Taking photos in different places is confusing.

When I first got here I thought all the photos I was taking looked really washed out, it was as thought the strong sun down here bleached the environment. But now that I'm looking through all the digital photos that I've taken in the last two or three years; I find myself thinking that all the photos from England look as though the colour has been sucked out, or not allowed to develop from all the grey clouds. This could also to be with that I've been slowly moving out of desert climes while in Australia, and spending more time with people. So photographing the tropics where is rains more so the wildlife is more lush, as well as people who generally look a hell of a lot healthier than the pasty poms back home may have something to do with it. Or my eyes are acclimatising. I guess I'll only know when I look over my pictures in a couple of years, hopefully with some objectivity.

Loxton; the town with the lowest % of indigenous people.

It's cold day today. It's cold for the middle of summer in South Australia. I just changed into my work trousers, not out of necessity, but because I wanted to feel comfort in my clothes. I guess having spent most of my life in England means the familiarity resounds well with the current weather. And I'm a bit depressed from the lack of work, so wearing something warming helps.

Wearing something as 'normal' as possible can make me feel like I can just slip into the background and avoid too much contact with the outside world. Jeans and a jumper is the most normal thing I can think of.

When I arrived in Loxton I knew I would have to wait a while for the grape harvest to start. I was prepared to spend a week maybe two walking around the town, reading, watching films + TV, talking to the other backpackers (Australian's generally keep a bit of a distance, most are polite and friendly, but still keep on the edges of our world. Meeting people from all over the world, who are motivated and adventurous enough to leave their hemisphere is pretty cool. Even if the conversation topics get a bit dry after a while. Talking shop is always boring, but when you work on a farm it's suicidal). So having been here five or six weeks (I haven't dared check) I have worked for just over two weeks. It was an OK job (btw this has become the way to describe work it seems. The deciding factor on if it's bad, ok or good comes down to how much money you can make in a week). I.e. we would work between 4 and 7 hours a day, (if it was too hot we would get sent home) and we got paid $17 something an hour. The work was easy; thinning orange trees of the scarred fruit and thinning down any multiples so when the get big they don't damage each other. The boss was really nice, in fact it was hard to decode what he actually meant underneath all the compliments. Every sentence started with “You're doing a good job”.  Messing about with the ladders was good fun.

The two tourist attractions in the town are the Historical Village and The Tree of Knowledge. The historical village is like an interactive essay on Australia's ignorance on it's insecurity about it's lack of white history. Nothing but loads of old stuff in badly built buildings. So when you go in the butchers shop, you think "wow so this is what it was like 50 or 60 or 80 years ago in rural Australia. Fascinating"  Folk history is odd.  The Tree of Knowledge is a big tree with dates on. The dates mark how high the flood waters have been. But I don't know how accurate it could be, because if the tree grows surely the dates will move up? Or do tree trunks grow out, not up?

The path along the river is now flooded, so it's impossible to walk the route/scenic footpath. One of the 5 five possible activities is now off the list.

I played basketball yesterday, for the first time in years. The shoes I was wearing have given me 4-5 blisters (I'm waiting to see if one is going to appear), so I won't be playing again for a day or two. There is a pool down the road though. It opens kind of randomly. I've been down a couple of time when it's meant to be open and it wasn't. And when it was open I asked to leave after a while because I was the only non-member swimming, and the staff wanted to go home. I was reading a book by then so it was no big deal really.

I've been debating leaving town, as everyone says the new owners of the hostel aren't looking for work as much as they should. And most of the people here aren't working. But most of Australia's farmland has been hit pretty bad by the weather. Someone from this hostel went up to Cairns (far north east) the other day and she has work now. But they were just hit by a massive cyclone last week and more are still due, so I don't really think it's a great idea to head in that direction. And it would be cool to head up to the northern territory, but a cyclone hit the other night and caused loads of damage. The whole of the east coast is basically raining all the time. And the west coast is raining quite a lot as well, with spots of flooding. I should really check what al/el Nîno is doing before I head somewhere.

UPDATE:

I now have work. I worked for a couple of days cutting currants off the vines so the can dry out and be harvested by machine. It needed doing quickly, because it was raining and I guess they would split. The farmers were English, so didn't wimp out while it was raining. That was nice. All the Australian farmers I've worked for have been really soft when it comes to the rain. Mostly very hardy to the heat though. The farmers were really nice. They left out tea, coffee, biscuit's, fresh fruit and instant soup. It's a shame it was only for a couple of days.

Now I'm picking wine grapes. It's paid by the bucket. We get 85c a bucket (before tax). The problem at the moment is that most of the bunches have dried out, so nearly every bunch we pick off each time is half the size it should be. A few people have quit already, due to only being able to make about $20-30 a day. It's understandable, but I think it's better to make a little money and waiting until we get onto a different variety  next week.

