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 Real Man Project

I've been hearing a lot about “Real Men” recently.

“I want a Real Man” and “Where have all the Real Men gone?” are phrases that most women seem to have said at some point. Women seem to know exactly what this means, even though they often have trouble articulating clearly exactly what the image is that is evoked in them by these two words...

Most men on the other hand don't have any clear idea what women mean when they say these things! The words “Real Man” mean as much to most men as the offside rule in soccer means to most women!

I have put a bit of thought into figuring out what women are getting at when they say these words, and here is my list of what a “Real Man” is...

What makes a Real Man is split up into two sections. The inside stuff and the outside stuff. First the inside...

A Real Man is calm, collected and confident. He is comfortable in his own skin, whether he is spending time alone, hanging with his friends, or meeting new people. In fact there isn't a situation that you can put him in that will make him uncomfortable. This isn't to say that he doesn't get nervous or scared, but he doesn't let the fear effect him, and acts in the face of it.

A Real Man is a leader. He is decisive. When it is time to make a decision, or take charge, he is willing to step up to the plate and do what needs to be done. He doesn't worry about making the wrong choice, or agonise for hours over which of two choices he prefers, when the time comes, he makes a choice and sticks with it. And if it turns out to have been the wrong choice he holds up his hands, takes responsibility and sets about making things right.

A Real Man has high self esteem. He respects himself and others. He is confident without being arrogant, and rightly so, because he knows that whatever situation is thrown at him he will handle it as best as he can, and even if he doesn't handle it perfectly he knows that he will have learned a lesson and the next time he handles the same situation he will handle it even better.

A Real Man takes action. If he sees something that needs doing he does it. If someone needs help and he has time and energy to give he will help them. He knows that the only true path to learning is through doing and doesn't sit around gathering knowledge and trying to be perfect before he tries to do anything.

A Real Man is motivated. He has a mission in life. He knows what he wants, where he is going and what to do to achieve these goals. He sets up smaller goals along the way, and congratulates himself every time he achieves one of these smaller goals on the way to the greater goal.

A Real Man is positive. He knows that people create their own reality and so he makes his reality a positive one to live in. He doesn't bring himself down with negative self talk. He may sometimes have days, when life throws him a curve ball, when he isn't on top of the world but when this happens he doesn't wallow in his self pity and he doesn't cling to his grief. He allows himself to feel it, allows it to wash through him, and then allows himself to get on with his life.

A Real Man is always learning. He recognises that life is a lesson for us, that all experiences, good and bad, are learning lessons. He knows that he is always changing, and strives to make the change a positive one all the time.

On the outside...

A Real Man has strong body language and posture. He carries himself all the time as if he has just won a gold medal in the Olympics and his national anthem is playing. He has a steady gaze, and is confidently expressive.

A Real Man speaks clearly and confidently. His voice carries as far as is needed without him having to shout. It is clear from his voice that he is in control. His voice comes from deep in his body and is rich and expressive.

A Real Man is well dressed and well groomed. He recognises that his personal appearance is the first impression that he gives to the world, and knows that this is very important. This doesn't mean that he is necessarily the height of fashion, but he pays attention to his clothes and takes care of them. Similarly he takes care of himself. His personal hygiene is impeccable and he makes sure that his nails are tidy and his hair is well styled.

Finally, a Real Man has a good balance in his life between work and leisure. He fills his life with activities and would never be content to live a life of routine. He may watch TV from time to time, but he chooses what he watches, and when the thing that he wants to watch is over, he will turn off the TV and do something else...

These are just a few of my thoughts of what constitutes a real man. I'd be very interested in your feedback. What have I missed? What have I gotten right or wrong? If you know me, how could I live up to this ideal better?

My mission in life is to move closer and closer to the ideal above, and maybe even to help others to get to this place, all with the intention of making the world a better place.

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....

Re-visiting the past...

Do you believe in déjà vu? It seems to be happening to me more and more these days. And especially this past month... It seems like everywhere I go I recognise parts of it, and sometimes I even know what is going to happen...

This is probably caused by the fact that I have indeed been to most of these places before... A very unsettling experience for someone that has been thriving on novel and unknown places for the last two years almost...

On with the story anyway....

So myself and Allan did our little road trip, heading north to the Gold Coast (been there before) via Giraween national park (been there before...). We met up with some of my friends and some of his friends in Brisbane, and generally had a good time... We then headed south back to Sydney via Byron Bay (been there... you get the idea...).

Road trip over we spent a couple of days in Sydney, most of which I spent repairing the van from Allans over zealous driving, and then flew over to Bangkok...

I like Thailand... I like it a lot... We didn't spend very long there though. One day in Bangkok (where we saw no sign of the troubles that are so widely reported in the news), then a train to Nong Kai, one day in Nong Kai; we went to the statue park there, which hadn't changed much since the last time I was there (before and after). Still well worth a visit though. Then we crossed over the border into Laos.

