Wow. I can't believe another month has come and gone and I am all done the first part of my exchange. I have spent the past month taking it very easy because of my back injury but this has allowed me to take in more sights while touring around the southwestern corner of the state. Contact Ian on exchange by e-mailing This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

I had the opportunity to spend a week with a rural youth member's parents, where they treated me to a week full of fun and leisure. Brian took me down to the coast to have a look about, and then we went out fox shooting one evening and finished up the week getting prepared for seeding and feeding a few sheep around the farm. Then they took me away for the Easter weekend to camp with the rest of their family down on one of the main rivers in the southwest.

While off camping we had a lovely afternoon river cruise on a family member's boat and took a drive down the coast to see where the two oceans meet. The views were just wonderful and I took many shots of the beach and coastal landscape that just took my breath away. We finished up our weekend by driving up the coast through the coastal forest where there are many natural caves to be explored and some of the finest woodworking shops I have ever seen in my life. The timber that they were once able to harvest from the surrounding area would be fit for a king.

I was then dropped off on a corporate fruit, marron, sheep and beef farm where they had an Angus stud program going. The owner of the property was a house builder from Perth who has farm managers to run the day-to-day operations. The farm was very diverse and employed around six full time staff and many part time workers to help pick the fruit in the orchard. The most interesting part for me was the production of marron, a fresh water crayfish that is black and looks very similar to a lobster. These little tasty morsels grow in the farm dams that they use for watering stock and are somewhat of a byproduct that can earn a small amount of revenue for the farm. The marron are trapped in small round traps that are thrown out about every six weeks in the dam for the day with chicken feed placed in a mesh bag in the bottom to attract them in. The person that goes in to collect them sorts by size, taking the larger ones and bringing them into a shed in the main yard where they are placed in large tanks that have continuous fresh water coming in to keep them oxidized prior to sale to a wholesaler where they will go on to major restaurants in Australia and around the world.

I then went on to stay with Andrew Ricetti, who some may remember as Mick who came to Ontario in 2000 or 2001. Mick runs a blue gum farm where his property is leased by a company to plant blue gum trees that grow for about ten years before being cut and chipped for the pulp and paper industry. Mick is also an agent for Spearwood Wool Handlers and Ravensdown. Mick helps farmers sell their wool in Fremantle just south of Perth and also sells fertilizer and chemicals through Ravensdown, a New Zealand-based company that has just recently come into Western Australia and bought out United Farmers. Mick was great and took me up to Perth for a few days where we got to go see the wool sale, which is not anything like I would have ever imagined, and then on to the state parliament where we had a private tour from a former MP. We finished up my week with a trip down to a local brewery that produced both alcoholic and non-alcoholic ciders with locally grown pink lady apples. It was a wonderful little spot to try some more dessert-type ciders that where very refreshing on the pallet.

My last week in WA was spent back with the three guys in Katanning area where we laid almost seven kilometres of water pipe in the ground to supply the farm and three houses with extra water from the main water line that feeds the region. On a different farm we spent half a day ultra sounding about 1000 ewes to see if they were pregnant or not, and getting them split up into the right groups to head back out to the appropriate paddocks to get ready for lambing.

The Kataning club gave me a great last hurrah in WA by hiring a school bus to tour the club and myself around to three different towns in the surrounding area on my last night, which was fairly well attended with 35 people. I was then off to Perth to catch my flight to Tasmania on the 5th of May.