We are currently at Harry and Iwona’s place for our second wwoofing experience. Harry and Iwona manage 4 Eco Lodges in the Grampians National Park. This park is located a few kilometers away from Dunkeld, Victoria.

An unusual WWOOFing experience

Usually, Harry and Iwona are hosting wwoofers because they need help to maintain the property, the walking tracks, and to clean the Lodges.
But this time, we will have different jobs! Actually, Harry and Iwona have just bought a bakery in Dunkeld. This bakery will be managed by Sauvanne and Romain, a french couple (former wwoofers!) who are settling down in Australia. They have travelled around the country before, and worked in hospitality field. Several times, they stopped by Aquila Eco Lodges and they became close friends to Harry and Iwona. And now, they will manage Harry and Iwona’s bakery. Nice story, isn’t it?

So, on March 3rd, Harry and Iwona got the keys of the bakery. They want to open it again on March 19th. As you can imagine some work has to be done to renovate the place, and we can definitly help with that! Here are our tasks:

• Sanding, painting, and vernishing the furniture
• Checking the ventilation system of the bakery (for Marie)
• Helping to build a new website for the bakery (for Edouard)
• And certainly a lot of other things, we’ll tell you!

We have been here now for 4 days, and the renovation is going well! We’ll stay until the opening so we’ll be able to show you the final result!

Eco Lodges

We should told you a bit more about the Eco Lodges.
They are offring the guests an eco accomodation nestled in the Grampians National Park. Lodges have been designed as a contemporary showcase for living in harmony with the environment. The lodges employ the latest technologies available to sustainable building, such as use of rain water, solar power, self composting waste treatment and are widely recognized for their low environmental impact approach to development.

Harry, wildlife carer

Another thing we didn’t really expected (but which we enjoy a lot now!) is that Harry is also a wildlife carer! He’s taking care of the kangaroos around the property. He also have in the house a nursery where he can take care of kangaroos and joeys found injured on the road. Plenty of kangaroos are hoping around the house, mostly in the morning and in the evening (for breakfast and dinner!). We have the chance to follow Harry while he was feeding them. An amazing experience!

Last important thing: Harry is the son of a baker and he bakes every morning some delicious bread (for the lodges guests and for us too!). Yummy. Marie took the opportunity to learn more about that and to catch some tips!

We are staying a few more days. We’ll give you some more news before our departure. Here are some pictures: