Bye Bye Farm!

I have finally completed my 88 days farm work in order to get my 2nd year visa! Hooray!

Had a pretty non eventful last few weeks at the farm. Got back from Malanda and Jo and Paul left, then 2 weeks later Steph left. It was sad to see them go cos we'd all been together on the farm since me & Steph arrived! So for the last two weeks there was just 4 of us!

We had a couple of good nights though, we went to the 'DJ FM Party' at the Mareeba RSL which was fun, then had a house party for my birthday - not quite how I imagined I would spend my birthday in Oz, but it was still fun.

Sarah & Me at the RSL

Sean, Andy & Me at the RSL

My birthday party!

So on 15th September I packed my bags and left the farm! Bye bye farmer Helen, Hello backpacker!

On Yer Malanda!

Managed to have a break from the farm for 9 days to a place called Malanda! Me and Sarah were told one week that there would be no work for us at the farm for about 11 days, until Jo and Paul left. We were pretty annoyed about it cos it meant losing almost 2 weeks wages. So in order to save money we looked into places we could work for a couple of hours a day for our food and accommodation. So even though we weren't going to be earning any money, we wouldn't be spending anything either. Jo and Paul told us about a website called HelpEx which has places all over the world offering this kind of work. I really recommend this website to anyone travelling on a budget!
So I had a look on the website and found a guesthouse in Malanda about 40 minutes drive from the farm in Mareeba. I phoned them up and organised for us both to arrive on the Monday morning (8th Aug)! 

Travellers Rest guesthouse is a lovely place and is about 5km outside of Malanda. The owners, Mike and Tracy couldn't have been kinder to us. We were treated like part of the family. Our bedroom seemed like luxury compared to our farm accommodation! We had nice clean sheets and quilts, TWO pillows, and an ensuite bathroom! Everyday we had a choice of cereals and toast for breakfast, anything we wanted from the fridge for lunch, then a main meal and pudding for tea! Needless to say, we came back to the farm with slightly tighter waistbands!! We were also given glasses of wine, champagne, and something I'd never tried before - Wild Turkey American Honey with ginger ale - yum! They invited us up to their family living room a few of the nights we were there to watch a film which was nice.

Fairy cake and homemade scones!

They also took us on days out to various places. Tracy took us to Cairns for the day so we got to relax by the lagoon! We went to the Gallo Cheese and Chocolate factory where we had lunch, ate yummy chocolates and watched the cows being milked! We were taken to the Curtain Fig Tree and Lake Eacham, and had an afternoon waterskiing with their family at Lake Tinaroo!

Gallo Cheese and Chocolate Factory!

Curtain Fig Tree and Lake Eacham

Me waterskiing and Sarah kneeboarding on Lake Tinaroo!

One thing we got to experience while staying at the Travellers Rest was 'Christmas in Winter'. Some Australians celebrate Christmas twice! So on the Saturday night they had a group of 12 old people who all came for mulled wine, cheese and biscuits, Christmas dinner & pudding, and a big selection of chocolates! There was Christmas music playing and even a Christmas tree! It was really weird, but quite nice because I don't think my Christmas celebrations in Sydney this year will be quite so traditional! 

The work we had to do was really easy, and there wasn't much of it! Our daily task was to feed and clean out the horses, which took about 10-15 minutes. A few days we were there we packed beef jerky for an hour or two as Mike has his own beef jerky business. Found out that I actually like beef jerky! 2 nights we cooked tea for some road workers who were staying that week. And we had 2 mornings of making beds!

Feeding the horses and alpacas!

All in all it was a great 9 days! We were made to feel like part of the family and got to experience things we otherwise wouldn't have done. So although it was annoying to be kicked off the farm for that time, it was well worth it! Thanks Mike and Tracy!!

Tracy, Mike, Luke, Rebecca, Jessica

Photos from the farm!

Nothing exciting to write about the farm so here are a few photos!

Our house.

 Mango trees.

Squash rows. 

Where the bees live.

The harvester.

The girls - all dressed up and nowhere to go!

The boys.

All of us - Andy, Me, Jo, Paul, Sean, Sarah & Steph!

Night out in Cairns!

Night out in Cairns!

Life on the farm...

Well, it's been an interesting few weeks!
Ended up really struggling to find a job in Brisbane, the only job I was offered was door to door sales which I really didn't want to do! So me and Steph (a girl I met in the hostel) flew up to Cairns and we are now working on a farm! I've decided I want to get my 2nd year visa and to do that you have to do 88 days farm work.

The farm is near a town called Mareeba which is about an hour and a half drive from Cairns. So we're pretty much in the middle of nowhere! It gets a bit boring being stuck at the farm all the time, as it's a $60 round trip in a taxi just to go into Mareeba! So we try to all go in together for a food shop and a few drinks in the pub about once a week. We're sharing a house with 6 other people who are all really nice. The house itself though is not so nice! You have to go outside to get to the shower and toilet, and they're full of cockroaches, bugs and spiders, yuck! And the sofas in the living room are old and horrible, so not comfy at all! Makes the hostels I've been staying in seem like luxury!

Our house.

Luxurious bathroom facilities...

Mine and Steph's bed bug infested room!

The work is really easy though. Picking and packing zucchinis (courgettes), limes and squash. Picking can hurt your back though, especially squash as you have to carry the buckets as well as being constantly bent over getting them off the plant! Zucchini picking is a bit easier as we have a harvester machine thingy that holds our buckets, and it has a radio so we can listen to music while we work :) Lime picking is the definitely my least favourite, even though it doesn't hurt your back. But all the branches of the trees are covered in thorns and the trees are surrounded by sometimes waist height weeds, also full of thorns! So you get really scratched even in trousers and long sleeves! Packing is pretty easy, but can get really boring and repetitive!
We start work at 7am most days. I've been working LOADS though, just finished my 3rd week and this is only the 2nd day off I've had since I got here! I'm thinking of the money though, and it's more days towards my 2nd year visa! I've done 19 days now so 69 more to go... lets hope I manage to stay here that long!

One thing you wouldn't expect to find on a farm though is a hot tub! Lester (the farmer's wife's dad) lives next door to us and has a hot tub which he let us use one evening! Did our aching backs a lot of good!! It was so weird though, being on a farm, in a hot tub, drinking wine! And Lester also made us a BBQ! So that was a good evening :)

Had a massive drama this week though. Me and Steph started getting horrible itchy bites, which we thought were fleas or something - turns out our room was infested with bed bugs! It was horrible, I had bites all over my arms, neck, shoulders and even on my face. It made me feel sick to think they'd been crawling on my face and biting me while I was asleep! 
So as soon as we discovered the bugs we went to tell the farmer, who didn't know anything about bed bugs and tried to offer us a can of insect repellent! In the end the farmers wife googled it and told us they'd phone pest control the following day, and in the mean time we had to sleep on the horrible sofas, which turned out where also full of bed bugs, so we still got bitten! After 2 more nights of very little sleep on the sofas, we all had to leave the house for 48 hours for the place to be fumigated! So we packed up all our clothes and bedding to be washed and moved to our new home for the next few nights - a shed! The farmer and his wife supplied us with mattresses and airbeds, and me and Steph ended up on the only one with a hole in it, so ended up sleeping on the wooden floor! So 2 more nights of very little sleep! 
Now finally we're back in the house and the bed bugs are gone, fingers crossed! I haven't been bitten again anyway :)

Anyway, haven't really got much else to report! Not sure when I'll next write on here, might not be for a while as farm work is not the most exciting thing to read about, might add a few more photos at some point! Bye for now :)