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Cyclone Debbie and a Great Big Piss-Up

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A friend in England replied to my snapchats on Tuesday saying “what the fuck are you doing?”

Well, seven of us from the hostel ended up in a shelter for a couple of nights, and consequently ended up appearing in the Brisbane Times, BBC News and in the news on Belgian TV.

There was a category five cyclone destined to hit the town that I’m staying in on Monday so we had a choice of evacuating to Cairns, going to a cyclone shelter or hoping that the hostel lives up to its cyclone rating. Bearing in mind that I could not be arsed to pack and leave for Cairns and that the ceiling fan in our cyclone-rated room blows our door open, I ended up going to the shelter where we spent 40 hours. I had literally ten minutes to pack so I packed a pillow case instead of a bag because it was easier.

What I usually end up getting in trouble for is making a sarcastic comment at the wrong time, and it could’ve happened in the shelter. A journalist from the Brisbane Times asked me if I was still expected to pay my rent in the hostel, to which I laughed and made a sarcastic comment. Quite glad that we only had a picture on the internet. As for the BBC News, I now have celebrity status in the hostel as I was on BBC News and BBC Worldwide, and it seems like the only thing that they showed was me saying that I wanted a bed and a food – to be fair, that usually is the case whether or not I’m locked in a shelter.

7 News Australia tried to interview us, too. Looking back, it would’ve amused us to just pretend that we didn’t know that there was a cyclone coming and that we were just squatting until we got kicked out because it was free accommodation.

The shelter wasn’t that exciting; we were just tracking Debbie and playing Uno. She’s received a fair bit of abuse from us, and if anyone had overheard us and not known that it wasn’t a human we have been speaking about all week, we’d be in shit. We were tracking it for the whole time; it was delayed by a few hours five times, then it was destined to miss us completely. Domino’s was still open, and someone ordered a pizza and had it delivered through the window.

One good thing has come from this: Debs did not ruin my seven week Sunday Domino’s streak.

The days after the cyclone there were quite a few people leaving the hostel which meant going for a drink. One drink turned into several more and the best night out that I’ve had in this town – it is one very good story, though for now the less I write about it on the internet, the better. There is still an alcohol ban that I don’t quite understand in the hostel after the non-visit from Debbie which has quite obviously not been complied to. Whilst in bed and still drunk on Friday morning, I was asked if I could drive to one of the farms to replace someone working – luckily I had a more acceptable reason for saying no other than the fact that it would have been illegal for me to drive there. Instead, I ended up doing a short shift planting.

We also had the regular Saturday night piss-up – I had work the next day and was intending to be sensible. Thankfully, it wasn’t that hot compared to usual during the shift as it would’ve been a struggle – we really were not sensible.

Melons, Capsicums and Cyclone Debbie.

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This weeks been a bit of a bore. I have now worked 31 farm days with 25 officially signed off, so there’s a bit of a farmer-chase-up which isn’t supposed to be easy or heaps of fun. Now there’s 57 days of slaving away left to go. I enquired about when work is meant to pick up and was told April – it means a few weeks of not much work, but the only things keeping me here are that I really can’t be arsed to move and there’s a Domino’s around the corner.

With that said, I did work a few short shifts. Monday and Tuesday I think we were planting capsicums. Sometimes we have to be out of bed and on call at a certain time if the weather’s a bit crap just so we can be up if the farmer wants us. That was me on Wednesday, and I honestly don’t know how I used to do it working a ski season. My personal best from bed to work, during a hangover on Christmas Day 2013, is three minutes; my nineteen year old self would have been very disappointed by my effort this week.

After doing a beer run on Saturday evening, I found out that I had a shift on Sunday, which will probably end up as a full-time job. There was also a notice above the job saying that if we turned up to work hungover, we’ll get fired from the job and kicked out of the hostel as the contract is that important to the hostel. As it’s an indoors job, I don’t have to douse myself in sun cream or wear a hat and was alright as farm work goes – just put eight melons in a box for five hours. For someone who got a G in their GCSE RE, I think I did a pretty good job of feeding the five thousand.

