Tally Ho!!

Many photos:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150101724708120.286675.510568119&l=32d65fc027&type=1
Next stop on the Great Kiwi Adventure was some wwoofing at a little place between Dunedin and Queenstown known as Tally Ho; home to Stuart, Barb, Josh, 24 horses, 350 sheep, 6 dogs, 23 chickens, 15 ducks and counting. When we arrived baby animals were springing forth left right and centre - we bottle fed 4 baby lambs, watched ducklings hatch, helped to find homes for 3 puppies and went to bed every night wondering whether the pregnant mares would set off their birth alarms before morning and trigger a mass torchlit exodus into the fields to help with the birth. As luck would have it, the most eagerly awaited foal-ly arrival turned up at the eminently civilised hour of 10am - early enough for us to be around to witness the birth and the foal's first steps, but not too early to celebrate with a nice glass of vino... As if I wasn't proud enough just being there, Barb bestowed on me the honour of naming the beautiful baby miniature horse after me - Mona Lisa. I am assured the Mona part is for poetic effect rather than casting any aspersions on my attitude to farmwork...

Living and working at Tally Ho was a little slice of rural paradise. Aside from the constant cuteness of lambs, ducklings and foals to brighten our days, we got to sample the unlikely-to-be-repeated experience of working in a wool carding factory. For the uninitiated (of course, I knew exactly what wool carding was before I arrived...) this involved manning the giant wool carding machine into which clumps of wool were fed, then brushed and teased between giant rollers until they emerged at the other end in beautifully uniform lengths of wool which were fed into the balling machine before being bagged and sold at the Tally Ho shop to people clever enough to be able to spin them and knit them into woollen wonders. Barb tried to turn me into one of these people but although I genuinely enjoyed lots of the time I spent on the spinning wheel, the rest of the time I spent loudly cursing at the knotted, broken or uneven fibres confirmed to all within earshot that this was unlikely to become a lifelong pastime for me. I am immensely proud of my very own handspun ball of Tally Ho wool though.

One of the best things about wwoofing at Tally Ho was the faith Stuart and Barb had in us and consequently the things they (perhaps unwisely) trusted us to do. Like, for example, injecting lambs with medicine, wrestling runaway sheep to the ground, making horseblankets for the miniatures (this involved a sewing machine, nuf said), and driving a 4x4 across steep and muddy fields. We certainly learned a lot in those few weeks.

But my favourite part of our stay at Tally Ho was getting to know Barb, Stuart and Josh and being made to feel like we were part of the family. An epic shopping spree with Barb, being taught the art of Skip-bo by Josh, dining like royalty every day, our weekly trip to the local pub for a fish & chip supper, hanging out with Mr Peel and admiring his crown green bowling prowess - by the end of our stay I for one was more than a little teary eyed as we waved goodbye to the farm. And then there were the miniature horse shows, but that's another story...

Whales, Jails & Hand-pulled Ales

Photos:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=283880&id=510568119&l=2db1038669

After leaving Karamea we had a less than leisurely 7 days to traverse the length of the South Island, stopping at all points of touristic interest on the way, in order to get to our final wwoof destination on time. So began a whistlestop tour of the east coast, during which we:

• Went whale watching in beautiful Kaikoura and marvelled at dolphins, sperm whales, a wandering albatross (that's its name, it wasn't lost or disorientated or anything) and an invisible blue whale (we were assured it was there, we just didn't see it).

• Paid a visit to Kaikoura's seal colony and watched some of them sunbathing in the car park.

• Spent a couple of nights in jail. No, really, we slept in a jail. Alright, it was a converted jail, but we still slept in a cell with bars on the windows.

• Stayed in an unusually swanky motel room, complete with king size bed, balcony overlooking the mountains and a luxury spa shower. The shower was amazing - built in radio/CD player, multilevel programmable jets, mood lighting, the works. Oh, and an ear piercing alarm (in case someone breaks in and tries to steal it, I can only presume). Rich discovered this to his cost whilst using the shower and trying to figure out how to turn off the ice cold jet function. How we (well, I) laughed...

• Explored Christchurch post-earthquake, discovered that it really is quite a cool city and wondered why I hadn't noticed this last time I visited. Then remembered I only stayed one night last time and was so hungover for the entire duration I only left the hostel to buy a sandwich and some aspirin.

• Took a tour of the Monteiths brewery in Greymouth, home of the world's most annoying tour guide, and sampled some of their finest ales.
  

• Took a tour of the Cadbury factory in Dunedin, home of the world's most inadvertently racist receptionist, and sampled some of their finest chocolate. And Rich wore a snood - v. entertaining.

