Kutchera Station

Hello from Queensland! 

On Saturday Elisa and I helped Charmaine to spread out some of the mulch we had made on the front beds.  In the evening, Elisa and I attended Easter Vigil Mass at the local Parish. The Mass was very similar to the way we celebrate Easter at home.  At the end of Mass the priest handed out gummy candy to everyone as a special Easter treat.   

Me and Elisa on our way to Mass

Easter morning we made chocolate chip pancakes ate them with fruit for a breakfast.  We then drove to the neighboring town of Penguin to attend the Sunday markets.  The market stalls are set up in a large building which was good since it was raining.  The markets had local crafts, foods, antiques, books, clothes, and other junk/treasures. 

Penguin Markets

 

For Easter dinner Wayne and Charmaine invited their neighbors and fellow helpx hosts, John and Glenda, and their current helpers, Ice from Hong Kong, and Katie from Germany, to join us for dinner.  We ate a lovely meal of sausages, chicken, green salad, potato salad, carrots, and rolls. For conversation John and Alex discussed the current and future problems of a world based on oil consumption.

Easter Dinner

 And for dessert we had Germany apple pie.  German apple pie has the sugar and spices mixed into the pie crust and in place of a top crust the remaining dough is just sprinkled in pieces on top.  It was very sweet and delicious.

German Apple Pie

 

Monday morning I helped Charmaine to pull out five hydrangea bushes from Glenda’s garden so we could transplant them over in Charmaine’s garden.  Pulling out such large bushes was a lot of work, but Charmaine and I had fun chatting while we worked.  In order to pull out the huge bushes we had to first chop off all of the branches.  Then we used a pick axe to dig a trench around the base of the bush. 

Diggin out Hydrangea

We also saw some very colorful Tasmanian mushrooms in the back corners of Glenda’s garden. 

 

Tuesday was a very exciting and yet sad day.  It was the day I flew out of Tasmania.  Wayne and Charmaine drove me to the airport, and I said a very heartfelt good-bye.  Wayne and Charmaine were such wonderful hosts.  They treated me like a member of the family and were always thinking of things to see and do that would interests me and the other helpers who were staying.  I loved Charmaine’s cooking and watching music concerts with her on DVD.  Wayne always had an interesting opinion or topic to discuss, and he was willing to let me help him with the painting and outside work.  And I will of course miss Toby, who would sit with me on the couch while we watched Big Bang Theory.  I don’t think I could ever express how grateful I am to Wayne and Charmaine for their kindness and hospitality.  And some day I hope to see them again, either in America or on another trip to Australia. 

Flying out of Tassie

Late Tuesday I landed in Cairns in Queensland.  All of my flights and plane changes went without a hitch.  While I sat in the Melbourne airport, a little girl, almost two years old, was waiting for the same flight with her parents.  I was sitting in the corner over by the window, and she kept coming over to sit next to me and “chat”.  She actually could not talk yet, but she would point at things and happily burble.  I felt honored to be chosen as her confidant. 

I spent the night in a backpackers’ hostel in Cairns and the next morning I caught a very early bus out to the middle of Queensland.  The ride was almost eight hours.  We drove through several mountain passes, past tropical plants, large ant hills, avocado, banana, mango, coffee, and sugar cane plantations.  The farther inland we traveled the drier it became.  The last town we stopped in was Georgetown.  The surrounding country is scrub land and while during the rainy season there is plenty of water, currently the landscape appears very dry. 

View from the bus

 And just outside of Georgetown the bus met my new hostess, Belinda, and her five dogs, on the side of the highway.  Kutchera station is my new residence for the next few weeks.  The station raises Brahman cattle on over 200,000 acres.  Belinda runs the whole station pretty much on her own.  She occasionally has a station hand or backpackers come through who help her, but for the last eight years she has been managing the station without any other assistance. 

Kutchera Station

The same night I arrived, Belinda’s recently hired station hand, Dan, arrived.  Dan worked at Kutchera a few years ago.  Besides the cattle, there are five horses, five chooks, eight dogs, and orphan calves to feed near the house.  And out on the property itself there are wallabies, birds, wild pigs, snakes, lizards, and dingoes. 

Goanna that wondered up near the house

On Thursday morning, Dan and Belinda worked on welding the last pieces onto a new loading ramp for the trucks. 

