Gayndah photos...

Those of you that pay attention may have noticed that my last blog post was a bit off topic... in fact I didn't mention my travels at all! The primary reason for this is that I have effectively stopped travelling for now, spending all of my time in Gayndah, and working every hour that I can! This doesn't make for a very exciting travelogue... 

I have taken some nice pictures in  this time however, and I thought I'd share some of them with you... They fit very roughly into four categories. Those four are animals, people, views and things I've done...

Animals...

No farm work in Australia would be complete without seeing some large spiders, and this was no exception! I found the spider on the right curled up in a leaf. It is a huntsman spider and as such is perfectly harmless..

The frog on the left is more obviously harmless... isn't he cute...



People

The people of Gayndah are very friendly, and people in the camp site are no exception to this. We have a group and we while away the long Gayndah weekends together, doing such exciting things as having fires, listening to music and getting drunk!

Views

As you can see, Gayndah can be very beautiful. Unfortunately most of the time this happens very early in the morning, and is accompanied by freezing cold weather!

Things I've done.

My van died at work one day, and Investigating I found that one of the terminals had completely dissolved! This disaster had a silver lining however, because the work involved in getting to the battery to replace the terminal gave me a chance to fit a hinge on the far side of the under bed area, making it much easier to take things in and out, and allowing much easier access to the battery in future.

Finally I've been working on a new project this last week or so. I'm not really sure if it is ready to go yet, but I'm going to launch it now anyway, and you can see it evolve and grow as I discover for myself what is involved in it!

The Real Man Project is an ongoing excercise in personal growth. It looks towards making the best of my life, and becoming the best that I can be. It also involves collecting resources together to help other people to achieve the Real Man ideal in a simple to understand, step by step,  process...


In order to achieve this I have launched a "Real Man Project" page on facebook (follow the links on my profile to access it) and I'm also launching a new blog that will chart my progress and hopefully help other people to achieve similar results!

I'd love to see you all over at the other blog, I have provided a link here and if you click on that it will take you straight there!

The road to glory... 2010

The title is of course a reference to the world cup. Some of you will be avid supporters of your teams, some of you couldn't care less... I fall somewhere between these two extremes...

Don't get me wrong, I'm an England fan first and foremost (well, that and a Leeds fan!). If the national team does well, I'm in a good mood. If they perform badly (Algeria anyone?!?) then I am flung into a tiny little pit of despair... So on the whole I'm glad that England have gotten through to the knock-out stages of the tournament, if slightly fearful of the upcoming opposition...

Back to my story though... My last blog left off in Koh Tao. Which was just as I remembered it... a tropical paradise... I saw a bit more of it this time, chartering a boat to take us round the island to some of the more remote beaches and snorkelling sites...

Myself, Namrin and Allan all had a great time there. Even after Allans adventure of having his wallet stolen and then the next day managing to drop his phone underneath the floorboards of a beach-side restaurant!

All good things must come to an end however, so eventually we had to leave Koh Tao and make our way back to Bangkok.

Bangkok is big! And smelly! Well, parts of it are. We spent a day there checking out the temples and palaces had some excellent meals, and then before we knew it Allan had to head home! We slightly nervously put him into a cab heading for the airport and hoped like hell that he would be able to make it back home all by himself!

I was only in Bangkok for a couple of days after this. We did a bit more sight-seeing, went to visit Namrins second home town of Ratchaburi and saw a bat cave there. We ate some more excellent meals with some of my friends from Bangkok. We even found time to fit in a bit of salsa! Then suddenly it was my turn to head back to Australia!

I won't go into it, but the goodbye was long and teary... On the plus side we got to travel to the airport for free on the test run of the new airport connection train!

Back in Australia I stopped for one day in Sydney, and then started heading north... I was heading towards Bowen, via the Blue Mountains national park when I realised that I was passing very close to a small town called Gayndah.

Gayndah is little town in the middle of Queensland, remarkable mostly for the citrus fruit that they produce there. It is also the little town where myself and Nam had our first picking job last year when we were just starting our travels...

I figured that I may as well pop in and see what was happening there, and within a day I had a job to start tomorrow!

So that is where you find me now! I missed the first England game against the USA because I was on the road, but once I got to Gayndah I haven't missed any of their games (though it seems that the England players missed one!).

Gayndah is mostly full of French people, Germans and Koreans (apart from the ozzies of course). The French are of course the but of many jokes right now regarding their team... We go up against the Germans next, which should be interesting. I have a place to watch it arranged and a German to watch it with. If we loose I may have to have a one man riot! We English have a reputation to protect you know!

Or I might just go to bed....