To Mudgee we go

Today we are off to Mudgee. We put off finding a host till the absolute last minute, but we still ended up getting lucky, or so we hope. We're going to a host that has a place in Bathurst and a B&B in Mudgee; we'll be going between the two. If it's good we'll stay for 2 weeks. You see, September is wine month in Mudgee and it's an ongoing festival. We work five hours in the morning and enjoy the wine region the rest of the day and night. I think all the vomit is out of my nose from the last bad bottle of wine we bought, and I'm ready to drink some more wine of the $10+ variety.

On a completely different note, we woke up this morning to find that somebody stole our granola at the hostel. We were all sorts of hungry and ready for breakfast, Jen goes out to the kitchen and it's not on our shelf. Where is it? We went to bed late, and it was there, got up earlier than anybody else and it's gone. Empty bag in the trash. So, so mean. You don't steal your hostel-mates granola!!! We shared a piece of toast for breakfast, and we're still pissed.

This post is going back in time. Yesterday we hiked Wentworth Falls pass. All the signs said in red lettering Experienced Walkers Only. (They say walkers, not hikers here.) We decided to pretend that we were experienced. When we had to go down caged stairways backwards and shimmy down a rock on a rope we thought that maybe we'd gotten ourselves into some trouble. But we didn't fall off any cliffs or anything. We got to pass through several waterwalls and got stunning view after stunning view. We'll put some pictures up soon.

The day before yesterday, we were still hiking and nearly had a tragedy. We were at a lookout point when I dropped the cap to the waterbottle and it rolled out a cliff edge, too far past the fence to grab it. I got down on the rock to shimmy out and grab it, but instead just laid on the ground because it was damn scary. Damn scary I tell you. But Jen was brave enough to do it. It was totally safe and she didn't have to shimmy far, but still. Scary. But we got the cap to the water bottle back and nobody fell off a cliff.

learning

so i have to say that we are learning. you would think that a bus is cheaper than the train. wrong. the train is cheaper. one would think that a 6 dollar bottle of wine is good. wrong. i was fine but sam throw-up about 3 times. keep in mind the bottle only had the name and a bar code on it. i think that was our bad.

for the past couple of days we have been in katoomba in the blue mountains. lots of hiking. i would say average 8 hours a day, but the views are kick ass. if i remember to bring the memory card to the internet cafe you all can see some pictures.

oh, if anyone knows about the "spray" aka the quarantine method that was used on us to enter australia, feel free to write.

thanks.

Farm #1, which is actually a garden.

So, we've all seen those gardens in Home and Garden magazine and on the gardening shows and think it most be impossible to maintain or even make a garden like that, right? Well, our current hosts have one of those gardens. I even saw their glossy spread of it in Home and Garden. It's crazy, it's huge! Their home looks out into the Blue Hills, and they're surrounded by other farms. Our hosts are Denis and Lynnette, who seem quite in love and call their home paradise. Adorable.

Our work has been fairly easy, mostly weeding of sorts. Our first day we pulled a cactus nicknamed Mother of Millions out of the agpanthas, reminding me of my environmental restoration class (dad you can have a chuckle). They practice permaculture, so everything that you would think is waste isn't. In fact, Jen got the job of scraping off the top layer of pond scum off of the pond and spreading it around trees (which were also surrounded by horse shit) to keep them moist and insulate them from the frost. We are learning quite a bit from Denis about permaculture, and Jen has got all the info down in her journal in adorable diagrams. The art degree is going to good use. We work for five hours, including a break for tea and cakes that seems to last an hour. They cook all of our meals and refuse all of our offers to help. We feel truly spoiled. And I've befriended their long-haired chihuahua Kevin. Only an Australian would name their dog Kevin.

We are leaving tomorrow for the Blue Montains. We had to buy some more clothing for the trip so we don't freeze in the night, but in another week after we've passed through the mountains we'll be leaving the clothes behind. But that's okay because we bought them for dirt cheap at the Big W, which was "rolling down prices"... After the mountains is our next farm, which we don't know where it is yet. We're going to try to go to this farm that also owns a B&B in a winery town and work out some deal that we could work double for a few days stay at the B&B. We'll see if that works. And now we need to walk back to the farm before the sun goes down and the "goons" get us, as Denis says.

new link.

Hey, we added a link for our pictures. It says "look at our pictures." You should look at them.

Almost time for some farming

So, yesterday in Sydney was not the most ideal day. We set out early to go to Manly, which is a beach north of Sydney that is supposed to be quite beautiful. But instead of making our ferry, we looked in our guidebook to see that most stores are closed on Sunday. I still needed work boots, so we ended up back in the retail district shopping. And we hate shopping. And we have bad luck shopping. Bad combination. Short story is our day sucked and we never made it to the beach. But that's quite alright, because we got back to our hostel, bought a cheap bottle of wine and some cheese and made an evening for ourselves on the spectacular roof deck. Could you imagine being on a roof deck in winter in Boston? You'd freeze to death, but here you just shiver a little. So, today we're off to the beach, and we're determined to catch the 8:45 ferry.

so imagine, its 10 in the morning and your ready to start your day. youve had your breakfast and your coffee. the sun is shining and you can tell its going to be a beautiful day because your already taking off layers of clothes. ( thats a good thing for the fact its winter here) walking down the street to your 1st destination which happens to be the powerhouse museum, and you see a man walk out of his house. he is wearing a white long sleeve shirt with blue sweat pants. now these arent any sweat plants, but the ones that have the elastic on the bottoms. you know the ones im talking about. high class sweat pants. this man has these pants hiked up somewhere close to mid nipple range. again, this is a classy guy.

so he is about 10 feet in front of us and he stops, turns to the side, kicks one foot out in front of him, then brings the foot back, and squats.

then the most incredible thing happens. he farts. not just any fart, but the type that lasts about 6 seconds long. IT LASTED FOR EVER! so we did the reasonable thing and walked around him and laughed uncontrollable for the next 5 minutes. i turn around to see if the man was going to continue on with his walk, but no he just walked back into his house.

jen

Sydney

Sydney is great. We got up this morning at 7:30 and have been exploring the city all day. Up until an hour we hadn't even got lost. We had to have a major tourist moment with our guide book out trying to figure out what street we wanted to be on and how in the world we passed the same noodle shop a bazillion times. But we worked through it and here we are.

Our observations about Sydney: 1) People here aren't very overweight, 2) the walk/don't walk signal at crosswalks is a very beefy man, 3)one could easily be trampled to death in the financial district, 4)Burger King is called Hungry Jacks or something like that, and 5) you have to look right-left-then right again before crossing the street instead of the other way around like we learned in kindergarden (much harder than it sounds).

And to all of you that have been to Australia, why didn't anyone mention that I would be "sprayed" in the airplane as part of the quarantine before I was let in the country???

SAM

3 more days

After a 5 day train trip and a week in Oregon, we're 3 days away from actually leaving. You may be thinking "5 day train trip? They told me it was 3..." We did, and we apologize for the error. We forgot to factor in the 9 hour delay and night in Chicago. We'll try not to make that mistake again.

We'll be staying at Eva's in Sydney before we're off to our first farm in Agnes Banks. The farm sounds crazy. It has 2 orchards, ornamental gardens, a swimming pool, chickens, horses, cat and 3 dogs. Sam will be trying to stay as far from the cat as possible, while Jen "nay"s at the horses. Stay tuned to find out how bad our fresh Australian sunburns will be.