Going Tropo down in .... Port Douglas?!
Trip Start
Oct 05, 2007
1
42
97
Trip End
Oct 04, 2008
Cairns,
Australia
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Hey Ho off we went prepared with cag and slightly broken umbrella! WWOOFing bascially means that you go and work on an organic farm (or similar) in exchange for food and board! We were to meet our host (Suzie) in Port Douglas which all went smoothly and then we started the hour drive (via the supermarket) back to blackmountain hideaway - a pony treckking center! She seemed fairly crazy from the outset, our suspicions were however confirmed when she took out an alcho pop and asked me to open it whilst she was driving - when after a purposefully lame attempt of opening it i gave it back to her unopened she then preceded to open it whilst driving explaining she didn't want to scare us by doing so when driving but as I couldn't open it she would just have to - she didn't realise that opening things at the wheel wasn't the issue it was the whole drinking at the wheel that was frigging scary!!
To our relief we arrived in one piece to a very dark yard/muddy area where there seemed to be horses everywhere! We hauled our stuff over the mud towards the light coming from a rather ramshackle barn which was to be our home for the next week....well at least it was dry...in most places! We could just about make out a bunk bed in amongst the rubble so that was a relief - we wouldn't have been suprised by this point to find a pile of hay for us to sleep on!! After an introduction to another WWOOFer - the delightful Heather - and supper it was bed time! We didn't want to unpack our bags because it was all so grose so we got out what we needed and gingerly made our beds! As we were minding our own bussiness what should wonder through the room and out into the kitchen but a foal - when Suzie wrote on her e-mail that Monty loved sitting on the sofa to watch the simpsons with WOOFers we presumed he was her son NOT a frigging foal!! No matter it was time to sleep and as i lay there watching a rat run along the gap between the wall and the roof I had seriously begun to wonder what i had let myself in for!!
One of the good thing about this crazy farm was that you didn't have to get up early...a 9.30 start at a horse bussiness?!! We emerged in the light to find a quagmar with about 30 horses in very poor condition every which way you looked, it was heart breaking. First we were taught what they all got fed - not too hard as they all got exactly the same wheather they were starving or a foal! It was apparantly nutritionaly balanced and was a diet that had been proscribed by some nutritionist that had WWOOFed with them previously - what i think she may have 'forgotten' to tell us is that the nutritionist was actually a cow nutritionist and knew nothing about feeding horses - any fool could see the horses wern't getting what they needed! No matter she knew all, so after the feeding we got on with administering to the worst of the horses who were covered in rainscald, cuts, bites and wierd growths (many of the injuries the horses had sustained from walking through the house - wierdly noone had managed to make the connection and that quite possibly horses shouldn't be walking through houses)!! Anyway that is pretty much how are mornings went and then we would spend a few hours in the afternoon doing cooking, cleaning, weeding (i'm employing a gardener when i grow up) and tidying!
One very good thing about this place was that the food was amazing and we were fed very well...untill the food started runing out! This was because after the first couple of days it really begun to rain....i'm talking over 48 hours on non stop downpour! By this point Suzie (borderline schizophrenic) had decided that we were all useless, we were eating all her food, doing no work (even though there was nothing much we could do - rain) and that basically she didn't want us there anymore (at this anouncement all three WWOOFers were rejoicing - we didn't want to be there either)....only one problem - we were flooded in! After a million and one false starts we managed to escape with a friend of Suzies husband who was also despratly trying to get the hell out of there!! As we made our way down the mountain past several landslides praying that the next one wouldn't mean we would have to turn back, the friend anonounced that we had officially gone Tropo - an experience i would not recommend to anyone - regardless of whether you're staying with a psychopath or not!! I have never been so pleased to arrive in a hostel in my life, it was clean, the shower had a lock on the door AND hot water, the bed didn't feel like it had been rained on, life was good!!
The following day and we were back in Cairns and out celebrating the escape from the nut house! Having being convinced by Heather (who was a more seasoned WWOOFer than us) that everywhere else she had been was fine we decided to try again but this time no horses.......