Cyclone Debbie has allegedly changed its course to come right at the town that I’m living in, and is grade four. We may even have to get evacuated out of what has been described as “this wooden shack” and into a proper shelter, which according to Google isn’t fit to act as a shelter. When I moved out of my flat in London to go travelling, I had anticipated that I may sleep in more unusual settings – night buses/trains, sofas, uncomfortable hostels etc., but it never crossed my mind that I may be stuck in a sodding hurricane shelter.

Same Shit, Different Day

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To start the week I didn’t have a job. Bearing in mind that I am within the first ten people on the priority list and all the new people are working, I had a moan to the owner of this hostel, and luckily I am very good at having an answer to absolutely everything. I landed myself a job, two days a week. To be honest, I’d rather repeat the day where I thought I might cry because I planted so much five times over than be stuck in the hostel for five days, but at least it’s something.

Monday, I worked at a farm that I was on last week and weeded for six hours. At first I thought that it’d be easier to crawl to ease the back and knee ache, though I ended up giving myself a dead leg after three hours of crawling and couldn’t feel my foot properly for the rest of the work day.

Wednesday was my first shift on another watermelon farm. It was quite amusing to hear people talking tactics in the van about how fast to go and a couple of others and me went at least twice as fast as the ten others without too much effort. Planting can actually get quite tactical and competitive; my tactic is to get a good playlist on and to go near the other quick people and keep up – with that said, I usually finish a row in at least third place anyway. There are days where you know that you’re just going to be working for a couple of hours so a lot of people will go slower as more time spent on the farm = more money. Having worked with quite a few half jobs in the hospitality industry, I’ll end up just annoying myself if I’m too slow.

Thursday, I was off again and was back to work on Friday. The people I was working with seemed to only be able to talk about goon, how drunk they were, how they were still drunk or about how they were going to get drunk after work. I was bored of it after two minutes of being in the van, and it carried on for the whole of the shift.

It got to the point on Friday where it was so hot (surprise!) that the farmer drove me to another part of the field and we just sat having a chat in the ute for five minutes with the air con on full blast. It was one of the days where sweat just drips off your face onto the plastic sheets that we plant onto. He asked me what I’ve done with myself before the farm work so I said about working in France, living in London and travelling pretty much the whole of last year, and he thought that I was a lot older than the people that I work with. I’m actually one of the young ones.

Friday was St Patricks Day. I wasn’t in the mood to go out so I hired a few movies and had watched a couple. Saturday night I actually didn’t go out and opted for a movie marathon, but only managed one and a half. Today, I’m two and a half movies in, about to watch the third and perhaps a fourth which I probably won’t manage.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it in another post but Sunday is the day to get a Domino’s for $5, nearing the $10 mark if you want a cheese stuffed crust (obviously I do), as the supermarkets are shut. Just an excuse to have pizza. It’s going to get to the point when I would’ve had pizza every Sunday for around 20 weeks in a row, and that might be one of my personal favourite achievements of my past 22 years. Today, I had one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had; not as good as the one I had when I accidentally booked a flight to Milan instead of Venice last year but definitely in the top ten.

Another Day, Another Field of Watermelons

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It’s supposed to be autumn here now – I’m not too sure how much I believe it as I was sat drafting out this post at 9.15pm, dripping with sweat.

Our week started off with a 32 degree-90% humidity day. To be honest I don’t know how I didn’t pass out on the watermelon field; it seemed as though whatever we drank sweated straight out, although at least we knew for sure that the alcohol from the weekend had left our systems by then. On the way to work we put the watermelon emoji sponge on the rear-view mirror which the farmer apparently wasn’t terribly amused by, but it is now hanging from my shelf in the room, much to the despair of my roommates.

Tuesday turned out to be the last day of planting watermelons… on this farm, anyway. One of the nearby farms had a thermometer that measured the temperature as 37 degrees, and I’m surprised that there was any sweat left in me after Monday. I was seriously struggling with it, and on other farms quite a few people passed out. Luckily, it was only a half day where we were supposed to be joining the farmers for a BBQ at the end of the day. As we finished so early, the farmer gave us some money to go out for dinner which was much appreciated, so I rather enjoyed a steak dinner.

Planted five weeks ago
Last weeks chilli picking efforts

We’ve got a pretty good analogy for planting: it’s like being on I’m a Celeb – only that we don’t have Ant and Dec to warn us that there may be something out to poison us whenever we stick our hands in the holes in the ground.

