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The couple seen here in this image are from Wales, UK and the USA. They stayed with us from the 25th November till the 6th December 2019 under the banner of an organization known as Help Exchange.
Under Help X guidelines travellers can request to stay in our home in return for 3-5 hours of work per day. We provide a bed and 3 meals a day and we also show them around the local area.
Over the last few years we have really enjoyed meeting usually very well educated young people who travel Australia using Help X.
The couple in this image are Megan, a Biologist and Gwyn, studying computer Science.
The work they did during their time with us was been very much appreciated. That work involved constructing a complex irrigation system to services our large plant nursery using greywater. In this time of level 4 water restrictions the system will keep plants alive when no other water is available. They also set up a 1000 litre water tank as the core of the system which doubles as a water source in the event of bushfire.
The irrigation job took at least 4 days to complete, although Megan and Gwynn did many other jobs during their time with us including hand watering plants with greywater, felling dead Bangalow Palms, clearing gutters of leaves and removing dry leaves from firebreak tracks. They also removed a massive Parsonsia straminea vine from our tractor shed roof, no easy task.
We took two trailer loads of green waste which included the vine and about 20 bangalow palm trunks and frons to the tip during a period when council had waived the fee on green waste following the Hillville and Darawank fires.
Unfortunately we had a trip to Melbourne planned from the 6th November so it was necessary for them to move on to friends at Pacific Palms, after which they were to head to Sydney area for Xmas.
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As of 20th December 2019 after the worst drought in living memory our creek has almost completely dried up and is expected to rapidly lose what water is lying in the bottom over the next week as the predicted heat wave arrives.
With the Australia wide average temperature record (40.3 degrees celcius) broken (40.9 degrees Celcius) on Wednesday 18th December its very likely in the days leading up to Xmas 2019 will see the record broken once again.
The water present in the creek here is minimal but it does continue to provide a home for a large eel and no doubt yabbies and other species.
With level 4 water restrictions in place, no water in the environment, and much of the Hallidays Point area burnt out, firstly by the Darawank Fire then a few weeks later, by the Hillville Fire, many birds and other animals have found sanctuary on our property.
With so little natural water in the environment we have provided lots of water containers around the property to aid their survival. We have also begun providing some pelletised food for the wallabies, water dragons, goannas and birds.
Despite no rain for many months a shaded section of the property is actually holding some green grass and the Red Necked Wallabies have found it and are never too far away as the drought further impacts their precarious existence.
The boys seen here in this image are from Lille in France and they stayed with us from the 10th till 22nd December 2019 under the banner of an organization known as Help Exchange.
Under Help X guidelines travellers can request to stay in our home in return for 3-5 hours of work per day. We provide a bed and 3 meals a day and we also show them around the local area.
We have really enjoyed meeting usually very well educated young people who travel Australia using Help X.
The two boys here in this image are both 22 years old and the darker haired boy, Pierre, has almost finished a business law degree while Quentin has almost finished a construction engineering degree back home in France.
The work they have done during their time with us has been very much appreciated. That work has involved digging out gravel that has collected in the creek over the last 10 years, since I last dug it out myself.
Its been a huge job as the gravel has had to be transported to an area beside my tractor shed which is some distance from the creek and difficult to access with the mower and trailer.
The job has taken at least 7 days to complete, although the boys have done many other jobs during their time with us including watering plants, felling dead Bangalow Palms and wood collection.
Unfortunately they must move on and on Saturday 22nd December they will head to Sydney, after which they will begin a road trip in Australia.
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These two French HelpX girls, Lea and Cecile, stayed with us for a week in early February 2020 and were an enormous help in weeding my rainforest plant nursery and planting Buffalo grass runners following the devastaing impact on my lawns by the 2019 drought. The original plan was to begin removing dead Bangalow palms and dead Cabbage Palm palm fronds from the forest however the mosquitos were very problematic until the heavy rains of 8-10th February came and filled the dam at the same time flushing the mosquitos downstream.
Fortunately while the rain was consistent and very good it was not enough to cause widespread flooding although the creek did break its banks for a couple of short periods.
It was good to hear though that as the rain came down Mid Coast Water finally pulled the level 4 water restrictions back to level 2. Hopefully we'll soon hear that they will be removed entirely.
Tags: 2019 Drought Drought Raintrees Native and Rainforest Gardens Raintrees Diamond Beach Hallidays Point Mid North Coast NSW Australia iPhone X back camera Iphone X IPhone shotoniphone Cecile Lea HelpX Cecile Le Lay Lea Le Doare Feb 2020 Asplenium australasicum Landscape Panorama Iphone X Panorama Apple Iphone X Panorama Apple Iphone Panorama Iphone Panorama people February 8-10th 2020 livingthedream whyIlivewhereIlive
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We live on an acreage property with a rainforest arboretum which does require constant work - mulching, planting, pruning, mowing, whipper snippering, weed eradication and a lot of chain saw work, especially after storms.
In order that we can keep on top of things many years ago we joined an organisation called Help Exchange, HelpX for short.
HelpX is a bit like WWoofers but perhaps with a broader charter which allows mostly unskilled people opportunity to have short stays where they can undertake a whole range of tasks related to household and property maintenance.
The usual requirement is 3-5 hours of work per day in return for accommodation and food. We usually show our guests around the area in their non-work time.
