MERRY CHRISTMAS 2010!!!

First of all I'd like to wish all of the important people (ie, the ones that read this blog! ;) a very merry christmas, and seasons greetings for the new year...

And now for a quick update on my travels, as I know it has been a while since I posted.

To be honest I haven't done very much since the last post. I have been living in Cudal, in New South Wales. Just in case you haven't heard of it (and, lets face it, why would you?) Cudal is a tiny town, population roughly 400, that is about 30 kilometers west of Orange. It has a post office, a pub and a caravan park... It used to have a general store... but it closed down. Just about the only kind of shop that seems to survive are garage sales, which I assume sell all of the things that the other stores left behind when they closed down...


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What I have been doing in Cudal is mostly picking cherries. Let me tell you... If anyone tells you that picking cherries is an easy way to make a lot of money fast, then they are lying! To be fair, some people make a lot of money very fast... Maybe 5% of people manage this... the other 95% though make a little bit of money. I was one of those people. On a good day I could make around $120... which isn't bad I suppose, especially when my fixed expenses are so low...

Recently however I have started making real money! I am finally on supervisors wages! This means that I am responsible for checking the quality of the cherries picked, and in return I get $20 per hour! I think that with the exchange rate being what it is this is the most hourly rate I have ever had! (As a side note I recently found out that an 18 year old swimming teacher in the UK also makes more money then I was making as a university educated designer... but that is another story...)

So, now it is christmas. I have a few days off. Then I am going back to work for the next 4 weeks! If you have read my other blog, The Real Man Project, you will know that my plans have changed recently. I cannot afford to go to South America and do it justice, so after Australia I am going to hop back to Asia, before returning home to the UK. Once in the UK I am going to start up a business, and re-start my life. I am also going to get back into my salsa, as I am horrendously out of practice! I went dancing last night, and my available repertoire is a shadow of its former self!

Anyway, enough about me...

Merry Christmas to all of you out there once more!

Life in panoramic detail...

Awesome views are like subtle aromas, or closer to home, they are like travelling. Easy to appreciate in person, but almost impossible to convey to someone else using words. It is almost impossible to capture an awesome view with a regular camera. They always feel like the view has been cropped, and much of the grandeur is somehow lost...

Anyway, back to me trying to convey the awesomeness of travelling using only words...

I think that the last time I posted I was in the middle of my New Zealand trip. I have to say... New Zealand is a beautiful place. The Kiwis are a friendly people that don't seem to be able to see a large cliff without putting a platform at the top for people to jump off!

In New Zealand I went scuba diving, sea fishing, shrimp fishing, climbing mountains, walking in forests, black water rafting, bungee jumping... in short... had an awesome time with my family!

But all good things come to an end. After returning to Australia I have paid for a new passport, paid to have my van fixed, driven about 800km, seen the blue mountains and waited for a job... At least the blue mountains were nice....

The good about waiting in Orange is the library. It has unlimited free wifi, and all the magazines that you could wish for... also free power!

I have used the time here to create panoramas of some of my pictures. I like panoramas... They capture a whole lot more of the grandeur of awesome views. Of course the problem then is to share this grandeur.

To this end I have decided to use Picasa. I chose Picasa because unlike facebook it doesn't shrink down your pictures, so they can be appreciated in their full glory. Here is a slideshow of some of the most awesome views I have seen in the past year. There will be more pics added regularly, so keep posted....