Next chapter: Farmwork

OK it's been so long ago since I wrote an update and so much has happened haha so this is going to be one long ass blog. So I left Cairns beginning of October. After I sold my car, I made a few plans for things to do before leaving Cairns, because I finally had some money again!

I went on one last live aboard trip as a volunteer, which was fantastic. Diving on the Great Barrier Reef has been absolutely amazing and I miss jumping in the ocean 3 times a day. Part of me completing the Divemaster Course was to down a liter of beer through a snorkel, which was not great haha but now I am officially a Divemaster now!

I did another bungee jump and went on a camping trip for a night. I did one night of camping before during the 9 months that I'm away, which was in Thailand and so so cold. So I thought, oo I'm in

Australia now and its starting to become summer, so it's getting hot, I'll be fine. We hired a car and drove up to the Atherton Tablelands to Lake Tinaroo. I had an air mattress and some sheets with me which I thought would be enough if I was wearing a jumper and leggings. But as soon as we arrived at the campsite it started raining and we didn't really have anything to cover ourselves so we had to be a bit creative. Also we didn't bring any wood so we tried to make a campfire with wet wood, which didn't really worked out as we hoped, but it was enough to roast some marshmallows. Then it was time to go to bed and my worst nightmare came true, again it was so cold. I was wearing all the clothes that I had with me, but we had a cheap tent and for some reason the inside of the tent was wet so as soon as you would touch 'the roof' you would get wet too. I think I slept for maybe 3 hours all together and as soon as the sun came up I escaped from the tent to get warm by what was left of our campfire.

I said goodbye to a lot of nice people and I decided to go to Zaïda's working hostel in Childers, and hopefully we would find a job together. I did not get much sleep the few nights before I took the bus, which -in a way- was a good thing because the busdrive was 24 hours. I was happy and sad at the same time when I left Cairns. It felt weird leaving a city behind where I lived and survived in for about 4 months and it meant a new chapter which I also was kind of looking forward too. Zaïda visited Cairns in July, so it wasn't that long that we didn't see eachother, but still it was nice to see a familiar face again and not starting this new chapter entirely on my own.

Even though there were no actual jobs in Childers, you always have the possibility to go to a farm and pick cherry tomatoes, which is paid piece rate, $5,00 per bucket. So since I was there I thought, I might as well start with this, at least it counts toward my 88 days. Also Zaïda had told me some horror stories and I felt like I needed to see

what she went through for so long. And it was bad. Really bad. We had to wake up quite early but I was used to that due to all the early morning dives, so that was not a big deal. For me the kneeling down and bending over all day killed me and I have absolutely no idea how you would be able to do this for 6 weeks and luckily I only had to do it for 2 days before I stared a real hourly paid job.

I'm got an hourly working in a trailer sorting and weighing blueberries and occasionally we rotate and I'm outside supervising the blueberry pickers. I had to get up even earlier, 4:10 AM to be precise and it was getting hotter with the day and last one day we worked in 37 degrees which apparently 'was nothing compared to what was coming' so that's just great. Oh well, I was able to save some money which I still desperately need if I want to keep traveling for a while, so I can't complain now. I hoped I could get all of the 88 days done at this

farm, but after 2,5 weeks the farm fired around 70 pickers and all of the sorting/supervising backpackers because the season was ending soon and they didn't need that much people anymore. There's not much to do in Childers in the weekends, which is good for saving money too. We went to Bundaberg for some bowling and laser tag and there's a $2,50 swimming pool which is quite nice on the hot days.

Zaïda also lost her job and we started another job, picking lemons. We were told that it would pay $180 per bin and it takes about a day to fill a bin. Not knowing that we would share the bin and actually had to fill 2 bins if we wanted to earn $180 per day per person. Once we arrived on the farm it was pretty clear that 2 bins was not gonna happen, let alone 1 bin. The first week we made around $40 - $80 per day, for 8 hours of work. Luckily, I knew it was only for 2 weeks.

Just before I left Cairns I met a nice aussie guy, Brandon, and we kept talking during the time I was in Childers. I told him that I lost the blueberry job and he said he could get me a job in a mango farm where he works every season, but it would take a while before that season started so that's why I did the lemon picking, to still get some of my 88 days done. Slowly I made plans for my return to Cairns. I know, crazy, because as most of you probably know, I wanted to leave this city so bad. End of November I took the bus to Airlie Beach where he picked me up and we went camping for a week, making our way back to Cairns. We stopped in Airlie Beach, Ayr, Ingham and Mission Beach. I really enjoyed this week and I began to fell in love with this guy, even though we didn't even know each other for that long. It just felt right and I can be completely my weird self around him haha. I do realize it sounds all cheesy hahah but I don't care, I'm just happy. The camping was -not like all my other camping trips

abroad- fantastic. We camped on beaches and national parks, made campfires, roasted marshmallows, peed in the wild, POOPED in the wild, showered out of a 19L water bag and had canned food from a camping stove. What more can you ask for right. We didn't camp on the obvious campsites, but more in the middle of nowhere or beaches, but that lead to a few creepy encounters. On the second or third night around 3:00 AM, a car pulled up on the beach and shined it headlights towards our tent, and then turned around and left. The same thing happened on the last night in Mission Beach, except Brandon didn't wake up when this guy pulled up. This was even more strange and creepy, because again it was just before 3:00 AM, but also this guy took a torch and went into the sea. What on earth would some random dude do at 3AM in the sea with a torch. I watch way to many thrillers and horror movies, so my fantasies just escalated and it scared the shit out of me. The guy was there for about half an hour and still Brandon didn't wake up. At the same time our air mattress

had a leak so every time we moved, it would make a noise. Oh man haha just thinking about it again freaks me out, but eventually he left and THEN Brandon woke up, of course. Oh well, we survived and it was a good week.

Last week we started the job on the mango farm in Mareeba. I'm what they call a 'sticker girl' and I get to use a sticker gun to put stickers on the mangoes. Pretty good job to get my 88 days done. It goes so fast though (I have to move the stickers to cover the marks on the mangoes) and my hands are as fast as lighting, or at least that's how it feels and sometimes I don't even have time to go for a pee or a drink. I work from around 7:30 in the morning until 7:00/7:30 in the night, so it really is all work and (almost) no fun. However it's all good because I'm with ma boooii. We're staying on the farm and every day we have off, we try to go back to Cairns and relax. So that's what's happening now. We worked 5 days and have the day off today, so finally I have time to do this blog again. Who knows when I have time again!