As the jobs on the watermelon field had ended, Wednesday and Thursday were days off. There is more or less nothing to do here – there’s a swimming pool, bowling alley and a cinema so Wednesday I was trying to kill the day. Thursday, we went down the pub and Friday I did a shift for just one hour, though it secured me work for Saturday too. Today has been another day off after a night out last night.

Planting Watermelons Like There’s No Tomorrow

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Work this week started off with chilli picking; the first job that I’ve had so far that isn’t on a watermelon field. It’s work that no one really wants to do as it pays $2.50 per kilo and most people pick 25-30kg which means that I’ll get paid around $100 for 16 hours work. I got paid a bit less than four and a half times this for the same amount of work in Melbourne.

Our first day on the farm, the farmer met us at a petrol station to take us to his farm and the next day we got pretty lost on the way there. It took 45 minutes, half hour on the phone to the farmer and two phonecalls to the hostel to get there, almost running over a dog in the process. One of the things that no one really warns you about for farm work is that there aren’t really any toilets on the farms – this time a year ago I was tasting port in Portugal, and at the start of the week I’m advising a friend on where the best place to pee on a field is. Still living the dream.

After two days of having my head in chilli plants and my hayfever going wild, I was so, so happy to be back planting watermelons. The happiness did not last long, though. As there have been a lot of people leaving over the past couple of weeks, a small group of us are working double as we are having to do our work, then helping the fifteen  or so new people. Thursday, I would say was either the joint worst or second worst shift of my life (going out on the piss three nights in a row and the fourth day was a menu change at work and I am never ever doing that again). It got to the point where I had been working for nine hours and had done so much work that I could have cried if I had to plant another watermelon for someone else. Luckily, someone else was on hand to help me help someone and to listen to me chat shit about watermelons. It turned out that I planted somewhere around 6km of watermelons all day Thursday. On Friday morning someone forgot to wear their shoes to work. When I had a day as shit as it was on Thursday, having something like that to laugh about was well needed.

During the week it was one of my roomates’ birthday so I cooked seven of us a lasagne, not going to lie it was pretty bloody good. It was also pancake day so three of us had pancakes for dinner – first course chorizo and cheese, followed by chocolate and salted caramel.

I found a mascot for our work van; an air freshener probably wouldn’t help whatsoever when you consider how bad we smell by 8am most days. In the supermarket, I saw a sponge in the shape of the watermelon emoji for $2 with a string around it. We’re going to hang it from the rear-view mirror in the car as though it is an air freshener and see if the farmers humour us.

Today I am definitely feeling as though I went out last night. As per usual, most people staying at this hostel went out and got absolutely twatted.

After almost three years, my tablet has finally broken. I decided to opt for a small laptop instead of a tablet as I find that it’s just easier to use a laptop. For a while I have wanted to change the layout of the blog to something a bit more professional looking which is pretty hard to do on a touchscreen, so over the next coming weeks I’ll be giving onewomanonebackpack a makeover.

Farm Work – the First Week

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I’ve been in Queensland for a week now and have been working every day since Sunday – it has flown by. The priority is to get all my farm days done as soon as possible, f.o. to Bali then Melbourne. The money is good, more than what I was earning in England but not as much as Melbourne. I’m just saving the $$$ for Bali and Tokyo, with some to help me settle in Melbourne too.

To be honest, the work in itself is alright, but bending down every time I move is the worst of it. I planted over 2000 watermelon plants yesterday over nine hours and everything just hurts. I’ve had an impressive blood blister on the web of my thumb from sweeping so much, and am currently sporting sunburn on my lower back from where my tshirt comes up from bending down.

I’ve settled into the hostel well; even managed to get a decent bed. It’s pretty average for an Australian hostel: the doors to my room don’t shut properly, the bathroom door fell off and the kitchen has some form of infestation. To be honest, I’m tired of hostels and can’t wait to be able to go to sleep and wake up when I decide – they hoover the rooms at 8.30am and people play ping pong as though it’s life or death right outside the door at 10pm.

Also, this hostel loves to threaten you with a $200 fine if you break a rule – if you are caught with a glass bottle, for instance. There’s a sign on the entrance gate saying ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’ – I’ll have to resist writing ‘and fined $200’ underneath when I’m finished here.

