Trick Or Treat

As irony would have it, Halloween Eve turned out to be more of a nightmare for me than Halloween itself.

After getting accidentally hammered, I proceeded to have a panic attack when a friend jumped out at me from behind a door, I was looking for a kebab before we'd even left the house, I made my friends (who have already booked to live with me in Sydney) promise they'll actually come and then, just to top it all off, decided to have a nap on the concrete outside my friend's house. And once awakened, I wouldn't listen to any of my friends and instead wailed for our resident hostel mummy, Jo, who finally reasoned with me to lay on the sofa after I refused to go to bed. Just another night on top for for me, there..

I blame stressful farm life pushing me to drink.

But back to my main point, Halloween. Despite it being a pretty big holiday for Americans and Europeans, Australians don't really make a massive deal about it but that wasn't going to stop us. All the hostel residents made such an amazing effort with their outfits, we had an array of felines, pirates, zombies and skeletons amongst many other ghoulish efforts. We even had not one, but two, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

Thankfully, I managed to gain control of my alcoholic tendencies and remain on two feet until it was finally bedtime in the early hours. And I got the kebab I'd been so desperate for the night before, totally worth it.

Carnival Cruelty

ROLL UP, ROLL UP... COME ENJOY THE FUN OF THE FAIR!
(Or in my case, come withstand the sheer slave labour working conditions)

You may have seen that I recently worked the weekend at a fair that was travelling through Mildura. Yes, the photos might have looked like I was having the time of my life, working in the sunshine, pulling a few slushies but photos can paint a very deceiving image. I can honestly say that it was a once in a lifetime experience that I'll never be repeating.

Don't get me wrong, the first two days were probably the easiest money I've ever made. I had to wear fluoro, don a Hawaiian lei and cowboy stetson (that threatened to strange me every time the wind blew it off my head and the string wrapped round my throat..) and push sugar filled slushies in decorative bottles to kids. I could put up with the instant glares shot at me by their parents and teachers as they begged for money for an icy treat. Even the absolutely ridiculous tan lines I've gained from working in direct sunshine all day didn't dampen my mood.

But then came Saturday. I was 'promoted' from the slushie stand to the food van. I use the word promoted here very, very loosely. I spent the day dipping disgusting deep fried saviloys, apparently known as Dagwood dogs,  into a massive tub of ketchup and serving them to the rapidly increasing crowd. Alongside these awful sausages, I was also dishing out tubs of hot chips, doughnuts, chiko rolls (yep, I have no idea what these are either), chicken kebab sticks and buckets of fairyfloss, more commonly known to us British folk as candy floss.
Now this might not seem so bad but working a 14 hour day with only a 30 minute break was a killer. There's definitely a few working laws being broken here.. I even had to ask to nip out for literally 2 minutes to go to the loo. Needless to say, when I was finally allowed to leave just after midnight, I was exhausted and probably reeked of chip fat.

On the walk home, I've never been happier to return to a state of unemployment. But on the plus side, thanks to half the hostel bagging jobs at the fair, we did get to go on one of the rides for a totally discounted price, every cloud and all that, eh?

Here me and my fellow burger van girls are pretending we are having the time of our lives so we don't get sacked..

Packing Shed Life

So, after moving hostels (#OldHostel), I was placed in an asparagus packing shed and my god, I genuinely was not prepared for the vast amount of asparagus sticks I'd see everyday. Literally thousands upon thousands of the lanky green vegetable. Worst of all, I don't even like the stuff (in my opinion, it smells and tastes like grass).
But it did pay very well. I felt like withdrawing my first wage in $5 notes and throwing it around my room just like they do in the movies... Until I remembered I live in a hostel and I'd probably lose the majority behind the bunk beds.

I spent my days sorting, packing and then moving the ugly asparagus around the shed. Though it may not sound particularly enthralling, I met some of the best people and they're what get you through the day. I spent so much of my time at work with a grin plastered on my face because of them.

You might notice I'm typing in the past tense.. This is because, annoyingly, Mildura has become unseasonably hot and therefore the asparagus doesn't grow properly and therefore can't be sold, meaning there's nothing for me to sort and pack.
Alas, I'm unemployed once again. I've spent over 2 weeks moping round the hostel as there's only so much sunbathing you can do and only so many times you can traipse around Coles in a week. Thankfully, I'm not the only one in this situation and there's a whole bunch of us spending our evenings drinking out of boredom and our days hungover in the sunshine.

