Melbourne is my Mango

If I loved London this much then I love Melbourne this much!

Melbourne just oozes with 'coolness.' Its buildings are funky, there's avenues of trees making the whole place look as quaint as a painting; there are laneways tucked between the streets filled with cafes pouring out of every cubby hole, graffiti decorating every spare surface and enough diversity to shake a stick at.

 I don't just love it, I have to come up with a whole new word for Melbourne.

Put it this way: my home in England Leeds is an apple- its perfectly nice, a good snack, tasty and plenty of variety, London's a pack of grapes- I love grapes, easy to eat, fun and I will always go back to time and time again just to remember how much I like them. But Melbourne, Melbourne's like a mango. I didn't know I liked mangoes at all. Then I tried one and it was amazing! I thought to myself 'god I've seriously been missing out!' Mangoes are bright, juicy, an explosion of taste and exotic. Its messy but fun- I have no idea where to start with a mango but I'll have one anyway because I love them.

That's how I feel now. I have no idea where I'm gonna start. I don't know the first thing about starting out in Melbourne. I don't know where to look for accommodation- where to look for a job but I can't wait to do it.  I just got this feeling about Melb; you know your doing something right when you don't need to be doing anything of any importance or significance and your smiling and you don't even know why.

I realised I might still not have a clue about what I want to do but I'm certainly in the place where I want to be right now... so as soon as I've finished my farm work I'll be on the first train back. I've had a taste now and I know this is definitely what I want.

I'm gonna take a risk and go for the Mango. Why not.

Travelling: A Love/Hate Relationship

Love
Having the ability to go wherever you want to go whenever you want to
The infinate possibilities of things you can experience
The diveristy in the people you meet
Meeting people for all over the globe who you get on with so well
Having all your worldly possessions in one rucksack
Swapping music with people along the way
Seeing the beauty of the world
Doing things you never expected you could do
Learning new things about yourself
Figuring out all the adults in your life were actually telling you the truth e.g. you never really get any older mentally just physically- you will always feel like a big kid even if you don't look like one

Hate
Not having my own wardobe
Not being able to buy everything I want to because I have no place to put it
Hostels missing the most basic things like bowls and graters
Always having to watch your bank balance and plan three steps ahead
Constantly having to eat pasta because you can't think of anything else to cook after not having to cook for yourself in so long!
Not being able to just call up friends and family when I want because of the time difference
Not having a bookshelf
Only having two pairs of footwear: vans and flip flops
Feeling further and further away from making any real decisions about the rest of your life
ALWAYS having to be considerate of others- sometimes it would nice to just worry about yourself!

New friendships, brilliant experiences and freedom win the arguement hands down, the rest I can put up with or will work out along the way :)

"No buses on a Monday or a Wednesday!"

I would like to ask my former self why on earth I wanted to go to Devonport for a whole three and a half days, or why I didn't look into the lack of things to do once I got there.

I had already bought a ticket to the Melbourne Comedy Festival Roadshow, the best of the comedy festival that had been going on in Melbourne so I figured I'd stay a few days and check of some of the north west of Tassie. What I didn't realise is that there wasn't anything to check out.

I even thought about catching a bus and exploring some other places but a quick trip to the tourist information centre put a stop to that when I learnt the bus only went on Mondays and Wednesday and as luck would have it I was there Thursday to Saturday!

So I made the best of a bad situation, took a walk around the scenic coastal line and even walked right across the whole town just to take a picture of the Lovett Street sign (where I live back home.) Boy, what a wild three days! I did try and get some more information on the second day about going somewhere different but as before the women said .."The bus only goes on Monda..." at which point I finished off "..days and Wednesdays!"

The hostel was also one of the worst hostels I think I've ever stayed at. Well to be honest it wasn't that bad but it was pretty cold and completely dead... I swear I wouldn't had been suprised if I'd seen tumble weed roll down the hallway! It didn't even have a bowl or a spoon to be seen, so i was completely out of my depth even looking for a grater to make the salad I'd bought the ingrediants for! When a women moved into my room on the second day I almost jumped on her, although she turned out to be pretty rude and sarcastic and said, "If its people you wanted you should have gone to the other hostel, there's loads of people there." Thanks, thanks a bunch. Not only am I in this god forsaken place I am now aware I've made another awful decision by paying to stay in this dump for the next few days!

Thank god the show itself was absolutely awesome! I would have liked to have gone with friends or even not gone to bed straight afterwards but hey you can't have everything!

So after what felt like an eternity in this nowhere town I was so glad to leave on the Sunday morning that I got the first bus outta that place and headed back to Launceston. 

