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.