TravelStream™ news feed for member dannyandjess on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/dannyandjess en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:10:06 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dannyandjess/1/1249710917/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dannyandjess/1/1249710917/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dannyandjess/1/1249710917/tpod.html Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:10:06 -0400 Moving to Australia

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Karatta, South Australia, Australia

Hi all,

For those who dont have access to Facebook I have put some pics up of our new puppy. Her name is Dot and she is a border collie x labrador (we think). She is very lovely, and is at the moment happily causing havoc about the place.

It was slightly random how we got her. We got given her whilst we were at a local footy match with some friends. It wasn't your average way to get a new dog! The woman, who's dog was the mother of the puppies, gave Dot to me to hold for a bit and then asked if I wanted to keep her. She was an unwanted puppy, so I said we could give her a home. Its not everyday you go and watch the footy and come home with a free puppy!

Dot and the sheep seem to be getting on ok. The sheep is definately the boss at the moment, but that will change as Dot grows bigger!

Anyhow, hope all is well with everyone and enjoy the pics!

Love Jess and Danny xxxxxxx
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Wisanger, South Australia, Australia

Hey all,

I thought it was about time we uploaded some pics of this place. All the pictures, apart from The Remarkable Rocks (which unfortunately are not in our back garden) are taken from the land attached to our house.

Keep an eye out for Danny sporting his new beard...he is looking more and more like a local at an alarmingly quick rate!

I have included a video of the sheep. I had to make it low quality so I could upload it, hopefully you can all still see it ok...

I will put these on Facebook too, but for those without Facebook...enjoy!

Love

Jess and Danny


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Sunny Lodge (our house), Church Road, Kangaroo Island, South Australia, Australia

G'day all. It has been far too long since we wrote one of these things, so I have drawn the short straw and will try and fill all you folks in on what we have been up to.

We are still living on KI, and really loving it. We are still in the same house, right in the middle of nowhere. Its amazing how quickly you get used to silence and pitch black at night. I am sure I sleep better than I ever have. When we stay with friends up in the big city (well, very small country town...think less than half the size of Topsham and your getting close) of Kingscote we find it difficult to sleep because of the noise.

We have spent a lot of time exploring the land round the house. There is about 500 acres of land (I think...) attached to it, and some truly beautiful natural bush. Its great to be able to walk out of the back door and see kangaroos, echidnas, koalas etc pretty much on our doorstep. Its great at the moment as it has been raining, so the river and dams are full and vegetation is very green and healthy. There are loads of birds around and we are really lucky to have a Wedge tailed Eagle's (one of the biggest birds of prey in the world) nest 10 mins from the house. It is a giant nest, about 3mx3m!! The island is truly an amazing place to live, very rural! And the beaches are beautiful. The seas are also populated with a healthy population of great white sharks, but I try not to think too hard about that! There have been some humpback whales sighted from the shore recently. Some people even say you can hear them sing from land. We are going out to see if we can see them in the next couple of days.

We have both got new jobs relatively recently, it is hard to believe sometimes that we have managed to get them. Danny is now the Marine Pest Awareness Officer for Kangaroo Island (Great title!!), which he is really enjoying.Some marine pests have been found on boats in KI and Danny is producing questionnaires, articles for the paper and giving talks at various yacht clubs on the mainland to let people know about them. Slightly different from Coldharbour!

I am now working as a Biodiversity Field Assistant, for the conservation unit on the island. It is brilliant, I spend a lot of time out in the bush doing surveys of various plants and animals. For a while I was employed as a contractor running a survey of invertebrate populations in areas which will be burnt in some upcoming fire trials. It was great. I finished it last week, after months of staring down a microscope id-ing thousands of invertebrates. Although I loved it and learnt loads, it has been really nice to get back out in the field again!

Danny and I are now fully trained members of the fire brigade here! I have been on quite a few fires, luckily all prescription burns so far, it has been great!! The uniforms are funny. Mine looks miles too big for me! I get the feeling they are mainly designed for men...not vertically challenged young women! Its good though, we look cool!

The sheep is still going strong. He is a funny little fellow. He has got into the habit of bouncing a lot, Im not sure its usual behaviour for a sheep. He also follows me around everywhere- it makes leaving the house in the morning quite difficult! We have been having a few troubles because he is now the proud owner of a fine set of horns (well, they are only about 2cm long, but we all know size isn't everything!). The other day I noticed a couple of scratch marks on the car, running parallel to each other and about horn's width apart. Young sheepy boy has got himself into the habit of scratching his horns on the car...hmmmm
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dannyandjess/1/1229711520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dannyandjess/1/1229711520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dannyandjess/1/1229711520/tpod.html Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:01:45 -0500 Moving to Australia

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Sunny Lodge (our house), Church Road, Kangaroo Island, South Australia, Australia

We are now truly settled in to life on Kangaroo Island (or KI as the locals call it). It is an amazingly beautiful place, with fantastic wildlife and countryside.

A couple of weeks ago we moved into our new house. Its amazing! It is quite literally in the middle of nowhere, the nearest neighbour is 5kms away (who luckily for us are cool people who also work for the National Parks)and the nearest pub an hours drive away (that might take a bit longer to get used to!). The house is great, very Australian, and is in the middle of a Eucalyptus plantation so we have forest surrounding us on all sides. The house also came with a lamb, who we found strolling round the garden on the day we moved in! We think he must have been left behind when the rest of the flock got rounded up to be taken off by the farmer. He is a cool sheep and is doing a good job of eating my kitchen scraps.

