Whilst we were at the zoo we kept on the lookout for paid farmwork to complete the remainder of our agricultural days for our visa. Unfortunately though the surrounding areas of Shepparton and Benalla had nothing at all, so we reverted back to plan A, which was to head up to Mildura in Northern Victoria. In our hostel in Cairns we had met a guy called James who had told us about Mansfield Zoo but who also had completed his farm days at a working hostel in Mildur...

The more we got to know Bronwyn and Dave, the more we loved being there. Dave was a proper country Aussie, he had travelled all over Australia always working with his hands and had a million and one stories to tell about everything (even more than Day would you believe)!? His views were sometimes hard to swallow but his disarming smile and country accent always got him out of trouble, and the truth is you couldnt meet a kinder person. We both loved hearing about ...

There was never a dull moment at the zoo... One day when a couple of the deer charged their fence once too many times, Richard, Dave's friend from the next farm (and an excellent marksman) was brought in to stock up the freezers with fresh meat for the lions... A couple of gunshots later I was being called up to the pit to give him a hand skinning the deer! Whether it was down to old caveman instincts or not, I was strangely excited about giving this a try and ...

Our first week flew by, and we really felt very quickly like part of the zoo family and took to our new job easier than we could have imagined! We got to know the animals and all their crazy little characteristics. The turkeys had a strange ability to know when it was time to go in and out of their aviary, the ducks would follow us half way around the zoo until they were fed their bread and the greedy emus would stick their necks so far out of their enclosure the...

Our first few days with Maddy around were busy with many different tasks around the zoo, from cutting and drilling windbreaks onto the lions' pen whilst they looked on at us licking their lips, to digging a trench and laying a water pipe in one of the paddocks, and trimming all the trees along the driveway from the back of the ute. Basically bits of DIY that I was never trusted to do back home (not that there were lots of lion enclosures requiring my attention in...