Craig & Sam Down Under

Hello Everyone!  Sorry for the delay in writing a blog recently, we’ve been massively busy.

 Since we arrived in Adelaide about a month ago things have changed rather dramatically, but I think we’re almost sorted now and things are starting to resemble a normal life.  After the disastrous experience that was grape picking, we began to have big money worries.  Picking the grapes was hard work, long hours and very very poor pay.  We felt for the first time since arriving in Australia, as if we were really trapped.  Travelling has so much freedom and relaxation associated with it that it was hard to suddenly find ourselves miserable, broke and too poor to go anywhere! 

A couple of times we looked for work elsewhere but found few results as we were restricting ourselves to only wanting to work for a few weeks and having to live on caravan parks.  We called the harvest-trail hotline who’ve helped us to find work in the past, only to be sent on a wild goose chase into the outback North of Adelaide and come up trumps.  We were told there would be citrus picking and pruning on the grapes, but due to the massive increase of citrus imports in Aus, many farmers were refusing to pay out to have their fruit picked, as they weren’t sure if they would be able to sell it and preferred to save money and leave it on the trees.  The pruning on the grapes wasn’t due to start for a few weeks and we couldn’t afford to wait that long.  We started to consider the possibility of finishing our travels in Australia as quickly and as cheaply as possible, using credit cards and then to sell the van once we got back to Sydney to pay off the cards and come home.  It would have meant that we would be flying home even before Mum and Dad J were due to come out here on holiday! 

So, in sheer desperation, we bought a paper, shelled out a fortune to set up camp in an internet cafe over a weekend and sent out copies of our CV to every man and his dog.  We agreed that we would be willing to take a city job, work for longer than we had originally wanted to and be prepared to move into a hostel or something if there were no caravan parks near to whatever work we found.  There was a big ad in the paper for a Ski resort in New South Wales looking for people to do all kinds of jobs over the winter ski season so we applied over and over  again for as many of those jobs as possible, as well as everything else in the paper and every work agency in town.  Monday came and we sat anxiously by the phone.  We kept asking ourselves, have we done everything we can possibly do to help ourselves? 

We walked around town looking for ads in shop windows, called numbers in the paper and eventually agreed to call one of the marketing companies that was advertised.  We really didn’t want to  go and be door-knocking sales people, but we had to try something.  Out of two that we called, one had a really friendly, helpful receptionist and the other was a bitch (sorry nan).  So we went for an interview with the friendly ones and when they invited us to go out with a couple of their people the next morning to watch how they work and find out more about the job and company, we decided to bunk off the interview with the bitch and do this instead.  It turned out great, the girl was really friendly, the companty appeared to be legitimate and the opportunity was there to start immediately.  We went back to the office for a chat with the Managing Director and attended a training session the next day.  Ever since then (about three weeks ago) we’ve been working as independent contractors (so technically self employed, can work for as long as we want and quit at any time) for Viper Marketing.  We attend a morning meeting each day for training and motivational, erm, stuff, then we go out to shopping centres all around Adelaide and we stop people as they are walking past to offer them the chance to swap their home phone billing over to the company that we promote, who’re doing quite a good deal right now.  It’s not difficult to get sales, so we’re managing to earn a living based wholly on comission and we’re already working our way up the ladder through the company.  Craig got promoted this week to a leader, so when he recruits some more people he can run his own team and will start to get paid overrides (a percentage of thei earnings), I’m hoping to get promoted by the end of this week too.  It all sounds very promising and we’re enjoying ourselves for now.  We’ve got a good 5 months left on our visas and only a very small part of Australia left to see, so we’ll carry on working and see where this company can take us!

 Mum and Dad J are coming out on holiday this week and we’ll see them here in Adelaide the week after, which will be really nice.  It’s great to be able to put them up here now we finally have a job and a house – oh yeah!  We’re living in a shared house now with an Indian guy, a New Zealand guy, an Aussie woman and a German!  It’s cheap rent, the people are friendly and it’s far easier to keep our nice new business suits and work stuff neat and tidy now that we’re not living in the van any more.  The lease is for 3 months and our landlord and landlady live right next door, they’re lovely people too.  The van is up for sale and we had the first people take a look at it today, who were very impressed so it could actually be sold!  We’re going to get a little car with some of the money we get for the van, which will be more convenient for getting around the city and we can still finish our travels in it as there isn’t far to go in Australia that we haven’t already seen!

