Hello Melbourne

The past 10 days I had total freedom. 

For the first 5 days I had everything I could have wished for; a great hostel, I met the most awesome people, had all the alone time I wanted, made some lifetime memories, I had every part of freedom I so craved for so very long. I was alone a lot but I loved it, I could do as I very pleased. If I wanted to just go to the gardens just to sleep and reed all day I could and I did.

I had a Christmas to remember too, it was my first Christmas away from home and it was definitely worth the experience. I do think that for future Christmases I will make sure that I'm home with my family. I liked doing it all different this year because I needed the change so badly. But I had the experience and now I know how much family means on Christmas.

It was life as I wanted it, carefree and with total freedom. 

-shrine of remberance

On Christmas morning Dries arrived. After my Christmas Eve it wasn't easy getting out of bed early but I had to so I did. (I had to check out any way because Dries and I would go to a different hostel anyway, biggest mistake ever wow.)

Anyway it is good to have someone familiar around me now, the only thing is that well with a partner you lose part of your freedom, it's inevitable. And so solitude any more. You don't choose your company anymore as much as you do when your alone. 

I really like having Dries here, don't get me wrong I was just getting used to the freedom of my brand new backpacking life. 

So we went to a different hostel, which was shit. We payed dibble for more than half the service I got at my previous hostel. (I'm talking about having to pay for really bad wifi & cups. Cardboard walls and doors in combination with noisy neighbours who found it necessary to have very loud conversations over the entire hallway at 4 in the morning and the continuous noise from outside. 

In short a shitty ass hostel.

Thank god for the son (his wife and two kids) of good friends of Dries'es grandparents. They live in Eltham, a town only about 40 minutes from Melbourne by train. We called them and ended up staying there for five days. It was like paradise! A good bed, great food and company we even did two day trips to the beach and Kinglake national park. It was totally awesome.

This brings us to the last day of this year. We had a flight at 6 in the morning to Hobart. We packed everything the evening before got up at 4 drove half an hour to the airport to arrive nicely on time for everything at 5. 

Ready for the next adventure, starting in Hobart, Tasmania. 

Lots of love

Happy new year to all

xoxo Lizzie 

Magical solitude

BACK IN MELBOURNE!!

I don't mind being alone a lot. I really enjoy company and meeting new people but I enjoy solitude just as much I suppose. Doing what ever I want to do whenever I  want, jup, I definitely like that.

Like today I walked through nearly the whole of the botanic gardens which was just magical. 

 It's a bit like paradise, enormous with little bamboo filled sidewalks,

 

All kinds of weird little (and big) plants 

Each more colourful than the next or wich a more difficult name than the next

(This made me think of a spell out of Harry Potter, Salvia hexia. Can't really recall what it's used for but I think it's something protective. Haha yes had a little HarryPotter geek moment there. Without my sisters around me I'll just have them by my self haha! )

Right, anyhow haha! Back to those beautiful gardens 

I walked throughout nearly the whole gardens when I decided I deserved a little treat so I went to the tea room at the big lake and treated myself with this;

A absolutely delightful big raspberry and white chocolate muffin! 

( I decided that I would give myself a 5$ or less treat. One everyday as a little snack. I bought breakfast and dinner of the hole week for about 20$ so I think it's a good compromise to myself. You see, I quite like to give myself a treat, I always feel like I deserve it and on top of that it makes me happy to do so. So one 5$ treat a day should keep the doctors away ;)

The most amazing thing about these gardens is that it's only like a 10 min walk from the cbd and so the big busy people filled city. While here you can't here a thing of the city it's so peaceful and quiet. And yet the cbd is still there.

It just pops out of nowhere it seems right at the back of this littoral paradise.

I walked through the gardens barefooted mostly, just because I felt like it. (And because the long walking days on my Teva's had given me blisters on the weirdest places on my feet)

 

When I got a bit tired I sat myself down near the lake layed down and enjoyed my life for a moment. I layed there for a few hours reading, sleeping, eating the rest of my muffin and enjoying life. It was beautiful. 

I walked back to the city centre with a detour which gave me some other points of view of the cbd.

I found China town today! 

I was walking through the cbd and all of a sudden this stood befor my nose. This city keeps surprising me and I love it.

Dinner consisted pasta (linguini, which always makes me think of Ratatouille the movie) arabiatta saus (basically a spiced up tomato sauce) and tuna. 

