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After 6 months of working in the wine shop, I needed to make a descision about staying or going home. I had set a timeframe of 6 months to be in this country, but I was not ready to go home yet.

So, I had two choices, stay another 6 months and then go home. Or, do 3 months of farm work to be able to get another year on top of my first one. I chose the second choice. But I was not at all keen to do the farm work, I've heard so many bad stories about people being totaly explotiated, been living in sheds, worked for 12h a day without any pay, out in the bush- hours away from society. What a life to look forward to for 3 months! Oh well, if anyone else could do it, so could I! And hopefully, I wouldn't end up in a horrible place like that.

Good thing is that there is a range of different farm works, and because I have a background with horses, my choice was easy. For a week I sat by my computer, emailing, putting up adds, spoke to people that I met to try to find somewhere to do my 3 months. Finally I came in contact with one guy up in Hunter Valley, that’s a 6h drive north from Sydney. And after all the wine knowledge I've got from my former job about all the wineries and amazing landscaping up there I knew that Hunter Valley was something special.

The guy, we can call him Tim, had his girlfriend in Sydney and was coming down for the weekend so we arranged a meeting. Tanja came along as a moral support. Tim told me he had 15 horses to break in and wanted me to "run" the farm while he went overseas, for three months. Run a farm, with 15 horses, by myself. Yeah, I could do that! I had done that before, but back home in Sweden. I was excited, I had one week to learn everything I needed to know about the farm before he was going.

Does anyone here sirens or seeing any stop signs?? I sure didn't!

Tim picked me up two days after our meeting when he was heading home. I knew it was going to be a long ride up to Hunter Valley, but Tim was easy to talk to and with an interest in horses we synced pretty well. I am not kidding, we were driving and driving, Tim told me that it usually took him 4h to drive back home from Sydney, in the end, it took us 6h. I bet he didn't count the last two hours from the nearest town to his house. My reception died after being in the car for 2h, imagine how good the reception was up there after 6h driving. None. Blank. You would need a bush phone to be able to speak to anyone in the world, and the nearest neighbor were about 20-30 minutes away.

Now? Do you see them now? The signs? I still didn't.

Finally, we arrived to Mount Hell, as my brother called it. And I am going to tell you exactly why. So we were 2h away from nearest town, we had to drive 1h from the house just to come out to a "main" road, no cell reception, I was with a guy that I actually didn't know and we were driving in the middle of nowhere, over bumpy roads and big creeks. Finally, going up a hill we came up to this big, big old house, built 1926- according to Tim’s father. First thing I thought for myself when I stepped inside the house was that it was haunted. Have you ever felt that feeling that someone is watching you and you can feel the hair rise in the back of your neck? That was my feeling.

Tim that was in my age lived with his parents on their farm, but he was the one running it. His mum was adorable and very caring. His dad, well, we can just leave him with that he was special and probably not very happy about his life. As I mentioned before, the house was big, it was huge! I don't know how many rooms it had but there were rooms everywhere and I almost got lost once. There were basically only one section of the house that they were using, the kitchen, lounge room with a fire, Tim’s room and his parent’s room. And I was not going to sleep in this part of the house. I got a room further down the hall, a big room with a high ceiling, old wallpapers that had faded, wooden floors in a dark cherry colour and it smelled a bit like mould, old and unused. Luckily for me the room was closer to their office, which would give me access to their Wi-Fi, crappie Wi-Fi, but at least so I could text Tanja and call my family through Viber.

His mum brought me heaps of blankets and an electric blanket, thank God! It was already winter here in Australia and without double glazed windows, heaters or any isolations what so ever in the house it got cold! The houses here turns into fridges during winter, it is almost warmer outside then it is inside. Being up so far north didn't help with the cold weather, it meant that it would be even colder than back in Sydney. We had minus degrees during the nights and up to midday. Long johns and my thermo jacket quickly became my best friends.  

After been driving for 6h I was pretty tired, it was late and after sort of had settled in in my "new" room I decided to call it for the night. Tim said he would wake me up in the morning and said good night. I fell asleep pretty fast, I think the driving for so many hours, all the new impressions, and for being nervous during the whole day had done the job.

All of a sudden, I woke up in the middle of the night, I could hear footsteps outside my door! Something or someone was standing outside my door!! I froze, my heart was pounding. The house was old and so the floorboards so you could hear anything that moved outside the room. I heard it again, someone was walking outside my door! I was petrified, my heart was pounding even faster! I could literally hear my own heart pounding so loud, I thought that the person on the other side of the door must have heard it too. Quick, what would I do if someone came in!? Pretend that I was still asleep? Roll out of bed and hide under the bed? Did I have anything to defend myself with? Where would I run to? How would I contact anyone if I was lucky to escape? Thousands and thousands of questions and escape routes went through my mind. It moved again, my heart stopped. Was this it, were this where I was going to die? I wondered what they would do to me, how long it would take until someone understood that I was gone? Would anyone ever find me? It got quiet. I tried to stop all my thoughts from just bursting out, tried to control my breathing and calm myself as quick as possible. Nothing had come through the door, I was still scared, shocked and shaking, but nothing had harmed me, and I remember myself thinking throughout the night - "Maybe I will live through this night."