After we left Sydney we made our way to the next stop of our journey: Wombat Creek.

This is were Urs Wälterlin lives with his family. Urs is from Switzerland and his wife is from Germany. They live in Australia now for over 20 years. We will tell you more about Urs in a blogpost of the category „people“ where we blog about interesting people who live in Australia. This is were we will tell you how we found our way to the Wälterlins, too.

The Wälterlin family has a farm where willing workers are always welcome to help. So we came here for wwoofing, too. Besides the normal wwoofing work I was willing to help Urs with his new website. We talked about that in the email conversation we had before.

We arrived with a warm welcome at wombat creek. Not only Urs and his family were very friendly from the beginning, but also both of the dogs, Heid and Moritz, the hens which are somehow all called Berta and the pig Susi. Susi was running happily up and down inside here place and was grunting very satisfied. At Wombat Creek it is a tradition to give the animals typical german names. Only the fish have more australian names like Bob and Fred.

We were allowed to stay in the shed. Shed is normally used as a word for storage buildings but this was more a real house. Fantastic. Dinner and sometimes even lunch were held with the whole family and we could join. Only for breakfast we had to care for ourselves. The best part about eating together is the conversation. Because Urs is very intersted in politics we learned a lot about the politics and society in Australia. You’ll get more information about this it the post about Urs but what I can say is that Australia is by far not that „open minded“.

Our tasks at the farm were pretty diverse, heavy and the taught us a few lessons. The first days we had to fix the driveway – a very long driveway – with putting the gravel which was washed aside from the rain back into the driveway. We also had to dig a ditch. Hard physical work but in the end we had really made some progress. Urs taught us how to fence the australian way from scratch. Fencing here is more a from of art than work and you need tools a German has never seen before. As we finished the fence we were a bit proud and the result was not that bad for first time fencing.

Besides the real wwoofing I made a Website for Urs. While working with him in his office I could witness how a radio newssnippet was recorded and sent to the station in Switzerland. That was really interesting to look behind the scenes. I have laughed a lot and had some really serious talks about problems in Australia. The website almost build itself while I was in his office and you can have a look at it at www.urswalterlin.com. To work with him was always a pleasure and I feel lucky to have such a well known and intersting person in my portfolio. I will tell you more about Urs work in the post about him.

But not only Urs was really nice to us. The whole Wälterlin family treated us like we have always been there. With the sons we could go for a nightly walk with Susi who took her chance to escape once in a while. We went to her neighbour with them, because she has a pool. The funny thing is that you have to drive, because it is just too far away for walking. They taught us where to find the southern cross in the nightsky and where Alpha Centauri and the closest star to earth is located.

Urs and Christine were always willing to answer every question we had. They showed us how weird some of the australian people think, watched kath & kim with us and spend a whole evening to find the best tour for us on a map of Australia. And of course they always provided us with delicious food. Who knows me knows that I’m no big fan of certain vegetables but this veggie-soup Christine had cooked was simply fantastic.

While I was working a lot with Urs, Carina, who likes to be creative too, painted all posts on the wombat creek and crafted the signs pointing the direction to the house and the shed. And she sewed some curtains for our car. A big thanks to Christine who provided the fabric and the sewing machine.

Of course all the animals were fun, too. Heidi and Moritz joined us while we were doing our daily work. Moritz even pushed some little kangoroo into our arms while he was chasing it down the driveway. Susi went for a bath in the mudd and was obviously very excited about that. And then there are all the Bertas. The are the happiest chickens on earth and they don’t even know. Last but not least the nightly wombat sights have been a great experience. To see a wild wombat is nothing special here, but for us it was very special. You can see them only at night and this can be a bit creepy when you make your way through the bushes with all that weird noises everywhere. You constantly fear for your life because of all the snakes, spiders and other creepy creatures. One day I almost got stuck in a spider web with my face. Luckily I recognized right before I was eaten by the big spider in its web. I tried to watch her with the flashlight and somehow got her a moth for dinner. Nice to see how fast they can be but better watched from safe distance.

What’s left to say? We had a fantastic time as wwoofers and were really some kind of sad that we had to leave wombat creek. But at the end of the trip we will come back even if just for a few days. That’s for sure.

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