www.flickr.com

nothing because it has to be connected to my computer to work, grrr


prawn cocktail crisps

pilchards on toast (you can get pilchards there but they just don't taste the same)

decent tv

jaffa cakes

Greggs pasties

proper beer (as in Black Sheep, or Timothy Taylor's Landlord, or Cwrw Haf, the list goes on...)

Monday, October 24, 2005

Mum made it too!

Having left the hostel at 5am this morning in order to get to the airport to meet mum, we've finally made it back here...4 hours later. Mum took longer than most to get through quarantine as she had to have her shoes sprayed because she's been in a rural area recently. Then we had to suffer my driving back into a city that I don't know. It wasn't too bad actually and mum was quite distracted from my driving by marvelling at the jacarandas (I think that's how you spell it)in bloom :)

It was really really nice to see mum walk round the corner into the Arrivals lounge but I think it may take just a little bit of getting used to the fact that this is Australia and it now has my mum in it :)

She's upstairs having a snooze at the moment. I'll go and wake her up in about an hour so she doesn't get too out of whack with the time difference. I can guarantee that she's going to be exceedingly tired by tonight though!

All in all I'm glad that she came here rather than us go to Bali, I really want to show her this country that has well and truly won me over.
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Saturday, October 22, 2005

I made it

Hooray! Huzzah! Woohoo! well, you get the idea :)

I made it to Brisbane! 26 hours on a flipping coach after leaving Cardwell. Thankfully it was a lovely and nice coach rather that the rattling falling apart one that conveyed me down to Cardwell from Cairns. I knew it was going to be a fairly tough journey when every single person I talked to on the coach winced visibly when I said I was going all the way through to Brisbane. Still, I'm here now with my sanity more or less intact (although I was forced to sit through 'Elf' from which I have not quite yet recovered from the tendancy to burst into Christmas songs but I'm getting there!).

If my timing is right, mum will already be on her way to London by now to catch her flight. She'll arrive at 9.30pm Sunday GMT, 6.30am Monday for me. I'm still trying to think of things to do with her (the Australia Zoo seems a fairly safe bet) but I'm sure we'll get there! I'm still excited, I can't wait to see her :D

Right, I need food. Time for an explore of the West End of Brisbane's streets.
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Friday, October 21, 2005

Leaving Cardwell


Well, today's the day that I'm off down to Brisbane. Fun fun fun!

Cardwell's been cool but I can't wait to see mum and hopefully TAB in Melbourne :)

I'm just lazing around today. At some point before about 4.30pm I really should pack my stuff but no worries, it can wait for a little while!

I've finally managed to work out how to put photos on this page (well, I knew how but the computer was being far too slow but this has, thankfully, passed, yay!) so here, just for all of you, is that picture I tried to put up a few posts ago of me in my bikini (apologies to one and all for it!).

I had a bit of a rant yesterday at work with one of my co-sorters about the wastage of food they have going here. When I read my sister's blog about the starvation and conditions in Namibia and know that I was paid to stand there and pull not only rotten or split bananas off the bunches but ones that were too curvy, or too straight, or just didn't make the bunch look nice. Not only that but bananas HAVE to be in bunches, which means 3 or more, so perfectly good single and paired bananas weren't even considered, nope, it's out to the thing that cuts them up into tiny little pieces. Bunches also have to have two rows so a bunch of (over 3, of course) bananas that just happen to be in a single line rather than two rows, out they go too.

The waste is incredible. We had thousands of bananas pass through our hands every day, every hour really, and we threw away at least one banana from each bunch.

The stupid thing is that as a single (up until recently anyway) girl buying food just for myself, I'm more likely to pull one or two bananas off a bunch in a shop and buy them rather than the whole bunch.

This world makes no sense, no sense at all.
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Thursday, October 20, 2005

More and more wildlife

We were on the bus to work this morning when, at the first bus stop, we saw a young kangaroo hop across the road! This was the first 'roo not in captivity that I've seen so I was, understandably, very excited :) After work, waiting at the same bus stop for people to be dropped off, Vince rescued a young turtle attempting to cross a road which we let into the nearby creek when we had everyone. Again, the first wild turtle I've seen in Oz :)

I've also finished work *does victory dance*. I leave tomorrow on a gruelling 26 hour bus trip to get to Brisbane (a few facts here. I will be on a bus, discounting stops, for approximately 18 hours of travelling to get to, not the country capital, nooo, just the STATE capital. I don't know quite how far it is but it's a long way. And Cardwell is approximately only half way down the coast of Queensland. This is a BIG country). Mum gets here in just under 3 1/2 days, I can't wait!

Today has been a good day.
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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Singing in the rain...


Welcome to the Wet!

We've just had the mother of all thunderstorms, a kind of welcome to the Wet season (you don't get winter and summer here, you get Wet and Dry).

