How to spend your day off

After working six days almost 12 hours a day harvesting, greasing header, losing my wallet in the middle of a huge fied and having VERY stressful time looking for it (eventually found it), driving bloody old trucks and eating/breathing dust, I definitely wanted to do something completely different on my day off. But this time Its slightly easier as I have my veeery own Nissan "Bullseye" Pulsar. After getting myself up and dragging out of bed, I enjoyed eating my breakfast sloowly instead of devouring it asap as usually. Just kidding. Anyways, around 11 AM I headed to the local (30kms) town Gilgandra and explored it, which didn't takee long as the main street is 100m long. Still it provides people everything they need. What I've found very pleasant in Australia is that in almost every town, village or city, there is a Visitors Information Centre (VIC later on) which offers you decent information, toilets, souvenirs and the best, air conditioned temperature.
I always buy postcards from every place I visit and this time didn't make any exception: I left with 4 postcards. They also had a very smartass postcard which was a picture of a gilgandra during the night and guess what it looked like? Comple black =D

After gilgandra I aimed my wheels to Dubbo which is far larger town than gilgandra and I like that. In Dubbo's VIC I came up with very interesting 3D postcards and I had to buy one, especially one with kangaroos and koalas. The piture actually "moves" as you turn the card! They were four dollars each but it's worth it.

Dubbo's city centre is very comprehensive as aussie towns usually. I could spend my day easily just walkng through shops and see around. But I had a necessities I had to look for: Esky, portable gas cooker, 20L water container and some camping equipments for my upcoming travels. I'm planning on sleeeping in a car and need adequate amount of water and cooking stuff. Oh and yes, I did my weekly groceries!

I had a succesful day today and am ready to face next week's challenges. But his week has taught me a very important lesson. I lost my wallet on monday or tuesday and my driving licence, finnish bank card, Australian bank card, travel insurance card, 230 dollars and security guard card with it. Ultimately I found it but it took me about six hours of desperate walking across huge paddock with flies flying around. Usually I don't carry wallet around but this time I had to drive in the public and took it with. That day I learned two very important lessons which are 1) take VERY good care of important things such as wallet or phone or passport (I guess this is obvious for most of you) and the second I consider also extremely important 2) Never EVER give up when there is still hope, even as little as a seed of a mustard and maybe after that, try once more. Don't be naive though; you waste your time loooking for a phone you dropped in the pacific.

Stay laid-back!

Ps. Aussie farmers are not very laid back :D

It's harvest

Barley waiting to be harvested

It's been a good while since last post and I apologize for that. Sometimes I'm tired and sometimes just lazy. Good excuse, huh?

Past 2 weeks has gone by fixing harvesting equipments such as greasing header and the nightmare: replacing knives in the comb (that big rolling collector in front of header). Some vehicles I've driven are a tractor with bloody loose steering, quad- and motorbike, two trucks one of which has pretty loose gearbox, very old toyota jeep and nice ute.
For the harvest time My duty is to drive two trucks to bring harvested crops to silo. Picture below of the other end of the process.

My duty: driving 10t old school truck straright from somewhere 60's. Notice good aircon!

What else has happpened is last Suunday I ended up buying a car!! As a backpacker I had to pay attention to what I buy as the car has to be in a good condition and be fuel economic. I had to travel 700 km's to pick it up and drive sasme way back, but it was definitely worth it! I drove through blue mountains and I can tell you that if you come Australia, Blue Mountains are a must. There were houses with breathtaking views down the mountains and the people living there are very fortunate.

Another day starts in 15 mins which means I'll continue posting more later. 

Time to move on

I can't imagine how fast time goes by! Six weeks of farmwork has come to its end and now it is time for me to move on. More or less difficult it was to say goodbye to three life-like young kids I became very good friends, I continue my travelling plan and move up north to Dubbo. With 41 days signed off towards my second year visa, I leave legendary Kaloola behind with lifelong memories. Last day consisted of building a spit "ROASTMATE" for upcoming BBQ which is, unfortunately, the same evening I leave =)

Heading up!

As the summer is closing in, I'm even more certain that I need more than just a cap to avoid sunburn. And what could be better than the genuine outback wide brimmed Akubra? It's quite expensive - average hat is 140AU$ - but it's worth it!

As you might know the internet is not the best in the outback and I look forward to have some signal at my destination to update new experiences  :)

ROASTMATE by Jacob and Marco

Vaccinating 500 sheeps

More orange

Ainakin omasta mielestä suomen pitäs ottaa mallia australian skeittirampeista, koska suomessa useimmat on muistaakseni tehty vanerista. Mitä järkeä rakentaa rampit puusta, kun betoni kestää kauemmin, kovin moni ei ala sitä rikkomaan eikä varmastikaan maksa paljon enemmän kuin vaneri. Alla muutama kuva Orange-kaupungin rampeista sekä paikallisista hurjapäistä. Jos olis ollut rullikset mukana olisin liittynyt seuraan. Huomaa toiseksi ylimmässä kuvassa bmx:n varjo alavasemmalla.

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At least in my opinion Finland should learn from Australia's skateparks because most of the parks in finland are made of  plywood. Below a few pictures of a skatepark in Orange and local "fast and furious". If I had rollerblades with me I would have joined them! Notice a shade of bmx down left in the second highest picture.

Couldn't believe my eyes :D

Want to give it a burl?

Orange

With a full month worked in a farm, we planned a one-day visit to orange which is only about 1,5 hour drive one-way. I'm content of what the city offers: vast amount of cloth stores, various places to eat, banks, book stores (found 2 very  good books!), and grocery stores. Locals also take good care of their surroundings and thee result is clean environment.

Doner with cheese!

Typical view in the outback (Eucalyptus)

Orange main street

morning...nice surprise

A few pictures of what has happened this weekend. I introduced the famous finnish summer cottage game mölkky to my roommates.  They like it.

week 2

Second week is fortunately over. Working hours have been either long or very long because there has been heaps of work with lambs. Local accent is far away from the perfect-pronunciated school english we've been taught. There are also plenty of farm-related words which takes time to "digest" and recognise. For example, it is cruicial to understand the difference between sheep, lamb, hoggit (not sure if it's written as that), ram and ewe to draft them succesfully. But basically what I've done is mustering mobs of lambs which I found quite challenging, especially when the instructions are not always very comprehensive.

Again, the nature is just breathtaking. We went hiking with two backpacker workers to Nangar national park which is just behind the corner, 30 minute drive from the farm. Roughly an hour hike in a pure Australian nature with wild mimosa (which smells just awesome), scentful eucalyptus and kangaroos, we made it to the top (700m) to find out extreme view of mountain range. It was totally worth walking up.

At the moment I'm in Forbes rodeo show, watching how at least half a ton oxen are ridden by brave cowboys, some of which fells off within seconds.. But I don't mind playing with my food :)