In Laos we spent a couple of days in Vientiane, which was nice. They have some nice temples there, and we got to see a buddhist monk baptism... or something like that. What I like about Laos (well, one of the things) is the baguettes, a hangover from the French colonisation, so we ate lots of sandwiches here.

After Vientiane we travelled north to Vang Vieng. This is a traveller mainstay on the Laos circuit, and as such hadn't changed even slightly in the 4 years since the last time I'd been there. Even to the extent that all the bars had exactly the same identical menus and even had the same Friends DVDs running on loops... One thing that was different was that my sister was there!

Another thing that had changed was the tubing experience... This is an essential part of the Vang Vieng experience (except for Allan who missed it due to feeling "a bit ill"). When i did it 4 years ago it was a simple experience, drifting down the river, visiting a few bars, enjoying the scenery... Now the top end of the river has turned into a resort style place! Bars either side of the river, pumping out music, and huge swings and slides for drunken travellers to abuse... It was quite fun, but I can't help but feel that part of the point of floating down the river has been erased... Here is the before and after pics...

After the hedonism of Vang Vieng it was quite nice to visit Luang Prabang again. Not much had changed here (before and after) but it was still a beautiful city, and a nice place to spend a couple of days... Worth noting was the Royal Palace, which I hadn't visited before...

After a couple of days in Luang Prabang it was time to move on. We took the slow boat to Huay-Xai on the Thai border. This trip took two days, with a stop-over in Pak Beng. Pak Beng was exactly as I left it 4 years ago (before and after).

One night in Huay-Xai and we crossed the border into Thailand. Some immigration checks and we were free to find our bus out of there. We took a bus to Chiang Mai from the border. A six hour journey, which was reasonably comfortable. It was nice being back in Thailand again, and able to go into 7-11 and buy snack foods without being ripped off.

Of course Chiang Mai is the biggest source of déjà vu. I have spent over 6 weeks in Chiang Mai, all told, and really like it here. If there is one place that I could see myself living outside the UK it is here. We vsited my friend Jangiraj, and discovered that I am used as a model in her advertising! We bumped into an old friend that Nam and myself knew from a farm in Australia, and had some drinks with him.

We also visited an elephant camp, and Doi Suthep (before and after).

Which brings us pretty much up to date. The next plan is to head south and re-visit Koh Tao, where hopefully I will find it similar to how I left it (one of the most beautiful places I have ever been).

Until next time....

One door closes, another one opens...

I write this from Sydney, having just said goodbye to my travelling companion for the last year... But I get ahead of myself... How did I get here?

The last post finished with me working on the potato harvest in Tasmania. That continued for another week, with a little gap for the harvest machine to break down and be repaired...

On the downtime caused by the machine breaking we did a loop round the west of Tasmania. We headed overland to the great lakes, then on to the Lake St. Clair national park, west to Nelsons waterfall and then onwards to Strahan. The next day we went north to Cradle Valley National park (very nice). In Cradle Valley the weather got a bit chilly, there was even a bit of snow!

Just after this we noticed that our tyre was deflating, with us miles from civilisation, and our spare tyre being the one that we had had to remove only one week earlier! We decided to call off the rest of our trip and head towards Devonport to sort out our van. We managed to make it with the help of a friendly Australian whose door we knocked on...

Once we had fixed up our van it was time to go back to our last week of work...

After the work was over we gave ourselves another week to tour Tasmania and headed south towards Hobart, stopping off at Mount Fields national park... Then we climbed (or more accurately drove up) Mt. Washington, and visited some waterfalls...

Next we headed to the East coast. We passed a spiky bridge and Swansea then continued north to St Helens. We visited the Bay of fires up here and a lagoon.

Then we headed back inland and returned to Launceton and Devonport. On our last day of touring we headed up the North west coast past Burnie, Wynyard. We visited the Gunns Plains caves and the Stanley "Nut". We also visited the most westerly point on Tasmania!

Then we headed back to Devonport and caught the ferry back to the mainland...

We took an overnight ferry, arriving at 7am, and the original plan was to take two days to drive the 1000km back to Sydney... At the last minute i decided to change the plan and we drove the entire distance in one day!

We spent most of our time in Sydney with Nam packing during the day and meeting up with various people at night... I also got to meet up with an old friend, Allan (more on him later).

Yesterday was Nams last day. The night before I cooked her her last good stake (stakes in Thailand aren't worth eating), and she spend most of the day cooking a huge pile of sushi! Then I took her (and her many, many bags) to the airport, where we had our fond farewell... not too teary, after all, I am going to go over there to see her in 11 days!

In the meantime myself and Allan are going to go on a road trip. I'm going to push his comfort zones. I'm not sure if he is fully prepared for the time ahead... you'll hear all about that in the next post...

A devil of a time in Tasmania...

Hi Guys...

Its been a long time since I last posted I know... but I do have an excuse...

It's Tasmanias fault... Not that I'm saying that Tasmania is backwards or anything, but it is certainly more difficult to get onto the information superhighway here... Add to that the fact that I'm working 7 days a week (weather allowing) and you can understand the predicament that I'm in!

