On Wednesday I was asked if any of us on the team would like to go to
“THE FARM” for two days. Um,
OF COURSE…it would feel like home 🙂 I
was very excited and after asking around Faith, Erin and I got to go! We left early Thursday morning to come back
Friday night!
We were so excitedddddddddddddddd 🙂
So we took the big 15-passenger van and headed 100km to Maranatha Farm
which was in “The Outback” or “The Bush!” We arrived and when we first turned the
corner into the gate we saw what looked to be a kangaroo!!!!!! Our first kangaroo siting in the wild! It was actually a wallaby. They look very similar. As the two days progressed we ended up seeing
heaps of wallabies AND kangaroos just hopping around everywhere we went!
Maranatha Farm has many pigs of ALL sizes, cows, 3 horses and a pig that
was raised up like a dog who likes to beg for food and come in the kitchen
(which is in the barn)! Our main job for
the two days, however, was to build a fence! We worked with the farm worker (who was basically an Australian cowboy
who rides horses and catches wild buffalo and used to ride bulls in the rodeo!)
and put up a barbed wire fence that was more than a kilometer long!! We had to slam down the pickets manually, tie
the barbed wire fence to the pickets and fasten droppers in between the
pickets. Add to resume: Fence-builder!
We worked all day the first day and then again the second day and finally
finished the fence at 5:45pm only to find out that they were taking down the
next section of an old fence and so they will be starting that section on
Monday! We worked in the outback, which
has little trees all over the place which means no shade. It was around 40 degrees Celsius and you
became thirsty only seconds after finishing a glass of water. I put on so much sunscreen, wore a big straw
hat and a long sleeve plaid shirt that they provided! I looked like a true Aussie on the farm 🙂
I was so proud of all the hard work we did and the finished product looked
quite nice! To reward ourselves we went
down to the creek, not to go swimming but to go look for “heaps of
crocs.” The water looked so nice
and I would have loved to go swimming. Even though we didn’t see any crocodiles for the first 15 minutes, the
water is full of them! We did see one on
the way back through the creek. We saw
only his eyes just above the water. Very
scary!
The two days at the farm were very enjoyable and it felt like a real
Australian Outback experience! I hope
the fence serves them well 🙂
AND I had the best mango I’ve ever had in my life. It was called “Kensington
Pride.” Very tasty! There are mango trees all over the place
here!
– Aussie Annie
