Keep Walking On

I have beginner’s luck when I do something for the first time, most of the time. But this didn’t apply to my Australia Working Holiday. The first 2 months didn’t go that smoothly, especially when it came to job and money.

First, I was kind of “scammed” into staying in a “backpacker hostel”, where I expected to get farm work referred by the hostel owner, but ended up waiting for 4 weeks while paying an unreasonably high rent for an ill-managed accommodation.

And second, I split up with my friend who went on this trip with me – we’ve spent years talking about going on a working holiday or travelling together, but just after 1 month I decided to leave her and go on solo (this would be another topic that I will discuss later in my blog).

So I think I kind of experienced quite a lot of ups and downs on the first 2 months after I landed on this beautiful big country. And here is the story…

My friend and I arrived at Brisbane on June 4, 2014. We booked 3 nights at YHA and I thought that we’d be able to get a farm job and leave the city on the 4th day – because I’ve actually started looking for jobs before I set off, through an online travel forum, which is very popular among Taiwanese & Hongkongese backpackers (but also notorious for having some illegal jobs or even scams). I already had a list of potential jobs on hand. Just a few phone calls then we could go! But of course, things didn’t always go my way.

First of all, we had to open a bank account. While I was told by friends that it only took 3 days to get things done, the bank told us that it’d take 5 to 7 working days until our debit cards were ready (we only knew later that we could actually make an online application in advance and be able to get the card upon arrival). And we had a long weekend coming (The Queen’s Birthday public holiday).

So anyhow we wouldn’t be able to leave Brisbane in 3 days. We extended our stay in YHA, where many backpackers consider as expensive. But since both of us had never backpacked before, we preferred to stay in somewhere safer and more decent, where we believed have the most helpful staff and support.

Extending the stay wasn’t really a big deal, and we ended up staying in the city for 10 days, travelling around, making friends and having fun (more on what to see in Brisbane). But at the same time I really wanted to get a job as soon as possible. Making lots of money was never my goal, unlike many backpackers, because I’ve already spent years working too hard and worrying about money in HK. On this journey, experiencing life and broadening my horizons were more important than earning money. But I just wanted to make sure I was at least earning some to cover what I spent.

Basically I was looking for jobs, sending messages and making phone calls every day. And there were a few farm jobs in Bundaberg (yes I know it’s famous for all the scams) that I thought we could give a try. But there came the problem of compromising with your travel partner. My friend was not very swift in making decisions, and she basically questioned and hesitated about whatever suggestions I gave. So I kept looking for and turning down jobs that I almost wanted to give up.

Then one night we saw from an online forum that a HK boy named Carlos was in YHA and shared his contact number. So I contacted him to see what he’s up to, but by that time he’s already gone to a place called Wallaville (a small town in the Bundaberg region), working on a lemon farm.

I talked with him for a few days asking about the living and working condition in Wallaville, and it sounded pretty perfect to me. It’s a backpacker hostel (though it called itself “Wallaville Hotel”). The backpackers there were mainly from Europe and Asia, and were arranged to work on nearby farms. While it was the lemon season, most of them were picking lemons and earning AUD$100/bin.

Carlos had been warning me that the living environment wasn’t that pleasant in the “hotel”, it’s dirty and messy. And fruit picking, especially lemons, wasn’t that fun because your arms would be cut by the thorns on the branches. But I’m absolutely ok with these and I really wanted to experience farm life, not to mention I was too fed up spending one more day in the city, not knowing what I was waiting for. So I kind of talked my friend into going (or maybe she thought I forced her to go) to Wallaville.

It was a rainy day (we were told that it didn’t rain in Brisbane..) when we left for Wallaville, and we arrived there pretty late at night. We were literally in the middle of nowhere, lost in the dark, until Carlos came over and greeted us. It was a good feeling meeting someone from hometown after nearly 2 weeks of searching and worrying about where to go.

So, Wallaville Hotel is a two-storey building, with a pub on ground floor and backpackers’ accommodation upstairs. It’s the only hotel and pub in town and was originally run by an old couple (Bob & Nola, as I heard) for many years, but was taken over by Brendon (an Australian) & Eilif (a Taiwanese) for just 1 month when I got there. (*update: Brendon & Eilif are no longer running the hotel. Bob & Nola are back there from May, 2016)

Soon we also met Brendon. He helped us move our luggages to the upper floor, where all the rooms, bathrooms, kitchen and dining area were located. He helped us make our beds, but our mattresses and pillows were old and filthy and we didn’t even have blankets (we used a few pieces of bed sheets, and with our own sleeping bags, to get through the cold nights). He promised that he’d get us new ones “tomorrow”, and also free wifi very soon – which never happened.

I always heard from the other backpackers how life was better before Brendon & Eilif. It seemed that everything had changed. First of all, the weekly rent soared from AUD$120 to AUD$170. The rooms, and especially the kitchen, were extremely dirty and messy. Of course for the kitchen, those people who never cleaned up after themselves were whom to blame. But there was one time when Brendon came upstairs and yelled at us angrily, saying that we’re all PIGS to leave the kitchen messy like this. And he said if we didn’t clean up, he would have to hire someone to do the cleaning every day, and he would increase the rent to cover the cost.

Well well… I also hate people who don’t clean up and I do think that everyone has the responsibility to keep the place neat and tidy. But while I was already paying AUD$170/week, I did think that hiring a cleaner to do basic cleaning for your hotel is your responsibility (not to say he himself was also running a cleaning service business).

A simple comparation here: months later when I went to another working hostel for farm work (Fruitshack in NSW), the weekly rent was AUD$112 and no one would be left jobless, and we had free wifi too. But there were rules, like every Sunday was the clean up day and everyone had to help, which I think totally makes sense. But if I’m paying AUD$170/week, I don’t think I’m obligated to clean up your shits, not to say I was always cleaning people’s used plates whenever I used the kitchen.

So I was quite pissed off that I paid to be yelled at from time to time, and the worst thing was, I never got a job. The second day after we arrived, everyone stopped working. Brendon said it was because of the heavy rain the day before, washing away the pesticides on the farms and they needed time to be sprayed all over again.

Some of the people managed to get jobs from farms they worked at before. But most of us, newcomers like my friend and myself especially, just spent days and days waiting. The next reason I was told was that the lemons were all done, and we had to wait until the weather got colder to harvest the citruses. To be fair here, I didn’t blame Brendon for this. Maybe it’s just the wrong timing.

Then we waited for 2 whole weeks and nothing happened. Of course we still had good time making friends, having parties, but soon we’re bored and frustrated. We couldn’t keep paying AUD$170 a week and some more for food, while we didn’t know whether we would really get any job. Many people had left. So after waiting for 2 weeks, my friend and I and our Taiwanese roommate Angela also decided to leave and went to a place called Caboolture, around 5 hours by car and train from Wallaville, for strawberry packing.

The packing shed and farms were run by Cambodians, and all the people who worked there were from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It’s paying shit money, like AUD$0.18/box for packing. I couldn’t really stand working in a shed for 8 hours a day, it was too tedious for me. I’d rather go working on the farm under the sun. Meanwhile, I kept in touch with the other HK people who were still in Wallaville, and asked them to keep me posted if they started picking citruses.

Around 2 weeks later, I got news from them and they’ve started picking mandarins for AUD$50/bin. Without a second thought, I contacted Eilif and said that I wanted to go back. And he suggested me to go back ASAP because, as he said, many people were going there and he couldn’t guarantee a space for me if I was later than the other people. So in 1 day or 2, I was on my way back to Wallaville. (to be continued…)