The way to Cairns

I finally left Home Hill yesterday after another few weeks. Picking pumpkins in 32 degree heat was pretty hard work and the last few days was very cool and windy, and they say the wet season has started early so I'm glad I left when I did. I started to help train Spot as well. He was running through the paddocks and chewing the plants so he started to come on the packing trailer with me and he's taken a liking to eating the peppers to keep him happy.

The journey to Cairns was very long. The bus was over an hour late and we drove much of the day through rain and low cloud so I couldn't see much. I checked into a hostel last night just outside the main centre of Cairns, so its nice and quiet and I've a single bed! I've 2 weeks in the Cairns area and there are a few things I want to do, but I'm not booking anything until the weather gets better. For today though it's time to browse the shops for the first time in 6 months!

Home Hill

I headed to Home Hill, about 1 and half hours South of Townsville and very close to the town of Ayr where I was in March. Home Hill is very small with 2 small supermarkets, a pharmacy and a few pubs. I've currently been here for over 12 weeks and have been working full time on a farm for 10 weeks. It was really boring for the first 2 weeks as I only had 14 hours of work but now I'm working about 51 hours a week so all's good. I'm picking pumpkins which is hard work and also packing peppers which is much easier but I have to pack pretty quickly as they are packed on the back of a tractor straight after picking. Thankfully since I'm not picking the peppers so I've avoid all the sore backs. We have also done weeding which is back breaking, pushing seeds into trays, making boxes and also washing trays.

It's definitely the good wage that's keeping me here. The weather's hot and we've also had some cold mornings, days long and the hostel is pretty basic and full of French who only really socialise in French. I am on a small family run farm with only 6 workers so it's been nice to work directly with the farmer. There's a 5 month old puppy who I absolutely love and he's taken a liking to me and spends most of my lunch hour jumping up on my lap. He does bite and chew wrists and ankles though!

We've had lots of run ins with other wild life too. I've seem some huge kangaroos and emus, pigs and lots of snakes. The Burdekin area is full of sugar cane fields which they burn every evening. It's pretty cool seeing all the smoke billowing into the sky and the ash which is locally known as “Burdekin Snow” falling down. We even passed a cane fire right the way up to the highway.

I've the weekend off this week as none of the crops are ready for picking yet. I've headed to Ayr to pick up some bits and pieces. I haven't left Home Hill since I arrived so it's nice to get out even if it is only to Ayr and everything's shut on a Saturday afternoon. I'm staying another 2 weeks in Home Hill before heading to Cairns for another 2 weeks before heading home on the 3rd November.

Townsville and Magnetic Island

Townsville is a bit of an odd city. It has a nice waterfront but there isn't actually anything in the centre. All the shops are in out off town shopping centre. I spent the first 2 nights basically catching up with life and not doing alot really. I then got the ferry to Magnetic Island which is 8km off the coast. Maggie Islands nice but not as great as everyone goes on about. I did a couple of nice walks and sat on a beach for an afternoon (not intentional but i missed the bus back!). On one of the walks I saw a very active koala which was pretty cool. No swimming done though. The water was freezing and so were the winds.

I headed back to Townsville for another night. I'm staying a newly refurbished hostel so the beds are very comfy and there is free WIFI throughout (partly the reason I stayed the extra night but sadly the net connections been very dodgy today). Between here and Cairns there's no where worth stopping at the very little work but to the recent cyclone destroying pretty much everything. As Cairns is the end of the road and from what I here jobs hard to find there I've decided to head back south to Home Hill to try and get some farm work with hopefully more success than last time! I have a 3 hour wait at the bus station tomorrow for the bus. Great!

More greetings from Ravenswood

It's still pretty busy down the pub as the weather gets colder and the tourists form the south come up for a nose around town. We had a group of ghost hunting kids stay in the haunted room 12A but no ghostly happenings reported.

Lots of various motor bike clubs and schools coming for roast dinner (thankfully no fires the second time round) and different BBQ's. We also got the TV up and running for the State of Origin football (English rugby league) game which is 3 matches between Queensland and New South Wales. People seem to be very passionate about it so thats been a busy night.

I've also been out to Charters Towers which is the closest largest town. Its another former gold mining town which is kitted out with lots of nice building but not much else. I climbed up the very steep Towers Hill which is where gold was first found by Jupiter Mossman, an aboriginal stable boy. Theres a few information signs and lots of WW2 bunkers at the top, plus a great view over the town.

On the wild life front we have had an owl flying around upstairs which was cool as i've never seen a wild owl before. Also, I flushed the toilet and a green tree frog came through with the flush and jumped out onto my leg!

On the job front, I met with the Geology boss from Carpenthia Gold. Sadly he couldn't give me any work yet as he has too many junior Geo's and not enough experienced ones. Never mind.