Dan welding

In the evening we feed and locked in all the animals.  The orphan calves are fed some pelts and the two of the smaller ones are given powdered milk. 

Feeding the orphan calves

Friday morning was spent in trying to take out parts from under the large dozer that Belinda uses to repair roads that wash out during the rainy season.  Unfortunately the parts that had to be taken out to be replaced were right under the back of the dozer in a place that was very hard to maneuver around. 

Belinda driving the dozer

Belinda had to do grocery and supply runs for most of the weekend, so on Saturday morning I cleaned out the battery boxes on the sides of the dozer while Dan dug out a pad for concrete in the cattle yards.  After lunch I helped Dan to start leveling out the base of the pad.  Belinda would like to pour concrete around the cattle crush so that she can set up her gear for de-horning and branding the cattle right there. 

Sunday was our day off.  Belinda believes that every week we should have some time off from doing the station work or else everyone goes sour on it.  Dan took me with him to see if he and his dog, Rocky, could rind and catch any wild pigs. 

Rocky

We didn’t find any pigs, but we did get to ride the motor bike through some beautiful country.  Even though Queensland is full of scrub and seems to be quite dry, during the wet season heavy rains pour down washing out roads and fences and then filling up natural watering holes and lagoons.  These wet areas are home to many birds, fish, and plants.  Many of the lagoons are filled with beautiful water lilies. 

Lagoon

Water Lily

Brolgas near the lagoon

On Monday Belinda and Dan finished replacing the parts for the dozer and in the afternoon two more helpers arrived.  Jeremy and Brian are from the LA area in California and they are excited to work in the outback as part of their Australian trip. 

Setting up the pad for pouring concrete

Tuesday morning the boys laid out the rebar and frame work for the concrete slab while Belinda and I worked on replacing the rear brakes on one of the motor bikes.  Belinda had me take apart the rear brake system for one of the bikes and clean out all the dirt and rust.  Being a mechanic is very messy work. 

Belinda replacing the brakes on one of the motor bikes

Wednesday morning the three guys started pouring the concrete in the slab.  Belinda and I had to drive into town to get some more bags of concrete. 


Pouring concrete

The highway into down is mainly just one strip of asphalt with the occasional passing area in between.  So when cars meet on the single strip they have to drive with one wheel off the road in order to pass. 

Outback driving

Georgetown is a small town but it does have the necessities: grocery store, gas station, post office, pub, and a small building where people can buy anything from horse feed and spare sprinkler parts to bags of concrete. 

After pouring the concrete slab, on Thursday morning we got all our supplies together and headed out on the motor bikes to work on repairing the breaks in the boundary fence.   The fence has the occasional snapped wire or loose post, but the hardest parts to fix are the flood gates.  Flood gates are where the fence crosses one of the numerous little creeks or streams that run between the properties.  During the wet season these little creeks grow into huge, gushing rivers full of downed trees and debris that flow right through the fences. 

Putting up new fence where the water
 knocked down the old fence

Once the fence itself is repaired at these creeks, we must then hang logs, called brushing, underneath the wires to add weight to pull the fence down low enough so that the cattle cannot walk through the river and under the fence. 

Belinda stringing up brushing under the fence

We spent all of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday working our way through over 200 km of fence.  The days were very hot and we would often immerse ourselves in the creeks during our lunch break to cool off.  On the three motor bikes we had two chain saws for cutting trees that had fallen on the fences, an axe to hammer in posts, pliers, wire, cloth cool bags full of frozen water bottles, five people, and Dan’s dog, Rocky.  Every day we would return hot, dusty, and tired, but we had plenty of laughs during the day. 

Dan, Belinda, Jeremy, and Brian out fencing

On Friday we drove out to the farthest point on the boundary and we ended up riding through the scrub for over an hour in the dark on our way home.  I thought we were going to end up lost for sure, but after eight years, Belinda knows her way around the property pretty well.  The stars in the night sky were gorgeous and Belinda pointed out some of the different constellations to me, the most obvious was the Southern Cross.  The Southern and Northern Hemispheres each have a different celestial pole which means that from the North Pole a person would not be able to see any of the stars that a person would be able to see from the South Pole and vice-versa.  So from Australia I can see some of the same stars that I would be able to see from home, but there are also some different stars.  I can still see the Milky Way though. J 

Today is Sunday again, and everyone is taking a much needed break.  And tomorrow the work will begin again. 

I hope you are all enjoying a beautiful Spring.

