Some of my adventures in Australia

Oceania » Australia » New South Wales » Griffith
March 29th 2014

Published: April 7th 2014

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Egregius

Car in Orange

My car! And: where I spent my nights in Griffith. For free.

First off: I got a shiny new car!

Spent 2 weeks in Sydney, slowing being drained of cash (funny how fast things go with 150 dollars a week for the hostel, and then shopping and indian food @ $7.50 to $10 each day)..... trying to use the internet at the hostel (soooo slow; I'll never take speedy internet for granted after 1+ year of trying to use free internet at hostels in NZ/OZ), trying to find a suitable car for my travels while not being distracted too much by the game of Dwarf Fortress.

And here it is! A 2001 Daihatsu Pyzar.

Oh yeah, buying cars in Australia is really confusing, with all the rebranded cars, renamed cars and the 'local' Holden company (owned by GM) selling cars that are essentially Opels and Suzuki's under a new name, but depending on build year for which car you actually get.

I spent twice as much this time (1900 AUS$, aka 1300 EUR) on again a station wagon, this time with only 155k km on it! It's in good condition, except for the dents on the front bumper and side doors, and tiny spots of rust. And despite being

Car in Orange 2

Doesn't look like a station wagon if you compare it to the rest.

advertised as coming with a brand new radiator, it seems to be leaking water somewhere.

However I'm quite happy with it! The seats minus headrests fold down completely to form one big mattress (why don't all cars have this?) with some curves. And I've done 1000 km on it already, for just 100 dollars in petrol (with NZ gasprices I did 4 km/$ over there with the toyota camry).

Parking is a breeze, seeing how gas-guzzlers dominate Australian roads. The picture to the side was taken at the camping site in Orange; for a station wagon it's positively tiny compared to all the ute's (aka pickup trucks) and bigger station wagons. Finally a car with a tiny turning circle :P

But as the title promised, time for some adventures (ahem, *cough*)!

Sydney: too many cockroaches

Halway through my stay in Sydney, I had to move from my hostel, because I hadn't extended my stay in time, and that same weekend there was the Future Music Festival. Big festival, big names, all hostels booked out. Oops...

Luckily found Kanga Backpackers near Hump Backpackers, in the same King's Cross district. The only thing...cockroaches everywhere. I could see

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Oh yeah, Kanga House Backpackers. Notice cockroach squished IN the microwave display.

them scurrying around from my bed (top bunk...this time I was happy for it) and every time I was in the kitchen. The limit for me was when I was heating a savoury pie (OZ/NZ favorite dish) and I found a cockroach IN the oven. I closed the door again, kept pre-heating it till 230 degrees..that should kill it right? When I opened the door, the cockroach jumped out. >.<

It was later found climbing into the oven again. (also see picture to the side of the microwave)

Apparently you can't find an affordable hostel anywhere near the city centre without cockroaches, because humid heat + 100 people in a house..

The funny thing is is that Hump Backpackers had all the organisation, friendly staff, free pancakes, 1$ taco nights and free breakfasts, and I didn't really connect with the people. I was there to work/find a car, they were there to party. But in Kanga Backpackers, I connected much more with my fellow travellers over the appalling conditions. I see this a lot more in reviews of 'horror-hostels' interestingly enough. Stockholm syndrome?

Orange: too many backpackers

So I was all too happy to leave expensive

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Like in NZ, they have an import section in the local supermarket. We dutchies get our own section again! But still no decent appelstroop, just crappy sugar beet syrup :(

Sydney, and set out for the Blue Mountains (aka first time Australia started to impress me, see pics), and then Orange. Orange is named after Prince William of Orange, a combat-chum of the land surveyor that did the naming of cities around the area. And in Orange, they grow apples and grapes. Obviously.

If you go to Australia, one can get a second working holiday visa if you do farmwork, and to aid in this, there's the 'harvest trail', which is a government website+hotline that aims to help you find farmwork where it's needed. They give out free booklets at info stands with all the listings of places to go, when and for what. Orange is the first city near Sydney, which meant it's a logical first place to go to orient, if not work. Apparently plenty of people thought the same, and I spent 5 days trying to get an apple picking job, which never materialised despite several promising leads. There were simply too many people looking for it.

I did spend my nights in a lovely nature reserve: on top of the local mountain/hill, with a spectacular night view of the surrounding nature and cities. And

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Ahhh, Auckland, how I miss thee..

some radio masts (see car picture). Was awesome when there was lightning though!
Free showers to be had at the nearby camp site down the hill, as well as free BBQ facilities. But one can live off peanutbutter and bread for a while, when one has run out of cash after buying a car :P

Griffith: too many flies

After some frantic searching on the library's free internet for jobs, I managed to discover a working hostel in Griffith that seemed legit. There's plenty of working hostels around (including Griffith and Bundaberg) that promise loads of work, and then you end up there in a crappy hostel, and you only get 1-2 days of work per week; just enough to keep you paying the rent, but not enough for people to be able to leave..it's quite evil around some places. Also: loads of scam adds on vacancy sites.