The last month has been pretty busy with parties of uni students, high schools, motor bike clubs, a funeral, plus a man who was a spit of Hugh Jackson in the film Australia and a man who thought that England was very big and Australia small. He obviously had never seen a world map! We have also had mass panic as the only freezer broke down and a mega cold day where bar temperatures never reached more than 13 degrees.

I also finally got to the Burdekin Falls Dam about 80km away. The dam was huge. The spillway is 504m long and 40m high and water was still flowing over which was pretty impressive. When the water stops flowing over the road at the bottom of the spillway opens and you can get to the other side. The dam forms Lake Dalrymple which hold 5 times more water than Sydney Harbour. On the road we saw kangaroos (alive), wedge tailed eagles which were massive, and a baby pig. Sadly no emus! We also stopped at White Blow, which is just outside of Ravenswood and is a large quartz outcrop.

In my last week in Ravenswood I had a look around the court house and the original jail cell. I have been replaced by 2 English backpackers. Nice girls and it means that I have had a few evenings to drink on the other side of the bar. Time definitely goes quicker on the other side of the bar and after not a single alcoholic drink since arriving in Ravenswood there were a few people who owed me one! Stupidly I drank them all and i'm suffering today on my journey to Townsville.

Still in Ravenswood

A quick update from Ravenswood. It's been so cold the past week or two, down to 15 degrees so I've had to put on most of what I own. I've no idea how I'm going to cope with English winter! The days in the pub are so variable and we have had a couple of very busy but short nights recently, including fish and chip Friday which is crazy! Things are still never boring in Ravenswood. We've had a pretty big BBQ fire whilst John decided to cook roast beef on it and I saw a huge bird (looked like a skinny emu but it flew, so apparently its a plains turkey). We've also had fire alarms going off in the middle of the night. Apparently geckos get into the alarms and play amongst the wires. The poor things were probably just sitting on the battery in a bid to keep warm. I've finally taken a stroll around some of town, walking past the primary school which has 1 mixed ability class with just 16 kids in it. I also visited the cemetery, which most of the graves were from the late 1800's. Pretty old for Australia but not so old when you compare it to England. I've got pretty lazy here so I took Leroy and Rosie (the 2 puppies) out for a walk and had a great time wandering around all the old mining relics and watching out for snakes. The other night there was a huge python just lying at the side of the road which was pretty cool. The weeks are going so quick that I've decided to stay here until the end of June before moving on. I just hope that it doesn't get any colder but I'm assured it will not snow here!

Ravenswood

I have been working at the Imperial Hotel in Ravenswood for over 3 weeks now and I'm loving it. Ravenswood is a small town South West of Townsville and consists of 2 pubs and a shop/post office plus a few houses. I'm working mostly behind the bar at lunch and in the evening so I've learnt lots of new skills which I would never have been given the opportunity to learn in the UK plus I'm widening my taste in country music. The town is heritage listed and was booming with around 50 pubs at the start of the 20th century when gold was discovered in area. Customers are mostly tourists and locals during the day, and in the evening the workers from the local gold mine and cattle stations turn up for and rum. It's been really hard work at times as everyone seems to drink so fast and the accents and slang has taken some getting used to. Everyone's really friendly and the locals are something never seen before- no teeth (one claims a rat stole hers) and everyone seems to have a dog! Although I've liked meeting other backpackers in the hostels it's been great to chat to the people who actually live in Australia. Living wise, I'm working about 45 hours a week for a flat rate and I get my own room and can eat meat and chips every night and I don't have to cook it which is great.

Despite its size there hasn't been a dull moment yet in Ravenswood. I don't want to do everything at once though. Behind the pub there's a huge disused open cast mine and everywhere you look there are remnants of the gold mining past. We have also had a magnitude 5.2 earthquake whilst I was working behind the bar which was pretty cool and last week we had a King Brown snake slither into the dining room! Thankfully it was spotted as there was just me in there eating breakfast. If a King Brown bit you, you would die before getting to hospital so sadly the snake had to be killed with the help of a couple of spades.

I have not internet or phone signal in Ravenswood but I managed to grab a lift to Townsville with the beer run so I can pick up some bits and pieces today. It's getting into Autumn and it's cooler so I'm wishing I hadn't sent home my warmer clothes. I hope to stay working at the pub for at least another month (flights to London are crazy expensive here) and then I think I'll head to Townsville and back into the land of communication to try and see if I can get a geology job with the local mines as my degree is actually worth something here due to a shortage of geologists. For now though I'll continue serving the beer.

