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! 

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!