There are 82 days of work left to go. Hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll write again and my back, legs, knees and what’s left of my sanity are in tact.

Melbourne & The Australian Open

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The main reason I came back to Melbourne was the Australian Open – I’d booked tickets whilst in Sydney, and have since been looking forward to the Melbourne climate. What should’ve been a five or six hour travel day from Cairns turned out to be around the 13 hour mark, but bearing in mind that I have a 30+ hour travel day next week it’s not too bad.

Unfortunately, my first day was eventful: a change of plans on the tram into the city made me miss Bourke Street on the day a car got driven down there, had they not changed I would’ve been either down Bourke Street or very close. The first couple of days I spent in Fed Square watching the tennis on the big screen there, as well as a visit to Hosier Lane.

On Monday I went to see the games. My ticket covered four matches,  but after three my brains were pretty fried. I saw the mens doubles where Bryan/Bryan won; the only remaining Brit Johanna Konta beat the Russian Makarova and Brady from the US pay against Lucic-Baroni. I missed the last game, a mens singles, but enjoyed my day and caught the Nadal game back in the hostel.

For me, time spent in Melbourne isn’t complete without a trip to the pub so I made sure that happened. Last time I was in the city I wasn’t too fussed by it, but now I’ve been gone and the weather is heaps nicer, I realise that it is actually bloody good.

If all goes to plan between now and the end of the year, I should be able to take some time off work in Januay and I intend to re-visit the Australian Open. I hope to splash out a bit and see a few matches and maybe even a final.

Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

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There is not a lot to do in Cairns besides chilling out near the lagoon and finding places to eat sushi. I came here to see the Great Barrier Reef and have it live up to the name, as it was the Alright Barrier Reef  at the Whitsundays. I booked up a trip on the boat Silverswift and whilst expensive at AU $200+, it’s completely worth it.

As I’m not a decent swimmer, I did think about getting a see-through bottom (probably has a proper name)  boat tour as I’d be more comfortable, but like most other things within reason it’s more worthwhile to push the boat out and do the more daunting things.

With an early start, I made my way to the pier and caffeinated myself up on board. It took just over an hour and a half to reach the reef then once suited up, this time with a buoyancy jacket, we were let loose into the sea. I don’t have pictures, but what I saw was amazing; the fish were were so brightly coloured and was incredible to swim/float over the coral, watching the fish. One thing that I have to say is that if your internal sarcastic monologue, like mine, is hilarious, don’t laugh because it loosens the seal on the goggles. I also saw some fish that looked like someone I used to work with, as well as someone from school so I had to sort the goggles out a few times.

The second snorkel was the best; there were so many more fish and I was more trusting of the buoyancy vest. I saw a few fish that I recognised from Finding Nemo, though no clown fish, but a similar anemone fish which is close enough. I also saw a jellyfish and some patterned like a giraffe, there were also a lot more fish in the coral, but no turtles this time which I was eager to see.

There was a snorkel tour done by one of the guides on the third and final swim, and there were too many people. I opted to hang at the back then go my own way which paid off – there was a turtle that the group missed so I stayed to watch it for a few minutes, and went behind it as it swam up to get some air. I didn’t expect to get so close to the turtles because of the vest, so this was awesome. The fish were impressive during this snorkel, though not as much as the other two. One of the most noteable things I saw was a ray digging around in the sand.

Once the third swim had finished, we returned to Cairns. This was by far one of the best experiences I’ve had in the past year of travelling, the highlight being getting so close to the turtle. I’m going to have a Google of snorkel spots in Australia, get an attachment for my gopro and snorkel again during my second year in this country. I may not be the biggest fan of Australia, but this is one of the things that has made coming over here worth it.

The Whitsundays

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Last week I went to Airlie Beach to do a tour of the Whitsundays. I try to watch my language writing on here, but there is no other way to describe it than a complete fuck up from start to finish.

To start with, I had a 14 or so hour bus ride from Hervey Bay, which broke down at 4/5am, and we had to wait a couple of hours for the bus behind us to come and pick us up. I did manage to watch Inception on the bus, which I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of years which I think was one of the highlights of the trip.

