Alex

Hello again,

The Golden Gumboot ; the height of this boot is how much rain fell in one year here in Tully (7.9m)

Just a short one today to tell you all about my sweet job! I started work on Wednesday and woke up at 5am fully prepared for a hard days ‘humping’ (carrying banana bunches on your back) but when I arrived me and another guy Dan were made Irrigators. This basically means we get to spin about a HUGE farm on quad bikes that go to about 50mph, up and down the rows of bananas and fixing the sprinklers! It can be hard work as there has been some major flooding in some paddocks and so the pipes are often buried under logs or are hanging in the trees, but for the most part we just drive up and down the rows stopping every now and again to machete some leaves and grass away.

Also the heat around midday is scorching, so if we start to drip sweat we can just lop the end off a main line and get drenched – which we probably do every 10 minutes!

A view of my world...

Apart from a couple of small things like getting badly sunburnt hands and leaving my sunglasses next to a burst water junction (which of course I fixed and so theres no way to tell it apart from the hundred or so others) I pretty much landed one of the best jobs on the whole farm. In fact it occured to me yesterday while driving at break-neck speeds around deserted roads, seeing wallabies in the grass, parrots overhead, turtles in the river, being completely surrounded by tropical plants and jungle covered mountains and getting paid $140 a day… I think I’ve found the very definition of a Working Holiday! )

Until next week, take care x

G’day everyone!

Plastered in Mamma Afrikas - a place now forever etched on my memory!

I finally managed to get out of Bowen after 4 days and caught a bus back to Airlie Beach, which was so late leaving a local who’d been past a few times stopped to see if he could help me out! When I finally got back to Airlie I checked back into the now infamous Magnums hostel, and went out for what I planned to be a quiet drink. That night I met Joleide and Jolenze from Denmark and we played drinking games with cards, roping in randoms as they walked past, until we ended the night crashing out in their campervan! The next morning the two girls headed up to Cairns despite flood warnings, while I spent hours on the internet and the phones looking for work. That night I vowed to have a quiet night in, but had just started to read my book when I got chatting to my roommates, who then put on some music, offered me a beer and I had to write the night off. We ended up doing the typical Airlie Beach pub and club crawl – which ended for me at least with Jaggerbombs at Mamma Afrikas….

I woke up to find that most of my roomates had gone, so I spent the day in the lagoon, chatting to a S.

Beautiful Mission Beach

African guy I’d met before and job-hunting, which was fruitless. When I got back to the hostel, again hoping for a quiet night, I found that 3 girls had moved in (their first day in Airlie) and so despite lying on my bed reading, between them and Stewart (a Canadian) I was persuaded to have a drink at Magnums. Inevitably one drink turned into downing jugs playing ‘Ring-of-Fire’ or ‘**** the Dealer’ which was great fun and we gathered quite a crowd! At some point we ended up at Beaches and Mamma Afrikkas (2 more clubs) although I have no recollection of them at all, but I do have photos! Much later on we all ended up swimming in the lagoon in our underwear which was pretty funny, especially as I ran into Rikoh, a friend from my last visit, who was equally if not more smashed than the rest of us.

Julie (or France's Tarzan) cutting fresh coconuts

So it was with mixed feelings that I caught the bus back up to Townsville the next day (all roads to Cairns now open), a mixture of relief of finally getting out of Airlie but also a little gutted to be leaving such a good and fun (if exhausting) lifestyle behind.

In Townsville I was finally reunited with my camera after so long, and spent a couple of days relaxing and watching films with the others at the hostel. After watching fight after fight out in the street from the safety of my balcony I decided not to go out in Townsville, and instead headed up to Tully.

Here I basically walked into a working hostel as someone walked out, which was really lucky as I’d been phoning this particular place for weeks with no luck. Now I’m thinking of settling here probably for a couple of months to earn some money doing banana picking, which is apparently really hard work but the social scene on the weekend is quite good. Yesterday 11 of us went over to Mission Beach which was a tropical paradise! We swam in a sea that was too hot to be refreshing (like a really warm bath!), relaxed on the sand and ate coconuts freshly fallen from the trees… and some green ants, which was a first!

Hope your all ok and the British weather is being kind to you, take care, Al x

A wild Cassowary - the most dangerous bird in the world

Hello again,

Well this will be a quick one as I’ve just been kicking back really! Or more like pub-crawling every night but it amounts to the same thing! )

Airlie Beach Lagoon - spent a lot of time here...

Team Canada came up to Airlie and we had a good laugh along with Mike and Lisa, messing about in the lagoon by day and getting drunk on the beach by night. The next day though we found out that all boat trips were cancelled and the roads north to Cairns were flooded, which ruined Team Canada’s plans (and mine, although they’re sketchy enough not to count), so we spent a day on the internet making new plans.

It turned out that the roads immediately north of Airlie Beach were flooded but may be passable in a week, but the roads up to Cairns would be out for a lot longer because of two cyclones. I needed to pick up my camera from Townsville (a little north), so I stayed around for a few more days in Airlie, while the guys flew to Alice Springs. During the next few days I hung out with Karin, a Swedish girl and her friends Nick and Linda as well as a guy called Rikoh who works on the boats.

The place to get drunk on the cheap!

The rain was incredible and lasted for days and days, although one night I got wetter than usual when Karin pushed me into the lagoon; jeans, shirt, shoes, wallet, passport, phone and all! No worries though, I got my revenge! )

The only problem with Airlie (described as a drinking town, with a sailing problem), is there is very little to do other than to go out, get drunk and meet new people! Which is fantastic fun, just painful for the wallet!

I had several really good, often messy and extremely memorable nights out in Airlie beach, which was finished off with a sambuka-shot-per-five-minutes-dance-like-an-idiot-till-4am night with Rikoh! What a legend.

Finally yesterday (Friday 6^th) the bus company decided to make a go of it and I was free at last! Only problem was that by the time we got up to the small town of Bowen fresh water had flooded the roads again, so I got off and am now staying in hostel/rural-town-bar – which is pretty cool. I have to admit that while last night was fun; chatting to Aussie farmers and dancing with young engineers – seeing someone get glassed and being bored stiff today was not so great.

I’ve now decided to scrap Townsville and re-beg Australia Post to send me my parcel elsewhere, although I genuinely have no clue where at the moment!

Hope your all enjoying the snow, take care, Al x