farming in kyabram

our friends zara and kay were already on a farm and told us we could come too. so after spending most of our money on a bus ticket we arrived in kyabram, most boring town on earth (little did we know that australia has even more boring towns). we called the farmer and he said he had no work for us. WTF!!! hannah and i found a shopping trolley where we dumped our stuff in and wandered around kyabram hoping to find work or a place to stay, pushing the trolley around like a bunch of bums. i think we only had about 5 dollars on us hahaha. what a day. we went to a working hostel and offered our passports as a deposit but the guy said no. we called the salvation army to help us, but they weren't allowed to help foreigners. we bought a can of beans and a can of pears with our last money in a supermarket where i also charged my psp, so we'd have a movie to watch if we had to sleep in some field. in front of that same supermarket a dog bit my hand. this day could not get any worse and we were laughing most of the time at ourselves and how fucked up our lives were at that moment.
later in the afternoon we tried to call the farmer once more and explain our situation. he understood how desperate we were and after much hesitation he had someone pick us up and 30 minutes later we were reunited with kay and zara and had a place to stay and a job!!! i was so happy at that moment, it was unbelievable. the 'place to stay' ended up being a complete insect fest and the 'job' was total shit, but at that moment, i was really happy to not sleep in a field somewhere.
the job was picking apples. what you have to do is choose a row of trees, strap on a bag, fill it up with apples and carefully empty the full bag in a big bin (which was about 1 squared meter). we were paid per bin (which is the norm at most farms) and most of us did about 2-3 bins a day. i think our salary was 17 dollars per bin, so we didn't make a lot of money. at all. and of course with our luck it rained pretty much every week and we weren't allowed to work in the rain, because it was to dangerous to climb the ladder. so we had to keep ourselves entertained most of the time, because we were literally in the middle of nowhere. the nearest little shopping area was a 40 minute walk away and all we had was a tiny tv with three channels. at one point i created a 'cinema' in our room with sheets and beds and we watched movies on my psp haha. luckily i was able to download movies in the library were we would hang out in weekends.

we weren't allowed to have any alcohol on the premises (as you can see on the sign on the left here), but we'd drink anyway. the farmer never really came over or anything, so we could do whatever we wanted. i think we stayed about 10 weeks in total. the picking season was over so at one point we had to leave. we got a weeks notice or so and looked for jobs online in the library. it's always really tricky finding good farm work, because jobs are always very well portrayed, otherwise no one will be interested. so what i used to do was look for reviews from other backpackers to see what the place is really like. most jobs that seem very nice with good pay turn out to be a total rip off. i even heard this story about a girl who found a job online somewhere, showed up at the hostel and was told to wait for a week, because the fruit wasn't ripe enough yet. she was paying rent of course but when another week passed she decided to do some research and it turned out that the hostel she was staying at, didn't even have any connections with any farms!! so she was promised work, but they didn't have anything!! and sometimes they guarantee you to be paid really well, but you end up getting paid horribly. and the problem is that as a backpacker you don't count. if you open your mouth and demand to be treated like a normal worker, they can just fire you, because you never get a proper contract. so basically you either get lucky and find decent work for decent pay or you just work your ass of for a little bit of money and swallow it...my advice for anyone going to oz and expecting to find jobs everywhere: make sure you have saved plenty of money. this way if you want to experience the farming life you can go wwoofing. wwoof means Willing Workers On Organic Farms, so it's volunteering at a farm and you'll usually get free meals and accommodation for your efforts. read all about it here.
the main reason i actually took up farm work is my visa. if you work for three months at a farm you will be able to extend you visa with another 12 months. this is mostly why backpackers go farming and why a lot of farms take advantage of them, because they know backpackers need to work there and will have to take their shit. i'm really sad about this and it's one of the reasons i had to go home. i worked my ass off and wasn't able to save any money, so i was basically just surviving instead of working and saving money to travel oz.

i actually really enjoyed the work, but it was really demotivating knowing you will not get paid a lot and won't be able to save anything. the rainy weather also didn't help much. the good thing was being surrounded with good mates and having people there who are going through the same thing and also not happy with the situation. we really had to entertain ourselves and try to motivate each other. when we actually did have some money we'd go into town on the weekends or have a little party in on of the empty rooms. have dinners together or watch the tiny tv haha. i was really lucky to have good people around :)
we ended up finding a working hostel in a town called mildura. but more about that next time.

sydney

in january i took a flight to sydney and stayed at the YHA near the harbour. it was a new hostel, very clean and way too expensive, but i was way too cool to arange any accommodation (stupid!) and after walking around the city for hours with my backpack looking for the cheapest place to stay i thought fuck it, i'm not moving anymore!