Last weekend (after cutting currants), I decided to drink as much as I could for some reason. This ended with me breaking my karaoke virginity, then coming back to the hostel and nearly breaking my nose in shower. I spent all of Sunday throwing up. It was good.

And I think that's all.

-Oh no I just remembered something. Picking grapes is actually very easy, just very boring.

updates

Seeing as there was little work in Bundaberg, I decided to leave for Port Macquarie to see my cousin Luke who was just back from his holiday in Fiji. He lives not in Port itself, but just over the highway in the country, on a few acres of land next to a forest (which one of his neighbours owns). I spent my time tagging along to the beach or town with Luke and the kids (Ben and Grace) or his wife Cindy and the kids. Or staying at home playing with the kids on the Wii or Playstation, when the weather was bad. Sometimes I did some work for Luke, painting or a bit of gardening. There being so much land though, a bit of gardening actually meant driving a tractor round with mower on the back or chopping down saplings to stop the wooded bits getting to over grown and becoming a fire hazard. This being Australia everyone has to take fire hazards very seriously (you have to apply for a permit to have a fire most months of the year, no matter how much it has been raining recently).

Just before Christmas there was a party in the shed of a neighbour's (it was too wet for the outdoor event that was planned). This involved a bar-b-q (naturally). We forgot the veggie sausages (Luke is also a vegetarian) so I got quite drunk quite quick. Chatted a bit to very conservative neighbours and watched the local kids ride around on scooters. I don't understand how or why everyone under a certain age has these things to ride around on. When most of the party had left some of the drunken 'girls' and I danced on the table to the Pouges and Irish folk songs. Then joined the other stragglers and talked until it was too late for anyone to still be up.

For Christmas Lunch we went to friends of family down the road. An English couple, the husband also a doctor in the same hospital as Luke and the son is friends with Ben. A bit of a know-it-all brat but the parents were fine. The wife's mother was down from England for Christmas as well. The hosts and most of the people there being English, there was turkey and ham for Lunch and nut-roast for Luke and I. Plus crackers and games with sprouts on the street. The kids played in the pool while the grown-ups chatted and played 'the game', which is basically an expanded charades. Really fun.

A couple of days later Aunty Mose (who is known as Granny Mose of course) arrived just as I was getting up (I was meant to greet her at the airport, but over slept). It was really good to catch up with her, we also went on a walk with Ben, Grace and Chilli (the dog) in the bush. After a few days I started figuring out how to get to Sydney for NYE. When I got round to booking the bus it was fully booked (doh!), so I looked on gumtree to see if anyone was driving down and found a car which was going from Byron Bay past Port Macquarie called them up and arranged to meet at MacDonald's 2 mins down the road on the highway. I got dropped off by Luke at 2am and waited till 6 for them to arrive... Luckily I had Terry Pratchett's The Lost Continent audio book to amuse me (its about Aus, in a sideways kind of a way).

So when the sun has risen and Macca's had finally opened the car arrived. It turned out they had problems with the roof-rack, it was rubbing on the car under the weight of the bags. Plus the car owner was really tired from getting drunk the night before. It was a really nice bunch of people, I forget their names. All foreign, the driver was Russian/German, there was an English guy, a French girl and an Indian guy. We talked about Australia, and music and life. I tried driving for about 1/2 a mile, then decided I'm not confident enough to drive a 4x4 full of people, having previously only driven very small light cars round England and recently passed my test. They dropped me off in Sydney and I got picked up by Paul in his air-conditioned beast of a car.

So I spent a few days hanging round the house talking to Yvonne, Des and Paul a bit. Doing a few laps in the pool, sun-bathing, sorting out pictures on my laptop, reading. Then New years eve came and we went for a meal in North Sydney, then went down to watch the fireworks by the Harbour. FUCKING AMAZING. I wish I'd taken my camera.

Then I set about getting a coach to Adelaide via Melbourne. Missed the first one due to me not knowing where Sydney Central Station was on the bus route. Stayed another night at Yvonne's, then got a lift to the local station in morning and got a suburban train to Central first thing. This was so I could try and nab a cancellation. My luck was in, I got a seat on a budget coach to Melbourne Booked a bed in the YHA down the road while travelling down. I spent the journey looking out the window at the landscape which still captivates me here. Chatted to the guy sitting next to me, who was going back home to feed his dogs or something before heading back to Sydney to see his family again. Or something like this, he wasn't very clear about it. Its funny how when I say that I'm going to pick grapes people ask if I've been trained or have experience. I really hope its not as complicated as these people think.

