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After a pleasent ferry crossing back to the main land from Kangeroo Island I went via Victor Harbour to 'Meadows' south east of Adelaide to wwoof at a flower farm. Wwoofing means work on organic farms, the idea is you work 4-6 hours a day in exchange for accomodation, food and some insights into organic farming. The flower farm sold their flowers at a growers market in Adelaide every Sunday, during the week the flowers were cut, bunched and stored in a refrigerated room for the next market day. Sounds nice doesn't it?
I arrived mid afternoon on Sunday, and met my hosts Geoff and Anna. Geoff welcomed me in, showed me around the bit of the house I was going to be in and I went to get my things, so far so good. He introduced me to his partner Anna who was about a third of his age, they have a 18 month old baby. Weird but ok whatever. She wasn't particulary interested in my arrival and carried on slouching over her laptop muttering. Alrighty then.
Geoff talked a bit and seemed like a decent sort of person, he told me about a local walk I could do before dinner, which I did as there wasn't anything else to do and wouldn't start working till the next day. The evening meal was delicous and so to bed, I set my alarm to be up and ready by 8am the next day to start work.
At around 3am there was some curious wailing which I assumed to be the baby, only it was Anna, she seemed to be upset she had to keep waking up to look after her baby, I think she actually woke the baby up as she was screaming her head off shouting unpleasent things, the sort of things that make you wonder if you're going to be murdered in your bed. Somehow I went back to sleep around 6am and got up around 7am. The next day Anna bemoaned how little sleep she had got, I didn't sleep much either but I had work to do, and endless amount of it as it would happen.
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| Clearing space in front on polytunnel |
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| Bunching |
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| Flower cool room |
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| Milton and Jean |
First clear all the weeds from 3 massive poly tunnels, weed Anna's garden area as she couldn't do it herself as she was too busy complaining and acting like a grumpy teenager, clear, stack and sort several meters worth of acculated rubbish from infront of another polytunnel, sieve soil and bunch an endless amount of flowers. I didn't mind the work, but I did mind not receiving a single please or thankyou. I worked 6 hours a day and took my lunches with Geoff's parents who came round most days to work on the farm because they enjoyed it, we had our lunch in one the barns which had its own kitchen bit, his parents were lovely and the only thing worthwhile about the place.
Geoff had inherited the farm from his mum. Only it was apparent he didn't appreciate it, or the help from his parents, and certainly not the help from his wwoofers.What a shame.
After about 2pm I was allowed my free time, I did a few walks in nearby Cleland Park as recommended by Josie.
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| Top of Mount Lofty |
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| Bottom of walk from Mount Lofty to Waterfall Gully |
On the wednesday Anna was in a foul mood, I was working ten to the dozen clearing all the mess away from the front of the Polytunnel (so it could be recovered) when Anna came up to leave the baby in the pram in our care as she was prone to doing, she was angry with Geoff and after an irritable exchange she stormed off down the path and started screaming at the top of her voice, he went down to talk to her and I could hear her yelling for a fair while. Geoff came back to where I was and took a phone call from the university he does some Ombudsman work for in town and had to go in, after finishing the call he said to me ' I thought you were meant to be helping'. ! I ignored the comment because I didn't think he was at first talking to me and anyone with eyes could see I was helping, in fact I was doing the 90% of the work, but it was that point I thought they don't appreciate anything at all, he doesn't thank his parents, or appreciate my help, he has no interest in telling me anything about the farm, his partner is a sullen grumpy immature person with no social skills for whom life just seems so aweful and she wants everyone to know it, so time to leave. I felt sorry for their baby, what life will it have with parents like that. There was no joy in them at all.
After my work I packed the car, booked a hostel in Adelaide for the night, and found another place to wwoof near the Clare valley, a vineyard and olive grove. Geoff had gone to uni and the crazy mad woman was somewhere in their tip of a house probably sleeping.
I was very glad to have the car who I've called Cuthman, so me, Cuthman and Baby Roo sped away to the safety to Adelaide, where there were normal people at the hostel who talked and had conversations and laughed and made jokes and had life in them.
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