I spent the next couple of days back with Yvonne as she was kind enough to let me stay with her while I waited for a cheap flight to Melbourne and then it was goodbye Tasmania. 

A month and a half later with some brilliant memories, my time was up in Tassie and it was time to head back to the mainland and on to Victoria. I needed to get my farm work done and so it was back to the farm life with a quick whistle stop in Melbourne to catch up with Patrick, a friend I'd met travelling in Europe. Good times were ahead and I couldn't wait to see what was in store.

Ineka and John

The couple that the Japanese girl, Yayoi, was staying with before she came to work with me at the farm was Ineka and John. They had dropped her off and upon leaving said if we needed anything not to hestiate and call them, although at the time I thanked them and didn't think I would see them again.
Minutes after the phone call with the guy telling me that he thought I should leave, Ineka had rung Yayoi to see how things were. I spoke to her and within seconds she had offered to pick me and Yayoi up in Launceston asap.

John are migrant from 'Landan' and Ineka a dutch migrant from Amsterdam, and were two of the loveliest people I could have ever hoped to meet.

They offered their home to me and told me I could stay as long as necessary and asked nothing in return.

They had a beautiful home in a place north west of Launceston, in a place called Beauty Point, which they had renovated themselves. John was a builder by trade and Ineka worked in the local hospital as a nurse.

I stayed three nights with them altogether and I really appreciated their kindness as it gave me an opportunity to figure out what I was going to do next without any pressure.

We went for walks along Greens Beach with their dog Benny, watched DVDs and spent evenings chilling out watching TV and chatting; they really made me feel welcome and I couldn't have thank them enough.

On the Thursday morning I caught the bus back to Launceston, (armed with a packed lunch made by Ineka!) from which I would go to Devonport. Ineka and Yayoi walked me to the bus stop and we said our good byes and just as I had sat down on the bus John rushed and got on the bus to come and say goodbye too. It almost brought tears to by eyes saying goodbye as they had been so kind.

From the bottom of my heart  I would like to thank them both for making me feel so welcolme in their home when I needed it. It really makes the difference when you meet people like that when travelling and makes the whole thing worth while :)

My Complete History of Tree Plating

From the craziness of living and working with Yvonne, my next desination was a farm where I was going to work planting trees to earn some much needed cash.

The guy that owned the place had offered to come pick me up at Yyvonnes, which he did and we headed to his farm.

I had a feeling of apprehension when I first met this guy, rightful cautiousness about my own safety, unsure if he would be another weirdo or a genuine guy.

But there was only one way to find out. He seemed ok. Yyvonne had known people who'd worked for him before and he  checked out ok, so my doubt had obsided but a little was bound to linger.

There was something about him that I just wasn't sure about. I can't put my finger on it. When he talked he always addressed me part way through his sentences which I found odd. He always seemed to turn to look at me when talking while he was driving. I don't know why but I found this strange too. Everything he said though, that was fine. He was a mild mannered man, ensured me that he wanted me to feel completely comfortable in his home and happy. He was very much into history and talked about both Tasmania and Britain with great knowledge. I began to relax a bit and chatted to him and my experiences of Tasmania and what i'd enjoyed about it.

We arrived back at his home not too far out of Launceston in the countryside. He had a small be adequate house that he shared with his two dogs. A bit messy, but for an older gentlemen living alone, it was pretty much what I expected.

His manner, still made me feel a little on edge but I figured I was just being stupid and that everything was ok, which it was.

 I felt like I may have been over reacting about him when he asks me if I would be interested in waitressing. Hestiating, I remembered about a guy who had rung me a few days before asking if I wanted to waitress in lingerie, then he says don't worry I don't think its not your thing and I politely decline. FFS.

I hope I'm wrong and that its not the same job proposition the guy rang me was talking about before.  The phase 'not your thing' is questionable. Waitressing, is a standard profession, so therefore can be most peoples 'thing.' He didn't explain his comments. I thought it best to leave it. I would have been interested in getting some extra work but at the risk of finding out that it was work of the unsavory kind, I didn't ask any more.

While eating lunch not long after I had arrived too, he started talking about feelings he had about a lost love. The more he talked it was revealed that it was quite some time ago, a lot longer than I first imagined. He said that he felt better over the last year. As it turns out its was over six years previously and he never actually had a relationship with this women but a 'deep spiritual connection,' and she was a lot younger than he. Not the kind of thing you start talking about when you first meet someone, but then again after meeting Yvonne who basically told me her life story within the first ten minutes of meeting her, it was less of a shock nowadays. I turned the conversation away to some time he spent in Brazil and thanked god that another person was coming the next day.