Love,

    Hana

Sunset on the station

 

Back in Burnie

Happy Easter!

   After arriving back at the Schafer’s home on Monday, the 26^th of March, I spent a very happy week helping with projects around the house and property.  On Tuesday Charmaine and I worked on reducing the leaves and other garden rubbish into mulch.  Charmaine worked on honing her tractor driving skills while moving the large piles of debris into one huge pile for us to put through the mulcher. 

Charmaine driving the tractor

Wednesday morning Charmaine and I continued our mulching project, and in the afternoon Wayne also gave me my own special project to work on: sanding and re-varnishing the picnic table on the veranda.  The table is made from hard Australian wood and it was originally varnished over 20 years ago.  The project kept me busy for the rest of the week and parts of the next week. 

Sanding

 After sanding the table I brushed on a sealing coat, three coats of varnish and a final coat of oil based varnish.  And now, when the weather is not too cold, we can enjoy lunch out on the picnic table again. 

The picnic table all finished

Nirose was still staying with Wayne and Charmaine and he helped Wayne with painting the house and back veranda.  I also gave Nirose a hand painting parts of railing while I waited for my coats of varnish to dry.

Nirose painting the railings

  Thursday morning, I took a break from sanding to accompany Wayne to visit his neighbor, Brian, and his wood mill.  Brian originally made the wooden picnic table I was restoring, and he still makes these beautiful tables.  It was very interesting to see all of the large saws and equipment Brian and his assistants use to cut the huge logs.  Wayne told me that Brian’s type of wood craft is dying out because younger generations are not interested in such hard, dirty, and often times, unprofitable work.

Wayne and Brian

  Friday morning we all went into town to buy groceries.  On Saturday Charmaine was in charge of catering dinner for a group meeting at the Emu Valley Rhododendron Garden, so we also bought groceries for the dinner.  In the afternoon Wayne helped me to develop a way of printing my own postcards with pictures I have taken. 

  Saturday was a busy day.  In the morning Felix, a helper from Germany, arrived.  And after lunch Nirose left.  He wanted to tour around Tasmania by car and see some of the other sights.  In the afternoon, Charmaine and I drove to the Rhododendron Garden to prepare the catered dinner for the Bonsai society of Tasmania which was meeting in the Rhododendron Garden’s event room.  We first had to chop up and begin cooking all the meat and vegetables for the meal. Charmaine put me in charge of making the crumble to put on top of the apple crumble for dessert.  I then had some time to wander through the beautiful gardens again before returning to help set up tables and arrange place settings. 

The North America portion of the Garden with
Autumn colors

Sue, one of the other garden members and catering helpers, showed me how to fold napkins into fans and hats for the table settings.  And together we went out to gather flowers and leaves to place in the middle of the tables.  Sue and I were also the servers for the dinner.  The meal was delicious and consisted of either lamb with mint sauce or pork with apple sauce with sides of carrots, peas, potatoes, baked pumpkin, and a broccoli/cauliflower cheese casserole. 

Dinner

For dessert there was my apple crumble with custard or an Australian favorite, Pavlova with kiwi and passion fruit sauce.  Pavlova is a light, foamy, sugary cake, like a very moist light marshmallow and the outside shell is a crispy sugar coating topped with whipped cream.  It is made from whipped egg whites with sugar and baked in a slow oven.  The dinner was a great success and the Bonsai Society lingered, happily chatting, until long after the meal was ended. 

  Sunday morning dawned with the promise of a sunny day, so Wayne and Charmaine encouraged Felix, who had a rented car, to take the day and go sight-seeing.  Felix offered to let me come along, which I was happy to do.  We first stopped at Dip Falls.  There we saw huge Browntop Stringyback trees reaching heights of 62 meters. 

The tree is so tall I was not able to even
get the top in the picture.

And the falls themselves were spectacular.  The water flowed down the first wall of stones that looked like stepping stones carved into the cliff face. 

Dip Falls

Then after lingering in a pool at the bottom of the first fall, the water then roared over the edge of the second drop to land at the bottom in a peaceful river.

Felix on the stairs to the bottom of the falls

   Next we drove to Stanley and I climbed up the “nut” again.  The sun was out that Sunday and the tides were at low ebb which made for a great view.  After all of the fresh air and exercise, Felix and I ate a lunch of fresh fish and chips. 

