Maroochydore!

I suppose it's time for an update.

A couple of days ago we left Bundaberg and set our sights for a town called Maroochydore. We figured since it's close to Brisbane we could go there for a few days until we figured out the whole job thing. We got on Google and literally just picked the cheapest one and showed up. This town is much better and there seems to be more job opportunities. The boys were put on the waiting list to fruit pick, which seems to be moving along pretty quickly, so I think in the next few days they will get hired.

I was put in a girls dorm and ended up meeting a really nice English girl who was also looking for a job. We decided to go to the library and print off a bunch of resumes then go walk around town to hand them out. There is a plaza with tons of shops about 20 minutes away so we decided to head there first. We handed out a bunch and finally got to this Kebab restaurant/bar right off the river who said they were hiring. She agreed to let us have a trial day and for Megan to go in the next day and me to do mine the day after her. We were so excited to finally get a yes, well more of a maybe, but nonetheless it was exciting.

Megan did her trial yesterday and called me immediately after to tell me that she got the job, which was very exciting. She came back and told me all the ins and outs, how it was all set up and what I should expect. Pretty much as long as you are efficient and friendly it should be fine. Sweet! She said it was super slow and that she only had to talk to two tables and they were like an hour apart from each other so it was pretty easy.

I woke up this morning getting ready to do my trial and arrived 15 minutes ahead of time. When I got there I informed someone behind the counter that I was there for the trial and he told me that none of the managers were there yet so to come back in 30 minutes. Ooookay?? I guess I'll just walk around the mall and kill some time then. When I got back the owner was there and put me with another girl to shadow. She told me she had never trained before and that she hadn't been there that long. I asked how long she had been there and she said since November. "So you've been here four months then?" "Yea about that." ---hmm sounds like plenty of time to me!

She did a pretty crap job of explaining anything so I pretty much had to figure it out on my own as I went along. At first it was going pretty smoothly and I helped greet tables and set everything up then she let me do a few on my own with her there for when the guests asked questions about the menu, as I had only blarely even glanced at it. Then the kitchen made a large platter of samples, so one of the girls went out to the walkway to entice people in with the samples. After this happend the restaurant got slammed. There weren't enough waitresses to get everything done in a timely manner so they told me to just go on my own and if I had any questions to just ask. "Uhhh, are you sure? okay?" Within 15 minutes I was taking care about about seven tables on my own and doing a pretty good job considering I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Then a couple from one of my tables went up to pay their bill and it was higher than they had expected. What happend was, there is a specials board with a few items that you can get for $12 if you buy a drink with it, and I thought they had asked me just in general what some of the popular items on the menu were. So I named off a few, which one of the trainers had told me earlier, and they ordered both. One of them happend to be on the specials board for $12 but the other one was $20. But hell if I knew what was on the board and what wasn't because I had only glanced at it when the trainer pointed at it.

Anyway, so after the manager sorted out what happend she pulled me aside and explained it. Obviously I was apologetic and it was an honest mistake, but what did they expect? They threw me out there on my first day with absolutely no menu knowledge and expect me to not slip up at all? Besides, they only lost a few dollars out of it. But she was not happy with this and pretty much told me I could go home now and that they would get back to me if they were interested and still have a few more trials throughout the week. Which I knew was bull because they hired my friend the day before right after her shift. So I guess I'll take that as a no. While I was disappointed, I knew that working at a restaurant that disorganized would just stress me out and I probably wouldn't have lasted long anyway. It's back to square one and I'm going to walk around town tomorrow and hand out some more resumes. On my walk home I stopped at Subway and treated myself to a cheer-me-up smoothie and picked up an application :).

Today the hostel is having a BBQ down by the lake and pretty much everyone is going, so that should be fun. Other than that, Maroochydore has been a pretty good time! There is a nice beach right around the corner where I have been soaking up some rays lately. That's all I've got for now!

Cheers

Bundaberg Bunda-sucks

Bundaberg is a shit hole.

We arrived here with high hopes of finding some farm work, but no such luck. When we got here we checked into a hostel called Cellblock Backpackers. This hostel used to be a holding cell for prisoners back in the day, and has now been converted into a hostel. For me, it felt similar to being in an insane asylum. There is one long hallway where most of the rooms were, then all the walls were white. The plus side was that there was a pool and a bar there and the people we met were pretty cool. Otherwise, it was pretty gross. After a day we checked out and checked into another hostel called Federal Backpackers. It's a lot more colorful, but it's still a dump. We saw a mouse in the kitchen...disgusting.