All in all, not a bad week.

The Pub at the End of the Road

Fun & Frivolity:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=279752&id=510568119&l=ac6fc72a21

At the north-western tip of the South Island of New Zealand, nestled between mountains, sea and rainforest, is a magical place called Karamea. It's quite remote - Westport, the nearest major settlement, is an hour and a half's drive away down the only road connecting the town to the outside world. Follow that road north and it ends just a few kilometres out of Karamea at the coastal wilderness that marks the start of the Heaphy Track. This was to be our home for the next two weeks as we'd arranged to do some wwoofing for Dee and Dan, proprieters of Saracen's Cafe and the hub of town life - the Bush Lounge.

When we arrived things weren't exactly as we expected. Dee was unwell, Dan needed to be at work in Christchurch for the two weeks of our stay and the cafe and bar were temporarily closed until things got back to normal. At first we wondered whether we'd be more in the way than of use, but we soon learned that out on the West Coast everything has a way of sorting itself out and within a couple of days we felt more like we were at home than working as wwoofers.

This was due in no small part to Dee and Ruth, a fellow wwoofer from Darlington who had arrived in Karamea some months ago and, in her words, "never found a reason to leave." Life was good - work started when we were up and ready, the Bush Lounge's well stocked bar and the cafe's ice cream stand were at our disposal and Dee and Ruth were incredibly easy people to spend time with. Work was never dull, or unduly onerous. We fed the pigs, split and chopped firewood, picked tamarillos amid beautiful scenery and glorious sunshine, cleaned the cafe and bar, learned how to make a decent cup of coffee, rode around on the quad bike, did a spot of gardening when the weather was nice and watched DVDs with Dee when it wasn't. The food was amazing - the good people of Karamea's loss was our gain as with the bar closed we had Dee, the Bush Lounge's chef extraordinnaire, whipping up hearty homecooked fare just for us every evening.

We also spent some time getting to know the people and places of Karamea, something we never would have been able to do as passing backpackers. Living at the Bush Lounge meant there was always someone calling in to see Dee and soon we had a pretty good idea of who was who and what was going on in the town. Every Thursday we'd head down the road to Little Wanganui for the pub quiz night which introduced us to yet more friendly locals and the surprise taste of victory as we won the quiz two weeks running.

Our two weeks passed in a flash and before we knew it it was time to leave. Like Ruth I could easily have stayed longer - in such a small, friendly town you really come to feel part of the place after even a short stay and there are few more beautiful parts of the world you could have all to yourself. But the open road and a farm near Invercargill beckoned and we knew we had some travelling to do. As we left we also realised, for the first time, that coming back to New Zealand again might not be such a bad idea...

The wonderful world of Wellington work

I couldn't get photos of all our various occupations in Wellington, but here's a taster :

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=273175&id=510568119&l=3042385d54

The grand plan for our time in Wellington was to put down some light roots, find jobs and earn some much needed cash while soaking up the ambience of the "coolest little capital in the world." (This rather specific accolade was bestowed upon Wellington by the Lonely Planet's "Best in Travel 2011" guide and seized upon with such gusto that days after the book's publication banners bearing the slogan lined the city's main thoroughfare and the story was a major item on the national evening news. It reminded me of the time Redcar won the Seaside Award back in the late 90s...)

We started by finding ourselves a nice little Kelburn apartment to call home, kitting ourselves out in business attire at Number 1 Shoe Warehouse & Farmers (NZ's answers to Shoe Zone and BHS), printing out our CVs and heading into town to sign up with the local recruitment agencies. I'd done a fair bit of temping in the past, and we were both up for pretty much any work that came along, so we had high hopes of employment. Sadly, our optimism was not shared by the city's recruitment consultants. "Hmm, it's very quiet at the moment I'm afraid" and "well I'll put you on our books but I can't guarantee we'll find anything for you" seemed to be the phrases du jour. Undeterred, and more importantly having nothing better to do each day, we adopted the slightly belligerent approach of calling into every recruitment agency in Wellington in person every morning until one of them, in a desperate attempt to get rid of us, offered us a shift clearing tables at Te Papa museum's cafe. Result!

