When doors open…

March 25, 2012

It’s the butterfly effect I guess. You meet a girl in a club while travelling. Nine years later you’re still friends, you revisit her home city on the other side of the globe and she introduces you to a friend of hers…who invites you onto the weekend of a lifetime. I feel so blessed when times like these happen to me.

Gubsie is the same guy who took me out on the motorboat and motorbike. It’s his birthday weekend and I’m taking a little timeout to blog while the chickens roast in the oven, the sun sets over the grassy plains dotted with trees and the others enjoy beers on the decking. Tomorrow I’ll be in Hat Head with another new friend from this weekend and I’m not sure there’ll be internet access there. So getting the blogging in now.

They say a picture tells a thousand words. Well I’ve got a lot of photos to put in this post so lucky I’m not writing it! We drove up from Sydney to Gubsie’s dad’s 4,000 acre cattle farm on Friday. Two girls in the 4×4, the two boys on bikes. The farm is about 20k outside of Walcha and 1,100m up, so the air is cool and crisp but the sun is hot. Days are hot, nights are cold, very very cold. The journey took about eight hours, we took our time and arrived in the dark. Three movies later (The Castle, The Help, Fifth Element) we went to bed.

A lookout on the way.

When we awoke, Gubsie took me quad-biking!

Generally I'm a dare devil, but on quadbikes I get very cautious. AMAZING fun.

There are pets in the garden, two alpacas and two sheep who are all very good friends. The alpacas are called Dave and Brian, the sheepies are called Sophie and Power-blaster. Aw.

I just got called over to the door halfway through this blogpost to see Gubsie's bro Hugh holding one of the sheep and he passed him over to me! What a shock, that sheep was HEAVY.

During the day we travelled into Walcha for coffees and a wander. We explored the town, took photos of the retro signs at the Royal Cafe, checked out the local skatepark and collected food for the evening feast.

Just before twilight, we shot guns.

Firing a gun for the second time ever. First was on a fly-fishing and clay pigeon shooting work weekend away a couple of years back. Thanks to Pitch, my old PR agency.

Look at the guys' reactions!

And a high five from Hugh. I'm not a bad shot it turns out!

And then the sun when down

All this land is the farm, it’s huge.

And then the fun began in earnest!

The steaks were from the farm's black angus, the salads were delish with eggplant and avo, we had a mushroom sauce to die for and plenty of red wine to go round.

More drinks and then off to the bonfire. We piled onto quad-bikes, trucks and a bulldozer and made our way to the field. Imagine a heap of, not branches, but tree trunks. Flames 15 foot high. Orange sparks high in the sky against the Milky Way stars. Amazing.

Coincidentally all the wine drinkers were on the same ute tray. We just sat cross-legged clutching our glasses as we bumped along.

It got very hot.

And then we went back to the farm house for more drinks. The next day (today) we took out a dirt-bike, two quad-bikes and the truck to investigate the farm boundaries and see the many many Eastern Grey kangaroos that bound through the woods.