Welcome to our humble abode

Here is our home for the next month. We are currently spending a few days in Charters Towers - a cool little town with a gold mining past.

We've been to see some of the old mines and yesterday we tried our hand at panning for gold! It was so much fun! We both now have little bags of real gold that we found ourselves! Mathias was more successful than me but he can put his find towards a ring ;-)

We enjoyed an aussie barbie last night and are looking forward to getting back on the road tomorrow.

Car!!

We got a car!!

His name is currently Stanley. I think naming cars is dumb but I didn't give him the name.

He's a white Ford Fairmont, for anyone that understands what that means. He has quite a nautical theme - we bought sheets to use as curtains that have boats on them without remembering that the dashboard is lined with shells and there are stickers of seahorses and fish on the windows.

As you can see from the pics, he's quite a long car so we can put the back seats down and sleep in him if we are worried about snakes or dingoes getting in the tent!

We're not wasting any more time in Ayr, we leave at 6am tomorrow for the outback! It should take us about a week to get to Alice Springs, which is the next time we will likely have internet or phone signals. After a week there its another 2 weeks of travelling and exploring until we get to Melbourne.

See Mathias' blog for more details. Speak to you soon!

Happy Birthday to Mathias!

(some kind of technical problem means this didn't upload when I did it yesterday)

This guy is 25 today! I was supposed to cook him a big birthday breakfast but spent most of the day either sleeping or vomiting (either I ate something bad or the 4 litres of wine we drank the night before didn't agree with me...)

We did eventually make it to our dinner reservation, which was great! We relished not having to cook or wash up. So, it was a chilled day and he seems happy.

Tomorrow is a very big day but I don't want to jinx ourselves so I can't say more than that just now. Wait there on the edge of your seat for more info!

Hi Ho Hi Ho

Jesus Christ.

We were so looking forward to getting work because Ayr is so damn boring. I got my first job on Saturday, selling hot dogs, candy floss and drinks etc at the parade that was in town. It was so much fun! It was really busy but I enjoyed myself.

The next day I was down to work my first day on a farm. I had heard about the farm before because one of the girls in our room works there. The farmer is well known for being a bit of an arsehole so I can't say I was looking forward to it too much.

Work outfit

I woke up at 5:30am as we start work at 6:45am and have to drive out to the farm. It's actually good to start that early because you get some of it done before the sun comes up. Once the sun is up you just sweat and burn, it's horrible.

It is a squash farm. Here is a picture of the little bastards:

And heaven help anyone that ever serves me one of them. I never want to see them again!!!
They grow on a plant that has needles all over it so you have to be totally covered up - in the heat! The first day I got scratches all over my wrists from where my shirt and gloves met so the day after I had to wear tubigrip bandages as well to cover up the gap.

The plants are very short so you have to bend down all day to pick the squash off. The difference between one being too big and too small is minute and I always seemed to be getting it wrong. You grab a bucket and have a very long row that you must pick. Some plants have 3 or 4 squash on, some have none that are big enough, so you bend down, lift the spiny plant up, pick whatever squash are ready and put them in your bucket, then pick up your bucket and move one step forward and repeat the process. The rows are loooooooooooooong and there are 7 patches of them, so you do 4 rows then have a 15 minute break and then do the last 3.

Even though I had shoes and socks on!

On the first day my back was sore. On the 2nd day I thought I was going to be sick because of the pain. On the 3rd day my hands were so wet inside the gloves that a bunch of skin came off my fingers.

It is the shittest job I have ever done, and I've had some shit jobs. In the end, Mathias and I decided that it is not worth the money to feel so shit and in pain, so when I got back from the field today we asked the hostel to take us off their work list and now we are at the library coming up with another plan.

Never Again!!!!!

Signs of Delta

We now live in a little cow town in the middle of nowhere so don't expect too many updates in the next few months.

The hostel that we're staying at, Delta, is MAD on rules and signs telling you about those rules. There are also cameras everywhere. I don't know what they think is going to happen but whatever it is, they want recorded proof!

As an example of their fondness for signs, let's look at a toilet cubicle. In just one cubicle there are THREE signs telling you what you can and cannot do whilst doing your ones and twos.

One sign says "Use this roll first" another informs you that you should "put toilet paper in the toilet and sanitary towels and tampons in the bin. Thanks." But my personal favourite is this one that guides our Asian cellmates on how to use a western toilet.

Exit the cubicle and you have another barrage of signs telling you how to use the taps and how long to spend in the shower! Lord only knows how I have managed to get by so long without all of these helpful hints for my daily routines.