I had a day in Airlie Beach to waste, then the next day I had to check in at the Ozsail office to get information for the trip. I saw a couple of people there who were at Fraser Island so we spent the morning together.

The first day on the boat wasn’t too bad, it rained a bit but the crew and other people were a good crowd. The next day, however, I woke up to the boat being thrown around. I was going to get changed then get onto the deck, though it took me a couple of seconds to realise that I had to get onto the deck asap, otherwise I’d be redecorating the boat.

The sea was rough and it was absolutely pissing it down so I got soaked. I witnessed a member of staff fall over and nearly fall off the edge. We were going to go to Whitehaven Beach, but it was not really do-able due to the weather.

We decided that we were better off doing one night instead of two, so a couple of snorkel stops were scheduled. As I’m not a strong swimmer, I had been assured that there would be a floatation device so that I wouldn’t drown, which was engraved with “warning: this is a toy,” which, obviously was incredibly reassuring.

I saw some of the reef which was cool and a turtle, but it wasnt really a prime spot to see it, so after 20 minutes having my life depend on a child’s swimming pool toy, we got back onto the boat and went back to the land.

The next day, I checked out of my hostel then got a phonecall from the bus company telling me that all the buses were cancelled for the next couple of days as the roads were flooded. It wasn’t all bad; I went to a better hostel then ended up having a room trip to domino’s then we went on a night out. I have never been on a night out in flip flops, but this was a first.

I don’t think I need to summarise what I think from this part of the trip. Anyone who’s Facebook friends with me would have seen my Karl Pilkington – inspired “it’s not the great barrier reef, it’s the alright barrier reef” post, which more or less sums it up. I’m hoping to come back whilst there is better weather for a daytrip, rather than an overnight one and snorkel properly at some point between now and when I travel to Melbourne.

Fraser Island

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I have wifi again, although it isn’t great, so excuse the lack of pictures.

I chose to do a trip to Fraser Island over New Years, a UNESCO heritage site. We had a pep talk the night before where the tour company squeezed in the fact that we were in tents and had no showers, which was marvellous of them.

We had to leave the hostel on the first day at 6am, and headed off to the ferry port in the four wheel drive cars. Once on the island, we were soon fearing for our lives due to the off-road driving. First, we headed down to a rainforest with a fresh water river running through, where we also stopped for lunch. After, there was a bit more off – road driving until we got to Lake Wabbi – a bit of a walk from a beach through a forest,  then onto a sand dune, and finally into the lake. The lake contains fish that eat the dead skin off of your body.

After the walk back to the beach we drove to the camp where we cooked dinner, seperated into groups. Because of the fact that I’m a chef I opted to cook, not going to lie but I didn’t want someone to give me a rare or cooked to shit burger, and of course I had a backseat driver. All of the suggestions I responded that I’d just do it to their food and they could clean up the mess. It worked.

We had a few drinks, half the group were playing ring of fire. It’s a game where everyone has their own rules and everyone is convinced that their rules are right, kind of annoying so I sat out of it and chatted to some people. After a while we left the campsite where the night sky was the clearest I’ve ever seen it, and I doubt I will see anything like it until I see the Northern Lights someday. Of course, as we are in a country where half the wildlife wants to kill you, we had to take jagged plastic poles in case a dingo came after us.

The second day the weather wasn’t so great, I started off couting at least 50 mosquito bites. It was a lot of driving and the novelty of having your life flash before your eyes had worn off. The first stop was the Champagne Pools; a lot of people didn’t really partake just because it was a miserable day. On the way back, we stopped off at the famous shipwreck, then Eli Creek, which is a lazy river.

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The last day we went to Lake McKenzie, probably the highlight of the trip. The lake is clear, and the sand you can use as a body scrub as well as shampoo. We stayed there for a couple of hours and true to form, I got sunburnt. A couple of hours later,  we were waiting for the ferry.

Overall, the trip had its good and bad; I wish we were treated like people on holiday and not backpackers as it bought the Reading and Leeds Festival experience to what should have been a fantastic few days. I joke that I am a one man wolfpack like the guy in the Hangover films, but after the second night with 22 other people I needed some peace and quiet. I wouldn’t go again just because I’ve done it, but if I were to go again, I’d definitely pick a different company.