My dear what that last ingredient a battle to get into my bowl. 

So I bought a tin of tuna, of course not thinking about how I was going to open thing luckily the hostel had a tin opener (which took me several attempts and the help of a cool Dutch guy to work out how the thing works) anyway that didn't work in the slightest. So I pulled out my pocket know and started to jab holes in it with a pointy (I think sowing) thing. Which ended me up with 3 holes in a tin of tuna.

After a while Sebastiaan, the guy from Holland I met the other day, decided tout me out of my agony and helpt me with the tin. We ended up cutting and sawing the thing open with a sharp knife and a bread knife. In the end we managed to open up a little corner out of which I could fish out my tuna (haha see what I did there? I fished out a fish hahah! Thank god I able to have such good laughs with myself every once in a while)

 

I ended up having dinner with 4 Dutch people which was quite amusing!

It's Christmas Eve tomorrow, where the hell did that come from all of a sudden?! 

Christmas feeling is below 3/10

-Flinders Station

Fifty two days

For 52 days the Northern Warmblood Stud in Wyuna, Victoria was my home. Now it's time for me to move on.

Fifty two days full of laughter, training, hard work, sweat, swearing, sun (a lot of sun), rain, tears, frustration, sunburns, day trips to the lake, night trips to Ky(abram)& Shep(parton), horses, friendship, secrets, itchy-ness, wounds, scares, real life horse breeding about 2 to 3 times a week, the whole of my 2 thousand song music library & tan lines, cowboy hats & Cowboys, sleep & desserts, washing & picking up shit, sweeping & drinking water, dirty nails & greesy hair but most of all the best of memories with awesome people.

I feel, although I'm not religious in the slitist, blessed to have ended up here for my first chapter of my Aussie adventure.

I learned enormous amounts about horses, myself and others.

There are so many ways to train a horse, not all are the right ones in my eyes but hey, they if they've done it like that for the past 50 years who am I to say I don't believe that's a good way to train your horse? So I just lay back a bit drained some of my morals concerning horses through the drain (temporarily!!) and listen to how they want their horses trained silently thinking by myself how and what I would do different from them to get the same end result.

On top of all the horses around me every day (which was like heaven already for me) I got to meet and get to know some totally awesomesaus people who most definitely made my stay here so much more fun. 

The last two weeks were hard, we were only with three for about 3 days (coming from being with 5 for a month), then a Italian girl came in the evening who left the following morning already because she had came to the conclusion that she had an insect fobia and with us seeing snakes every other day, having an average of 10 spider kills a day and seeing so many little animals fly around this wasn't the most comfortable place to stay so she left us the following morning leaving us with 3 again. Lucky us the day after the girl left a new girl arrived, a German girl who could ride. She was a lot of fun and planned on staying 3 months! But something went wrong I guess with the horses ending up with here leaving after a week with Noémie (the French girl who had been here for 2 months) so from last Friday (12/12) we were with 2. Inge and I worked out asses of with nearly 10 hours a day hard work in the burning sun. After 3 days we were absolutely exhausted and didn't have no fun in doing anything anymore. But on Monday evening Steve saved us by inviting us to a Christmas BBQ at his place, he would pick us up at 6 that evening so we simply couldn't work until half past 9 like the evening before. We had a great evening (without bbq but) with great people and lovely food! We stayed at Steve's for the night so the next morning he drove us back to Northern. We had quite a chill day because we were later back and Jan wasn't home so we could really work relaxed. Wednesday afternoon we went to see Betty an older friend of Jan. We had baked gingerbread so we brought it over for a lovely afternoon tea. And then on Thursday evening we went to the Christmas BBQ of the Wyuna church community which was absolutely wonderful, so much little kids all excited waiting for Santa who arrived on a big fire truck (because well, on what else ?! ;) ) so we had another great evening with loads of good home made Aussie food and sweets. 

The last week we worked really hard and I'm so glad to get out of here now, but nonetheless I will miss this place. It was, after all, home away from home for nearly 2 months. 

It was a great experience and I'm ready to move on. 

I need it now to go explore new things and places around Australia (to start with. You know, while I'm here ;) ). There is still so much to be discovered about this world and most certainly about myself too. I worked a few things out for myself already such as; I could work with horses everyday for the rest of my life (with the occasional vacations of course). I will move on, no matter what I have to move on because life goes on no matter what. Friendship is so so so important. Relaxation is essential to be able to work hard and good. 

