Australia - Day 3 - Corinella

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WORK
Today was our first day of work, and I was admittedly pretty stoked. We began on the hilly coast to the east of our caravans at like 8:00 am. It was very, very, cold, so I bundled up for warmth. Our job today was to weed out all of the non-native plants to make room for planting actual native grasses. Marcus pointed out a few to look for, so we began going through the brush to find and eradicate the weeds. Some of them were huge plants; I'm talking like actual trees. It seemed like a shame to cut down such large plants, but hey, if that's what they want me to do, that's what they want me to do.

Everybody worked in pairs; the first person walked around with a small saw to cut down the weeds, and the second person walked around with a little "dabber", which looked like a glue stick, and used it to apply poison to where the weed was cut so that it would fully die. You only had like 30 seconds after the weed was cut to poison it, otherwise the plant would generate some sort of immunity or something like that...I probably should have paid more attention when they were explaining this stuff. Anyway, it was way cooler to be the person with the saw, because you got to carry around a saw, rather than a little glue stick filled with poison. The only way to make being the dabber cooler was to shout "die, mother fucker!" whenever poisoning the plant, but even that was a bit excessive after a while.

MORNING TEA
After a couple hours of clearing out the plants, we stopped for "morning tea", which was basically a break at 10:00ish for tea, coffee, and snacks. Marcus and the girls were all used to morning tea; I guess it's just a normal part of their daily routines. Danny and I weren't used to it, of course, but I may just have to incorporate it into my daily routine when I get back home, because it's a pretty refreshing and timely break during the day. They also drink their tea hot, with milk and sugar. I gave it a whirl, and it was actually damned delicious. I made a fool of myself though, because I got a cup of hot water, and stuck a bag of tea in it and waited for it to dissolve. Apparently, you're supposed to stick it in there and use a spoon to squeeze all the shit out of the tea bag, and it takes like seconds, instead of sitting there, waiting for it. The girls had a good laugh about that; my bad, I didn't pay attention during my freshman tea-making course. Assholes.

CACTI
That afternoon, after lunch, we ran into a huge patch of Prickly Pear Cacti that had to be removed. Chopping them down wasn't hard; it was just the fact that there was a shitload if it, some well over 6 feet high, that was a bitch. We worked for a while, getting stabbed the entire time, and finally cleared the place out. Seeing the area after clearning out all of the cacti was immensely rewarding; It also felt good to know that I had worked outside and gotten loads of fresh air all day, so I smoked a congratulatory cigarette to reward myself. Ironic, or just plain stupid? You decide.

EVENING
After working all day, we all decided to walk over to the community center and check out the internet, as well as to call our loved ones. The community center had decent-sized computer lab, but also had a no-so-decent-sized internet connection. It took literally minutes to load a page, much less upload pictures or do anything of the sort. That's one of the reasons why it was so hard to update this journal the first couple of weeks; that, and because I'm too damned lazy to just write out the journal on traditional pen and paper. Who the hell uses pen and paper anyways? What is this, the 90's??

After about an hour of excruciating internet shittiness, I gave up, and we all came back to the caravans. Dinner for the night was bangers and mash, which is British for "sausages and mashed potatoes with gravy". It was pretty good; at least, warm and filling after a long day of work. It was another night of sleeping early.

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