So began a long and varied succession of work assignments, as the recruiters realised we really would do pretty much anything and with very little notice. After succesfully clearing tables at Te Papa we were woken at some ungodly hour by an agency wondering whether we could take a shift that started in 30 minutes and involved making and serving lunch to students at the university canteen. From then on we were on a roll. Before I knew it I was in demand as a waitress working business awards dinners and high school proms, serving wine and canapes in house to solicitors at NZ's "premier law firm," washing dishes at an industrial research facility, making coffee and washing more dishes at the NZ national police headquarters and selling cupcakes on a market stall. Rich, meanwhile, had secured the dubious pleasure of working 2 weeks' worth of night shifts at Wellington hospital's laboratory. The lab staff were on strike and working to rule, therefore refusing to answer the telephone and thereby creating a job for Rich which involved sitting at a desk from 11pm to 7am waiting for the phone to ring. One on of the 10-15 occasions each night when it did so he would take a message, pass the message on to lab staff in the room next door and then call the caller back with their response. I did feel sorry for him until I heard about the temp whose job it was to sit at the end of the hospital's pneumatic tube transport system unscrewing and emptying any capsules which arrived containing samples for the lab to test. We also managed to work a few shifts together, notably manning the box office for a Wellington Lions rugby match at the Westpac Stadium where we sold a combined total of 23 tickets.

What with all the night shifts, daytime washing up assignments and evening waitressing gigs (I made such an impression that clients kept asking the agencies for me by name. I'm clearly wasted as a solicitor), Rich and I were pretty much working around the clock. He'd be coming in from work as I was going out, my feet permanently ached and we were both starting to wonder when we'd get some proper sleep. Having said that, there were unexpected perks, most significant of which being the ridiculous amounts of free food we kept being given (well someone has to eat all the leftover gourmet canapes, don't they?) After a few weeks we'd entirely restocked our fridge with leftovers from all the dinners, lunches and drinks receptions and I was getting quite a taste for the free wine that kept coming my way.

So it was both a relief and a disappointment when we each landed full time, day time office jobs. Rich was recruited to answer ministerial questions at the NZ Department of Health, and I was given a job as an executive assistant at Compass Health, the company which provides management support for health care providers (PHOs) in and around Wellington. I ended up spending 6 weeks with them and came to feel rather at home there. My work was varied to say the least - as well as taking minutes and being administratively helpful I also found myself trying to get tea stains out of a carpet with vinegar and driving across town to pick up a new foot for the staff fridge. I met some truly lovely people, including Kira (the kitkat queen), Erin (without whom I would never have figured out the binding machine), and my boss Stephanie who I will always remember for overseeing the implementation of the most brilliantly bizarre office colour scheme I have ever known.

In our spare time we made the most of Wellington's undeniably cool and eclectic attractions. Rich reports that he enjoyed the "extremely well developed independent coffee scene," notably at Memphis Belle; I was a fan of the shopping on Cuba Street and we both loved the food (Sweet Mama's Kitchen's swamp dip and fried chicken is worth travelling from the UK for); the grand old art deco Empire Cinema; the excellent Weta Cave; the Alice in Wonderland themed kookiness of Alice bar, as well as the impressive array of live music and arts on offer. We took in an evening of bohemian hybrid blues/calypso/spirituals courtesy of Storehouse at Mighty Mighty, the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra at the San Francisco Bath House (a fun night but they could take some lessons from the original and far better Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain) and the amazing World of Wearable Arts show. Part avant garde fashion show, part circus, part theatrical production, this was like nothing we'd seen before and a definite highlight.

So 2 months after we arrived we left Wellington triumphant - money and happy memories both firmly in the bank. And now, having lived there for a short while, I think I can say the Lonely Planet got it spot on.

Exploding mud, a giant metal dog & a town called Clive

Photos:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=261397&id=510568119&l=3fa4964784

After our eye-opening stay at the pig farm we headed south towards NZ's capital, Wellington. On the way we stopped to take in some of the country's quirkier attractions. These included:

• Fishing for prawns and having our fingers nibbled by their offspring at the Huka Prawn Park
• Climbing a giant kiwi fruit
• Visiting the road sign bearing the longest place name in the world
• Marvelling at the giant corrugated iron sculptures in Tirau, the town of giant corrugated iron sculptures
• Witnessing exploding mud, steaming pavements and crazily coloured rock pools around Rotorua
• Enjoying a Big Mac inside the McDonalds aeroplane in Taupo
• Taking a tour of the art deco neighbourhood in Napier and staying in the equally deco Masonic hotel
• Sampling the wines made at The Mission Estate - a former seminary
  
• Being disturbed by the macabre dioramas of singing and dancing stuffed possums at Opossum World.

New Zealand, you are quite an odd country...

Vegetarians Beware - Lisa and Rich go Butchering!