We've indeed been fortunate to have had some of the nicest young people you'd ever want to meet stay with us, usually for just a week, though longer stays are possible with many HelpX hosts.
Most of our recent guests have been French university students interspersed with other nationalities from time to time. We can honestly say we have been unbelievably impressed with the respectfullness, trustworthiness, diligence, manners and individual personality of almost every guest we have ever had.
If you've followed my photostream you will be aware that we travel a lot. This has enabled us to catch up again, particularly in Europe, with several of our former HelpX guests, sometimes years after they leave Australia.
The cultural exchange for us is every bit as valuable as the work component of a HelpX stay as most foreign language speakers we have stay with us are here in Australia to improve their English. We've never had a problem communicating even though we don't speak a second language.
Nevertheless, sometimes the communication barrier presents an occasional humorous and rarely, a not so humorous moment. For example, when you send a HelpX worker to the shed to get a wheelbarrow and they come back with a rake or when you ask them to prune a bush and they prune it to the ground.
In every case though the incorrect performance of the task is innocent and needs to be viewed from the context of our role as educators.
Our guests always seem to enjoy their stay with us, if the references they write on our profile are any indication, and the same goes for us. We're often very sad when they move on to their next host but, as any good parent knows, kids have to go out and take the opportunity of new life experiences, so we gratefully say goodby and wish them well in their travels and in their future lives.
Just one final point. Many helpX hosts are just suburban mums and dads with young kids and pets. You don't need to be on a bigger property to enjoy the benefits of a cultural HelpX exchange.
The young man in the image above is Romain from France, a great worker and just an all-round nice guy. Romain was with us for a week in early November 2022.
He had just completed a degree in Business Marketing back home in France before arriving in Australia and was using HelpX to save money, gain new experiences and to improve his English.
There are a few organizations similar to HelpX.
Others include WWoofers (World Wide Opportunities on
Organic Farms), Workaway and Worldpackers.
All these require work in return for accommodation and in most cases provision of food can be negotiated.
A couple of others providing free accommodation but not food include Global Freeloaders and Couch Surfing.
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© All Rights Reserved - Black Diamond Images
We live on an acreage property with a rainforest arboretum which does require constant work - mulching, planting, pruning, mowing, whipper snippering, weed eradication and a lot of chain saw work, especially after storms.
In order that we can keep on top of things many years ago we joined an organisation called Help Exchange, HelpX for short.
HelpX is a bit like WWoofers but perhaps with a broader charter which allows mostly unskilled people opportunity to have short stays where they can undertake a whole range of tasks related to household and property maintenance.
The usual requirement is 3-5 hours of work per day in return for accommodation and food. We usually show our guests around the area in their non-work time.
We've indeed been fortunate to have had some of the nicest young people you'd ever want to meet stay with us, usually for just a week, though longer stays are possible with many HelpX hosts.
Most of our recent guests have been French university students interspersed with other nationalities from time to time. We can honestly say we have been unbelievably impressed with the respectfullness, trustworthiness, diligence, manners and individual personality of almost every guest we have ever had.
If you've followed my photostream you will be aware that we travel a lot. This has enabled us to catch up again, particularly in Europe, with several of our former HelpX guests, sometimes years after they leave Australia.
The cultural exchange for us is every bit as valuable as the work component of a HelpX stay as most foreign language speakers we have stay with us are here in Australia to improve their English. We've never had a problem communicating even though we don't speak a second language.
Nevertheless, sometimes the communication barrier presents an occasional humorous and rarely, a not so humorous moment. For example, when you send a HelpX worker to the shed to get a wheelbarrow and they come back with a rake or when you ask them to prune a bush and they prune it to the ground.
In every case though the incorrect performance of the task is innocent and needs to be viewed from the context of our role as educators.
Our guests always seem to enjoy their stay with us, if the references they write on our profile are any indication, and the same goes for us. We're often very sad when they move on to their next host but, as any good parent knows, kids have to go out and take the opportunity of new life experiences, so we gratefully say goodby and wish them well in their travels and in their future lives.
Just one final point. Many helpX hosts are just suburban mums and dads with young kids and pets. You don't need to be on a bigger property to enjoy the benefits of a cultural HelpX exchange.
The young man in the image above is Romain from France, a great worker and just an all-round nice guy. Romain was with us for a week in early November 2022.
He had just completed a degree in Business Marketing back home in France before arriving in Australia and was using HelpX to save money, gain new experiences and to improve his English.
There are a few organizations similar to HelpX.
Others include WWoofers (World Wide Opportunities on
Organic Farms), Workaway and Worldpackers.
All these require work in return for accommodation and in most cases provision of food can be negotiated.
A couple of others providing free accommodation but not food include Global Freeloaders and Couch Surfing.
Please consider joining and adding your Handheld Panorama Photos to the Group - HANDHELD PANORAMAS
Tags: Romain X 2 Dragon's Walk Raintrees Native and Rainforest Gardens Diamond Beach Mid North Coast NSW Romain Werth November 2022 France HelpX Help Exchange IPhone Panorama Iphonephotography shotoniphone iPhone Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max iPhone 13 Pro Max Panorama Widescreen Garden Landscapes Livistona australis Cabbage Palm Romain Middle Arm Creek repeated subject panorama
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