The following day he left me pretty much on my own at the house all day while we went to some meetings he'd arranged with work collegues and friends. He'd left me with a few tasks to do so I got on with them once he'd left. He returned later in the afternoon, not long after the Japanese girl who was also going to work for him had been dropped off my the couple she was staying with. He acted a little odd, but not any more than he had done previously and invited Yoyoi to go with him to buy vegetables but not me which we both found strange. Not more than ten minutes later after he'd could have left he rang me again for the millionth time that day. This time though, I wanted to leave as soon as I hung up the phone.

He called to tell me that he didn't think I was happy and that I should leave.

I found it all rather biazaar. I hadn't given him any indication that I wasn't happy there, and certainly hadn't let on about my feelings about him being strange.

To me it felt as though I wasn't right for him, for whatever reason and now he had a new girl I could leave. Harmless or not I wasn't staying a minute longer than I had to. I also wasn't going to leave Yayoi there alone either. I hung up the phone and immediately packed. As soon as he returned, I got him to take us back to Launceston, where the couple who had just dropped Yayoi off were more than happy for us to go and stay with them.

Whether or not he was a harmless old man wanting the best for me or if he was a seedy old man and I wasn't going to do didn't matter. I just went with my intuition and got the hell out of there. Something its just best to go with your gut feeling and leave.

While travelling you learn so much about yourself and the world and in this case it was all about making the right decision.

P.S. Number of trees planted: One

"The Crazy Women" of Launceston

I left the comfort of Jenny and Bronte's home in the Huon Valley and headed to my next host.

Yvonne Gulyas. Fiftysomething. Lives in Launceston, northern Tasmania.

A single women with many life experiences and more than willing to tell her about her son who had got mixed up with the wrong kind of people, her intertwined relationships with men, her achivements and passions all within the first ten minutes of meeting her.

This was a truely extraordinary women. Needless to say, she had AHD.

Upon meeting her, I didn't know whether to be amazed at the amount of words and different conversation topics she could get out in one breathe or to run for the hills. I don't even believe that I got more than two words in during the first couple of days I stayed with her.

She was a poet, a writer, had previously been a journalist and now owned had her catering business. A crazy women, but her heart was in the right place.

I was volunteering for new experiences, and by joe staying with Yvonne was definitley an experience.

She'd lived in China for four years, had four children, grew up in sydney and relocated to Tasmania. She'd had her life theatened by a previous boyfriend hurling a knife, won poetry prizes, had love affairs with her best friends man, worked on chinese tv, trained as a chef, went to school in Malaysia, lived in Bali and took pride in telling me she had 'cancelled christmas' and was heading back there for a the festive peroid.

This women was something else.

She was loud. She was crass. She was one of a kind.

Her house was messy, but it was an organised chaos. She had a cat she mothered and a stray she fed. She housed two chinese students, both lovely people.

An odd family life but never a dull moment.

The 10 days I stayed with her were never boring. In the evenings I spent most of my time in my room, enjoying the peace and quiet and the ability to hear my own thoughts or chatted with Rachel, one of the students, answering her many grammar questions and helping with her pronouncation of English.

A couple of evenings she had guests for dinner which was nice. She was a very sociable person and she shone when she had company. Another evening we also attended one of her poetry nights, where she met up with a group of local poets and they shared their writings over a few drinks at a local pub which I found very interesting. It was also nice to see her in her element, almost like seeing a wild animal in the wildness. Her personality shone there too.

So as I said it was certainly an experience meeting Yvonne, and certainly not one I would forget in a hurry.

The Huon Valley Farm

The Family

On the Sunday I met up with a girl called Fiona, a 20 year old Canadian who was also going to WWOOF in Huon Valley with my new hosts Jenny, Bronte and Luke. Jenny was English and from Bedfordshire, Bronte from Adelaide, and Luke was their seven year old son.

They picked us up from the village bus stop and took us to their home buried amongst the hills of Grove in the Huon Valley.

Their house was a gorgeous self-build, and after coming from Michaels it felt like a castle. Everything about it was amazing. It was beautifully built, amazingly decorated and so incredibly homely

.

Me and Fiona

Me and Fiona had our own room which we shared with our own bathroom. I really was living in the lap of luxury after staying in a bed that was basically in the living room of Michaels house.
They had the perfect little house complete with two dogs named Rosie and Bruce (although I prefered Rosie Pie and Brucie!) and a cat called Murphy too.

Comfortably stretched in front of the fire!  

Goats!

On their little family farm they had assortment of animals. There was a herd of goats that much to my delight followed up into the forestry and climbed trees! Two bucks- Seb and Handlebars and my god did they smell! It was supposed to be a luring part of being on heat to attact the female goats but the only thing it attracted was my overwhelming urge to vomit!