And the plus side of so many people not working? We won a competition at one of the local bars after having the most people from a single hostel in there 2 weeks on the trot and won a $1000 bar tab! Which we promptly drank dry within aprox half an hour.. All with no worries about having to get up the next day!

A few days ago, the fair rolled into town and the majority of the hostel have bagged jobs on rides, ticket booths and food stands so starting tomorrow, carnival life begins for 3 days...

(Here a bunch of us are pre-free mass jagerbomb downing)

New Beginnings

Okay, it's been a while since I've actually updated this but I've had good reason!
After returning home from a two week break in England, I arrived back to the hostel to find it was a hot bed of contempt towards our bosses as nothing had changed whilst I'd been away, we were still earning next to nothing yet still expected to pay rent.

So we did what any rational group of backpackers would do... We staged a mass walk out after finding a new hostel to move to, obviously.
Over the space of 5 days, nearly 20 people abruptly left the hostel. What we didn't realise was that said mass walk out would cause the place to completely close down and the building to be locked up, which probably prompted a sigh of relief from the surrounding neighbours who all hated us and the local police force who were fed up with issuing us with noise complaints.

Not long after moving out, we discovered what we already knew deep down, but dared not think about. We'd been getting mugged off to an even bigger extent than we'd originally suspected. Our bosses were shaving money off the top of everything we earned and sliding it into their wallets before we even knew we'd earned it. Dicks.
Looking back, it was no wonder they were always turning up to the house with crates of VB (vom) and cider for us. It seemed like a treat but it was probably paid for with the cash we never even knew belonged to us.

After moving to the new hostel, our bosses followed us, waiting outside the grounds to try and confront us, even telling staff they were from immigration as a way to get to us. Though turning up drunk, in high-vis tops and mullet hair-dos, god knows who'd believe they were from immigration. Thankfully, the staff knew exactly who they were and under no circumstances were they allowed to get anywhere near us.

On a plus note, life has gotten a lot better since we all moved! I've actually made money and gained a new set of friends who just LOVE hearing tales about the 'oooooold hostel'...
The only downside is we don't have wifi, hence the lack of communication post-England, soz.
I'm currently off work as it's unseasonably hot and the asparagus can't grow (more about that later) so I'm off to laze in the 38 degree sunshine, enjoy your drab Tuesday back home!

(Just for old times sake, here's a photo of the old hostel bunch)

I Got A Brand New Combine Harvester.. (Or To Be More Accurate, A Tractor)

Clearly, life doesn't think I'm being reckless enough already by giving me a quad bike to rag around the farm as this week I've been taking control of a tractor. Yes, a real life farming tractor. I can only imagine many of you wincing at the thought of me controlling such a vehicle. Unfortunately, due to carting round a trailer carrying various wire coils that weigh over 50kgs each, my speed has been limited to one where I can't do much damage even if I wanted to. 

When Laurie and I first arrived in Mildura all those weeks ago, we joked about the potential for any drama happening at the hostel, coining the phrase, 'Farm Dramz,' but up until this week, we've never really had call to use it...

Mid-week, it all kicked off in the hostel. People were planning to strike. Everyone was uncertain about pay and some of them decided to get wasted and plan strike action. Being boring and hoping to stay employed, I refrained from joining the goon pong table and instead spent the evening watching Netflix. 

Until one of the guys at the hostel decided to play the big man after hearing that not everyone was agreeing to the strike. Everyone who knows me knows that I'm not one to shy away from an argument, if something needs saying, I'll be the first to get up and holler the message and this night was no exception. 

After already explaining once that I was going to work and if others wanted to go too, that was totally fine and people who didn't want to go to work could stay at home, the issue just wasn't being let go of. I wasn't going to risk over a month's worth of farm days and potentially losing the contract we had for a day off but it was each individual's decision. This then boiled down to a blazing argument at about 11pm at night outside my bedroom with the afformentioned big man after hearing him still complaining about people going to work before I was bundled into my room by one of the lads who, despite being very drunk, did a very good job at calming me down and amusing me with an anecdote about slave labour and EU regulations.. 

All is well that ends well though, the pay situation was explained and we didn't lose the contract, hooray! 

Totally Unrelated

I'm a massive fan of cheese jokes and I spotted this on a sandwich board outside a store in Mildura. Enjoy! 

Driving Me Wild

We currently have a new job! It's shit but this is farm work, nobody promised me it would be exciting. I won't bore you too much with the details but we're basically rebuilding the structure that grape vines are wrapped around. See, super riveting stuff. 

