the southwest part III; Manjimup - 4/9 oct

So back up to Manjimup, one night in the hostel and then on to Fonty's Pool for a week of WWOOFing.
Got picked up by Kelly, and together with her husband, Jeremy, she runs the caravan park. They were fixing up 'The Lodge'. Spent the first day raking the driveway - they don't come that big back home - trust me, the driveway was huge. 8 Ute-loads of leaflitter later it was starting to look clean....

Found a guitar in the corner of the room, so I got to play some songs - completely out of tune of course, but hey, I'm not complaining, it's a guitar!! Spent two days doing odd jobs, which was perfectly fine, and then some woodchopping - get a nice workout. Playing monopoly (card game version) a few nights in a row, pretty cool game! Stephan and Carlie taught me how to play a bit of football as well, nice local culture experience :P

This was followed by one day of "I can't do anything right" - try to cut metal, you burn your pants. Mess around with asbestos, get covered in rat-shit, and some more...
Next day Jeremy gave me the car and a surfboard and send me out to Salmon Beach, to see if there was any surf. Had a beautiful drive through forests, and a lot of rain on the road, so no surfing, but a really nice trip and viewpoints out into the rain.

Got to play Lego with Travis (Kelly & Jeremy's 5y-old) - under the guise of 'babysitting'. In the evening watched a movie called Madmen about the Kimberly and people living there - local movie, Sundance Festival winner, pretty interesting. Next morning Kelly and Stephan ran for the local cancer-fund-raiser. I'm working on the roof of the lodge today, getting out the rivets so Jeremy and Stephan can get that off to replace the chimney later in the week. Midday break watching the Wallabies beat the Springboks (Rugby) and watched the Bucket List in the evening.

Next day Kelly dropped me off in Manjimup, got a goodbye hug from Travis, after he did some surfing on my backpack (it was on the ground, don't worry, he was safe). Bus trip back up to Perth for the rest of the day.