22nd November 2010

From Dairy farms to sheep farms, throw in some crater lakes and caves.. back to Melbourne and out again…

Well that's it in a nutshell

So last time I wrote of our doings I was havin trouble sleeping in Mt Gambia. That was a lovely place and quite a surprise to find these spectacular crater lakes and then find that the city has quite extensive caves under it as well. They call this part of Aussie The Limestone Coast. We took a tour through some caves, from a guy who played in them as a kid..what a playground! We continued on up to friends Catherine and Shannon and their cute as a button wee 13month old daughter Charley, out on a sheep farm. They run 30 odd beefies(one of those being Catherine's pet Brahman cow) as well as around 2500 sheep I think.

Catherine and Shannon are a very accomplished but very modest couple, Shannon having 2 world titles and numerous National titles in Australia for Shearing. Catherine too is a dab hand and has many other talents, wool sorting and her art.

The farm at Willalooka was as Gold as the Dairy Farm at Glenormiston North was Green.(they were actually growing Taranaki grasses there) but in Willalooka there were beautiful fields of gold…rye grasses waving golden heads, but also some large irrigated fields of Lucerne. We got to help out too.. I got to inject lambs with their Vitamin B12 shots as Catherine followed doing the Worming ones…Bevin was playing sheep dog  J Bevin and I headed out next morning to clean troughs..the warm weather makes them scummy so there were were riding across the farm on the bike with trough broom in hand. Later that day we headed to another farm as they both had a shearing job on, Shannon shearing and Catherine being roustabout ..in the wool industry that's wool sorting. They have a reciprocal going on in the district…one goes to a farm and does hay cutting and then the job is repaid by them going to shear sheep..all goes in a wee book titled 'The National Debt'

While the shearing job was going on the owner of that farm took Bevin and I up one at a time in his wee two seater aeroplane for a flight over the district that lasted around 30 minutes each. It was a super clear day and whereas there looked to be heaps to trees on the ground we could see just how few there were, apparently there is now only about 5% of the original forest/scrub cover left after clearing for agriculture, not to mention cities. Was an awesome flight thanks to Brian

We were sad to have to leave the beauty of this region and have to make a mad dash back to Melbourne this time back along the Western Highway seeing a pink lake along the way and stopping for lunch beside a green lake  and was a lovely warm day. Got back into Melbourne feeling rather bum sore at around 5.45 to Alex and Bex's just in time for them to head out, so it was blob out time for us.

The reason we came hotfooting it back to Melbourne was yesterday (Sunday) Bevins dad and wife Wendy were arriving into port on the Holland American  cruise ship Volendam and we were meeting them at 10.30 down on the ship. We had an awesome tour round the ship seeing how people travel when they are NOT motorbiking and tenting around Australia. And food, there seemed to be a non stop selection of amazing foods all round the ship…ok so we were like kids in a lolly shop. We spent most of the day there and have to concede there is an appeal there when feeling in need of a good dose of luxury.

We said another goodbye to Alex and Bex and their lovely St Kilda apartment and headed out of Melbourne once again to amble round the coast to Sydney and concerts there. We rode today to Lakes Entrance, stopping for lunch in La Trobe which was a very pretty city and are now camped at Eastern Beach and can hear the waves nearby. Took a walk to the beach at sunset and saw a gorgeous orange moon rising ..looking forward to looking around tomorrow.