It is really peaceful at the house, the only sound to wake you up in the morning is the galahs and cockatoos in the trees. There are lots of parrots around too. The land belonging to the property is huge, we havent explored it all yet, but have found a couple of dams and a big patch of native woodland. The dams also have yabbies and marron in them, which are like freshwater lobsters. We have caught a few and put them on the bbq, they taste great!!

We are both really enjoying our jobs. I (Jess) cant quite believe I am getting paid to do the work I do. My job is to take people on guided tours of the sealion colony here. It is truly amazing, the animals are fantastic and really interesting to watch. I dont think you could possiby find a better office in the world! Danny is spending half his time at the visitor centre in one of the national parks and the other being a lighthouse keeper (well giving guided tours of a lighthouse anyway!). He even gets to fire a cannon, which he seems very excited by!

We dont get internet access at our house as it is so remote, so the nearest internet access is 1.5 hours drive away. Next time I am up here I will upload some pics of the house and the sheep...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dannyandjess/1/1227297600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dannyandjess/1/1227297600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dannyandjess/1/1227297600/tpod.html Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:44:18 -0500 Moving to Australia

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Cape Jervis, South Australia, Australia

We are getting on the ferry at 3pm this afternoon to start our new lives on Kangaroo Island! The island is pretty much a huge nature reserve, and is teeming with wildlife of all sorts. Everyone we have spoken to here tells us what an amazing place it will be for us to live and work. It seems pretty cheap to rent a house there (we've seen a 4-bed house for £60 a week!) so we should have plenty of room for anyone who wants to come and stay with us there!

We're going to spend a week looking round the island and then have a two week induction course before the jobs start properly, but we'll be sure to let you know how it all goes. That's if they have internet access out there...
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Meadows, South Australia, Australia

We still hadn't heard anything back after the job interviews so we left Adelaide and to try and save a bit of cash we thought we would do a bit more Wwoofing. We found a farm near where we are camping (in a lovely eucalyptus forest) that breeds miniature horses and miniature cattle (Dexters) and the woman there said we could help out for a few days if we wanted.

It was great! Jess spent a lot of time helping out with the horses, including training a month old foal to be led on a halter, clipping a yearling and rounding up a group of pregnant mares who had got out of their enclosure. There was also a small motherless duckling, which had been hatched by and therefore imprinted on the woman who owned the farm. It followed her around everywhere, chirping loudly if it got left behind. It also followed Danny and I around when we were helping out and if we were walking distances that it could not manage, or if it was getting tired we had to pick it up and carry it with us. It was very cute.

One evening (at half-past eight at night!) we got a phone call to say that we both got the jobs on Kangaroo Island! Jess will be working at a place called Seal Bay where there are loads of sealions, and Danny will be based further down the coast at Flinders Chase National Park. We are both very excited and the jobs start in two weeks time!
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

We were having no luck at all finding work up by the river, when we got a phone call to say that we both had interviews back in Adelaide for a job we didn't think we would get - a proper, permanent job working in the National Parks on Kangaroo Island! The job is titled "Interpretive Officer" and it means that we will be working in the visitors centre providing people with information about the parks as well as doing guided tours and even helping out with fire-fighting if they have bush fires! It sounds amazing! Luckily there are multiple positions available so we won't be competing with each other...wish us luck!
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Ramco, South Australia, Australia

We've left Adelaide and headed back to the River Murray in search of jobs. There are supposed to be lots of fruit picking jobs up here at the moment so we are hoping to get a few weeks paid work somewhere. We've found an excellent spot to camp. It's an area called Ramco Point just outside a village called Ramco and the camping here is completely free! There aren't any facilities at all, but there are a number of lovely camping spots right by the water's edge.

We've been doing a lot of fishing while we've been here and Jess caught two large carp one afternoon which we filleted and then ate for dinner! They were very tasty. The next day Danny caught a monster carp - 70 cm long (we measured it)! We have also bought ourselves a yabbie net and caught 10 yabbies which we had for dinner another night. Ray Mears would be proud of us!
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Head of Bight, South Australia, Australia

It is also only a couple of hours drive from Scott's Beach to the Head of Bight, which is a marine park and the breeding ground for the southern right whale, so we set off hoping to see one a little closer than when we went to Victor Harbour. And it was absolutely amazing. There is a wooden walkway that leads down to the cliff edge at a couple of points, you could stand there and see in the bay at least a dozen females and each of them had a calf with them. They were swimming right up to the edge of the cliff until they were about 30 metres below you. It was amazing to be so close without being in a boat. We spent several hours just sat watching them swimming around the bay. If you ever get the chance, you should definitely go there. You have to go at the right time of year, but it really is an amazing experience.
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Fowlers Bay, South Australia, Australia

Scotts Beach is a further 200kms West of Ceduna and the camping area is surrounded by huge, white sand dunes that are pretty spectacular. From our camping area there's a little gully that leads through the dunes and takes you to the beach, which is very long and completely deserted apart from the occasional fisherman and the rocks at one end. And thankfully it is much more sheltered than Wittlebee!
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