Hey, howareyoudoing?! We have a lot of news and amazing impressions for you!
Last weekend Linda and I made our first tour with Out the Back Australia. And here it is:
We started at the Gallery in Cunnamulla, where we had Damper with a lot of friendly and great people from the town. Damper is the original handmade bush bread and it tastes quite good! The traditional way to eat it is to put some honey or treacle on it and some butter if you want to.
A TV Team from Channel 7 was also there. They participated in the whole tour to get an impression of what is offered in that beautiful place and its surrounding.
One attraction, I mean really an attraction, is playing Bowl. Every Friday evening half Cunnamulla seems to be at the bowl court. In such a town everybody knows everybody and it is quite easy to find a team. Bowl you can play one vs. one, two vs. two …and so on. The only condition is to have enough balls!
For us it was a complete new experience, because neither Linda nor I played that game before. Fortunately father Rod, our heavenly succor from next door, agreed to explain us the basic rules and to teach us how to play that special game.
We had some tries and it is not that easy as it seems!
Nevertheless both of us won one match against ex-champion Rod! Ha ha!
And such achievements make you really hungry! So we had a simple but tasty dinner at the Bowls Club.
Now then we were prepared for the evening – It’s showtime!
Linda and I made our way to the Hotel Cunnamulla, a Pub in town, to meet Ann (another German girl) and some other new friends.
The evening was very funny and amusing! Aussies love to have a beer, a few beers more … and a lot of beer after that.
It was a very good evening for us and after a few hours of sleep we started good-humoured into the day!
We drove to the gallery and met with Carla and the guys from TV to have breakfast. Our wishes were lovely cooked by Carla and it was really yammy! That was the first time we were that brave to try vegemite, a typical Australian spread. What can I say? .. Everyone has his taste ;-) . After everybody was full and satisfied, we (Ann, Linda, Chris (TV), Chris(TV), the bus driver Trevor and of course myself) entered the tour bus and drove to a lovely house out of town close to the river. There was John already waiting for us, who was our “captain” for the following boat trip. In a white lovely boat our group discovered the great Warrego River!
The weather was absolutely amazing and so we had the chance to take a lot of fantastic colorful pictures. Well, maybe I have to admit that we tried to get a little bit more tan, too.
It seemed that the endless width of sun reflecting water becomes more and more beautiful with every centimetre we passed.
On the bank you could see kids playing and wonderful trees. Most impressive were the majestic painted birds we see during our trip. Bride white ones, with elegant wings and profound eyes – curious, sprightly flying ones, having a closer look at us while passing by. They hid in the impressive blooming trees in a blot of deep full green.
But not only our eyes were in demand.
Listen to the calm afar rush of water, carrying you into another world full of harmony and peace. That sound becomes more alive and louder, when you come closer to the twee waterfalls.
I don’t promise too much, when I say I am pretty sure you would love it. Feeling the wind in your hair and just close your eyes for that fantastic trip.
Maybe you will be that lucky as I was, because I got the chance to drive the boat and it is really really great fun! Probably I am that enthusiastic, because I never did that before. Anyway, I love it and tried my best to scare my passengers!
Actually we survived also my driving arts and found feed again at the place we started our trip. Meanwhile it was lunchtime and we were expected by Carla and her parents to have lunch together. With really good salad and different kinds of quiche everybody found something to enjoy.
Although you will feel sand at points you never felt sand before, you’ll have a really good time at the sandhills. If you waxed your board exhaustive, you can glide down the hill pretty fast. We shared that experience with some kids from Cunnamulla, who were only a touch better than we were ;)
After that it was absolutely necessary to take a shower. That was it what we did. In only 30 mins three girls were showered! Isn’t that unbelievable?!
From now on we had time to relax a little bit, because our next stop was Charlotte Plains. It takes a while to get there and so it was more sleeping than relaxing for all (except Trevor) of us.
Charlotte Plains is a farm appr. 90km away from Cunnamulla. The farm owners, named Robyn and Reid Russel, are very nice and kindhearted people!
Together with a few more farm owners from other properties who came around, we chased sheep into ..I can’t remember the name of that metallic fence construction.. to be honest I nor know the name for that in German. Anyway, we helped to chase them into that whateveritscalled, where they get marked according to their quality of wool. After spending some time in that, we continued our tour to the artesian bore.
What’s that?
That is a place over the artesian basin, which is one of the largest underground water reservoirs on the earth. The water consists of different layers: bearing water, porous sandstones and impervious siltstones and mudstones. In general underground water is quite hot, only some rare bores are filled with cold water.
Our one was very hot!
We had to erase from the spring to go into the water and not to get cooked. But when you are insight the water you will love it! Especially for those people, who love whirlpools it will be great. There is no artificial blowing (only natural one if you like it that way), but the temperature is the same as in a 4 stars hotel whirlpool!
So we enjoyed our bath and made some steps in the direction of the spring, but we couldn’t get that far, otherwise we would have become melted.
Afterwards we set up the campfire and had a fantastic dinner! The steaks tasted that fresh and the apple crumble was to die for! The atmosphere was pretty romantic, sitting around the campfire, eating and drinking with the farm owners and sleeping directly under the million of stars.
Don’t mind: if you are not that exalted about sleeping on one ground with crickets, grasshoppers and all that other creeping things, you can sleep in a one-man tent. It’s badly cool that you can have a look at the stars out of your tent protected by a fly screen.
In those swags/tents we spent a comfortable night and got up early in the morning, to have another bath. After feeling warmly refreshed we joined the little crowd for a lovely handmade breakfast. We helped the staff a little bit and then Trevor drove us to the Rocky Station.
There we met Mike and Chris Webster, the station owners. The Rocky Station offers beautiful trees on the blank of the river and a cool swinging footbridge! People who are afraid of heights could need a little time longer to cross the bridge. Actually I am not afraid of heights, but nevertheless I felt a little bit uncomfortable the first time. We walked over it with 3 people at once, so the bridge had enough space to swing and jiggle. Concentrate on your aim and you will manage it like I did. After the first time, it is not that freaky anymore: now it is good fun! Mike also had fun, because he drove his motorbike across the swinging wooden footbridge.. Impressive! He and his wife also invited us to have tea together. Linda and I were totally glowing for the presented food. Handmade sandwiches, cakes and cookies. Yammy Yammy Yammy!
There we wanted to stay a few meals longer…;)
But everything comes to an end and so did our tour.
Trevor brought us back safety to Cunnamulla at round about 2p.m. on Sunday.
We enjoyed all the experiences we made on our tour. It is really great to get so close to nature without leaving the safety of nowadays. Everything was so authentic and yeah, country style. Maybe we could get used to.. But we will see…
