Lizzies aussie adventures, remasterd

And so it started once again,

I was back on Australian ground. 
I had reached my goal of returning as soon as I had my degree.

Melbourne, Oct 2018

After living toward this day for a good 3 years I was equally excited as scared.

 What if everything had changed? what if I didn't recognise the city I once grown to love so much? 
what if I had glorified everything in my head so much I would be disappointed by reality?

But it hadn't, the city was still as wonderfully full as when I left it 1222 days previously. For which I was grateful. 

QVM views

I'll forever love Melbourne, the city just gets me. It's always been there for me, through the good the bad and the ugly. 

Needless to say I was so glad to be back, and for a couple of days everything was bliss. I was able to show someone from home the city I'd been talking about for so long. 

So together we explored this wonderfull city. Going back to familiar places for me like the awesome Queen Victoria Market, which is an absolute MUST if you're in Melbourne. Even for a day. 

This huge partly indoor but completely covered market truely has everything you could need or want. Endless rows of fresh fruit and veggies, a labyrinth of meat and fish as well as a hall filled with cheese, breads and all kind of other prepared goodies. And on the other side you can shop your hart out finding things from real leather belts, shoes or jackets to a pet bird and all it's needs. 

Books for Cooks

Around the outside you'll find a bookshop called, 'Books for Cooks'. So naturally, as I was traveling with a chef, we HAD TO go check that out. About a gazillion books  neatly stacked in shelves just about everywhere you looked and all about, you guessed it, food. 

It was quite the sight to see.

Basically we spend out time eating a lot of food and drinking coffee everywhere, walking for hours all over the place and chilling on the beach in St Kilda. 

Next up for me was to get back to my beloved horse-life. Which I did where I had done it before, in northern Victoria.

Victorian bushland, Oct - Dec 18

And so I stepped on that 3 hour bus that would take me to Kyabram, where it all started 4 years ago. 

But I was back in the horse world, the reason I had worked so hard for those past 3 years at uni. 

I was so happy to see this rascal  (<---) again! The cutie on the left here is Wilson, The last horse I worked on in Aus 4 years ago when Steve plucked him of a paddock and we worked on him to be able to get the vet in safely to castrate this beauty.

Needless to say I was extremely happy to learn he was still there and I was able to help with breaking him in further! I learnt so much from this kid in the 5 weeks I had the honour to work with him. He's a lot of work but he's so willing to work if you do it right.  

Oh how I missed these country sunsets

hay season

roundyard views

 

Equine dentist @ work

I will be forever great full for all the things this family has done for me, when I first met them 4 years ago and then when I went back now all over again. 

Spending my days working with the horses and the evenings eating, drinking, talking and laughing,  Playing games, meeting new people. 

And sure, not everything was as I had thought it would be in my head but then again, it never is. So life was pretty damn good there at that time.

After a month of chilling with the horses and chilling in general I got a job as a vet nurse (again thanks to Steve and Charlotte obvs)/ My very first job in Aus and as a vet nurse and all !!

 

So I went from left to right 4 days a week. 

It was such a great experience to be able to work in a vet clinic. I learned so much from the head vet and the other vet nurses in such a short period of time its insane. 

newborns at the clinic after my very first cesarean
on my first day of work

Chilli

Annelies

So for a few weeks I was living the life, working with animals 24/7 on duty soaking up so much information about how everything works in a vet clinic here and after hours or on days off working with the horses at Steve and Charlottes'. 

long live those days we had 25odd kitties in for spading

Kyabram is a great little country town. Right in-between the bigger cities of Shepparton and Echuca it's rural but still quite easily accessible (for aussie standards of course). The town also has a great fauna park which is always worth wandering around through. It has a walk-through aviary and kangaroo's and emu's jumping and walking around freely, needless to say it's a great day trip for all round.

taking out the girls for some exercise

land of irrigation

So northern Victoria is essentially irrigation and dairy land. Because it rains so little farmer have to rely on irrigation to get stuff growing there. Even though I had lived in this region for over 4 months in the past I hadn't actually seen the process in action. Except for the first fase where you order the water and open your little gate to let the water enter the channels across your property. 

The goal is to basically flood a certain amount of land so that crops can grow. To control the flooding you work with check banks along your fields so that you can regulate the flood as such. It really is multiple days worth of hard work job. the day before the water arrives you have to make sure the channels are closed off in the right places and that there are "gaps" allowing water to flow in between each check bank. When the water starts flowing into your own channels (usually around 5 am) you have to make sure it is indeed flowing and that the channels are clear for them to fill up efficiently. And then you have to check up on the process every few hours to close up the first check banks as they will have gotten flooded first as to give the last check bank a chance to get flooded completely as well.  

This was such a weird concept, to literally flood your own paddocks to be able to grow crops out of it. But in the hours and days following the transformation of those two paddocks we irrigated was amazing.  They went from so dry and dusty to lush, healthy growing crops in such short time. 

Safe to say that that was a real Aussie-bushlife experience for me. 

And with the memory of yet another beautiful sunset I'll talk to you soon about my dearest Nala and our adventures on the road !

xoxo Liz