I had a lovely time running and dancing in the pouring rain. You could almost swim in the air there was so much water!!

I love summer rain :)
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Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Good day

Today was quite a good day. After working our socks off for the first 2 1/2 hours, we came back after smoko to the rather nice fact that for the moment there were no more bananas. This happy situation continued on and off for most of the day. Given that yesterday was a mad banana filled dash to get our work done this was quite a nice change :)

I talked to TAB last night and have come to the conclusion that the fates are conspiring against us. Having been sacked last month he has been job searching but, after being told that he was too senior for the one job the agency he's going through put him up for, he's going for jobs in other cities. Which is all well and good, I don't mind where I go, but he'll know by the end of the week whether he's got a job in Adelaide or not. If he's got it, he'll pack up immediately and go and stay at his parents house for the short term which means that I may not even see him when I get to Melbourne in 10 days time, grr! I hope that he gets the job, I really do, as he's bored and miserable and needs the money but some really selfish part of me hopes that he at least doesn't hear until AFTER I've seen him...
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Monday, October 17, 2005

Very excited

Oooh, in a week mum will be here! Can't wait :)

Also only 3 days left at work among the spider infested bananas, woohoo!

:D
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Saturday, October 15, 2005

Bloody technology bloody useless...mutter...grumble...


I have had it up to HERE with technology!!! Having assumed for a while that my USB cable to connect my MP3 player to computers was knackered because it wouldn't work on TAB's Mac or PC laptop I found out that it did actually work. I've just spent 40 sodding minutes searching the internet for the right driver to download to this computer and have just discovered that for some bizarre reason although it recognises that I can put things from CDs ONTO my MP3 player, I can't put stuff from my MP3 player onto CD.

Great. Just what I needed. My player has already frozen this year and I was really worried that I was going to lose everything on it (it's only a quarter full but that's still 5GB of music). So, I wanted to back it all up (and create a few CD's for mum and me to listen to when she gets here) but noooooo, of course that would be too easy to do wouldn't it!!

I think I'm going to go and sit in a corner and rock quietly.

p.s. the photo I'm going to attempt to attach to this is proof that I've been out working :) (and yes, that's me in the hat)
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Thursday, October 13, 2005

Knackered

I decided I would have a change today and took my MP3 player into work. It was the only interesting thing to happen today apart from our conveyor belt breaking which meant I didn't do any real work for 45 minutes. Oh and another spider landed on me. Along with a couple of frogs, some slugs and some roaches :(

Only 5 working days left. I can do this, really I can. I'm sure.

Please, any support available at the minute would be much appreciated.

Also I'm a little annoyed as I can't work out why my emails aren't getting through to my aunt and uncle, and I'm not sure that theirs are getting through to me. And I have no credit on my phone.

I am sorry, I will stop complaining...just as soon as I stop having to deal with the bananas. Even pineapples were better.

Apart from the whole fainting thing *sigh* ah well. What will be, will be.
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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Ouch

My fingers are so sore that I can barely type at the moment. It's amazing how just picking up bunches can really kill. Pumpkins were a good hurt at the end of the day, you felt you'd achieved something and you felt good. Bananas just hurt. And I don't think my shoulder is supposed to make crunching noises whenever I move.

Ah well.

Only 2 days left of this week and 6 days left of this job in total. Tomorrow will be half way through the hell that is this job.

I felt really guilty last night as I had a bit of a go at TAB for playing computer games instead of talking to me. I apologised later as it wasn't completely deserved and he'd already had a terrible day but I still feel a bit bad about it :(

I offer a heartfelt prayer to any deity that may be listening, please please PLEASE make the 24th come really really quickly. Pretty please with a cherry on top...
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Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Stupid computers

Bloody hell! I tried to post 'more wildlife' but it wouldn't do it. Just in case it had gone and posted it I logged out, left it half an hour and came back to look. No post. So I re-write the sodding thing, re-post it and it puts both of the bloody posts up!
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More wildlife

Spiders on bananas, midges in the water on the floor at work (my feet are more bites than foot), a tiny little frog in the bananas and a bloody huge tree frog that nearly gave me a heart attack when I was in the bathroom last night.

And I'm hungover.

And TAB appears to be more interested in playing Metal Gear Solid 3 than in talking to me.

9 weeks, 3 days left to go...
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Monday, October 10, 2005

Counting down...

I'm a great believer in counting down to things. I don't know why, it just always makes me feel better if I know exactly how long I've got left.

