in the region.

At the 800m point was a nice bench - a clear encouragement to have a wee sit down before the path began to climb steeply - and a nice contrast to the sign next to it: "Stop! Are You Prepared? This track is for experienced bushwalkers only."
It also warned of a 'continous steep climb' for the rest of the 1km of the track. It definitely wasn't wrong there! I made a valiant effort to enjoy the intermitten views through the breaks in the trees as I panted, sweated, stumbled and lurched my way up the steep, rough and at times narrow path, but my face was distinctly tomato-like and at points I was quite convinced I was going to throw up. I suppose that's what six months of a backpacker diet and exercise regieme does for you!
But, finally, after ascending a part so steep that my concern was less about how I'd get up it (being only metres from the summit), but how we'd get down without falling flat on our faces/sliding into oblivion - the Summit!

Warren atop mount Woowoonga

A quick scramble over some rocks to the 'edge' of the mountain and then we were greeted with an overwhelming view. Above, blue sky, and below and into the distance, trees, endless, endless layers and shades of trees, repeating onwards so far as to form a green haze at the horizon. It was definitely worth the climb, that's for sure! And it only took a cereal bar and some water for us to agree to follow Warren along an out-of-bounds (but helpfully marked by 'no hiking' signs) track along the ridge to the next peak, where a communications station was situated. This hike was cooler; a scramble down the steep other side of Woowoogna, and then we plunged into damp, greener forest; diving round trees, scrambling over vines, catching skin and clothing on twigs, walking face-first through cobwebs (Nik managed to almost walk face-first in a Golden Orb weaver's web, but luckily the giant spider was elsewhere at the time). We even got 'a little lost' at one point, as Warren happily admitted.
It was much, much easier than the mountain-climb track; just the right side of tiring as we climbed the opposite slope and emerged in the communications-station clearing, filled with pylons and aerials, sticking it to the man as usual as we passed, unheeding, the 'no entry' signs on the way in.

On the way back along the no-hiking hiking track, we were lucky enough to spot a goanna itself, sunning itself on the track in front of us. It stayed stockstill, in an I-don't-move-you-can't-see-me manner - long enough for me to snap a photo or two - but scarpered when we moved too close. And as we made our gingerly way, sliding and once or twice falling on our bums, down the steep Woowoonga Mountain track, we spotted an Eastern Brown snake (the most deadly snake, based on the number of fatal bites, in Aussie) slithering away into the undergrowth. (It's comforting that everytime we've seen a deadly snake they've been slithering away from us). Still, in typical Aussie fashion we stood around in the same spot with Warren discussing anti-venoms and snake-catching for a good five minutes, while the snake, as far as we knew, lingered in the undergrowth just metres away (or made a swift exit as far from us a possible, more than likely - but who knows?).

Back at the carpark, ever-so-slightly tired (that the 1.8km track took us 3 hours, return, gives you some idea of the steepness of it), Warren (who, it may be becoming obvious, is a pretty ace and generous guy, as well as a great teacher) showed us some bushcraft skills - from making a chair out of a flour sack and some logs, to weaving rope out of raffia, and making a bush-compass. On the way back he even abruptly pulled over the ute to pull leaves from trees on the edge of the road to show us - the soap tree leaf, which when crushed and rubbed between the hands in water provided the Aborigines (and early settlers) with a frothing soap, and the aptly named sandpaper tree leaf, used to sand and perfect wooden tools and weaponry.

We left Vintner's on the day of the Aussie election, to catch the Greyhound to Hervey Bay, gateway to Fraser Island. It was hard to go - Marianne and Ed had been such fantastic hosts, and we'd even taken to referring to 'going home' when we were heading back to the farm from Childers or Bundy, such was the welcome they gave us. But it was a happy goodbye, with many thankyous and genuine promises to stay in touch. I think our time there will be one of our most prized Aussie memories.

Marianne in the cellardoor

fraser island

Info time: Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, and is home to the only rainforest growing on sand in the world, too. It was logged extensively up to 1991 when it was made a world heritage sight, and is home to what are thought to be purest dingos (wild dogs) in australia. I was hopeful on seeing one, but on a daytour it seemed unlikely.

All the foot passengers, mostly from different tour groups, piled on the pedestrian and 4x4 ferry for the 30min ride across the water to Fraser Island (which lies off the QLD cost, accessed from Hervey Bay and Rainbow Beach ferry terminals) at about 8am. The first ace wildlife spot of the day was a large sea turtle in the water next to the boat. At the island we got onto our allocated 4x4 buses (all the tracks on the island are sand only so it's a 4X4 only zone). First we drove along one of the island's many bumpy sandtracks to Central Station, the site of a former logging camp, passing dry scrub merging into lush rainforest on the way.
At Central Station we took a rainforest walk along the banks of Wanggoolba Creek, which was astoundingly clear - so much so that you barely see the water moving. Apparently Fraser teams with snakes, but we saw none on the walk. From Central Station we drove on a little way south to 75 mile beach, a designated highway with an 80kmp/h speed limit. 4X4's driven by tour guides and backpackers speed along it regular intervals. It's a bit weird to see so much traffic on a beach, and perhaps it's a bit odd to do so, but any thoughts on the morals etc. of this were fortunately/unfortunately dispelled, as the minute we drove onto the beach we spotted a dingo! The naturally skinny, slightly alsatian-looking dogs (see photo) have been encourage to rely aggressively on tourists for food who insisted on feeding them tidbits, and they have attacked people in the past; an 8 yr old girl was even killed by one some years ago. Thus there is a complete ban on any feeding or even interaction with dingoes on fraser island - with a fine, prison sentence, and deportation facing any overseas visitor who does so. So, we were kept on the bus until our driver had driven far enough away from the dingo to let us out in safety.
The dingo would have been enough of a highlight for me to end the tour then, but a breakdown on the beach (allowing some impromtu sunbathing), a visit to other the coloured pinnnacles of sand, and to the Maheno shipwreck were still on the agenda. Then we drove to Eli Creek, which, while being a beautiful, tropical-plant-fringed creek flowing out of rainforest onto the beach and into the sea, was a bit of a circus with 4x4 buses, 4x4's, and even motorcross bikes parked around it or driving through the beach-mouth of it. This was a theme of Fraser Island, at least the bits you see on a daytour - it's almost like it's a 4x4 adventure playground, rather than a heritage site, which is sad, and a fact that is bitterly lamented by many local QLD'rs.

On the way back down the beach to visit the picturesque turquoise-blue expanse of the inland, rainforest-fringed Lake Mckenzie, our wildlife extravaganza was completed when we saw three humpback whales elaping and cavorting off-shore. Amazing; we were so lucky to be driving past at the right time to see them. It had felt like an incredibly touristy day, and the sight of Eli Creek, in particular, being so crowded with alien-looking motor-vehicles encroaching on the lushness of nature was jarring, but it was the unplanned sites, the dingo and the whales, which were most spectacular, made more so when observedagainst the natural beauty of Fraser.

a dingo on fraser island