Still in Ayr

After 16 days in Ayr and not a single bit of work I'm officially bored. 10,000+ photos sorted, 20 films watched and 6 books read and i',m ready to leave. We are in now into the harvest season which lasts until November and fruit and veg are ready to be picked but the farmers apparently arn't ready and the fields are too damp. I can't understand it as surely the food is going to rot! I had a spot of luck this week as a lady from a hotel in nearby Ravenswood called the hostel and was looking for someone to work for her. I've happily said yes and i'm hopefully getting picked up tomorrow. Even if I only stay a month it beats sitting around here so hopefully it will all work out. We are currently on Tsunami alert after a earthquake in Indonesia. Quite exciting since we are only a few kilometers from the coast!

Ayr

I spent just 1 night in Airlie. It's basically just a little town full of bars and not much else which serves as the leaving point for overnight sailing trips to the Whitsunday islands. As I wasn't going sailing I had a nice afternoon lounging around the artificial lagoon on the sea front. You can't swim in the sea here because of lots of jelly fish. From Airlie I got a bus to the little inland farming town of Ayr which proudly declares that it gets 300 sunny days a year.. This town has more fruit and veg picking work than workers in the peak season so I was hoping to pick up some work here. I been here 7 days now and there's still no work due to a very rainy couple of weeks. I think i'm going to sit out the boring and costly wait though as I will get the hours when the work comes which should be within the next week. Theres not a huge amount in Ayr. A couple of pubs and supermarkets, a McDonalds (besides the library, the only place to get internet) but no actual shops to buy clothes and things which is good. The town is also stuck in a time warp. Instead of the usual DVD hire shop there is one filled with videos so the hostel is full of people lounging around watching very old videos and reading books. The places is also full of geckos and tree frogs wandering the walls in the evening which is pretty cool.

Bundaberg

Bundaberg is a typical working class Aussie town with some cool architectural building typical of the tropical north- large through windows and balconies. The town is also home to the Bundaberg rum distillery which is advertised by a polar bear so there is a bit of a theme to town. I headed to Bundaberg in the hope of finding farm work but what I got was lots of rain, a horrible hostel, crazy humidity and a town that shuts entirely at the weekend. Bundaberg was hit badly by the Christmas floods so there is very little farm work which has been divided up between the 100's of backpackers here. I've asked around and most are getting just a couple of hours a day which pays the rent and thats about it. I've decided to push on north towards Cairns but after a day of sleeping with nothing to do in town, the only bus I can get is late this evening and I've had to check out of hostel so I'm left which nothing to do for the day but sit in the library whilst it's pouring down outside. My legs did get picked up my a PR for a camera company which was a little bizarre! I'm getting on a night bus to Airlie Beach which will take 12 hours this evening.

Fraser Island

I booked on a 4wd tour of Fraser Island which left from Hervey Bay. The idea of these tours is that you are put into small groups, given a 4wd land cruiser and then drive around Fraser island for 3 days, 2 nights following a lead car so that you don't get lost or caught out by the tides.

Fraser Island is a 30 minute ferry ride from shore and is the largest sand island in the world and what makes it cool is that it's covered with rainforest and it's inaccessible without a 4wd. The aboriginals call it K'gari which means Paradise.

We spent our first day swimming in Lake Mackenzie which was amazing. The lake was huge and the waters crystal clear. We also swam in Eli Creek and drove down long empty beaches. The sea looked really nice but you can't swim in it as it's shark infested and full of nasty jelly fish. Our camp was already set up for us- very basic tent, toilets and showers with some very scary spiders that I'm slowly getting used to. Dingos also roamed through camp which was really cool. The wild dogs however can attack if they feel threated and we were told just to stand still if they approached us. This training came in good use when a toilet trip saw a few of us between a dingo and a rubbish bin food source!

More swimming on the second day and we were having the best weather I've seen in Australia. We swam in the Champagne pools which are large rocks pools that the waves fill making the water bubbly. We walked to the top of Indian Head which is an aboriginal massacre sights which gave us amazing coastal view and we also swam in Lake Wabby which is at the foot of a huge sand dune.

As we were due to catch a lunch time ferry back to the mainland we had limited time on the third day but we still managed to fit in a swim in Lake Birebeen and a trip to see the Maheno ship wreck which lies on the beach shore. The rusty wreck was once a passenger liner which sank in a cyclone whilst being towed to a Japanese scrap yard. It was pretty cool to see the waves crashing through the empty shell. We also saw a much hated Cane toad in camp that morning. It was absolutely massive!

Fraser Island has been a brilliant trip and it's amazing how much fun you can have when you give people a bit of sand, plenty of swimming opportunities and a campsite. Although there were 30 people in all the cars you only really mix with the people you share a car with as you spend 24/7 with them. Thankfully I had a great group- a mix of English, Swiss and Brazilian and we had a fab time and it was sad to leave them as I headed next to Bundaberg.