When I left my job in Leeds I knew I was leaving in December and decided my 25th (shh, don't tell anyone) birthday would be the best day to leave being just near Christmas. So, from the moment I got my visa I had this little internal countdown going on. To the minute. Literally :)

Anyway, this little internal countdown has started again, I have, in total, 9 weeks and 4 working days left of nasty harvest work to do, 2 weeks and 3 days (ish) until I see TAB, 1 week, 5 days and 13 hours until I see mum, and 1 week and 3 days until I've finished this bloody banana job (do NOT get me started on that), or, as I like to think of it, only 8 working days. Woohoo! Each little goal reached means I'm closer to the next one.

So, 8 working days left in the banana shed...
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Saturday, October 08, 2005

Poetry, literature and the like

I had the most surprising conversation with an Aussie guy living here called Corey the other night, a self confessed, usually drunk when not working, bum. We, somehow, got onto the subject of poetry. We just went on for ages, he didn't really approve of some of my taste (Keats in particular) but did approve of my liking for Coleridge and was quite impressed at the amount of 'Kubla Khan' that I can recite from memory, even after a couple of beers :)

I also had quite a good time today when I borrowed a copy of 'Going Postal' by Terry Pratchett that someone had left on a table. Made my day as I am sorely missing my bookcase full of books :( I also was in shock as I looked at the bibliography and realised that there were not one, not two, but THREE books that I knew absolutely nothing about! 'Thud!', 'Where's my Cow' and 'Once more, with Footnotes'. How has this happened?? I simply don't understand how I managed to miss the publication of these books, that's not like me at all. It's so easy to get really out of touch with the real world when you live this sort of life, time especially seems to be playing a little game all of it's own. I still can't believe that it's actually October, I don't feel like I've been gone that long at all.

Anyway, should TAB and I still be together at Christmas I DEFINATELY know what I'm going to ask for!

He's also going to get a bookcase, something no place should be without.
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Hungover without reason, grrr

For some reason I feel this morning like I had a huge amount to drink last night and am completely hungover.

This, of course, is impossible as I actually only had 4 beers over about a 3 1/2 hour period. I'm not that much of a lightweight!

Anyway, feeling terrible aside, I'm glad I didn't have to go to work today :) Getting up at 5am would not have been an easy task!

I know that the picture I tried to put in in my last post didn't work, I'd finally managed to email it to TAB but it did not want to upload to Blogger, so I gave up for the minute. I promise I'll try again soon. TAB did say that he thought it was a good picture which was a blatant lie but made me smile all the same :)

I'm trying to figure out things to do with mum in and around Brisbane as she wants to stay there for a few days. Am not entirely certain that there is that much to do or see apart from the Gold Coast (which quite frankly I don't think is mum's cup of tea and definately isn't mine, FAR too touristy) oh, and Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo, which will be worth a visit. Have been scouring my Lonely Planet in an effort to find out more stuff so fingers crossed something will come up.

Anyway, I need another coffee, then I'm going to go for a swim as I'm still keeping up my 'trying to get fit' phase.
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Friday, October 07, 2005

Bananas

Well, the decision has been made for me. At 5.40am one girl decided she wanted a day off so I took her place (which, considering the bus leaves at 6am I thought was pretty nice of me). I've spent the day in a banana packing shed. Not the most thrilling work but I didn't faint which is always a bonus!

Anyway, at the end of the day they asked me to come back next week so I'll keep the job until I have to leave to meet mum in Brisbane.

I'm hoping to upload a picture of me in my bikini but I don't think the computer likes it so it might not appear :(

Oh, and concerning wildlife. Geckos are cool, you can hear them chatter away at night and the mozzies are a pain but bearable. The birds and fireflies are cool but I really REALLY object to having big grey hairy spiders drop onto me while I'm working. Or, actually, at any time at all.
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Thursday, October 06, 2005

Decisions decisons decisions

I have a choice to make. I have to be in Brisbane by the 24th October to meet mum but the time before that is mine. I can either stay here in Cardwell where I know everyone and there's a pool 5 minutes walk away where I can go for a swim everyday and do exercises and stuff and they'll give me the first suitable job available or I can head on down to Bowen where they pick generally the same sort of stuff and I don't know anyone.

I'll probably stay here, it's easier, but on the same note I doubt I'll get a job. Grrr.

Ah well, it'll give me a chance to get fit and work on my tan...or at least, getting slightly less white :)
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Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Bored now

Well, not much to report really, I'm still here in Cardwell unable to work because the only jobs out there are picking, not packing, and I think Monday proved how incapable I am of doing picking work. Anyway, even if I was willing to subject myself to the torturous heat and constant bending down and standing up, Darryl and Nerieda are not. They catagorically refuse to give me any jobs that will most likely involve me passing out again. So here I am.

Mum's just let me know that she's flying into Brisbane in just under 3 weeks time so there's no point me going anywhere else until after her visit so Cardwell it is until then.