Called the one that seemed legit, and they said they might have something for me based on my previous job in the Netherlands (something with responsibility) and the fact that I'm a bit more mature. So I got here, and the next day I got started in the broccoli packhouse.

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Quite like the architecture in Sydney. More older buildings compared to NZ, and thus more stylish.

I was expected to be a supervisor, including driving a forklift. Never done it before; weeeee!

Alas the current supervisor, a fellow dutchie called Akke didn't quite agree, and the owner/boss didn't seem to see the need for another supervisor either. Thing is with the hostel I'm working for is that they sometimes want to push people onto farmers, because more workers = more cash for them. You see, all jobs in Griffith are what is called 'cash in hand', and they take 2-3 or I heard even 5 dollars for every worker, depending on payrate. Thing is...they do know where all the jobs are, and get good jobs for a lot of people depending on season.

So yeah, didn't get called back the next day, and then a few days later I started with broccoli picking for the same farm. Then there was some hazelnut tree planting for Ferrero Rocher (yes, I'm helping with the production of Nutella!) an hour's drive away, in employ of an extremely dickish South African named Jan (e.g. "You! Don't just stand there, pick up those pots!!!" when you look around for just 2 secs to see what to do next..) and

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This definitely looks like the Amsterdam school of architecture to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_School

then back to Broccoli picking, which will be stable until August, bridging those tricky winter months.

Except we currently have a gap week, because some seedlings died due to heat, so there's a hiatus in harvesting. Ah, the backpacker's life..

Oh, did I mention flies? The one big downside about Australia are NOT the spiders/snakes/crocs, but the flies. They're everywhere and in large numbers. They seem to like the broccoli too (that or the nearby rock melons), and they land on every part of your face: your lips, nose, they buzz in your ears, and sometimes they walk over my glasses. God forbid you cut your hands picking broccoli with those big cutting knives, because they're out for blood. Has only happened twice in the 3 times I've picked though; I usually stand on the truck because I'm too tall to be bending all day.

The flies help predict the weather though: if you're accosted at 7 in the morning, it might rain, otherwise they're most active around 16 to 18.

Close encounter with death

Oh yeah, before I forget: spiders yeah? On my second day of chucking broccoli into the bins on the tractor/truck-thingy while

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Almost every town/city in NZ/OZ have their own memorials dedicated to the World Wars. This is definitely one of the more impressive ones.

the pickers walk behind the truck, throwing the broccoli on the conveyor belt, I stood face to face with death itself: the broccoli I was holding had a web, and in that web there was an Australian Redback Spider, one of the more venomous spiders in the world.

I want everyone to know I did what I had to do: I plucked off the leaves off the broccoli head, and chucked it into the bin like the others. All in a day's job.

Griffith: too much drugs

One last note in this overly long entry: the drugs man, what the hell! Griffith is known in Australia, besides as a harvest hub, as the nation's drug capital. The city is full of naturalised Italians, and the Maffia is in Griffith as well apparently. The hostel has it's known dealers; a fellow french backpacker in the house I'm staying at (one of 3 houses; the hostel has about 120-140 people working through them or just staying!) was weighing marihuana on an electronic scale ("No no, I'm not a dealer, just helping a friend!"), everyone seems to smoke marihuana, and on saturdays there's talk of who is doing what pills before going to

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A gold encrusted dead tree in the middle of Sydney?

the one place to go out in Griffith, called 'The Area'. Every week there's a fight at The Area, or just people looking for one.

Not only that, but it's widely known the hostel owner has a coke habit. ("What did you expect? He's Italian and he's a millionaire" "He's a millionaire?" "He has 140 people that pay him 130-150 dollars every week, and he earns on us working, as well as transport, of course he's a millionaire").

His brother looks pretty intense to me as well. And to top matters off, the (Italian) broccoli farmer I'm working for is rumoured to have bought the farm together with his dad with drug money. And he has wild mood swings and a constantly runny nose...

In conclusion:

Yeah, loving my working holiday visa so far :P

I'll stay in Griffith while the money is good, and I'll look to get a fork lift license so I can get better paying jobs in agriculture. What's up with me being the designated driver all the time anyway; don't they know me and my lack of driving skills?

PS1: no photo's from Griffith, as there is little of interest

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Nerdy stores everywhere :)

to photograph here.

PS2: 37 pictures that prove Australia is pretty crazy (includes a picture of the fly-problem, though we don't have it quite that bad here so far)

Additional photos below

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