Il s’agit de 2 semaines d’ experience de woofing (nourri et logé en échange de travaux jusque 5h par jour hors WE) dans une grande ferme de l’outback, plus communément appelée station. Voici la description officielle de Glenara station:

Short Property Description

We’ve had wonderful rain, and it is THE BEST time of year for a farm adventure.  Get in touch soon! We welcome you to spend time with us on the family farm & enjoy a real Aussie experience, complete with kangaroos, dust & flies! We have sheep, cattle & cropping, a large family and plenty happening.

Volunteering is varied & can include mustering, yard work wool shed hand, irrigating, burr cutting or gardening. Relaxing shady garden with pool & tennis court.

Accommodation for 1-2 people in our home or separate cabin nearby. Highlight for most visitors is a fly in the plane to check the stock & water from the air. Meat-style meals but can go vegetarian on request. No smoking. Neg stays usually 2 weeks – 2 months. Daily train from Sydney. Enjoy your travels & see you soon.

Full Property Description

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We have sheep, cattle & Wheat, Canola, Cotton, Lupins, Chickpeas. A large family and plenty happening. Volunteering is varied & can include mustering, machinery operation (tractors, harvesters, earthmoving, sprayers),   yard work, wool shed hand, irrigating, burr cutting or gardening and general help in the home.  Relaxing shady garden with pool & tennis court.

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Accom for 1-4  for people in our home or separate cabin nearby.

Highlight for most visitors is a fly in the plane to check the crops, stock & water from the air. Meat-style meals but can go vegetarian on request.

No smoking.

Negotiable stays usually 2 weeks – 2 months. Daily train from Sydney.
Enjoy your travels & see you soon. We welcome you to spend time with us on the family farm & enjoy a real Aussie experience, complete with kangaroos, emus, dust & flies.

PIX HERE

We have sheep, cattle & cropping, a large family and plenty happening. Work is varied & can include mustering, yard work wool shed hand, irrigating, machinery operation (tractors, harvesters, earthmoving, sprayers) or gardening. Relaxing shady garden with pool & tennis court.

Accom for 1-4 people in our home or separate cabin nearby.

Highlight for most visitors is a fly in the plane to check the sheep, cattle & water from the air. Meat-style meals but can go vegetarian on request.

No smoking.

Neg stays usually 2 weeks – 2 months. Daily train from Sydney.

Enjoy your travels & see you soon.

Voici notre commentaire qui résume notre sentiment très positif. L’expérience a été enrichissante et éprouvante physiquement. 

Woofing Glenara station

A genuine outback experience

We are a French couple in their 30s in good physical condition but with no farming skills.

We stayed 2 weeks during January 2024 at Glenara station and were very happy with our outback experience which offered all that we could expect from the outback.

Outback experience

The station is 20mins from the closest town which has a pub but no supermarket.

It is huge, has many fields of different types and we could see many kangaroos and emus and ants and other wild animals from time to time.

There are sheep too, big tractors, and many types of vehicules like bikes, quads, pick up (youut in Aussie).

It seems there is an unlimited number of tasks to do in the station for the farmers (either in maintenance and fixes or in daily operations)and Kevin always had something for us.

Kevin took us twice in his plane to overwatch the station at the end of the day and once for a run/sunset safari to look for kangaroos and emus. It was really fun.

We also had our dedicated youut that we used every day to access the fields where we would achieve our tasks. On the morning trip we would often see kangaroos and emus.

The sunset is also very nice next to where we resided.

There is a fresh swimming pool at their place which we could use whenever we wanted to « cool down ». Days were often hot of course so it was welcome, though there were some moskitoes and we could not stay too long.

All this plus the work tasks we had made for a rich outback experience.

On the days off, if you have a car there are nice places to visit: gilgandra/dubbo, national park warrumbungle, mount Arthur but 2hrs drive away.

Accommodation

There is a flat house 100m from Kevin and Maddy’s house which is where we stayed. The bed has just been changed and was very confortable.

Kitchen is fully equipped : There is a microwave, oven, cooking pan, water heater, and many dishes.

There are : air con, an electric fan that we could move, anti insect grids on the windows, washing machine, big fridge, free unlimited drinkable water. There are also a TV and sofa but did not try them.

There are not : wifi (we had to get to Kevin’s place to access it), no or very limited mobile coverage in the house or around it (on optus at least) though I had some data in some fields wit Optus where Kevin did not with telstra.

No dishwasher.

Food

We had 2 meals that we shared with part of the family.

All the other meals on our own. Kevin and Maddy would provide us with all we needed so we did not lack anything. It was confortable in a sense but we were sad not to be able to eat with Kevin and Maddy to get to know them better and have more details abut the outback or to have any kind of discussion.

Social interaction

Kevin is very nice and we could speak to him especially in the youut when we were working with him during the morning. It was a bit more complicated to speak with the rest of the family.

Since we could not have any meal with the family neither, we had a bit the feeling that we were employees and could not really get to know them well.

Work

We worked from 8am to 1pm initially but after 2 days when it got hot we would work from 7am to 12pm, sometimes until 1pm.

Saturday and Sunday are off.

We often worked together though some days for physical tasks the male would go with Kevin and the female would be assigned another task.

We could organize our own breaks, go to our own speed, work was not repetitive but still basic mostly because we had no farming skills initially. Appart from advanced tasks that we would do with Kevin’s guidance like building a gate, burying new water pipes, doing some water measures etc… We fixed some fences and picked up wood logs from a recently plowed field. It was physical work under the sun. It changed from our life behind a computer screen and was exhausting at first but we got used to it after a few days.

The afternoon were free, and too hot to do anything, though one day out of three we would help on small errands that took one hour or two. It was always different and we could get to know more the station.

As a summary, we could discover the life in an outback station with all its beauty and its challenges and are impressed by how families like that of Kevin manage their life through it.