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Published: November 6th 2012
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The first thing that came to my mind upon arrival in Cairns was,
'now what'.
I walked to the nearest taxi and asked him to take me to a hostel of his choice. We pulled up outside 'Calypso Inn', a 10 minute walk from the center of town. As soon as I arrived I asked for work for free accommodation in order to save a bit of money. Now, I know what you're thinking, trying desperately to save money as soon as you arrive in a country is not a very good start to a holiday, and you're right, I hadn't saved up that much money at all. You see the plan (if you can call it that) was to stay for a week in Cairns and then look for farm work for three months to get some good money in order to fund my travels. Well, just as my brothers predicted, I got slightly caught up in the traveler's way of life and didn't really make much of an effort look for work. I worked at the hostel for a week receiving the title 'Sweeps', (the leaf sweeper every morning from 7am).
Within my first half hour in Australia
I was handed a bong. Lee, the night watch, an Englishman, walked into my room and said, "welcome, do you want a bong?", to which I replied, "sure, why not" (peer pressure is a glorious thing - not that I'm complaining, free drugs are great). I spent my first day there high and later on, drunk. I'm not too sure what sort of a first impression I made that day, I can't remember.
I went snorkeling during the week with Lee and Alex, another Englishman. I saw Nemo. Okay, I lie, the scuba instructor pointed Nemo out to me, and I actually couldn't see him but didn't want to tell him, so pretended like I saw him. But, I did swim with a turtle and touched his shell.
On my final day of sweeping I started work an hour and a half late. I was engaged in a deep conversation with Alex on the sofa and totally lost track of time. I was told off for this. Later that day, Lene, the German toilet cleaner, told me how she had been told off for not cleaning one of the toilets and for leaving a hair on the floor. We decided to leave and go in search of farm work. Bowen seemed an appropriate place. We sat for 3 hours discussing the matter, rather annoyed at the way we had been treated. Along came Lee, "they told me I can't drink on the job anymore" were the first words he spoke. He was as annoyed as us, and decided to join our plan of escaping. The funny thing about it is that we were all annoyed that they'd told us off even though we were in the wrong. I was late for work, Lene was slacking and Lee drinks on the job, but in the moment leaving felt like the right thing to do. So we booked a bus to Bowen for the following day: A Welsh, a German and two Englishmen; we titled ourselves,
Messy Crew.
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Nickie
non-member comment
Jealous
I wish I had the guts to just get up and go and travel alone especially to Australia (ive always wanted to go there) I love your blogs keep writing. Nickie www.pinmytravels.com