Australia
Favourited 34 times
Hi there! We live on a historic sheep and broadacre cropping farm about 1.5 hours drive from Melbourne and 45 minutes from Ballarat and Geelong. We're on the edge of the Western Plains, so we have great sunsets and lots of rocks! My wife and I travelled for a long time, before we had our two kids (7 and 4 years old), and did plenty of voluntary work, so we have a pretty good idea what works for people on traveling holidays.
We like laughing, stories, getting things done, meeting new people, games with our kids and generally doing as much outdoors as we can. We like food, camping, fishing and travel. We love travel, but as it's a bit harder to do now we like to bring the travelers to us - that's where you come in. Apart from helping with managing the farm, we have an online education business which we run from here. We're busy, very busy! Maintaining what is a very big garden, the farm buildings, plus our businesses means there's lots we can get help with.
Our garden is a great place to chill out and it's very beautiful, we like food, wine and chatter. We love our kids to meet people from other countries and learn there's a lot more out there than the local school with 150 kids.
Gardening
Building
Babysitting / child care
Cooking / shopping
General Maintenance
Farmstay
Help with Computers / internet
You'll get a good understanding into our lives in Australia. You'll see a working Aussie farm and you'll meet some really nice people. You'll have very comfortable accommodation and most likely have your own room. I know when I was traveling that was a huge bonus. You will get to taste local beer and wine and you wont go to bed hungry.
Also, our water here has been known to make people more beautiful ; )
The property is a historic farm that's been producing wool and lamb for over 150 years. Keeping everything up and running, especially maintaining the buildings, takes a lot of work and that's why we love help from volunteers. The jobs we do are many and varied. Examples might be cleaning and dusting and washing rooms, painting windows and walls, weeding and mulching in the garden - planting new garden beds or digging trenches for the installation of garden watering, helping inside with the kids, help with cooking and generally just helping out where we need it. Some days your might be outside on the farm and some days you might be inside. When you see how big the garden is you'll understand we have loads to do.
What we expect: in summary we want you to work hard and do a good job. For us having guests takes time and we want to make sure you enjoy yourselves, in return we want you to do your best and try to get through everything we ask you to do - for your 5 hours a day. We like happy chatty people who are interested in our lives, likewise we want to know about your life.
We'll give you yummy food. You might end up making your lunch and breakfast with food we supply, but we'll give you a tasty end of the day meal and give you a good insight into what live is like in Country Australia.
English
We have two options depending on what is happening on the farm. We have the quarters which has 6 rooms and lots of single beds. Self contained accommodation and good water pressure. Or if the quarters is in use, we have a self contained apartment, attached to our house. There are 2 x bedrooms and your own bathroom. There's a double and 2 x single beds here.
The nice part about all of this is you have your own space, which is good, as that means our kids won't wake you early in the morning.
We're relatively close to Melbourne, Ballarat and Geelong. We've had lots of guests like you before and everyone has enjoyed their time here a great deal. We have limited web access, via a computer you can use in the evenings, but we don't have big internet plans - so no video streaming.
In your time off, you can wander round the farm or chill out in the garden and read a book. If you have a car there's loads to see in Ballarat and Geelong. Plus we're only 1.5 hours from the Great Ocean Road. If you don't have a car about 4 days is usually enough for people as sometimes people feel a bit isolated after a while.
We can collect you from Geelong or Ballarat train station if necessary and drop you off again.
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
More than two
Maximum 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week