Photos (some grisly): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=245930&id=510568119&l=8ffe137a8b

One of the main aims of this trip was to seek out as many new experiences as possible, particularly any we'd be unlikely to stumble across in our lives back home and regardless of whether we were confident the experience in question would be a good one. In other words, if it was new and unusual we'd probably give it a go. It was for this reason that we found ourselves spending the best part of a month working for stay at Soggy Bottom Holding - a rare breeds farm with its own on-site butchery, looking after the animals and, well, butchering them.

Oddly, looking after the animals proved to be more of a challenge than turning them into foodstuffs. Every day we had to feed the pigs (Saddlebacks, Tamworths and Iron Age) who lived in various free range enclosures/amongst the trees/on impossibly steep hillsides around the farm. Their diet needed to be protein heavy so that they could grow quickly and healthily, and as we were slap bang in the middle of the Waikato, NZ's dairy producing heartland, the cheapest way to do this was to go to the dairy factory down the road, buy a shipping container full of out of date McDonalds cheese slices and feed them to the pigs in blocks of 160. (For those who might occasionally partake of the odd Big Mac, be grateful for the relative freshness of your cheese slices as when they go bad they develop a delightful mucusy coating that probably wouldn't do much for your appetite). Each pig would get 2-3 blocks of Ronald's slowly decomposing rejects each day, as well as the odd bucket of windfall apples, leftover ciabattas from the local farmers market and the occasional camembert (these were well fed pigs...). Getting all this food up and down the hills to the pigs required the assistance of a Polaris Ranger and, at least during our stay, the skills of a world class rally car driver. It was a rainy mid winter when we arrived, which had turned the entire farm into an extremely hilly quagmire. The Polaris was essentially a quad bike with a canopy and the tracks we had to drive on were slick, muddy ruts so deep that once the Polaris' wheels were in them the vehicle operated like a self-driven rollercoaster - the ruts dictated the direction of travel and the only control the driver had was over the speed at which we slid down the track or struggled up it. This would have been terrifying at the best of times but once you threw in the vertiginous drops that lined the tracks, inclines more suited to downhill skiing and my personal favourite "the corner of death" (a 90 degree corner at the bottom of a hill, the track only inches wider than the Polaris and a 3 foot deep pothole along one side), you had the makings of an particularly grisly episode of "999."

We probably wouldn't have been so worried about riding around under these conditions if our good hosts, Jono and Sarah, had shown any flicker of concern for our safety. Instead they reacted with thinly disguised disdain when, on our second day, we timidly suggested that perhaps we weren't quite experienced enough to be whizzing across their hillsides without killing ourselves or at least severely damaging their shiny new Polaris. In fact, the whole time we were there we got the distinct impression that anyone other than a fully fledged farmhand would be looked down upon whilst working on their farm, and as time went on I began to wonder if we were being filmed for some kind of hidden camera show. Examine, if you will, an extract from my journal:

14 July 2010.

Today I:

* Felt extremely redundant pruning puny larch trees with shears while Jono scooted up and down the hill pruning 5 big cypresses with his chainsaw for every half a dead twig-fest I managed. At one point I was actually snapping the branches off with my fingers. And I'm pretty sure he only left the larches for me to do out of sympathy. Also spent significant amount of time dodging falling branches being lopped by said chainsaw and trying not to fall down the hill. Not finest hour.
* Collected 30 litres of fresh milk from Mike's dairy farm - more difficult than you'd think, decanting a 10 litre bucket of milk into several glass jars. Ended up with lots of milk on the floor and several further buckets of water needed to wash it to the drain. Then driving home without spilling milk all over back of car slight concern... Only casualty = cracked jar but miraculously no milk spilt.
* Was so cold I took warmth from (1) the ham scented steam rising from an industrial bain marie, and (2) a hairdryer.
* Tried to look compentent as I struggled across a marsh, jumped over a small stream, climbed a fence and clambered up a steep muddy hill to see a sow and 7 baby piglets (v. cute). All attempts undermined when on way back I sank my foot into the swamp and lost welly in it, which Jono came back and pulled out as I removed my mud covered sock and regained composure.
* Narrowly avoided death (again) driving the Polaris (against my better judgment) up and down mud-logged narrow hillside tracks, at times sliding sideways in a rally-car stylee, at others inadvertently pressing the accelerator at key braking moments.Scooped the remnants of a cow carcass from a wheelie bin and burnt it in an old metal drum. This involved making a wood burning fire, trying to haul dead animal bits out of the bottom of the bin without falling in or smearing self in blood and guts from the side of said bin, avoiding leaping fat-fueled flames from the fire and hoping the acrid smoke plume floated obediently down the valley and not towards the unhappy neighbours' house...
* Scrubbed blood from the wall of the butchery.
* Felt like Cathy in Wuthering Heights climbing great big flipping hill in the wind and rain in order to feed cows.
* Spent some time living out my worst nightmares and re-enacting the downside of Glastonbury by sliding around and getting stuck in mud while attempting to build a pig enclosure. Regretted offering to leave relative safety of the track to help build said enclosure when result was being asked to put up an electric fence running along the edge of v. muddy, v. steep hill. Felt quite proud after avoiding thorn covered tree trunks, thorn bushes and ankle breakage to actually erect said electric fence.
* Discovered how loud and blood curdling the sound of pigs squealing is, whilst feeling traumatised by having to help put nose rings into a penfull of piglets.