(Note: I've been forced to post this blog without having all of the photos uploaded (damn Tasmania), but keep your eyes on this album for the rest of the pictures...)

However.... I've made it online now, so here is my story...

We left you last on our way out of Wentworth, having just finished working on a grape farm, and heading south towards Tasmania. Before we went to Melbourne we visited Wilsons Promontory for a couple of days, stopping off at Happy Jacks rest stop on the way... As we headed south we could feel it getting colder, and it seemed that this led directly to a proliferation of millipedes the further south we went...

Wilsons Promontory was very nice, with lots of beautiful views, walks and beaches close by, and absolutely loads of wild life including bright red parrots, a kangaroo called "dude" and wombats! Also giant mushrooms...

We stayed in Melbourne for a couple of nights... on the first night we met up with Phil and Ffion again (see last post), and on the second day we met up with one of Nams friends from her university days… we also saw a fashion show and went back to the museum of moving images and played with all of the displays, including making a rotoscope video of me knocking Nam about Matrix styleeee!

Early on the morning of the second day in Melbourne we made our way to the ferry terminal and prepared ourselves for the 8 hour ferry ride over to Tasmania! The ferry was pretty huge and comfortable, and we kept ourselves amused pretty well, apart from Nam feeling queasy for the majority of the journey!

The first couple of days in Tasmania we went around all of the job agencies that we could find looking for jobs. We were slightly apprehensive about this as we had been told by many people that it was difficult to find a job in Tasmania… Figuring that we had a few days to spare before anything showed up we decided to take a small tour of the island.

We drove to Port Arthur (very nice area of Tasmania with crazy rock beaches and a chocolate factory!) and promptly got two phone calls from different agencies offering us jobs! So much for work being difficult to find!

We took a job on a potato harvester and have been doing that ever since, with a couple of days of for bad weather and a couple off for Easter, one of which we spent picking broccoli instead. We were told that the smallest acceptable size for broccoli was "about a C  cup"... so I spent the whole day groping broccoli... My psychiatrist may hear about this in the future...

Worthy of note in this time was staying in Poatina resort village, which sounds like it would be an expensive place to stay, but which turned out to be very cheap, and to have all sorts of additional bonuses including a maze and a Thomas the tank engine that you could ride round the village on!

The plan for now is to work for another few days, and then to tour round Tasmania and see the sights before heading back to the mainland and Sydney for Nams flight home… more on that in the next post…

The Rhythm of Life.... Mildura...

In the spirit of fairness I feel that I should add that I don't really like Guinness... But I do like this advert...

On to the matter of my travels.

This last month I have been settled down in one place, working once again. This month has been one of changes... watching the seasons change, watching some things grow up, and some things fall apart...

It doesn't seem like a month ago that we moved to Wentworth. The memory is still fresh in my mind. We had visited the farm where we would be working just the day before, and found that the nearest camp site was in a sleepy little village, about 10 km away, called Wentworth. So we arrived in the mid afternoon and started setting up camp.

The cast for our next month of life was already assembled. In the camp spot next to us were a Welsh trio, Ffion, Phil and Dave that immediately introduced themselves; one camp spot over from them was a French guy called Maxim, who we later found out was to be working at the same farm as us; paddling about were some tiny little cute ducklings; and though we didn't know it, sleeping in the tree just above our tent were a whole family of possums... the scene was set!

We enjoyed our time in Wentworth very much. Our neighbours were great. Phil and Ffion were a lovely couple... Phil was a very chatty guy whose twin passions were rugby and fishing. In fact he would spend up to 8 hours a day fishing on his days off... in spite of the fact that all that he ever caught were carp. Ffion was a bubbly girl who only ever stopped talking when she was reading or being artistic. Dave only stayed for a week, but in that time we came to enjoy his chat very much. As for Max... Even though he was French we found him to be a modest, inteligent, warm guy who was quiet at first, but really funny when you got to know him.

Every day the ducklings would come round, guarded by their mother, begging for bread; and then later on, around dusk, the possums would venture from their tree and get among us. Taking bread from our hands, and taking any other food that we were foolish enough to leave lying around overnight!

As for the work we were doing... We were both working on a grape farm, producing sultanas and raisins. Nam was doing the picking side of things (not too difficult work, though not very well paid) and I was a cart-man. My job basically involved riding around on the back of a tractor, picking up all of the buckets of grapes that the pickers had produced, and piling them onto the back of the tractor. We then had to tip all of these buckets of grapes onto racks so that they could dry.

The best thing about my job was that I got to drive the tractor! The worst thing was the bees that liked to hang out on the drying fruit, and don't take too kindly when we had to spread out the fruit so that it could dry better... I got stung 4 times! Luckily I'm not allergic! As well as the bees there was the usual assortment of spiders, flies, spiders, lizards, wasps and spiders... some of them deadly!

Now our job is drawing to a close... we are in our last week of picking... The ducklings have grown up and been replaced by new ducklings that are even smaller and even cuter... our neighbours have started moving away...

All in all it feels like things are winding down in Wentworth... I guess that is all part of the rhythm of life...