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.

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)

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..