Eventually got into Melbourne at 11pm (we left at 8.30am, coaches are long). Its really nice seeing people greet the weary travellers at the station, or surprise them with flowers. Makes me feel homesick in a warm way. So I jumped the tram a couple of stops down the road and checked into the YHA. I remembered about a photo I wanted to take, which involved walking down the road in time for rush hour in front of the train station with the risen sun glaring. When I got down there it turned out there weren't as many people there as I remembered from my last visit. I guess most people are off for their long Christmas break. I didn't have much time either as my bus was leaving for Adelaide soon. When checking out I checked into a YHA in Adelaide, just for piece of mind really.

This coach was much quieter than the syd-mel one. I didn't have anyone sitting next to me, so I just looked out the window, read Trainspotting, watched the awful movies forced onto us on the coach, listened to music and slept a bit. Its weird how its totally acceptable to sleep all day on a coach or train, but if you do it anywhere else you're a dosser or something to the same effect but less old fashioned. I think people people who just sleep the whole journey are really dull. I love having the time to read or listen to music. If I could I would spend most of my life on public transport. Maybe I should be a musician and just go on tour constantly. The actual gigs may get awkward, as I have no musical bone in my body.

About an hour from Adelaide I got a call from Luke (who I met in Bundaberg, and I emailed saying I would be in Adelaide soon, this is a different Luke, German Luke. There is also Aussie Luke). (Emailed sounds better than facebooking I think) He was staying in a Hostel much cheaper than YHA, with his girlfriend Lydia and her friend Diddy. I met up with them and we bought a crate of beer and got a bit drunk in their room.

The next few days we went geo-caching, I went on a walk with Diddy up Mount Lofty, went drinking in some alternative bars in the CBD for Luke's B-day, drank Taiwanese bubble tea, explored Adelaide, went on a bike ride to the beach (it rained and I got a flat tyre. But I ate chips and watched the gulls, it was a nice day out, even though everyone kept whinging about how annoying my bike was). The day I left we did a really cool geo-cache on an island in the river. We had to rent a peddle-o from down the river and sneak away past the bridge to the island to find the cache. It was a really great way to leave Adelaide. Before the floods the day after...

I got the overpriced bus to Loxton checked into the workers hostel at about 9.30pm. Had a few cigarettes with the people out on the balcony, and a couple of glasses of wine then crashed out. Now I'm waiting for the grape harvest to start.

Rain, rain, rain

Still in Bundy, the weather is still terrible. It's sunny for a couple of days at a time, then it pisses it down for ages. At least when it only rains in the morning and work gets called off, we can get a bus to the beach to swim and sunbathe. But when it rains all day there is nothing to do but read, watch films in the smelly TV room with a leaking roof, smoke, drink tea or beer, think up different recipes using as many [insert which veg is abundant at the time] as possible (there are two carrier bags of toms in the room at the moment, some are ripe, others will be in a couple of days), walk to the library to use the internet, try not to think about how much money your not making etc.

Christmas plans (as all my plans seem to do regularly) have changed again. Instead of India, I'm hoping to go down to see my cousin Luke, who lives near Port Maqurie, which is about halfway between Brisbane and Sydney. That's on the right side nearish the bottom of Australia, if your geography of this massive island is as bad as mine was before I got here. There is town called 1770 up the coast. I still don't know why. So yeah I should be leaving Bundaberg next weekend I think. After Christmas I think I'll go down to Sydney to see my Step-Dad's Sister and visiting Father, then go to some hippy festival in northern Victoria somewhere.

But this may well all change tomorrow.

So far I've worked planting sweet potatoes, weeding Dutch flowers, chipping cane, picking zucchini, picking squash. Hopefully I'll get onto a watermelon farm this week, it's not as bad on your back as what I've been doing so far, but most of the watermelon farms only work about 4-5 hours a day, and if it rains a lot of them won't pick, because the melons are too slippery to chuck about, and they get fingerprints all over them, which is why they normally start about 8am, they dew has to burn off before they can start. It been pretty cool seeing how all these different fruit and veg get farmed.

I think after NYE I'll head West to the Southern Territories. I got a phone number of a really good sounding working hostel a couple of hundred kilometres north of Adelaide. They have work for the grape harvest, which is meant to be really well paid and you don't have to bend over!!

I've picked up a few tricks for hostel living. Put anything that goes in the fridge and a mouse may eat in a tough plastic box; the dryers and washing machines can be made to think there is money in, using cotton buds, but they tend to get stuck so it doesn't work terribly well; if you want work you have to get up for the first bus and wait around till the last one leaves, you may not get work that day, but when someone is needed you will be the first to get a job; things that are more likely to be stolen, aren't expensive, but cheap (no guilty conscience) and useful, like tea-towels, cheap sharp knives, washing up liquid, toothpaste, your towel (well not stolen, just used in a way that you wouldn't like i.e. to dry the bathroom floor) crockery, milk etc. but if you lock everything up, it's no problem, its just easy to forget.