I've decided that after mum's visit I'm going to head back down to Victoria as the apples and cherries start in November in Shepparton and the surrounding area which will be much better for me. Hopefully it will also mean I'll be able to see TAB at least most weekends which will be even better. To get my 3 months done though I'll have to work it nearly all in one go which is something I was trying to avoid. Oh well.

I'm determined to get fit. Even after just packing I felt so much better by the end of the week so I'm busy looking up exercise regimes I can do here (after all, it's not like I don't have time on my hands now is it?). It's not so much weight loss that I'm after, simply toning up would be nice and I won't achieve that by sitting round all day reading or going on the internet. I even intend to keep it up when I've finished the fruit picking much to TAB's astonishment. Now, I'm the first to admit I'm not the most athletically minded but contrary to what most people believe I do enjoy feeling fit it's just I find gyms so mindnumbingly dull that I refuse to fork out the cash to go there. I need to find a sport that I enjoy that keeps my mind active as well as me.

I'm thinking of taking up fencing.
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Monday, October 03, 2005

Antiseptic please

Yesterday pumpkins, today pineapples, tomorrow...something less painfull please.

I have scratches ALL over me.

And I fainted.

They're not giving me any more picking jobs, I'll just have to wait until a packing one turns up. This may take a while longer than I thought it would :/
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Sunday, October 02, 2005

Not good

I just received an email from my mother whom I am supposed to be seeing in Bali in 3 weeks time. As most of you will now have heard there have been more Bali bombings and mum is, understandably, concerned about our trip and, quite frankly, so am I! I hadn't heard anything about the bombings until she emailed me so it came as quite a surprise. I'm going to ring her in a minute and see what she wants to do, it would be lovely if she could come to Australia but I don't know how long it takes to get a Vistor's Visa for here. I don't think it's long as my Working Holiday Visa only took 48 hours so that shouldn't be a problem.

I can't believe that it's been bombed again. I feel quite selfish though as all I can think of is 'Thank god we weren't there' but is anywhere really safe these days? Melbourne has been stated recently as a target for terrorists and I have no doubt that other cities and places will be hit. All I can hope for is that me and mine are not involved. We had a lucky escape in London, and a slightly less narrow escape from Bali, I just hope that our luck continues.
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Saturday, October 01, 2005

Settling

Life here soon settles into a pattern, you get up at 5am with the morning wake up call and the bus is at 6. There's no time, you don't have the energy and there really isn't a point in having a shower given that 5 minutes after you start work you're going to be filthy and sweaty as hell.

We had a pretty good boss last week, we started at 6.30/7am-ish and worked until 'smoko' at 9.30 for half an hour. Then it's through until 12 when we stopped for an hour's lunch. You work the hardest in the morning because that's when it's cool enough to actually get stuff done. 1pm it's back to the fields again, most likely catching a lift on the back of the trailer. You stop to drink water any time you get a couple of seconds respite and you go through several bottles a day, we also had a water barrel strapped to the back of one of the trailers.

3.30pm we finish, gratefully and hitch a lift back up to the farm on the trailer again and it's in the Ute (and yes, we are in back country Oz, EVERYONE drives Utes) back to the bus stop where the bus from the backpackers picks us up at 4pm.

Home by 5pm at the latest, shower, food, a beer and it's in bed by 8.30/9pm.

I'm still bemused by the fact I'm getting up at 5am every day...
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Good day

Yesterday was a really really good day. We slaved like, well, slaves in order to finish the field (we've had more people helping us over the last 2 days so we have been able to pick more pumpkins) and worked a bit later than usual but we nearly finished the field (only half a row left for those poor sods who elected to work today, I volunteered to be the one who went with the bus to Ingham and do the shopping for the ones working as I really needed a day off!).

After work Ben, one of the workers and a really nice guy, took us up in his Ute to near the Murray Falls up river from the farm and we went swimming in the pools up there with a couple of beers and lazed around on the rocks in the evening sun soaking up the heat and then went back to his place for a bbq. Just what was called for after a hard day in the fields. We lay on the rocks and watched the stars come out, I thought you could see a lot at home but that in no way compares to what you can see when it's truly dark here. Lying there in the dark looking for shooting stars and watching the fireflies in the bush was simply amazing.

I don't know if I'll be working for the same farmer next week as I couldn't work the weekend but I'll keep my fingers crossed because he's a really nice guy to work for and Ben seemed to think that he was happy with my work (even though I'm a hopeless picker, I'm a MUCH better packer by far but then he said that he needs people good at packing so that's ok then!). I've said that I'll work tomorrow if he needs me.

Yesterday was also payday (always nice!) but apparently because we're doing the visa extention thing we need to be taxed the extortionate amount of 29% instead of the 14% the others are taxed. Grr. Out of the $500 I earned last week I came home with $360. Not impressed in the least. Still, there's nothing here to spend it on so I should be able to save some!

1 week down, 11 more to go...
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