HAPPY NEW YEAR 2006! Dear everyone, I thought I should take this opportunity to catch up with you all and fill you in on my last few weeks here in Tasmania. Life at the cheese factory is going really well. I start work at 8:30 most mornings and mainly work in the packing room sticking labels on cheese and packing it into boxes. With the new packing machine that arrived the week before Christmas this has become a very painful task. The machine is brilliant and creates rows of little plastic pockets for the cheese and then sucks all the air out before spewing it out the other end for us to put front labels on. However they haven't got the weight sorting machine nor the conveyor belt so we have to bend over a table that is too low and I get a very sore back. But, we do pack the cheese much faster than before! In the week before Christmas we had one night where a gang of us stayed back late to make up about 100 Christmas baskets full of local produce. 70 for the West Coast miners that work on Christmas day, and the rest for the cheese factory workers and the guys who work on the farm, quite an entertaining evening! Emma and I were shattered though after a 12 hour day and could hardly move when we got home. I spent Christmas with the Blaxland's in Launceston. It was Lucy B's 16th birthday on the 24th so we had a big dinner that night with all the three girl's boyfriends over to celebrate. Very strange to have a thunderstorm around Christmas! Had a lovely day even if it did rain a bit. We all opened our pressies round the tree (thank you so much to those of you who posted me things over!!... Especially the fake snow!! Tee hee.... The guys at the factory thought I was mad when I took it in to snow them!!..... got a pic of my Danish friend Claus dressed up as Santa Claus on the little boat sculpture that is outside of the factory with a little drift of snow!! Hee hee) Spent the rest of the day round the fire (it was a little cold and very very windy here, made me feel more like home!) and took the dog for a blutstery walk down the lane. Boxing day, Elaine and I took a brief trip to town to hit the sales to get some clothes for when I start work at the school at the beginning of Feb, didn't think I'd be able to get away with my old jeans and trackers! Odd to see so many people in town, really quiet compared to a busy day in the UK but crowded for here!!! Funny how I've got used to seeing less people around the place! Then it was back to Deloraine for Emma Viney's 22nd birthday. Had a lovely birthday BBQ with a couple of her friends and family, and spent most of the day helping her to pack her bag for her 7 weeks travel in Europe! Very strange to be waving her off to a plane to London, when I'm staying here and living with her family she's over with you guys! She left on the 27th. Will miss her. Then it was back to work on the Monday though there were only a few of us in, Richard, David, Claus and myself in the factory making a vat of cheddar and one of fetta, great fun to be actually working with the cheese itself. I'm doing this more and more often which is great. I keep getting moved around to where ever they need an extra pair of hands. So I'll be out in the shop one moment, then helping to take the cheese off the press, then on the vacuum packer and then back into the labelling room! Doing lots of different jobs like that definitely helps the time pass quicker! On the Thursday Richard left David, Claus and I to get the cheese on at 6am whilst he went down to Hobart with the Caravan ready for the crazy weekend ahead. Finally got out of the factory at 2:45 and we started the drive down to the Falls Festival which is held on a farm 15 mins walk from the beach on a hill in Marion's Bay about 2 and a ahlf hours south from here. Stunning location for a festival!! We were working for the Bennett's cousin Ann who runs a café and bar in Hobart who had a stall there. There were about 40 of us who had got tickets in return for about 6-8 hours work a day and any food or drinks we wanted. A great set up, we got to camp in the staff area which was much quieter and had more space than the others, our own toilets and even a shower set up in the trees. Very eco friendly loos, long drops into wheelie bins with sawdust to throw on to try to keep it smelling fresh as a daisy!!!! Didn't arrive till about 8pm on the Thursday night after a tour of Tassie, we'd had to go to Launceston first to pick up David's tent that his mate had forgotten to take for him, then to Longford to pick up a Swedish guy. We were up at about 8 the next morning and went over to the stall to meet the gang. From the factory there was David, Claus, Richard and Fiona and her cousin Lou and myself. We also took down a Swedish rural exchange guy called Henrick who works on a farm out near Longford. There were a couple of English girls there too and Ann's partner is from London! J Kept on being sent away from the stall on the Friday because they had