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.