Off to the Wonderful World of Auss: A Real Aussie Experience

I spent this past weekend on a home stay. We went out to a town called Bathurst which is about 4 hours outside of Sydney. It is a lot colder out there than in the city! You have to drive through the Blue Mountains in order to get to Bathurst and while we were driving through the mountains, it started to snow (which is very rare here).

This is where Bathurst (B) is in relation to Sydney (A)

The town is really small. It is out in the middle of no where (Sydney is the closest city) and is surrounded by farms. All of the families that my group stayed with live on farms. I stayed at a farm with my friends Bekah and Clare, who are both on the same program as me. We stayed with an elderly couple, Trevor and Ellen Kiloola, and they had their 13 year old grand-daughter, Tiana, over for the weekend. They own a huge sheep farm that is about 1400 acres with approximately 4,000 sheep. The also had 3 sheep dogs that were cute. Their house was really pretty and they were really nice. Their grand-daughter was fun and we played a lot of card games with her and hung out with her at the house.

We arrived on Friday night. It was really dark already so we couldn't really take in any of our surroundings. When we got to the farm, they fed us a delicious dinner and we hung out for the rest of the night.

On Saturday, we woke up early so that we could go see the concrete being poured for the new house that they are building. It was kind of boring, but we got to see the populated area of town and the view from their new plot was gorgeous (pictures below). Afterwards, we went to a local park and met up with the other families that my program was staying with. We went for a walk along a river and got to see a little market and a polo-cross match. I had never heard of polo cross before but apparently it is basically lacrosse but on horses. Then we walked back to the park and had a barbecue lunch with amazing desserts. The desserts were pot-luck style, so each family contributed cakes and cookies and they were all delicious. Our host family then took us over to the local racetrack. We got to drive all the way around it (its about 4 miles and goes up a hill). At the top of the hill, we stopped and got a great view of Bathurst (pictures below). Then we drove back to the farm and Trevor took us out to see and pet a baby lamb. It was only about 4 days old and really cute! We also got to see all of the wool that had been sheared so far.

For dinner, we went to one of the other farms. This farm raised cattle, so we got to see a bunch of cows and baby calves. Again, we had a pot-luck type meal. The food was so good! They had steak and a bunch of types of salads. For dessert, there were two types of apple pie, fruit salad, lemon meringue pie, and ice cream. Everything was delicious! I haven't had a home-cooked meal (that I haven't made myself) in a long time so it was a really nice change. It was also fun to hang out with my friends who were staying at other homes.

That night when we were driving back to our farm house, we saw wild kangaroos on their driveway! It was really exciting. Trevor had been telling us that they like to hang out on his driveway at night, but we had missed them the previous night. They were huge and were not afraid of the car. Kangaroos here are a lot like deer at home. Once you leave the city, they are everywhere. We had seen a few during the day as roadkill (like deer would be at home) but we hadn't seen a live, wild one then. It was really cool! Trevor chased after them in the car as they tried to run / hop away from us. But I managed to get a few good pictures!

On Sunday, we went to another one of the farms for lunch. They had an outdoor brick fire oven and they made us pizza in it. Afterwards, we went on a ride in a truck to go see and feed cows. We even got to see more wild kangaroos! When we got back to the house, they had a baby lamb that we got to pet and hold. Trevor then drove us around the town a bit and showed us the local university, the boarding school that he went to and balding hill (a hill where no trees grow). Finally, we got on the bus and spent another 4 hours driving back to Sydney.

It was a really fun weekend and a great experience. All of the animals were so cute and everyone from the town was really nice, friendly and welcoming. The views were amazing! You could see really far in every direction and land was beautiful. It was a great break from the city and from doing school work.