Low tide at Stanley

   On the drive back to Burnie, we stopped by a small conservation area called Peggs Beach.  The beach was beautiful and there were tide pools among the rocks at the far end of the beach since the tide was still out.  We also drove back along the scenic road through Table Cape. 

Peggs Beach

Monday morning Charmaine and I were back working on the mulch pile.  So on Tuesday morning, for a change, I went with Wayne and Felix to meet with the Schafer’s farming neighbor, Ray, to find the boundary line between their properties in order to put up a fence.  The boundary line runs through an area overgrown with large ferns and sapling trees.  Our first task was to use a compass to find the boundary line and then placed four poles to mark the line.  Then we began the hard task of clearing away the brush along the line. Ray and Felix worked with Fern hooks, curved blades on the end of a pole, while Wayne used his weed wacker to clear. 

Ray and Felix clearing a path with fern hooks

After working in the host sun for most of the day, Charmaine took us to the beach.  Toby had a wonderful time chasing after his ball. 

Charmaine and Toby at the beach

 Wednesday Wayne, Felix, and I picked up a small rowing dingy to keep on the Schafer’s dam for their neighbor. 

Unloading the dingy

 The dingy is in need of som TLC, but she floats and glides beautifully across the water.  After playing around in the dingy for awhile we eventually got back to work painting the house.

Taking Wayne for a ride in the dingy

That evening we were invited over for dinner at Ray and his wife’s beach house at Sisters Beach.  We left a bit early so that we could stop and visit some of the sights along the way.  My favorite was Boat Harbor Beach.  My luck could not have been better.  The tides on the beach were at their lowest ebb, exposing the rocks along the side of the beach and all of the little tide pools hidden in the crevices.  I had a wonderful time clambering up and down and peering into all the pools looking for sea anemones, snails, and little fish. 

Boat Harbor with rock tide pools

  When we arrived at Sister’s Beach, Ray took us for a walk along the beach.  We walked along as the sun set and lit up the clouds with all different shades of pink and orange. 

Sisters Beach

Thursday morning I went to the shops in town with Charmaine to purchase an Easter outfit for Easter Vigil Mass.  In the afternoon, Felix and I worked on painting the side of the house.  We had a great time talking about our homes and travels, and Felix taught me some useful German words.   

The side of the house we painted

Friday morning Felix left and in the afternoon Alex and Elisa, my friends from Launceston, arrived. 

Must stop now, but I will be sure the finish updating later J.

At the bottom of Dip Falls

Hana

Launceston

Hi Everyone,

I must apologize for not giving an update of my activities sooner; somehow while traveling time seems to just slip by.  The Monday after my last post, March 19^th, Viola and I both left Burnie on the bus.  I got off in Launceston, about a two hour drive east of Burnie, and from there caught a bus out to the little community of Exeter.  At Exeter I met my new host family, the Grosvenors.  The family owns a small apple orchard where they grow and sell organic apples.  While I was staying most of the apples were in fruit and I enjoyed eating as many apples as I wanted.  The Grosvenor family consists of Peter, his wife, Gwen, and their two teenage daughters, Jodie and Amber.  There was also two other helpers staying at the same time I was, a couple, Alex and Elisa.  They are French and Italian respectively, although Elisa speaks fluent French. 

Elisa and Alex at Cataract Gorge

   On my first day I washed and vacuumed out Peter’s car, and helped him adjust the seat coverings.  In the afternoon Elisa helped me make peanut butter cookies.  Peter was very nice, in the evening he played a game of Uno with us, and Alex won by a landslide. 

   Wednesday morning I worked with Alex and Elisa to cut back the old blackberry canes that surround the vegetable garden.  Once we had finished, Peter drove us into Launceston and we helped him mow the lawn at a property the family rents out.  Since Peter had some errands to do in town, he dropped us off near the trail that leads around Cataract Gorge. 

Cataract Gorge

We walked all the way to the end of the gorge and across the river on the suspension bridge at the other side.  Even though it was a cloudy and rainy day, the view was still beautiful.  On the drive back to Exeter, Peter acted as a tour guide.  We stopped at Brady’s Lookout, which has a gorgeous view of the Tamar valley and Tamar River. 

The Tamar Valley from Brady's Lookout

    Thursday morning I baked some cookies and helped with some of the house work.  In the afternoon, Elisa and Alex took me with them to go see some of the local sights. 