enough people to work on the Friday so we went down to the beach. Fi's cousin Lou is a yoga instructor so we did a bit on the beach.... Tee hee.. after the boys went for a swim!!! Brrr...... very very cold water... I got up to my knees paddling and decided that I rather liked being warm and dry so went for a walk instead!!! J It being the beginning of summer and the water having nothing between here and the South Pole except ice results in very cold sea. Claus laughed and said it was fine, there was no ice!! The people who'd come down from the sunshine coast on the mainland were really struggling! There was a big main stage with a natural slope so you could always see the stage, whilst you were sitting watching the bands you could see the sea out to the left and the gum covered mountains in the distance. You can see Maria Island from here where I did a weeks camp with Grade 7 when I was over in Tassie on my Gap Year. Bands in the line up of the weekend included : The Dandy Warhols, The Shins, Hoodoo Gurus, The Cat Empire, The Zutons, Wolfmother, Ozomatli, Ugly Duckling, Pete Murray, Ian Brown (of The Stone Roses), Eric Bibb, Sarah Blasko, Rolling Blackouts, The Beautiful Girls, Kelley Stoltz, End of Fashion, Little Birdy, The White Buffalo, The Mess Hall, Ash Grunwald, Evermore, Mia Dyson, Dallas Crane, Katalyst & RuCL, Offcutts, The Grates, The Vasco Era, Lior, Matt Walker and Ashley Davies, 67 Special, TZU, Dappled Cities Fly, Youth Group, Dan Sultan and Scott Wilson, Faker, Rob Sawyer, True Live, Danny Bhoy, Adam Hills,.....etc some you might have heard of.. most of them are Aussie though... I ended up working a late shift on the Friday night finishing at about 4am..... up at 11 the next morning and worked on and off throughout the day popping off to the Sarah Blasko who was great and a few others..... Ian Bown from Stone Roses was rather drunk and singing horribly out of tune, quite painful to listen to! Really liked the Beautiful Girls and Wolfmother were great live, the Cats were cool .. too much too good to say how great they all were.... Unfortunately there was a hitch and Ozomatli who were supposed to be on counting down the New Year weren't on stage until after 12!!!.... meanwhile we had a crazy time in our little tent, about 25 of us in there with a bottle of champagne still serving a few people but dancing around to the music that we had hooked up along with a gang of customers... counting down the New Year about 20 times over since all of our watches had a different times showing!.... I think the last count down was at about 12:40!!! Hee hee.....went down to the mosh pit to dance till the early hours to Ozomatli and Offcutts....finished at about 4:30 I think..... was locked out of the caravan by the others who had headed to bed earlier so ended up in the tent that leaks...... it had been raining all nigh so we were all soaked and the tent was full of water too.... Resulting in very little uncomfortable sleep. Got up at 8 am and headed to the stall,..... Suddenly got really busy when we got the BBQ on and the crowds just did not stop! Worked straight through until we were taking everything down to pack up. On only about 2 hours sleep it was rather tough J hee hee... all of us fuelled on caffeine to keep us going..... (yes.... I do actually drink coffee now.... !!) Only mixed things up a few times, like charging someone for four burgers when they wanted one! On the Friday eve we had a terrible moment when the coffee grinder stopped working.... Got a new one in the morning and people were queuing up for over 30 mins for a coffee.. all looking rather desperate having been partying the night away!!!.... On the Sunday morning we had run out of cups, the crazy coffee addicts were going back to their tents to find their thermos flasks and plastic cups or anything they could drink out of and then coming back to us for a coffee! It had all got rather muddy after all the rain of new years and I ended up bare foot with mud half way up my trouser legs..... Feral! J A very entertaining drive home after the big clean up, set off at about 5:30 and had a brief stop at David's uni house and had to drop Henrick home, all hysterically laughing at everything on the way back due to the lack of sleep all round......finally in bed at about 12:30 and slept for 13 hours straight without stirring when we got to the Bennetts left a little more human after a bath... ready to face the day at about 3 in the afternoon!!! A brilliant Falls, definitely a New Year I will never forget! Wonderful place, great bands, brilliant atmosphere and a bunch of fab people! J Back to work as normal tomorrow for another 4 weeks at the cheese place before returning to Lonnie to work at the school for a term. Got to go now to hang my washing up before dinner and then another early night! Hope you all had a smashing New Years and best wishes for 2006. I hope it's a good one! Love you all and miss you heaps, wish you were here! Zoë xxx