In other news, our composting toilet has now reached crisis pyramid situation, and is starting to encroach up the toilet chute. Not good. Smell ripening. Apparently Jono needs to remedy with raking... It is still v. cold in our hut and the shower has now run out of hot water.

After this, the time we spent in the butchery hacking up pig carcasses and mincing their internal organs seemed like a holiday. In fact, it was also really interesting, and because Jono butchers his meat himself we were able to get stuck in and actually feel fairly useful. We learned how to butcher a whole pig (honing our cleaver skills on several spinal columns), made sausages from start (manhandling buckets full of cow and pig bits into a giant mincer) to finish (cutting the sausage links into singles, arranging on polystyrene trays and operating the vacuum packer), cured, sliced and packaged bacon and prosciutto. The highlights for me, however, were making black pudding and brawn. The black pudding is one of the top sellers at Jono's market stall, and making it was like stumbling into a slasher movie. Large buckets of congealed blood, livers, kidneys, hearts and other organs are tipped into the mincer which, when switched on, spurts blood across the room and continues to do so for much of the mincing process. The end result strongly resembles a murder scene. The brawn making was more of an experiment really - one which I won't be repeating in a hurry as it involved spending the first part of a morning pulling the boiled flesh from a pig's head, trotters and tongue before pressing it into a loaf tin and leaving it to set. I can tell you that there is a lot of fat on a pig's head...

After 3.5 weeks we had definitely had some new experiences, most of them good but some more suited to the "once but never again" pile. A definite high point was helping to man the Soggy Bottom stall at the nearby farmers' market. After feeding the animals, rounding them up and sending them off to the abbatoir, chopping up the carcasses and turning them into sausages, roasting joints and bacon, packaging and labelling them we were now able to sell the finished products direct to the public, and in doing so we realised how much we'd learnt about our food and where it comes from. All in all, then, an interesting and eye-opening few weeks.

On The Road Again

Photos:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=244463&id=510568119&l=36cea28231

Next stop on our grand adventure was a trip to visit friends Chris and Charlie (and their adorable groodle puppy Georgie) in Melbourne. After an excellent but hectic couple of weeks at home, it was lucky we had the nice long 26 hour journey to Australia to use to catch up on lost sleep. It was less lucky that I have a hard time sleeping on planes and so arrived in Australia 26 hours after we set off, met Chris at the airport, managed to stay awake long enough to drink a cup of tea before passing out for the next several hours. Somewhere amongst the confusion of times and dates we were struggling to get our bodyclocks used to it was Rich's birthday when we woke up, so Chris and Charlie took us out to the Northcote Social Club to celebrate. I took the opportunity to sample the Parma - Melbourne's version of the ubiquitous Parmo. Needless to say the Parmo reigns supreme...

For the next few days we were treated to a trip down the Great Ocean Road courtesy of our hosts extraordinnaire. We saw the sights of Melbourne (including a trip up the extremely tall Eureka Tower), dragged ourselves out of bed in the middle of the night to watch the first England game of the World Cup (and to make sure our body clocks were completely bamboozled), visited the building site of Chris and Charlie's palatial new home, ate and drank like royalty and generally had an excellent time. After a few days of being looked after we were awake enough to be let out alone, so we bade farewell to Melbourne with a promise to return on our way home to help christen the new house.

Our destination was New Zealand, which was to be our home for the next 5 months. If all went to plan we hoped to buy a car, do some sightseeing, wwoof at a few of the more interesting farms we had found and earn some much needed cash working in Wellington. After just a couple of days we'd achieved the first item on the list, becoming the proud owners of a beautiful 1997 Mitsubishi Legnum with unnerving ease at one of the Auckland car markets where you can buy a car in much the same way as you'd buy a bag of carrots at a regular market. We named him Old Red (as he is a little old and very red), and after allaying our initial concerns about the functionality of the petrol gauge he was soon a trusty steed and part of the family.