Cellblock, the first hostel



The way it works is that the hostels here assign you to a farm to work at and a van comes and picks everyone up in the morning and takes them to the farms. Since everyone heard that Bundaberg is the place to go if you are looking for farm work, there was an overplus of people and not enough work so there were long waiting lists at each hostel we talked to. In order to be put on the list you have to book your stay at the hostel for at least one week, and there's no guarantee that you will get work soon. Even when you do get work, before you are put on a contract you might only be getting 2 or 3 days of work per week, which isn't really enough. We also talked to a hostel that told us they had work for us and to come visit them in the morning to discuss it. When we arrived there, there was noone at reception and this French guy came out and told us not to book there because they told him and his friends that there was work as well, but once they got there they booked a week and they still hadn't worked yet and had been there for about five days. Scam artists!

After talking it over if it was worth it to stay, we decided we should leave. No point sticking around wasting accommodation money if there is no guarantee of getting a job for awhile. We got online and started applying for several jobs and called this farmer a few hours away from Brisbane, but he said he just recently filled some positions but to call him on Monday to see if he has anymore openings. Back when we were in Brisbane an Irish guy staying in my room gave me a number to this lady named Sue who does strawberry picking. We decided it was worth a shot to call her and sure enough she had positions for us! You may think this sounds promising, but the thing is, there are many many downfalls to this job offer. She mentioned at least three times throughout the phone call that this wasn't going to be easy work and that we weren't picking, we were planting the strawberry seeds.

Sue said she would send us an email of the job description and we could talk it over and get back to her about it. She seemed like a really nice lady, but once we got the job description we were pretty weary. Highlights of the email include:

• $40-$45 per every 1,000 seeds we plant (Is that a joke?)
• $165 per week for accommodation and food is not included
• The nearest grocery store is 15 kilometres away so we have to pay $5 for a ride to town
• $100 deposit at the beginning and must work for 1 month in order to get our deposit back
• A direct quote: "This is backbreaking work, if you have any back problems this job is not for you. The first four days you will be very sore and tired, but after that you shouldn't feel anymore pain." ---WTF???!
• We don't get work everyday. Some weeks we may work 4 days straight then have 3 days off or work 2 days then 5 days off, it's unpredictable

Oh Sue, what are you trying to sign us up for? Hell?

After looking this over and exchanging a few "this sounds terrible" looks, we thought we wouldn't really be actually making any money there. The hours are unpredictable and we still have to pay for accommodation and we are only making $45 for every 1,000 plants we plant soooo I don't know... We thought on it half the day then called Sue back to ask a few more questions. She said that we are in groups of 4 and that if you are good, groups usually average around 5,000 plants per day. We told her of our concerns of not really saving any money and just breaking even or even losing money while we were there and she said that we shouldn't lose any money and that if we are then she would let us leave with our deposit back. We decided that we would get back to her about it on Monday or Tuesday and we decided to keep it in mind as a last resort. In the meantime we are going to go back down to the Sunshine Coast, which is about an hour from Brisbane and stay there for 3 days. During those 3 days we are going to look for other options of work and hope to God that something better comes along.

Today we booked our train tickets to a town called Maroochydore (Mar-oo-chi-door), so at least now we can get the heck out of Bundaberg and hopefully have a few more job opportunities there. If not, then Sue can welcome us into her personal hell.

While it is kind of stressful figuring all of this job stuff out, I do appreciate that it's all in the experience and I love how spontaneous everything has been. In situations like this, you really just have to roll with the punches and hope for the best! As for tonight, we are going to the bar downstairs and celebrating our Bundaberg departure off of the Happy Hour $5 pitchers from 8-10 pm :).

Cheers

Let the Good Times Roll - Fraser Island Adventures!

What can I say, a good time was had indeed. Like I said earlier we decided to take off from Brisbane and do one of the packages we booked just to have some fun before we started work agian. It was really nice to put any worries behind and have a solid adventure.

Being a baller

We arrived in Rainbow Beach on Saturday evening and checked into our hostel. Luckily we didn't have to really pay for anything because 3 days accommodation and a meal ticket was included in our package that we booked when we first arrived in Australia. We were told that we had to be up the next morning at 6:45 to do an orientation, which included watching three videos about different ways we can roll our van and how to avoid it, about how if we go in the ocean we will get attacked by sharks and about the dangers of dingos! After watching the videos, which kind of put us off, we got ready to be put in our groups for the vans. We ended up getting pretty jipped on this because we got put in the leader car, so none of us got to drive the whole time. Just the guide guy, Adam. Bummer. But don't worry, we still took fake pictures of us driving.. Seen below :). Our group consisted of me and my three guy friends who I have been traveling with the whole time, two Israeli girls, and a brother and sister from England. We all got along really well and played some really interesting games to pass the time on the road. At first we thought we were just only with our van the whole time but there were four vans following each other and we did all the stops together as a big group and camped out together, so that was nice because it gave us the opportunity to meet more people.

