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!

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 :)

Byron Bay, Surfers Paradise, Brisbane!

Byron Bay

So, last time I updated this I was booking an extra night at the Arts Factory in Byron Bay. That extra night turned into 3 extra nights as Byron Bay is now my favourite place ever! Spent quite a few nights at Cheeky Monkeys having cheap drinks and cheap food! They held various competitions and giveaways each night. Unfortunately I didn’t win anything, but they did hold an auction for some trips, and I got a $65 surf lesson for $35! Which I was pretty pleased with cos I was planning on doing another surf lesson anyway!

That was Thursday night. So the next day I went into town and booked my lesson for Saturday morning, then in the evening me and Shweta went to the beach because we’d heard that it’s a cool place to hang out cos lots of hippies go there! It was pretty good, someone playing guitar and random street performer people! We stayed and watched the sunset, which was so beautiful. Took about a million photos!

The next day I was up at 7am ready for my 5^th surf lesson! Had a great morning surfing, though I didn’t really improve, as the waves were really different to Spot X. Because the waves were breaking really close to shore, once I was actually stood up on the board, I had to jump off as I was hitting the sand! Oh well, still had a fun morning!

Sunday I didn’t do much really. Byron Bay is the best place to do nothing, especially at the Arts Factory, it’s so chilled out. Definitely going to go back there at some point! I think in the summer I’m going to have a few days in Spot X and another week or so in Byron. Packed my bags on Sunday evening ready to get the 7:45am bus on Monday morning to Surfers Paradise.

Surfers Paradise

I arrived in Surfers Paradise at 9:30am on Monday 23rd so it was quite a short journey. First impressions weren’t that great - lots of skyscrapers and not much character. Turns out my first impressions were right. It was ok there, the weather was good and the nightlife was ok. But if you’re not into lying on the beach all day and getting drunk every night, then there’s not a huge amount to do there. I prefer places that have a bit more about them, like Byron Bay!!

There are loads of theme parks in the Gold Coast area, but they were all overpriced and I didn’t really come to Australia to go to theme parks.. and because my funds are running pretty low, I didn’t want to waste money, I’ve been to Alton Towers at home, so I doubt these places are going to be that different!

So I had 3 nights at Surfers Paradise spending most of my time reading and sitting on the beach. Which was nice apart from the fact that the skyscrapers kept blocking the sun so it wasn’t that warm! Did manage to get through a good portion of my book though!

The best thing about Surfers Paradise was definitely the hostel. I stayed at a place called Sleeping Inn which was quite a small hostel and very social. The rooms were like a little apartment, with every 3 dorms having their own kitchen, living area with a TV, and a bathroom. So it was actually quite nice having a sofa to sit on! On Tuesday night they had an “all you can eat” pizza night for $6 - and it really was all you can eat! They kept bringing out pizzas until we were all absolutely stuffed! I had 9 slices! What a pig! Wanted to get my moneys worth though J

Then on Wednesday night we went on the backpackers big night out! We paid $30 for entry to 4 bars (which normally cost about $10 each to get in) and a free drink in each bar! So that was good!

The next day I left Surfers Paradise and got on the bus to Brisbane!

Brisbane

The fun has now ended and the search for work has begun! Turns out its really hard to get a job here as a backpacker. Because I have to put on my CV that I’m on a working holiday visa, companies know that I can only work for them for a maximum of 6 months, so don’t want to hire you. I’ve applied for every job going including shop work (yes, I applied to a shoe shop!...), restaurants, bars, call centres and even door to door sales. I had 2 interviews today, one for a restaurant that opens next week, and one for a door to door sales job. I’m tempted to look for farm work instead, because at least then the work will be counting towards getting my 2^nd year visa!

So yeah, I’ve been in Brisbane for 4 nights now, staying at Base Central. Met up with Ellie (from Spot X) on Thursday afternoon, and we went over to the Southbank, which was just as nice as it was 2 years ago. We had a walk around and took some photos. 

On Friday I job hunted most of the day, then in the evening went out to look round some night markets with Helena, a girl from my dorm. I could have spent so much money there, they had some really pretty jewellery! Maybe if I get a job I’ll treat myself to something!

On Saturday Shweta arrived in Brisbane, which was good. In the evening we went down to the hostel bar as it was ladies night. So between 9 and 10pm they had free champagne and free cocktails for all the girls! And to top it off they played a Blink 182 song!

Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got to report for now. Doubt my updates will be as regular or as interesting once I enter the world of work in Oz!

Hope everyone back home is OK, missing you all lots! xxx