WWOOFing and Couch Surfing

Before i left England i was told about these two ingenious ideas on how to live in and around Australia for free, the concept is brilliant and I'm seriously thinking about getting involved in some of the action.

WWOOF: Willing Workers On Organic Farms - the concept is simple, you work 4-6 (varies) hours on a farm doing things such as fruit picking, painting, house cleaning, gardening and so on for 'free' and in return you are given accommodation (usually the family home) and food. There are hosts all across Australia and even the world, the best thing about being in Oz is that there are fruits that need harvesting all year around all across the country thus enabling you to travel all across the country, theoretically just paying for transportation such as flights or a bus, to go from one spot to the next - as it says on there website you'll learn not only about the ways of farming what ever it is your harvesting but also Australia itself.
After i complete writing this post I am going out to buy myself a WWOOF directory which basically does what it says on the tin, it gives you contact information for participating hosts all over Oz.

Couch Surfing: This is a truly brilliant idea that came about when some fella went to Iceland for a couple of weeks, but didn't have anywhere to stay so he came up with a plan and proceeded to 'spam' 1500 students in the area he was staying simply asking if any had a couch that he could crash on and in return he offered to cook for them and keep general maintenance of there probably grotty little abode. He got several response and not only crashed at a couple of places but also struck up some great friendships and was shown the 'real Iceland' as he puts it, you know, the stuff that they don't put into travel guides.
So, when he returned home he got together with some other mates and made it to what it is today, a network of millions of people all over the world offering couch's for people to stay on for a day, a week and in some cases even a month. In return for the host's hospitality the surfers would cook them meals, clean or in some cases turn up with a gift for there host upon arrival.
The system works a little like EBay to, the host's are given a rating and feedback on how they accommodate there surfer and vis-versa as the host will then give feedback on the surfer on how they were as a guest enabling people to who are in the process of looking for somewhere to stay a heads up on what to expect. In Australia alone there is roughly over 10,000 host's but with allot of them from Sydney 'fully booked' in advance for the Christmas and new years.

You could if you wanted to make use of both WWOOFing and CSing together by, say if you get a placement working in a farm in Perth whilst your in Sydney and you've only enough for a bus ticket you could try and find a couch mid-way between the two that will let you crash just for the night so that you have somewhere to stay....

Talking about being fully booked for Christmas, i think that's a serious problem Helena and I are going to face, as we booked to stay another week in our current hostel although for me it was no problem Helena found that someone had already been penciled in to her bed already, after throwing the bugger out and changing the sheets she managed to sleep peacefully but all the same, we were told that a big party of nearly 30 odd people will be arriving as hostels/hotels and campsites become fully booked for Christmas and as your all away theres no were really better to be at New Years than in viewing distance of the Harbour Bridge...