Crystal clear lakes!

Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world and there are several lakes throughout it that are beautiful. The first day we stopped for lunch then went to a lake where it was crystal clear and changed colors dramatically. The picture doesn't even do it justice. After swimming around for a few hours we went to our little campsite where we set up camp then cooked a nice little feast for everyone. The night was spent under the stars with jugs of goon at our sides and some hilarious banter. During the night the dingos came out and we could hear them running all around our camp site scavenging for food! Creepy.

The next day we went to another lake and went off roading a bit. We stopped at this beautiful lake with champagne waves but as soon as we got there it started pouring down rain on us so we had to run back to the vans! I managed to get a few good pics in though. Again the night was followed by good laughs but the dingos were much more aggressive this time! In the morning we woke up and they had torn through four of the tents when people were sleeping, including my friends' tent! There was a box of goon outside of the tent and they ripped it to shreds. Guess they were trying to have a good time too? Alcoholic dingos...tisk tisk.

Dingo aftermath!

The last day we had some breakfast then set out to see a few sites. First we went to this huge sand dune which had a lake at the bottom of it. It was about a two mile walk to get there then we spent a few hours there before heading to our next destination. We made some wraps for lunch then headed to this canal where we could walk through, it was pretty cool! I kept hearing this guy shouting out, "This is just like Minnesota water!!" What?

About to walk through the canal

After the canal we stopped and saw a giant ship wreck that's been washed up ashore for a long time and snapped a few photos. Pretty neat that a giant ship wreck is still just on the beach after all these years. It was used during WW1. Sadly after the shipwreck it was time to head back to Rainbow Beach and back to reality! We still had 2 days accommadation left on our vouchers so during those two days we were going to figure out our next move.

We decided that we were going to get on the OzExperience bus Thursday morning and head to a small town called Bundaberg. Pretty much the only thing cool to do there is go to the Bundaberg Brewery and yea, that's about it. Although there isn't much to do there, it's a good place for backpackers to stop for fruit picking work so we figured we would give it a go. I guess the hostels there set you up with work, so we will see what happens. I don't know if I really want to do the fruit picking, it sounds like some pretty strenuous work. Up at 5am every morning, picking fruit throughout the day in the heat. The boys are for sure going to do it but I will at least just get to Bundaberg so that I can get phone reception again and maybe check it out for like a week and if it's unbareable I think I'll try and do the barmaid job in a pub gig. The boys really need to do it because they need quick money and in order for them to receive their second year working holiday visa they have to fruit pick for three months. I can't get a second year visa so I don't really have a need to do the fruit picking.

That's pretty much all I've got for now. Tonight is our last night in Rainbow Beach then it's off to Bundaberg! I hope I can get some phone reception there, keep your fingers crossed for me!

Cheers

Fraser Island Here I Come!

Fraser Island

So we didn't last in Brisbane too long. We ended up walking over to the other Base hostel and talking to Jeremy about what kind of jobs were available. Basically, there were tons of jobs for me and absolutely nothing for the guys. He told me there were tons of barmaid jobs at the country pubs so I told him I would think on it and come back and see him if I am interested.
We went back to the hostel and hung out on the patio where we met a group of Aussies from the Sunshine Coast, which is about an hour from Brisbane. We made friends with them and one of them even offered to let us stay at his place next time we are in the Sunshine Coast. It's handy to make connections like that because accommodation isn't cheap!

The next day I was so bored of sitting in the hostel doing nothing so me and this guy from Israel who was staying in our room walked over to the Modern Art Museum. This turned out to be way more fun than I thought it would be! When you first walk in there is this huge Lego station full of white legos and you could just sit there for hours building things. Some people had made the most intricate, huge and awesome buildings. I sat there for about 30 minutes putting something together which was fun. After that we went into the "Balloon Room." This was literally a room full of purple balloons and you get like 3 minutes to just run around in it with random people. So fun and ridiculous. I felt like I was five years old again and it was awesome. There was also a Michael Jackson room full of just videos of people singing MJ songs--hilarious as well. We did this outter space optical illusion room, as well as sliding down a slide that went from the top of the museum to the bottom. Pretty efficient way of getting down if I do say so myself.