Batman Bridge

We saw the Batman Bridge which crosses the Tamar River, and we also stopped to see a local lavender farm.  The lavender farm has its own distillery and sells lavender products made on sight from the lavender grown out in the fields. 

Lavender Farm

The scenery in the Tamar valley is very beautiful.  There are many farms, vineyards, and orchards.  So the valley looks green and prosperous.  In the evening I made a pumpkin pie for my host family from fresh pumpkin.

   Friday morning Elisa and Alex spent part of the morning making a homemade Italian dish for dinner called Gnocchi.  It consists of a tomato sauce base with handmade meat balls and pasta.  The pasta is made of flour and potato and each piece of pasta must be rolled into little individual balls. 

Elisa making Gnocchi pasta

While they were cooking I did a bit a floor scrubbing.  Then all three of us spent the rest of the morning outside cutting up the large branches Elisa and Alex had pruned from some of the trees the day before.  We cut the branches into little pieces that would fit into a branch mulching machine.   In the afternoon, I also made two apple pies for my host family.  I must thank my mother and grandmother for teaching me how to bake.  Those skills have served me very well while traveling and sharing American culture with others. 

   Peter and Gwen would like to set up a wooden frame around their vegetable garden on which to hang a roof of hail netting in order to keep out the birds.  Saturday morning Alex helped Peter to mark out, dig and set the first two posts for the wooden frame.  Meanwhile Elisa and I mulched up the branches we had cut the day before.  In the evening, Peter drove Elisa, Alex, and me all the way up to the coast at Greens Bay.  We were just in time to watch the sun set over the water. 

Greens Bay

In the distance we could see the light of the lighthouse rotating and acting as a warning beacon from the shore of the opposite head land.   On the drive back, we kept stopping the car to try and catch pictures of the nocturnal creatures that would scamper across our path in the dark.  We saw wallabies, wombats, and possums.  But it was very hard to take pictures in the dark. 

Possum up a tree watching us drive by

We also stopped at the Beaconsfield gold mine on our drive back.  It was difficult to see anything in the dark, but we could watch the shaft elevator running up and down.  And in one of the main buildings, a wooden structure that has been there about as long as the mine, there were holes drilled into the large wooden door, through which we could see the inside.  But I don’t know enough out mining equipment to be able to describe or explain what was inside. 

Looking through the eye hole in the wooden door
of the mine

  When we returned to the house, Jodie had made pancakes for us for dessert.  The Australian version of pancakes reminds me of what we would call crepes.  On top of our pancakes we put sugar with either lemon or freshly squeezed apple juice.  It was delicious. 

   Sunday morning Elisa, Alex, and I continued to help Peter put in the posts for the garden roof.  We finished setting all four corner posts and one of the side posts.  And we also were able to help stake out where the remaining posts should go.  The holes we had to dig were deeper than the length of my arm. 

Amber and Elisa showing how deep
the holes were

And in one hole, halfway down, we found a little frog, still alive, buried in the dirt.  He seemed rather sleepy, so we gave him a new home in the strawberry patch. 

The sleepy little frog

   On Monday, Alex and Elisa said good-bye to the Grosvenors. 

Peter, Gwen, Amber, Jodie, Alex, Elisa, and myself

Alex and Elisa continued on their trip around Tasmania, and I took the local bus into Launceston where I met Charmaine, my first hostess, and went back with her to Burnie. 

  On the drive back from Launceston, we stopped to visit a friend of Charmaine’s in the historic town of Evansdale.  As drivers enter the little tow, they are greeted by the old water tower that looks like a small castle turret.  The water tower was build of bricks in the early 1900’s.  Evansdale is also known for its Penny Farthing races.  Each year the main street of the town is closed and racers perched precariously on tall bicycles sprint as fast as they can down the avenue.  A statue in the main park is a year round testament to the city’s famous event. 

Statue of Penny Farthing Racer

   We also made a stop along the way to tour a local cheese factory.  I learned that the type of cheese depends on the kind of bacteria that is first added to the curds and whey at the beginning of the cheese making process.   We could watch cheese being made in one room and also see the racks and racks of cheeses in the storage room. 

Cheese storage room

 And around the outside of the visitor’s building where several painted cows.  So were even hiding in the bushes. 

   The drive back to Burnie was also filled with beautiful scenery.  The wonderful thing about Tasmania is that you are never too far from the sea. 

Scenery on the drive back to Burnie

Hana