First Wwoofing Experience - Australia

Hiking boots, breathable long sleeve top, long trousers, suncream, hat, sunglasses... all packed and ready for my first wwoof experience in Dunolly, in the Goldfields region, a couple of hours north of Melbourne. What the heck is wwoof you ask?

'Willing workers on organic farms'
Hopefully I look like one of those?

It's a cultural exchange programme which enables farmers in rural Australia to have help on the farm, to share skills, to learn how farming and life is done in other countries and for the 'wwoofer' or woofa, in Aussie, to learn new skills about organic farming and building work as well as experiencing the true rural Australian lifestyle and also for some to improve their English. Of course it's relatively cheap labour for the farmer if they get a skilled woofer and the woofer receives free accommodation and food during their stay.

In my case, the hosts were a lovely couple who were very keen to help me learn new skills which I can take back someday to set up an Irish small holding with probably a strawbale home, a chicken coop and veggie garden. Their farm is an organic herb and garlic farm called Bromley Organics. We picked calendula flowers to be dried and sent off to a cosmetic company, we sorted harvested nettle and lemonbalm for weeds, weeded and mulched, did some building work and took an old wardrobe apart! I learnt about organic growing, permaculture systems which promote recycling of resources, environmentally friendly and sustainable systems. I learnt about caring for chickens ('chooks'), growing vegetables, fruit and herbs and about water saving and collecting. The latter might not be required in Ireland.

Generally you work 4-6 hours a day which was on average what I worked. Some days when the weather is close to 40C it's best to start work at 6:30am. At other times my hosts were kind enough to drive me around their friends houses which had been built from cob, mudbrick and strawbale and I was able to ask them questions about how they built and designed these. Evenings were very peaceful in my own caravan with a million stars shining in the pitch black above, any fear of the dark now banished! Often we would swim in the dam after a day of work, or even during work, to cool down! Canoeing in the dam was also fun!


I particularly enjoyed the community small town life and joined in at the weekly community garden one evening, went to watch an SES (State Emergency Service) training session, and saw a small field just after a small bushfire. Oh! And lots of kangaroos. Thankfully I saw no snakes though I did see a large lizard and echidna. On a day off I went to the local museum which had lots of gold mining artefacts and a replica of the Welcome Stranger golden nugget found nearby at Moliagul. This was the heaviest ever recorded golden nugget in the world bug of course was melted down not long after being mined.

At the weekend I went camping with my host and her 3 granddaughters in the Kooyoora State Park. We went for some short walks, spotted kangaroos, cooked some stew and roasted marshmallows and bananas with chocolate over the fire!

My next stop was Bendigo, another Goldrush boom town of the mid 1880s. Bendigo had a very interesting history  and I enjoyed the art galler there and a visit to Australia's deepest gold mine which closed was used mostly in the 1940s-70s. I didn't go to the deepest point but 60m was deep enough for me! I donned the hard hat and head torch and enjoyed hearing stories of what it was like working down there during those times. Thankfully there was an industrial lift so we didn't have to climb all the steps!