Working with an outback family – part two

This was written a while ago but I have been so busy I haven’t been able to upload and edit! Sorry about the gap between the posts…

…So what was an average day like?

In a nutshell, the complete opposite to my home life.

At seven o’clock in the morning, I would help make the kids breakfast, ensure they brushed their teeth and got ready (harder than it sounds), then we would do the animal feeding run together. They had chickens, ducks, pigs, dogs and horses as well as all of their cows. This would all take about an hour and a half to two hours. Afterwards we would do odd jobs around the property or help with the kids school.

Growing up, I had one friend who was home schooled and he had a braid which was longer than mine, a cow boy hat, waist coat and an incredibly vast vocabulary. He was strange but kind of cool. This is the only relation I have have in regards to homeschooling. The children I nannied were taught with School of the Air, which is a school covering the outback of central Queensland. The pupil logs on with their webcam and it’s a virtual class room. In my year alone there were over 200 pupils whereas they had just seven. It’s a really interesting system to see and such a contrast to what the norm is for me.

The odd jobs around the farm were limited for me as their attitude towards working women was a bit different. I found this a bit of a struggle coming to Australia because I like a bit of ‘girl power’. I love being able to do the same things as my boyfriend and not being left behind just because of my gender. It’s not often you come across this but when you do it’s annoying. 

This was one of the storms we were lucky enough to see. It was incredible to watch this. We stayed on the decking of the house for hours just watching, it was beautiful and so clear.

We found this job by creating an advert for ourselves on Gumtree. We listed all of our skills, where we were and what we were interested in doing. The responses were a bit weird and we did have some strange people contact us, but in the end we found the job we thought was right for us.

It was hard not to fall in love with the kids when they were this cute!

This experience was something I would of never been able to do any where else and I’m so glad I did it but there were a few negatives which outweighed the positives. I don’t want to go into them too much because I don’t feel that my blog is about me moaning. However I will say pig hunting was a huge issue I found here. The way the dogs are treated is disgusting and the hunting methods were just vile. I understand hunting but the ways that some people do it here are just awful. 

Australia is beautiful but this side of it is ugly. It’s a real shame.