Spit happens!
Trip Start
Oct 05, 2007
1
43
97
Trip End
Oct 04, 2008
Brisbane,
Australia
Friday, March 7, 2008
This time we rung instead of e-mailed to guage how sane the person on the other end of the line sounded, Dawn sounded lovely so we headed a couple of hours north to Gympie! Dawn was as lovely in person as she was on the phone and we drove up to a tidy (no mud) farm, full of healthy looking alpaccas and shown to a water tight and very cosy room! We learnt all sorts of new things on the alpacca farm, what the difference between Huacaya (fluffy fleece) and suri (dreadlocks) was, how to catch them (grap their necks and hold on), how to lead them and groom them, how to sheer them (yes it did look a complete mess by the end), how to drench them, how to weigh them, how to pick up poo in a big hoover (ok knew that one allready), how to sort grass from the poo we had just picked up and then put it in bags to sell, .......ummm......ok so the alpacca novelty factor wore off pretty quick and i decided almost as quickly that i didn't really like them much - they have the ability to look so vile sometimes or in some cases all the time and they don't really do much apart from poo, spit and as i discovered when whishing my parents a happy easter they fart too!
Of course there is the fleece to be considered which is very soft and warm and we did learn how to warp a loom (it certainly looked warped by the time we had finished with it) but really i think i'll just buy the premade alpacca products and avoid the afore mentioned disadvantages to alpacca husbandary most notably the poo and spit! Of course we did the usual cooking and weeding (on one occasion i got bitten by the most vicious ant ever - weeding is more dangerous than it looks)! We also helped out with taking the Alpaccas to the petacular in Brisbane - one of Australias very popular 'expos' (must be said in high pitched voice with slight intonation of sarcasm), it was a random collection of dogs, cats, birds, camals, cows (i milked one by hand), alpaccas, lammas, pigs, chickens, climbing walls and ice cream vans, there was also an alarming number of small children but i suppose that is to be expected! Other highlights included the premature arrival of a new alpacca (cria - in alpacca speek) and a subsequent trip to the vet for plasma, a visit to Gympie town for Dawns weekly spinning class and a couple of drives round the surrounding country mostly stopping to look at small train stations!
One exciting discovery during this time is that Gympie is the home town of Isabels (mums sister) fiance (Andrew) and is where his sister Alison and her family still live! So we got in contact and spent and very enjoyable lunch and afternoon at there beautiful farm (it has the most incredible view)!
Anyway after two weeks we decided we should really get a shift on so we bid our farewell to Dawn who really is an incredible person - she is retired Sydneyer with pretty bad arthritis who manages the entire farm by herself! We really admired how sensible she was by making every thing as easy as possible for herself and how active and enthusiastic about life she was! We both agreed we would like to be like that at her age and part of us wanted to stay and help her but time was ticking so off we went to Manley.....
