Wwoofing in Australia

What is wwoofing?

WWOOF is an acronym that started out at first as Working Weekends On Organic Farms. Now, it means a lot of different things as it turned out people liked volunteering. But basically that’s what wwoofing is : volunteer work in exchange for food and a place to live. It is in my opinion the best way to discover a place and a country while traveling, as you are totally immersed in the culture and life of the locals.

The idea is to work around 3/4hours a day for 5 days a week helping out the hosts, usually in a farm, or a hostel. But nowadays there is a lot of different people looking for helpers for various reasons. I’ve seen old people needing help around the house, people who want travelers over to help after the kids have left, I’ve seen a guy looking for help to build a boat! So you can definitely find nice people offering you work within your skills set, no matter what skills you have!

I’ signed up on Helpx years ago, to check out hosts around the world and get my dose of travel induced dreams. So when my traveling time went on, I paid the 2 years plan (20$ for 2 years is pretty cheap compared to the amount of money you can save while doing it, and the overall incredible opportunities it gives you) and made the jump.

I’ve done quite a bit of wwoofing in Australia, and they were all incredibly learning experiences! It is definitely good for people who are open-minded and ready to discover new ways to live, and see their life improving.

First wwoofing experience : the Alpaca Farm

My first wwoofing time was on a tiny farm in northern New South Wales, about an hour inland from Byron Bay. I got to spend three weeks gardening and fangirling over the cute alpacas and the dogs.

My job was just to help out the hosts, David and Rachel, with everyday tasks around the house. Mostly cleaning, feeding the chickens, ect. It came at a right time in my life as I had been traveling and struggling to find work around Australia for about 4 months. I also had never traveled that long before, and was starting to feel a bit tired and overwhelmed. My three weeks with David and Rachel and the animals fixed that!

It got me ready for what was coming next! A good thing considering coming next was my farmwork! The first week started weirdly. We got caught up in floods. (The aftermath of a cyclone in Queensland the week before). And I pretty much got stuck inside the house (the roads were closed or flooded). With no electricity or internet for a few days. I spent a week trying to approach the alpacas, playing with the dogs and watching the rain fall over the lush landscape of northern New South Wales.

We also had to help out a family (my hosts’ friends) that lost their house and all their belongings in the floods. My heart broke for them and it was a real eye-opening about me and my own situation. After all I wasn’t lost or anything and I still had my whole life with me! So I had to stay happy and keep enjoying my travels. In case your wondering, the family got a new -safe- house and beside their home and materials, they didn’t lose anything too valuable as they got a bit of time to escape and save some stuff. NSW government also set up some help for the victims of the floods and they probably got something from that as well, so everything turned out well in the end!

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My favourite thing was of course the alpacas. They don’t like humans so much so it’s not easy to get to them but they are so cute! I had never seen any in real life before! They were four of them, including a tiny baby named Harriett (she’s the cutest).
In case you don’t know (I didn’t) alpacas are NOT llamas. They are a different species. They just look similar (and are both from South America. You can cross-breed them also) but alpacas are smaller.
What I think is cool about them is that you can house train them and keep them as pets (it takes time though) they also live about 25 years (that’s a long time!) and they can survive in any climate. Which is why you can now find some in a lot of other places than just South America.

During my time there I also did a bit of discovering around and we went to a cool fall called Minyon Falls. It’s huge and beautiful. When you’re at the top, you can see all the forest and all the way up to Byron Bay. You can even see the ocean from afar (if it’s not too cloudy). I also went to the cool town of Nimbin, which is famous for being the hippie town of Australia!

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Second wwoofing experience : the Camel farm

On our search for farmwork and ways to save money, my travelmate Meike and I ended up on a dairy farm with camels. While it was fun while it lasted, it’s not so bad we only stayed four days to be honest. It was a lot more work than what wwoofing is supposed to be. Also it was very boring work haha but we got to be around camels and a bunch of cool backpackers, so it was worth it still. Camels are absolutely amazing beasts! They’re like huge cows basically. We spent our mornings cleanup their poo and just hang around them.

Some of them were super friendly. They had names that were just their numbers, which I found a bit sad honestly. While they were very well taken care of, it was a bit sad to see these wild animals stuck between fences, but I can only hope they were happy still, being well fed and cared for.