Throughout the day I had been thinking that I should just get out of Brisbane and go start doing some of the fun things I have booked and then just get a job afterwards. I was only just wasting time and money just sitting around in a city doing nothing so I might as well go off. When I got back to the hostel I was going to tell my friends that I was probably going to carry on in the next few days and turns out they were thinking the exact same thing. So we booked one more night in our hostel then booked Fraser Island. Fraser Island is something that is a must do when you are in Australia. It's like a 2 day, 3 night, 4-wheel-drive safari excursion across an island and you drive yourself. I guess there is kind of a guide person a ways ahead of you but they load up the vans with like 6-8 people and you just go and you camp out under the stars and swim and just have a blast. You are supposed to be 23 in order to drive it, so looks like I'm going to be one of the drivers for awhile! This should be interesting. I'm so excited to get there. We were going to stop in Noosa which is like a pretty island on the way but turns out we have to get to Rainbow Beach a night before to do an orientation for Fraser Island. Dang, oh well.

Yesterday it was raining all day so we couldn't really do much. My mate Jake and I walked over to this outdoor pub for a few beers just go get out of the hostel for awhile. The rest of the night was spent playing drinking games with our trusty goon. This morning we all woke up early to pack then had to walk over to the OzExperience bus to catch our ride to Rainbow Beach. This was the wooooorrsttt walk ever. We were running late so the boys were sprinting off to make sure the bus didn't leave, I was struggling pretty hard. I had my huge suitcase, my backpack, purse, 2 boxes of goon for our trip and my groceries. The bag to the goon ripped, everything was falling everywhere, it was raining and I was rushed. So after about the 3rd time I dropped everything I had to just leave my groceries in the middle of the street. I'm sure people thought I was some sort of crazy lady. One lady caught up to me asking if I wanted her to go back and get it for me but I just told her not to worry about it because I was in a big rush. Nice lady though. Luckily I made it to the bus on time!

It's been raining the past few days so we are keeping our fingers crossed for some good weather when we are on the island. Should be a good time none-the-less! I'll be sure to keep everyone posted on how it all goes!

Cheers

My Days of Door Knocking Are Over! Onto Brissy...

FINALLY. I no longer have to door knock! Monday was officially my last day on the job so I'm freed from harassing people :). After work a few of us went over to a co-workers apartment, but it got a little too loud so we had to leave. Everyone was in a good mood because remember that Quarterly Cup competition I mentioned in the last post? We found out that night we ended up winning the whole thing, so the channel is having a huge party this Saturday in Brisbane. After I hugged everyone goodbye we went back to our hostel to get a good night's sleep because our bus to Brisbane was going to leave at 9:45 the next morning. I was a little nervous that I might not be able to get on the bus because I hadn't been able to book it. The website was messing up and when I called to do it they had already closed down their call center. I got up early the next morning and packed up everything then called them and was luckily able to book it just 30 minutes before I was supposed to get on it! Close one...

Brissy is only like an hour away from Surfers so the ride there was pretty relaxed. Although, when we arrived there was a little bit of confusion about the hostel...We are staying at a hostel called the Base Embassy and turns out there are two. The other one is just called Base Central but they are owned by the same people. Confusing. Anyway, they are only two blocks away from each other but we didn't really know where to get off so we got dropped off at the transit center which is way out of the way. So once we figured out we missed our stopped we were pretty gutted that we were going to have to walk across town in the scortching heat with all our luggage.

This actually turned out to not be that bad because in the process of everything I ended up meeting a fellow Texan from Dallas! We were stopped in the city center kind of looking around for our hostel and this girl on a bench called out to me and asked if I was American? How could she tell? I guess my Nike running shorts that every 3rd girl in the States wears along with my TEXAS shirt gave it away? Anyway, turns out she's from Dallas but went to the University of Texas. What a coincidence! I should have grabbed her number but the boys figured out where we needed to go and were in a rush to get there so I had to keep going.

After we checked in I decided to go walk around town and familiarize myself with everything. I went to the store, bought some ice cream, went in a few book stores etc etc...Brissy is pretty much just a big city with no beach. I'm bummed that there is no beach, but I actually feel pretty comfortable here already. We booked 3 nights in our hostel so we are hoping to find some work in the next few days. I think I'm just going to go walk around and hand out my resume to nearby shops and restaurants. I wouldn't mind sticking around here a little longer but I feel like it might be hard to actually save money here, so it might be wise for me to go to the Outback for a little while and save up there. We shall see.

Since we are all kinda slim on money we decided to stay in the hostel last night and mingle with fellow backpackers. There's a patio/hangout area on the second floor so we went there and met a bunch of people. Alot of them happend to be Australian and lived just an hour away, they were just there visiting some friends. Pretty cool though. I like meeting people from the area because they can give you heaps of advice on what to do and what not to do, so that was good.

Anyway, that's all I've got. I'll be sure to keep updating!

Cheers