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)

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! 

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.

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!