It was a dairy farm that was doing beauty products with camel milk. Which is why we had to spend so much time cleaning their poo. They can’t stay around it too long or they get sick/dairy is contaminated. That’s what we’ve been told at least! I just know I spent way too much time around camel poop lol. It’s actually not that bad. It doesn’t smell, it’s not that gross, you just pick it up with a shovel, toss it away and call it a day. On the plus side you get to hang out with the camels all morning! It turned out not to be the hardest job on the farm!

When we were not cleaning poop, we were labelling the products to be sold. That, for sure, is very hard. Stickers have to be very very well stuck, to one millimetre, except you have nothing but your bare hands and eyes to do it. Honestly it was very hard, annoying, boring, and I found myself thinking picking poop was actually better, because at least I wasn’t sitting on a chair pulling my hair trying to do such a stupid thing. I hated that if you fail even 1mm on the packaging, the whole pack goes to the bin.
So not only is it boring, but you hold the risk to lose the whole pack if you have one bottle with the sticker not that well placed.

I just felt incredibly bad being a part of such a disaster for the planet. I know just being alive is somehow already bad, but I believe we can and have to live consciously and be aware than each and every one of our actions has consequences that go further than our own little nose and little life. Knowing so many products were thrown away, I promised myself I would always try to not buy any of that expensive shit every again. That’s the best I can do so far.

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We were living in a huge barn facing the fields of camels. It was nice but very cold, as it wasn’t closed, and full of mice. They stole and ate our loaf of bread on the first day. They also had a couple of cute cats, not helping that much with the mice problem lol. We were about six or seven backpackers, most of them from Germany, living in there together. Food was being delivered every Thursday because Coles was too far for us to go. So since we left on a friday evening, we never got to get food hahaha (we didn’t stay long enough). The farm was really in the middle of nowhere, about an hour away from Brisbane. It was beautiful to see the sunrise and sunset from the fields everyday. The shapes of the camels afar giving a very cinematographic feeling to the scene.

Third wwoofing experience : The Gold Coast Community

I finished my farmwork on the last day of September, after five months of very hard work, and a lot more muscles on my back. Needless to say, I was tired as hell.

I needed some rest after my farmwork, to set up my mind and body for the next chapter of my life, as I was incredibly exhausted. I also had very little money as I got scammed while doing farmwork and barely manage to save anything in the end (but that is a story for another day 😉 ). Which is why I needed a quiet and cheap place to stay for a couple weeks.

That’s how I found myself, thanks to Helpx again, in a cute hippie community in the Springbrooke National Park on the Gold Coast. I stayed there for about a week. The property had a breath-taking view and this itself was a good help recovering. I would find peace watching the sunset over the mountains every evening. Loved it. I met an awesome guy named Matt, who kindly came pick me up at the station and we got to chat the whole time I was there.
I remember spending a morning picking up rocks under the sun, and being so covered in flies I couldn’t see an inch of my skin anymore! Welcome to Queensland eh?!

I also had to take care of a little boy named Max. He was adorable. He was a cutie pie and very patient with me hahaha.

Max also had a sister who was a few month old. So of course she was staying with her mum, I only had to watch over her a couple times to help out her mum. She was so cute and smelled so good.

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Once again I felt pretty proud of myself for doing all that and enjoying it that much. It was a fun time, and I met yet another bunch of cool backpackers.

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The best tips I can give you if you are willing to do wwoofing for the first time:

• – Check the reviews of the hosts
• – Always have a plan B just in case
• – Try to always have a bit of money with you, again, just in case
• – Be respectful and open-minded. People are opening their homes and lives to you. You have to be respectful of their way to live and adapt, even if it’s very different from what you are used to. That’s the point !
• – Don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s always ok to leave if you don’t feel alright where you are. If you feel uncomfortable with anything, if you don’t want to do the work you are asked to do, try talk to the family and see what you can do. Remember you can always leave if you have to, no one will be mad and you always have to think about yourself first!

To sum it up, I think wwoofing is an incredible experience and it’s worth giving a try no matter where you are in the world! You will love it and learn so much about yourself, people, the country you are in, and so much more.
Check the wwoofing portfolio for more photos as well 🙂