i was already low on cash and spent my first couple of days wandering around the city trying to find work at a hostel. luckily westend backpackers needed cleaning staff, so i moved in and stayed for a few months cleaning the hostel for free accommodation and trying to find paid work, but the jobhunt contained more hunt then job....i did manage to get some promo work here and there, but not enough to actually save anything.

at the hostel i met the coolest and weirdest people and partied A LOT. backpackers mostly from the UK, but also a few americans and canadians and even a few dutchies working at the reception. a lot of people stuck around for a while and there was a big group i used to hang out with. the hostel itself was a total party place and i got bedbugs about 3 times, punched a guy in the balls for touching my boobs, walked in on people having sex a bunch of times (someone walked in on me and a girl once hahaha), met a guy with five nipples and had my ipod stolen!!!

however, i also got to experience mardi gras for a second time and this time as a volunteer. i had to walk around with a tv crew filming the entire parade for some gay network and even though i wasn't allowed to bring my camera i brought it with me anyway (duh) and took pictures in front of the fence!!
i also did the coolest thing i've ever done in my life during this time: i posed naked for spencer tunick at the opera house!! it was one of the best experiences of my life, i cannot believe i was naked in front of the sydney opera house with 5200 other naked people!!! so much fun and the next day i was in the newspaper too.

my mate hannah and kim were staying at the hostel too, but after having no more money and also not being able to find work, they had to leave the hostel. which of course they didn't. the place was so unorganized, that they were able to stay there for a few nights without anyone noticing!! unfortunately some twat that was always minding everyone elses business told the manager and they were kicked out. the manager wasn't always around and i arranged for them to sleep in my bed, but of course that twat girl found out and then all three of us were kicked out!! luckily i got my deposit back, but i was still really poor and stayed the next two weeks with my mate sophie, who lives in the city. after that me and hannah decided to look for farmwork together.

malaysia - penang

i spent about 3 months in singapore before heading to australia. my dad and jade took me on a long weekend to malaysia. we decided to go to penang, which is an island northwest of peninsular malaysia and connected to the mainland by the penang bridge. other ways to get to the rest of malaysia is by ferry or airplane. we arrived at the capital of the island, georgetown, somewhere in the morning and spent the first day walking around exploring the city. armed with an incredibly touristy map, sunglasses and our camera's, we visited many temples, famous buildings, crowdy markets and tasted true penang food. the population is very varied with the majority being ethnic chinese, making penang the only state in malaysia where ethnic chinese forms a plurality. the official religion in malaysia is islam, but in penang the mosques are definitely outnumbered by temples.

buddhist temple, mosque and city hall

campbell street which is mostly chinese, the blue mansion, clanjetties

traditional penang laksa, the outside of popiah, springrolls guy

tossing noodles, guy cooking food and who was too busy to even notice me taking photos, chendol a sort of lemonade with gooey thingies in it

guy filleting fish, sunday market, veggies

pickled fruit, dried fish, goat heads, you gotta love asian markets

guys plaing checkers with beer caps, nightshot, outside food court

there are two places on penang you must absolutely visit: the butterfly farm and the tropical spice garden. of course we couldn't explore the entire island, since we only had 5 days, but these were really worth going to. after trying to get a bus we just took a cab to these places, since they were both on the other side of the island.

penang butterfly farm is the world's first tropical butterfly sanctuary and inside are about 4000 butterflies from 120 species. signs explain the life cycle and there are also some other interesting creatures crawling around:

lifecycle: egg, caterpillar, butterfly

butterflies on a pineapple slice, giant millipedes (that's their actual name), fluorescent scorpions

bunch of walking leaves, two iguanas

little alligator snapper, pignosed turtle, horseshoe crab

at the spice garden we took a tour with a guide who explained everything we had around us and after that we had a cooking class with nazlina, using spices from the garden itself and learning how to use them. we made spicy chicken with a salad and tomato rice which was absolutely yummy (the recipe can be found on her website). Underneath some pictures of the tools and ingredients we used and some pretty areas in the garden. The only bad thing about the garden though is the never ending clouds of mosquitoes!! The staff is so nice to give everybody free anti mosquito stuff at the entrance.


A couple more places we saw were the snake temple (with actual poisonous snakes), kek lok si temple (which means temple of supreme bliss) and one with a massive statue of a sleeping buddha.

back online

It's been a VERY long time since my last blog and so much has happened in the past few years, I don't really know where to begin! I think I'll just continue where I left off and tell you about my long weekend in Penang with my dad and Jade, my working holiday in Oz, the last few weeks before my return home and then what I've been up to since and what it was like to return from a 2 year and 8 months lasting trip!! I'll try to keep it in small edible sizes :)