I will continue to search for myself for as long as I feel the need to.

Inge (bottem left), Noémie (right) and myself on one of Steve's bbqs 

My totally awesomesaus ride

One of the 7 beehives on the property 

Draught + stormy winds = dusty sky's 

A verry melony tea time, delish!

 Cowboy hats in the burning sunshine 

My dearly beloved Fergil, my very first breaker! 

For those of you who were wondering how and Aussie Santa looks like, there you go. "Why is he wearing sunglasses?" "Because he's cool"

It was an early Christmas, but it was the first time this year that it actually felt like Christmas for me in this heat

Oh yeah... I started packing today (Thursday) too. My room got worse before it got better haha! 

Tomorrow I'll work until I've done my 3 horses after that I'll have to start washing all my horse gear and actually get everything into my backpack. Horse stuff must go first in because I won't be using it for at least a month or 2. 

 Got everything rolled up neatly to go straight in after my horsey stuff goes in. I already stuffed my sleepingbag and some other shit in but I'm thinking I'm going to have to get it out again once I'm putting everything in there. Ah well I'll see ;) 

So exciting!! I love to pack, I'm really bad at it as you might've gathered but I love it nevertheless. 

Preparing for my next great adventure!

Saturday at 20 past 3 in the afternoon I'll be out of here! 

So excited!

xoxo Lizzie

Weather forecast: windy yet sweaty

Today, December 11th, we have barely two weeks until Christmas. At home I would have so much going on right now, buying presents for my dear ones helping mom organise this years Christmas location and meal. But this year with two weeks until Christmas I'm on the other side of our globe laying in a sofa outside enjoying the wind rushing by and the sun occasionally poking through the trees to warm me up again. This year I have no Christmas hustle what so ever, I'm just another girl laying in a sofa taking a moment to enjoy life.

I love the thought that you can find my direct family over the whole world. With my dad in India, my brother in Canada and my mother and sisters in Belgium we literally are all over place ( nearly one on each continent, I know that if she could my second oldest sister, Katrien, would be on a different continent than any of us as she's always planning to do ;) ).

I changed my prepaid deal on my phone which made that I didn't have internet for about a week. This made me realise how much more I enjoy my time here. Christoffer McCandless once said "Happiness is only real when shared" and I couldn't agree more but I enjoy my moment of happiness so much more when I don't have the ability to share it with the world immediately. It feels like my little secret, and it's in my power when and wether I want to share it. I like to savour my happiness. Suck up as much happiness as I can, while I can. I missed all this happiness for a while but now I remember what it feels like and I won't ever let it go anymore. I swore to myself that, for as long as I live, I will do everything in my power to make myself happy. I've realised here that there is nothing that makes me happier in the world than traveling and working with horses and now that I actually combined both I couldn't be enjoying life more.

Writing for my blog becomes so much easier to without Internet all the time. I actually have something to say now. When I had so much internet I would be talking a lot with friends and family  what made that I didn't really have anything to say anymore because I would have said everything already maybe not all to everyone but at least all in bits and pieces to a handful of people. So now I'm back on the blogging! Yay! 

I like blogging, I can get rid of everything I want, I don't need to say everything a dozen times and I can still keep things to my self to say in person to the people I want. (And I like sharing my adventures ;) ) of course it's also a great way to keep all my adventures and memories neatly in order for my self.

Last thing! 

I finally got some pictures of me riding here! Currently I'm riding about 4 horses. One of which I'm breaking in (Fergil), one has just been broken in so I'm training him further (Berenger) and the last two (Fasolt & Nina) are fully trained horses which I train. Nina is a bit of an exception because she was broken in quite late and with no consistent riders after that so she's a bit of a project, but we're making progress of which I'm proud! 

My dearest Fasolt<3

 

My big baby boy, Berenger

-this has picture has been taken from a video which can be seen on my YouTube account ' lizadirix ' captioned 'Berenger Dec 14'

The beautiful, talented Fergil. This is Noémie riding because it was here last day. 

He's only had a rider on him since last Monday (8/12)  and already relaxed and even collected (with just a very light contact!) ! So proud of this beautiful boy!

I don't have any pictures of me with Nina but they will come, all in good time.

On the 20th I'll be heading back to Melbourne for Christmas and from there on I'll continue my travels to Tassie. But first up; my last 9 days in my little horse paradise!

