Our actual last day was spent in Sydney centre again. We utilised our free tickets to climb one of the pylons at the harbour bridge and visit the museum. We had a little walk around to take in the city before we had a nap in the botanical gardens! We went to Surrey Hills, a nice little area of town, for our tea before retiring back to the Coombes home for another good nights sleep!

Today we got up early to catch our train inland to work on a farm in the town of Barraba for two weeks. The train took around 6 hours to reach Tamworth, then we took a bus to the town. The owner of the farm, Hadden, met us with his dog Gus and walked us to the hotel he owns with his partner Andrew. In Hadden's words, Barraba is one of those towns that if you blinked you would miss it! But it has everything you need and is surrounded by green hillsides. The hotel is bigger than I expected and looks very nice. The toilets were quite posh so we have concluded the hotel must be posh too! Hadden then piled the four of us, all of our bags and his dog into an old banger of a car which an old lady has lent him, and drove us to his farm, the Barraba station. His great Grandfather came to Australia and took the land from the aboriginals in the late 1800s, and the farm has been in the family since. The house is old, but massive! First, we were the given a safety talk! Andrew is away in Sydney, and Hadden has been in England for a while, so wildlife has taken over the house! The house is full of bugs and spiders, but apparently none of them inside are dangerous, it is outside we have to worry about! The town is home to the second most venomous snake in the world, but hopefully we will be fine! Apparently the hospital statistics say of all the snake bites they see, only 10% of patients bites have actually contained venom. The rest were just a nip! Also, the town has had more rainfall the last few months than they have in the last few years! So there are frogs everywhere! An echidna (looks like a porcupine) has moved into the house while it was empty, so we were warned it may roam around but won't hurt us! We were also warned of kangaroos in the area as one killed one of their dogs! Hadden was going to drive us and our luggage to the farm in his ute, but he said it was illegal for us to ride in the back, however, we have full use of the old ladies car with no insurance! On deciding our bedrooms at he house, I drove us back to the hotel to meet Hadden there. Having never driven an automatic it was a little strange, plus it really pulls to the left! It's a good job the roads are quiet! We just take it slow! On arriving at the hotel, we were seated and waited on. We had some lovely wine, roasted pork belly with caramelised red cabbage and a mustard and fennel jus, with a side of baked sweet potatoes and peas. for dessert we were served lime semifreddo (in Italian means half frozen) and was very nice. Finally it was washed down with tea and coffees! And all for free! We have really landed on out feet here! Hadden says we will work half days then can use the pool or go for a walk or take a nap, and he will take us out for walks in the national parks so it doesn't sound too bad! Tomorrow we can have breakfast at the hotel and will have an easy day. Then on Saturday there is a Christening party at the hotel we may help at, then the 'real' work will start next week whatever that means! On this note we departed back to the house through a massive thunder storm! Sally took her turn to drive taking it slow as it is the time when kangaroos will just jump in front of cars! We got a little lost missing the turning off the road, as we just have to turn onto a grassy/dirty track between the trees which is impossible to see in the dark! But we made it and returned to the house to have frogs jumping out from all over! Living with all the wildlife may take some time to get used to! Especially as the frogs seem to be living in one of the toilets, so we will have to be careful for nighttime visits to the loo! There is another extension separate to the house which has two double bedrooms so we may move over there yet. But as it hasn't been lived in for a while it needs cleaning out first of anything that might have moved in! We will explore that tomorrow!!

Amy x