Boongalla

We are on the Boongalla organic wheat farm and cattle station. Today is our tenth day and we have been asked if we will stay on and work for two more weeks. It is not always fun, but it is nice to being doing work for a change and getting a pay check. Most of our time has been spent fixing fences. That means driving metal stakes into the ground and them wiring them on to the existing wires. It is dusty and fly's in your mouth kind of work. The fun parts of the job include cattle mustering on quads, it didn't go so well with us on the horses. We've done cow tagging, counting their teeth, and horn removal(yuk). We are currently building a new ramp to load the cows onto trucks. That means that I'm doing a lot of welding and Rachel is doing the grinding. There is a nice Polish boy here with us as well. He is doing a lot of shoveling dirt and filling holes in the road. He is jealous of our jobs, but he has never done any work like this before and the boss, Ian, thinks that he eats too much so he gets the crap jobs. On our day off we rode around on the quads trying to find kangaroos and cow skulls. Then we went to the dam and caught yabbies for dinner(a yabbie is an Australian crayfish). The farm is 9000 acres, so there is much we haven't seen yet. It is beautiful here. Every sunset is wonderful. And the stars are the brightest I've ever seen. We are allowed to take the quads out on clear nights to ride to the middle of the wheat fields to take a look. Nothing but stars. And the only familiar constellation is Orion. On the third day I was sent with the boy to round up 8 bulls and bring them to the pen. Everything went well until we got to the gate at the pen and they decided that they didn't want to go in. They all ran in different directions and it took lots of fancy driving, yelling, and horn honking to get them headed the right way. There are also lots of old cars and trucks here that we get to do some maintenance on which is also exciting. We've been into town twice as well. It takes an hour to get there. We are now recognized as the girls from New York. It makes getting stuff done hard because everyone has lots of questions. They really like us at the steel place because I know about welding. They have given Rachel and I a pair of gloves and some grinding disks to try out. If we don't want to go all the way to town, they is a gas station a half hour away. It is also the post office. Basically it is the town. Maybe you could look up were we are. The town is called The Gums. Our remoteness has made it difficult to stay in touch. Cell phones don't work and the internet is iffy. The house we are staying in is large and I'm sure amazing 1967. Now it is run down and vintage. The kitchen isn't to bad but the stove doesn't work so we make everything in a plug in skillet and microwave. He says the oven works but we're not that adventurous. We all take turns cooking dinner, except for Ian, he does all the dishes, sort of. So we are jillaroos now. We get to see kangaroos in the morning and pink sunsets at night. On Monday we start plowing the fields. The tractor is huge. Its a John Deer, only the best. Oh, and Ian has two wonderful cattle dogs named Bonnie and Clyde. They never bark and they love everybody. But when its time for work they are no fooling around. Boongalla rocks!

The Golden Staph

It started on our first day in Sydney. I reach into my pocket to pull out some 2 dollar coins and I notice that my thumb tip feels a little tender. I look for a reason for the pain, but there's nothing to see. What I now know is that was the first sign that I had a truly painful, quick moving, and very hard to treat infection growing under my skin. Goodbye Sydney, hello Grandparents in Salamander Bay. First I was misdiagnosed with a fractured thumb, then a few days later told that it was a common infection, no worries mate. I got some antibiotics and some really strong pain pills that would make it better within two days. Two days later it was worse and needed to be drained. That should do the job. It's now been over a week. Rachel and I decide that I will be better now so it is time to move on to Brisbane. First night there I receive a call from my nurse practitioner Jason (who was wonderful) that I might as well have been taking candy to treat my infection. It turns out that I have an MRSA infection, more commonly referred to as Golden Staph. Almost all kinds of staph infections can be treated quickly with metacilin (may not be spelled correctly). The golden staph is a metacillin resistant strain that resists most treatments and medicines. I was luck that they tested the goo from my thumb or it would have gotten much worse. I went straight to the doctor in the morning who gave me the right medicine. Now its time to explain the picture. The doctor sent me to have my thumb dressed by the nurse. Apparently dressed means squeezing my thumb until I scream, hit Rachel, jump off the bed, and cry like I haven't cried in years. Once I sat down again the nurse said, “Oh yes, it did look a bit tender. Hold your breath and lets have another go.” I tried to let her do it again, but I couldn't, so she wrapped it up tight and Rachel snapped a picture.
It's doing much better now that I've been on the right medicine for 5 weeks. I don't need to wrap it up any more. Now is when I have to be patient and not play with it. Lately Rachel says it looks like a raisin. Uncle Ian says more like the end of a hotdog. I'm just happy that they didn't cut if off. I'll write more, but only if it gets worse.

Back to the Beach - Noosa

We're here almost a week, Adam comes to visit as well, and we might stay a bit more. It's beautiful, and relaxing. Vernon takes us to the boat club and we go sailing - we LOVE it. We don't realize until we are there that we are speed sailing, and the boat Vernon and I are on win the afternoon race. We recieve a bottle of wine, the Captain - Peter, wants us to have it. The next day Alison & I go sea kayaking, we are very adventourous. It's us, a guide and one other couple. We are prepared to kayak in the river, we're not so sure about the ocean. The ocean is very choppy at times, but we paddle, watch surfers, and try not to roll our kayak. The guide complements us on our paddling skills (or at least Alison's, I try not to freeze when waves come) Alison might kill me but we make it through, two hours later we are done, and soaked. We go home and prep to cook dinner.

Katoomba

From Sydney we head to Katoomba where we spend two days hiking around. It is unbelievable beautiful. Waterfalls, the Three sisters - rock formations, and Grand Canyon like vastness but with greenery, then tropical forest. We stay in a super hippie hostel with really nice people, then head back to Sydney and Brisbane. We are hosting a birthday bbq for uncles' Vernon, Ian and myself (Rachel) on the weekend. We have a great time and cook a huge southern feast - ribs, chicken, cornbread, greenbeans, and potato salad. On Sunday we head to Noosa with Aunt Karen, Uncle Vernon, and their six year old daughter Tennille.

Parade

The crowd gets whistles, and Jarrod gives Alison and I a sandwich since we've been there all day. We are back in the same hostel as when we first arrived in Sydney. They are doing construction on the building, we find out this means they've torn out the bathroom in our building. We are hoping we won't wake in the middle of the night to pee. We are exhausted after the parade and crash out pretty much immediately after. We spend the next day wandering around Sydney and take an evening ghost tour.