Lots of love

Lizzie xoxo

Hello summer!

The first of December has arrived, this year it means some different things than last year like no coats, jackets, long trousers and comfy jumpers. Hates and gloves come out for the verry opposite purpose. 

Along with the season our daily routine changed too. The horses go out in the night and stay in during the day without rugs to sleep.

(Fasolt just waking up from his nap)

 This means several things for us like bringing the horses in instead of out in the morning feeding them wheelbarrows of hay in their fields in the evening and mucking out stables in the evening after 6. We still work them all in the mornings, we can't work them long because of the heat but they still get their exercise and the young horses still make their progress. With this new routine we begin at 7 in the morning work until round about half past 11 and commence again at 5 meaning early mornings and late evenings. Most of us (me including of course) compensate this with our nanna-naps after lunch until 4 if we don't go to town. If it's to hot to sleep in side and the flies finally drive you totally crazy (there will come a moment when you actually feel like a dead carcass by the amount of flies that are on your body, personal record about 6 flies at once no joke) we make our own little spa in the stables where it is the coolest and it would look something like this 

A big water bucket filled with the lovely dirty but cold so satisfying water from the channel.

I love summer, even this hot humid sticky fly-filled summer. It makes me so happy. In Belgium we had quite a sunny summer but nothing can compare this. The amoun of vitamin D I soke up here is just the best. I'm not even getting brunt that much anymore! 

However along with the summer sun the mosquitoes and flies arrived too... 

An example of what Australia's countryside mossies do to you:

It has gotten a lot better by now (I took this about a week ago), they like my bum and legs better now... I just have to keep myself from scratching TO hard, I wouldn't want them infected or any thing.

Triplets and driveway roses 

Lots of love

xoxo Lizzie 

Banana bread and little alleyways

Sooooo the past 3 days I was in Melbourne, the big city!

I enjoyed being out in the city so so much, it's such a wonderful city! 

Very multicultural so it doesn't represent Aussie in any way according to and Aussie I met the other day but still such a great city! 

There are so many things to see and so many little alleyways to walk through which all bring you somewhere else, wether it's just a different street or this whole great shopping complex hidden in the middle of a cluster of buidings. Love it! 

Watching this awesome dude play the didgeridoo and some other aboriginal instruments on Burke St in the lovely Friday sunshine

I had 3 great days in Melbourne starting of on Wednesday when I first walked though the cbd at bit and then ended up on a tram heading for St Kilda, the beach in other words! It had become very cloudy and windy so there were a lot of kiteboarders which was awesome to watch for a while until I thought it started raining (and of course I had forgotten my jacket) 

Here's a picture of the guy I was watching in the air, he just got caught up in the wind and let the wind pull him into the air, TOTALLY AWESOMESAUS !

As to have an idea of the amount of kiteboarders ;)

In the evening I walked through some more alleyways, which some of them looked familiar already, and found a place to eat. Here's the result!

Belgian beer and a great smoked chicken with mozzarella spring onions tomato sauce and pesto. It was B E A UTIFULL 

On Thursday I went for a walk near the Yarra river ended up buying some lovely sushi rolls and ate them on a bench in the sun by the river watching joggers doing their thing. It looked something like this 

OH and I found this cute little cupcake place called little cupcakes!

Expensive as hell (of course) but I still treated myself on 3 little beauties 

Oreo, peanut butter and salted caramel. Boy did I enjoy eating those!

I ate one after my lunch 

And than one after an hour or 2 

And than my last little treasure I had on federation square. It took me nearly 10 minutes to eat one but I enjoyed every minute of it, possibly the best cupcakes ever. I savoured every piece because they were so expensive but so damn good. M m mmm

At Federation square I met this guy with which I spent the afternoon and evening which was lovely, had a good laugh! 

There is this night noodle market going on near federation square so we went there and it was foodtastic! So much people and food, really my kind of thing haha! 

This is what the entrance looks like during the day, including a great skyline which is even more pretty by night! 

Taken at Burke St 

These are from federation square, top one is from on fed sq 

 

Last thing I did in Melb's was eat a delicious pancake and have a home made lemon iced tea (which I got for free, by the way!) at the pancake parlour.  

Of course I forgot the time, ending in me having to rush it all down but boy was that one hell of a good American pancake! 

Always got time for a picture, thank god ;) or two!?

Alleyways & banana bread 

 

Cheers mate!

xoxo Lizzie