A week in OZ...

Hello there. So since I dad the last blog we flew to Darwin, then to Brisbane...then back to Bali...which is where I am now. We did that all in about a week. I just didn't like Australia.

So we made took the 2 and a half hour flight to Darwin and arrived at our hostel at 4am where we arranged for someone to be there to we could get a bed. But of course no one was there so we had to sleep outside till we found an open common room. Good start. The weather is Darwin was pretty crap. This time of year the weather in the North is pretty wet and in Darwin it's really hot. So its soooo muggy there. Apparently it was quite easy to find work there but we really didn't want to stay there, it was kind of a hick town with not a lot to do and the weather was crap. One good thing was there was a bar what gave you a big free dinner every night, I guess to get you to buy drinks and that as well...so that was Darwin.

Next we wanted to fly to Cairns, which was on of the places we were most looking forward to but we couldn't because of all the flooding in the region. It was impossible to drive down the coast and Cairns itself was in water. So looked at some weather reports and decided to fly to Brisbane as the weather looked better and from there we could look for jobs and travel down the coast. So we took the 4 hour flight to Brisbane after about 3 or 4 nights in Darwin.

We got to the hostel we booked....it sucked! There were these stupid rules all over the place, including that if you take a shower for too long then you loose your deposit. For Christ sake! Our room as well was packed with 6 people and had leeks from the roof. For this we were paying about 14 quid each. We thought about what we could get for that in Asia. So before we left we took a picture of our room in Brisbane and will compare it to what we can get for that much in Thailand, we'll be living in luxury! Another night we had these two guys sleeping there who both snored incredibly loudly, literally right beside me which gave me no sleep. Everyday we tried to go out and find a new place but nowhere had vacancies. So we thought we would try really hard to get a job, make some money and get out of here. But that was so difficult too. Because of all the bad weather around, flooding meant there were so little harvesting jobs going and the ones that were wanted you for several months. Even those ones were hard to find. I know people do the fruit picking for the experience but I'm sorry but I don't want to live on an Australian farm for months on end picking fruit, what kind of experience is that? Why would I do that to myself? We heard a lot of stuff about some farms that employ you but not through an agency. Apparently they don't pay you what they promise and a lot are really racist and don't employ Asian or Black people. I could just imagine slaving away as the Neo Nazi owner of the farm drinks moonshine and chews on straw ha! Maybe I'm dramatizing it a bit but this doesn't interest me. One agency actually had jobs on farms going but apparently they wanted 'EXPERIENCED' fruit pickers...come on! I've picked fruit before, I even made a pie with some fruit in it, that not experience enough?

One of the last nights we went on a night out. We had heard before we came here that although Oz was a western country the rules were really relaxed compared to others. This just wasn't true. There's crazy rules everywhere. On our night out Jay got turned away from a backpacker bar because his shoes looked too much like skater shoes. What the hell? For one his shoes are really expensive Nike's and for two, who the hell cares! It was one of the last straws for us. We were getting really fed up by now.

Another thing was the lack of football. I swear Australians don't like or show football much just to be stubborn. I mean the FA cup was playing last weekend and we couldn't watch it or check any highlights, what is that? Its so annoying, football is huge for me and I couldn't take it. The thing is, all the while we were spending money like crazy and weren't actually doing anything, just getting by. SO we got to the decision that we didn't want to be there anymore. So maybe we made a slightly hasty hangover decision but we booked two tickets back to Bali for the next day. It may have been impulsive but I'm so glad we've done it. This way we can have a month in Indonesia and a month is Thailand before we go home. These places are cheap and so much fun, experiencing different cultures, partying, seeing crazy things everyday etc. I think at the end of the day I hit the nail on the head when I said to Jay that I felt like I was in England but without the 3 things I love at home, family, friends and football.

I've really ripped on Oz but there were a few things that were cool. Cooking our own food after so long was cool, we made some really nice curries and that was fun. Also the social side of being in a hostel there was cool, we met some really cool people. Hot showers were also pretty sweet. And I think we got really unlucky with the time we got there as well. With the combination of the floods in the north, fires in the south and the recession all over the country it was expensive and extremely hard to find work. But at the end of the day we wanted really enjoy our last couple months and we knew that we would do that in Asia. It was crazy and a waste of money to go to OZ and back but we weren't to know and I'm glad we came back instead of just seeing out our time in OZ, that's the beauty of not having a flight home, you can do spur of the moment stuff like that. Plus it's my birthday tomorrow and I'm so happy to be spending it in Bali. Speak to you soon x

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