Yee-haw?

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Forced by lack of employment opportunities, we signd up for a farm training scheme which 'guarantees' you work for the length of your visa once you have completed the vastly overpriced week long course.

They sent you a list of things you would need for the course, but after much to-ing and fro-ing with the school maam style organiser of the course we felt that if we purchased the boots in Brisbane they would for sure be wrong by her standards. We didn't understand why they had to be as specified (and we still don't). I think it's more of a farmer uniform than anything to do with safety.

We took a Greyhound bus to a hick town called Gympie, where they picked us up and took us to an even hick-ier town called Goomeri for our 'induction'. They put on a disgusting lunch and then proceeded to fleece us for everything we had. We had to buy heaps of stuff, none of it we needed. We had to get a different SIM card because apparently Vodafone 'doesn't work outside of the cities' (not true). The the farmer told us he doesnt get mobile phone signal at his farm and we would have to buy a phonecard, so rendering the Telstra SIM useless. We had no idea we'd even need to be making phone calls to employers as we had assumed that was what part of what we were paying VisitOz to do.

We also had to buy boots which were not only more (much more) than the same ones in Brisbane, but were also more than they had told us they would be in the e-mail. By the end of it all we felt pretty bled-dry.

We also had to fill in forms with the information we had already provided them upon signing up for the course. They we got told off for not having Visa labels in our passports, despite the fact that they don't give you a stamp anymore, it's all electronic. I thought she might be funny about this so I had called immigration from Brisbane and they had categorically told me that we couldn't have a stamp because it was a label-less visa and that was the whole point. They wouldn't budge on the issue, then here I am getting an earful from this VisitOz woman. I didn't really appreciate being spoken to like I was a naughty school girl who hadn't done their homework when I was paying her through the nose.

Next up we were split into 2 groups. The younger ones went to the training farm and the rest of us went off with a farmer to his farm, an hour up the road. Despite the promise of 4 to a group there was 8 of us here. Arriving at the farm the sleeping arrangements were girls and boys dorms, which I had feared it would be! The house had no fly screens and because it's so hot the doors and windows were always open so you had flies and mozzies all over you all night. And we could only have one 3 minute shower a day which is not enough to ever feel clean. I didn't like it.

But my real complaint was the training itself, because it did not resemble the fairly intensive training course we were sold. It was a regular working farm with no experience of training people. Most of the time we stood around waiting for the farmers to do something, often we were hired out as free labour to do unskilled jobs for the farmer's mates. Very occasionally were we taught anything, and the farmer's chosen teaching method was to shout at everyone and tell them they were doing everything wrong. One day we were tasked with mowing his lawn and weeding his garden, and we still got shouted at like children.

In the 5 days we were there we could have fitted the useful parts into a day. These were: tractor driving, quad bike riding, horse riding, helping with the cattle & chainsawing. It was funny that the website stressed safety to be their first priority when we rode the horses with no helmets and no supervision and used the chainsaw with no safety gear.

The most full-one part of the week was the work with the cattle. They were rounded up into holding pens by the farmers and we were there to help with moving them into successively smaller pens before they are trapped in a crusher, fliped on their side, branded 4 times, get their testicles sliced off, a chunk cut out of their ear and an injection before being released and kicked to their feet - all in about 30 seconds. Probably the most traumatic day of their lives. Next to getting killed. I'm not complaining about this bit though, because at least it's real farm stuff that we were a part of. It's just pretty harsh to see for a city girl like myself! The cattle are all really stressed out because they hardly ever see humans and when they do bad things happen. Several charged at the gates or trampled each other. One broke it's jaw trying to escape and had blood pouring down it's face. It's full on.

Fortunately we escaped with only minor injuries. The worst was probably my thumb when it got crushed between a gate and a fence post as a calf charged the gate. I probably would have got it x-rayed in the UK but you have to pay for that here. I think it's ok.

To add insult to injury, when it came down to finding everyone jobs at the end of the week VisitOz were really poor. The other farm (where apparently training is more like it should be) got the first pick of the jobs coming through. Of what was left, no-one wanted a couple. The other couple on the course only got a job actually working for VisitOz. We probably will call them for work at some point, partly because we want to feel we've re-couped the course fees and partly because we probably won't find any other work. I wouldn't be surprised if they have nothing for the both of us or what they do have is on the other side of the country for a 6 month stretch. One week in the middle of nowhere was bad enough. We'll see.

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