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?....."