They also had four large pens of chickens (which frequently liked to escape and create our very own version of chicken 

run!)  One poor little rabbit which lived in one of the hen runs which also housed some noisy geese! In addition, were three random peacocks that also lived in one of the chicken runs.
And last but not least were the three cheeky piglets, that I used to play chase with whenever I fed them, however I've since been informed are now only two :( and Blaze and Connor the mummy and daddy pigs.

Connor enjoying some apples

Even though I hadn't driven in years Jenny was keen for me to get behind the wheel of an old suziki she used around the farm. It was so much fun ragging it round and as it was old and a bit battered anyway it wasn't so bad when I bashed or crashed it (which only happened once.. into  wooden crate when it shot back in reverse!.. oh and the accident with the shed post!) It was a bit tempermental in reverse and liked to suddenly jump into full speed after being reluctant to start for a while, probably my inexperience as a driver but whatever it was made me wear a seat belt everytime I reversed!

Life was never dull at the Huon farm, even when we went for a general meander into Huonville, the next biggest town, we ended up on swan rescue!A friend of Jenny's had found a injured distressed swan which was passed over to us to rush to the nearest vet.Somehow at the farm me and Fiona managed to get the cold/flu and within a matter of 24hrs we'd gone from being completely ok to dying with fever and congestion- not the most ideal situation when your staying with a family for room and board in return for your work! The family were lovely though and didn't mind at all and told nus to take it easy, but we still managed to continue with at least feeding the animals for the next few days.

Easter Sunday came too and we assisted in an easter egg hunt that Bronte had planned for luke. He'd hidden various eggs and bunnies all across the farm with clues written on them leading to the next egg. Although still being both not very well, me and Fiona weren't much help but we gave some good moral support.

We did get in to the spirit of easter and make bunnie shaped cookies and hotcross buns though and they turned out pretty well if I do say so myself!

On easter monday, as Luke was off school and Bronte had a few days off from work we headed out for the day to the Hertz mountains, just south of the Huon region...and there was snow! I think it was what I really missed at christmas time and here we were in thick snow and it was brilliant!

I left the following friday, leaving Fiona behind and after a last minute swap of media, I went off to my next adventure and on to launceston!

Huon Sunset

Homely Hobart

Michael dropped me off in a town called Margate not too far from Hobart around 7:30 in the morning and I got back to Hobart around 9 and headed straight for city central backpackers where I'd stayed before. I liked the hostel so had no quarms about going back there. The women at reception recognised me straight away and found me in a bed in the same room as before. Just like returning home!

I spent the rest of the day doing some boring stuff like washing, bought some food and hung out at the hostel. I also started chatting to a lovely german guy called Lennard from my dorm and made loose plans to go up Mount Wellington, which over looks the city, the next day.

Later the day while in the dinning area I noticed someone I recognised. It was Phil one of people I'd hung out with last time I was in Hobart! Turns out his wwoof experience hadn't gone well and he'd come back to the city. He told me that there was supposely a few bands and stuff happening at a place called the kelly steps that night and I agreed to head there with him, after we shared his food after what i'd made had turned out to be an absolute dinner disater!

The Kelly Steps are buried down an alleyway, so if you didn't know they were there then you'd just walk right on by. As Tasmanians don't like to be 'normal' this obviously was the perfect place to have a few bands playing and to set up a make shift bar! We had a beer and hung out on the steps listening to the music for a little while, but due to our late arrival and the immediate end at 11pm we weren't there long. After all this was Tasmania and it certainly isn't reknownd for its all-night party scene.

On the Saturday I spent the day with Lennard, the guy from my dorm visiting Mount Wellington. We wanted to get there but didn't know how and ended up going on a tour with just the two of us around Hobart a little then headed to Mt Wellington that over looks the city of Hobart.

The views were really nice, but the best thing about the day was certainly meeting Lennard.

He was such a well mannered lovely person. We spent the rest of the day together hanging out at the hostel talking about anything and everything. How a crazy guy that kind of lived at the hostel looked like Gerrad Butler in the film 300, (He certainly wasn't any Gerrad Butler, but after googling a picture i agreed there were some similarities!) the different names the British and Germans call the seas around Europe (Its the Baltic sea, not the east Sea :p),  the weird names Germans have for things like slugs or should I say naked snails :) and why dinner is called dinner, what lunch is and what exactly is teatime, with a bit of bad pronunciation of German thrown in for good measure.

We certainly talked for hours. Its always pretty awesome when you meet someone like that! Especially when all you do is talk nonsense!

 We headed back to the room not so late. The next day I was heading off again, this time to WWOOF at a farm in an area called the Huon Valley South East from Hobart.