Backpacking in Aus

"England"

"Cambridge, yourself?"

"I got into Australia about a month ago, but into Bundaberg last Sunday. I flew into Melbourne, spent a week there and wanted to get out of the city. Headed up to Red Cliffs, which is near Mildura in North Victoria for two weeks. Then I got a phone call from someone responding to an advert for a lift up to Byron Bay area, so got on an over night bus back to Melbourne to be picked up at 7am and driven to Sydney first; with this guy who was staying in the hostel I was in Melbourne and came up to Red Cliffs to try and find work with me. Abdulla was driving, he is a farmers son who converted to Islam. He was driving up to go to a Permaculture course near a hamlet The Channon, which is near Byron. We stayed in a pretty grim, but cheap hotel near where he was staying in Sydney (Bankstown, encase you know Sydney). Got up to wait for Abdulla (who was late again) to see he had a bandage on his wrist. It turns out his erratic and awful driving was due to a pulled muscle in his wrist. I would have have taken over, but he doesn't have car insurance, and if I scratched a car when parking I really wouldn't be able to pay for it. So back on the road again, stopping for fuel, cigs, prayer, food, find a hotel/hostel on the internet, and of course the toilet. Australian stop things on the motor way are really good, theres space to camp, clean toilets, no rubbish, simple, but what you need. Getting a vege burger from Macca's however is impossible, which is annoying as they have free WiFi.
After Sydney we arrived in Nimbin, the cannabis capital of Australia. Looking for paid farm work. Not the smarted move of my life, as its all WWOFing round there, no paid work, unless you have a steady skunk supplier. Drug dealers constantly hassled us as we were walking down the street, checking out the town and waiting for the bus to Byron Bay. In Byron we had about two hours before the next bus to Brisbane left, so we went to the beach and got some lunch (I'll put some photos up soon from Byron). Byron Bay is just a pleasure town for 18 to 30 ozzies, talk about hell. It seemed to be shopping day as all the kids had trolleys full of booze and food while walking down the street. We were the only people on the bus to Brisbane. I think everyone was going the other way on Saturday night funnily enough. Crossing the boarder into Queensland from New South Wales, means going forward (or maybe back, not sure, time zones confuse me) in time, as they don't have Daylight Savings in QLD. This means it get dark at about 7pm! Ace.
We booked into a Hostel round the corner from the station, checked in (just before about 20 other people turned up with out reservations either), and went to the pub! Eventually we found this nice theater bar, where a Caberet show just finished, where we paid about $6 for a drink (thats a lot by the way, oh and I'll talk about the sizes of beers in Aus in a bit, its fucking ridiculous), went back to the hostel, picked up this girl, and went to an Irish bar (Phil is Northern Irish, and has awful taste in pubs, maybe as a result I don't know), after playing pool really badly with this Canadian Hockey player. Got really pissed in this Irish bar shouting over the terrible cover band, and everyone else's voices. Then we went to a 24 hour pancake place down the road. Yes a 24 hour pancake place, IN A CHURCH! If your in Brisbane CBD, hunt it down! I can't remember where abouts it was, I was drunk.
Went back to the hostel, I got up at 7am and went for a walk to take photos (will be online soon) checked out at 10am to get the 11am train to Bundaberg (as Phil found out from a mate that there was work there). The train was fully booked so we got the next one, and had to burn about 6 hours in Brisbane with hang-overs. Luckily it wasn't hot.

Got the tilt-train to Bundaberg, checked into the scummiest hostel I've ever seen, with some of the friendliest people I've ever met. Everyone wants to say hello and ask what you've been doing. The work is back-breaking, today I bought some Protein Shake, so some of this crazy exercise actually does something beneficial to my body. No sheets on the bed, so I had to buy one, yesterday I killed a cockroach larger than my thumb, I swear the shower has never been cleaned, mice are constantly fighting to get into everyone's cupboards, the fan ticks in the night when we try to sleep, the walls all have gaps along the top (I guess for ventilation) so you can hear your neighbours chatting away, some of the farmers are literally slave drivers, but others are really sound, luckily the weather has been pretty shit so far, so no breaking my back in 35-8'C this week."

"So where in Australia have you been?"

"Wow you've been here a while."

"I think I'll be leaving at Christmas, to go to India to see my Mother, as she is working there, then near Alice Springs for NYE to see a friend."

"Which farm were you working on today?....."

Idea for light painting

At the moment I'm planning a way of projecting photos, and then photographing them to make a light painting animation. Below is an example of a sequence of photos which could be projected.

A shower in Red Cliffs, VIC

The rain forecast for this weekend has been in the local news this past week. If it's as bad as feared, it could ruin the wheat harvest in a couple of weeks, which is really serious in the local farming communities. On the upside, locusts can't swarm in the rain. more info here