But, on the plus side, someone clearly has a sense of danger as I've been allowed to DRIVE a vehicle! Yep, I don't actually own a UK license but as we're on private land, letting me loose on a blue, 4 wheel drive quad, that I've affectionately named Henry. Granted, I can hardly zip around the farm as I'm driving round a pretty hefty trailer but it's still the most fun thing I've done on a farm yet. 

I have, however, lost any dignity that I may have remaining (insert joke here about how I didn't actually have any dignity left anyway) as, due to a lack of toilet facilities on the farm, I've had to pee behind a massive twig pile recently. This is coming from a girl who, despite being a festival regular, refuses to use anything other than a portaloo when surviving in the great outdoors. Luckily, I've only had to resort to such behaviour once and that was shameful enough, thankyou very much. 

As I write this, I only have a week before I take a short break from my farm work expedition to make a fleeting 13 day visit home and I genuinely could not be more excited! Whilst I'm not looking forward to not having anyone to chat to in my bedroom in the morning when I wake up (travelling makes you actually enjoy sharing a room with God knows how many people, who'd have thought!?), I cannot wait to use my beautiful, clean bathroom back home without having someone knock on the door wanting a wee! 

Getting Lost

The past week hasn't been great for us girls when it comes to work. We worked too fast on our previous farm and caught up with the vine pruners meaning we had nothing left to roll onto the wires. You can't win here, sacked if you're not good enough or running out of work because you're too good! So we had about 60% of last week off with no way of earning any money.

As you can imagine, we got very bored of staying in the house all day. Turns out there are only so many films you can watch in front of the cosy fire everyday. And Mildura isn't known for being the entertainment capital of Australia so our options of things to do were very limited..

We ended up at a giant maze. It cost us $2 and actually turned out to be a lot of fun, I kid you not. Situated about a 10 minute drive from Mildura town centre, it's attached onto Woodsies Gem Shop, a small store selling every kind of gem in various forms of trinkets, ornaments and jewellery. How does that relate to a giant maze? I have absolutely no idea. 

9 of us headed into the maze and ended up splitting into 4 teams and I'm slightly ashamed to say I didn't win. But I did come second which isn't the end of the world. For someone like me, who tries to complete pretty much any task in life as efficiently as possible, the maze drove me insane. I was cursing like a sailor as I took more than enough wrong turns and ended up in the same spot yet again, much to everybody's amusement. The boys were last to traipse out though which was a boost for girl power!

Thankfully, we are on a new job now so we aren't scouring TripAdvisor for things to do or crawling the walls with boredom anymore but we are still pauper poor until we get paid so that's always fun. Who knows, I might find a natural skill on the next farm?! Jokezzzzz.

It's Happened, I've Screamed

It's day 11 and the inevitable has finally happened, I saw a scary spider. And I screamed. 

Two of the girls and I spent the day gardening and the monstrous creature appeared from under a pile of leaves. As soon as I spotted it, I threw my tools to the ground, screamed and legged it to the other end of the garden wailing at the girls to kill it. Totally appropriate adult behaviour. 

I'd normally add a photo onto every post but funnily enough, I wasn't going to stand around and take a photo of the hideous 8 legged beast. And I'm certainly not googling, "spider" for a stock image as I'll probably end up peeing myself. Soz. 

Drama In Mildura

Believe it or not, Mildura actually experiences drama every now and then! I know, I was shocked too.

In the hostel, we all live for Saturday nights. It's the only night we all let loose and drink as much goon as we can before the taxi arrives to pick us up. We head to the same place most weekends, it's free entry, the drinks are cheap and the music's pretty good. 

But this weekend was a bit more dramatic than most, it all kicked off pretty early on with punches and glasses being thrown aplenty. Apparently one of the poor girls behind the bar ended up on the receiving end of one of the glasses! 

From what we could gather, a bunch of guys from one of the other hostels in Mildura kicked off, for whatever reason, at pretty much anyone who might have a go back. There were bouncers everywhere and the police were drafted in resulting in the whole night being shut down and everyone wandering the streets wondering where the hell else in Mildura you could buy a vodka at 12:30.

We ended up in a bar where a guy dressed as SpongeBob SquarePants seemed to be the main form of entertainment, I kid you not. 

And I didn't even get a kebab on the way home, Laurie and I were pretty much devestated when we got home and realised all we had was toast. 

