We drove straight from Rainbow Beach to our WWOOFing hosts (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms or Willing Workers On Organic Farms, depending on where you are). Volunteers generally donate 4-6 hours per day in return for food, lodging, and experience with organic farming. WWOOfing is most prevalent in Australia, so we’d always planned on doing it here.
The host farm was a small hobby farm an hour from town and is powered by rainwater and solar electricity. Most of the buildings are timber-framed structures built by our hosts using lumber from their property. They also have a pretty large orchard with a surprising diversity of fruits. Unfortunately, the worst frost in a few years occurred while we were there and it hit their orchard pretty hard. These banana trees were all brown within hours of the frost.
We spent much of our first few days weeding and mulching and then spent a day pruning the orchard. We ended with more weeding of invasives in the forest. During our down time we explored the property, including their large stream (which is a pretty rare thing for how dry the area is. And the stream is host to the rare lungfish, platypus and the bum-breathing turtle!) We also took a fire bath one night! Once you get past the fact that you’re cooking yourself over a fire, it’s pretty relaxing and the stars were absolutely amazing (if you can spot the correct Southern Cross constellation in this sky picture, you’re awesome).
Our hosts were a bit quirky, and a one week stay was about right for us. Though we were ready to move on by the end of our stay, our experience was very positive and we’re looking forward to WWOOFing again.
After WWOOFing, we drove straight to Brisbane. We’d heard/read that many people find Brisbane a bit dull so we didn’t have that high of expectations. But we found it to be just the opposite and really enjoyed our time there! We spent a long day walking through their many city parks and waterfront public areas. We also hit up two free museums before heading back to the campervan.
Highlights from our time WWOOFing and in Brisbane:
- Getting our of our normal campervan travel routine while WWOOFing
- Brisbane’s South Bank Parklands
- The Queensland Museum is well done and we both enjoyed it more than we expected