Sunday was spent down by the river that splits Victoria & New South Wales (miss you, Sydney!) in what turned out to be a surprisingly warm and sunny day considering it's now winter out here! My friends spent the afternoon fishing for, or at least trying to, the carp that swim in the waters whilst trying to avoid the various pelicans and ducks that sit atop the water. 

After various snapped lines and false alarms, one of the boys actually caught a HUGE fish. He offered it out to me to hold but I politely declined, slimy sea creatures totally aren't my thing!

And in the blink of an eye, the weekend was over and a whole week of work lay between us and alcohol once more. Considering how often I've thought I hated Mildura, sitting by the river when the sun sets was actually pretty decent (despite how bloody cold it became, I could barely feel my feet!)

 

Spoke Too Soon

I blogged yesterday about how I was still managing to function like a normal human being whilst working on the farm. I clearly spoke too soon as today I could have easily thrown down my tools, told the farmer to do one and jumped on a plane back to city civilisation. 

Don't get me wrong, I had my reasons for throwing a complete wobbly, I'm not totally unstable.

For starters, I'm experiencing yet ANOTHER eye infection out here, the fourth in almost as many months which is extremely frustrating. And working in the blazing sunshine with an eye infection is nobody's idea of fun, it basically burns your eye ball and has you tearing up like a toddler constantly. Plus, I was the slowest girl on the farm today which, for a crazy competitive person like me, could probably drive you clinically insane.

Whilst wrapping vine upon vine round metal wires today, I continuously had the thought that 88 days of this wasn't worth a second year in Australia. But then rational, grown-up me gave childish, tantrum prone me a good talking to and I'll be heading back to work tomorrow.

So, it's only day 7 and I've already had my first thoughts about giving up. 81 more days of this is going to be a piece of cake.. 

Alive & Kicking

I So I'm nearly a week into my farm work and, believe it or not, I haven't screamed once. 

And this isn't a ghostwriter typing, it's actually me and I haven't actually died from fright yet.

I mean, I haven't seen any snakes or spiders yet but I have seen two caterpillars and various snails and that's more than enough wildlife for me so far. 

So what's Mildura like? It's genuinely a lot bigger than I expected it to be! In my mind, I saw a tiny town with nothing to do whereas, in reality, there's actually a fair amount here. You've got your regular Australian fashion stores; Cotton On, Factorie, Dotti and everyone's favourite, cheap and cheerful K-Mart. And there's the usual fast food suspects; McDonalds, Subway, Dominos and various kebab joints to hit once you've visited one of the 4 bar/clubs in the town. 

But in terms of farm work, I'm spending my days pruning and rolling grape vines. It's not hard work but it's about as exciting as spending a Saturday night in by yourself without wifi. We're meant to be moving onto oranges in the next couple of weeks which has piqued my fear that there might be tarantulas in the trees obviously just waiting to jump out and bite me when I reach out to grab an orange. But that's probably me being irrational, let's hope.. 

You can see how impressed I am by farm work below. I'm having a whale of a time. Only 81 days to go!

I Can't Think Of A Worse Profession For You

I had people taking bets on whether I'd even come to Australia when I first announced I was jacking in my job, house and stable lifestyle 6 months ago. Lo and behold, I filled my rucksack and here I am, still alive and just about functioning. However my sunny bubble of a life in Sydney is about to be dramatically popped.

For English backpackers, if you want to stay in Australia for longer than your allocated year, you have to undertake 88 days of work in a rural postcode. This can be agricultural, construction or fruit picking work, all of which sound about as much fun as chopping my leg off with a blunt spoon.

So, somehow, I've ended up booking a flight to Mildura, just west of Melbourne and basically in the middle of nowhere. Sounds fabulous, right? I know you're all super jealous of my adventure right now. Apparently I'm going to be picking citrus fruits and pruning vines.. All whilst on a farm no doubt covered in jumbo sized spiders and poisonous snakes. Sounds just like a spa weekend.

Upon telling one of my friends at home, he commented, 'You're going to die. I can't think of a worse profession for you.' So that bodes well. Another asked me to live blog my traumatic adventures on the farm, which provided another of my amused friends (who has the enjoyment of coming to the farm with me) with the idea of setting up a YouTube channel documenting my hard time in the country declaring, 'We'll make you a YouTube star!'

Am I even a little bit excited for this new experience? Absolutely not. But I'll try my best to not have a panic attack on the first day and end up in the hospital and keep you updated on the experience.

I'm not religious but my god, please all pray for my safety and/or sanity.