 I can’t think of anything else to say, although I’m sure I’ve forgotten a million things.  Happy Birthday to Danielle and Vicki for a couple of weeks ago!  Miss you guys.  We hope everyone back at home is well, we’re missing you all oodles of course.

email us if you haven’t and thanks for the comments – Sue & Gino, you will get the hang of it soon!

Love Team England xx

Hi guys!

Sorry it’s been a while since our last blog, we’ve travelled an enormous distance since you last heard from us and as always, there is much to tell…

We left you last time with the tale of our trip from Geraldton to Perth and how we stopped at the Pinnacles and New Norcia on the way, so really we saved the best stuff for this blog because Perth and Fremantle were two of the BEST places we’ve been so far in Australia.  For a start things were cooling down a lot and so the weather was loads more comfortable which made us lots happier.  Although Perth is the only big city in the West and we have a tendency to avoid big cities like the plague, this city was really special.  Fremantle is a town nearby where we set up camp and we used the buses and trains to get in and out of the town and city over a few days.

On our first day we did some exploring in Fremantle and sussed out the public transport ready for going to Perth.  Fremantle was about the same size of Hanley but obviously far nicer.  We went to the Motor Museum where we mooned over loads of cool cars, including one of Stirling Moss’s racing cars.  We visited yet another Maritime Museum on the harbour which was nice although Craig enjoyed it way more than me, I’d had a guts full of boats by then.  We also spent a little bit of time just strolling around the town, which you can’t really appreciate unless you’ve been there, so all I can describe is that it had a great atmosphere, friendly people ( not too many weirdos), clean streets and some cool old buildings, we felt like it would be a great place to live. 

The next day we went into Perth on the train and the city had pretty much all the same attributes as Fremantle only on a bigger scale.  We visited the Swan Bell Tower where we got some great views of the city plus a demonstration of bell ringing.  We were only just in time for the bell ringing and a crazy old lady let us ring a couple of the bells ourselves.  Then the official ringers arrived and we went up a couple of floors to see the bells in action as the ringers attempted a quarter peal, where each bell would be rung approximately 1200 times!  They were very good although there were a couple of false starts and we didn’t stay to watch the whole thing because it takes about an hour!  After that we went for some dinner and got all Sex and the City about it, supping coffee and munching muffins  -the city just has that effect on you, thank god we escaped!  Next we went in search of the Government House but only found the gardens! They were nice but you know… gardens.  Then we decided to find an internet cafe to do a blog and conveniently found a pub that had internet access and sold Guiness!  The internet was out of order but the Guinness was gooooooooood and it seemed so rude not to partake of a couple of pints!  The next stop was The Perth Mint and it was awesome.  We did a tour of the Mint and watched a gold pour take place, sitting about 5 feet away from $225,000 worth of solid gold bar!  We also weighed ourselves in gold on a funky machine, Craig’s worth about $2.7million and I’m worth a measley $1.9million!  The tour guide gave Craig a free coin with the Perth Mint insignia stamped in it and we also bought ourselves a personal one with the inscription ‘Sam & Craig * Great Australian Adventure * 2005-2006’.  It’s our new favourite belonging, we call it the precious and if you’re lucky we might just give you a peek when we get home.

Next day we returned to Fremantle to explore the markets which are supposed to be some kind of extravaganza over the weekends but we didn’t really have the money to splash out on stuff so we just had a look around.  We did however, manage to scrape together some funds to visit The Candy Cow.  The greatest sweet shop in the world ever.  They had some many sweets your teeth ached just looking at them.  We bought some Caramel flavour and Baileys flavour Fudge and it was gone before bedtime.  Yummy.  We also went to Fremantle Prison and did a tour there.  Pretty much everywhere we’ve been in Australia has involved visiting prisons and museums, so those of you who think we’re just bumming around should realise it’s actually very educational.  The Fremantle Prison was one of the best ones we’ve been to and I think that’s mostly down to the tour guide we had, an Irishman who was very very funny.  He pointed out tennis rackets on the roof from when prisoners had rioted, showed us the tennis balls the townsfolk used to cut open to put messages and drugs in and then throw them over the prison walls, we saw prisoners cells where they had been allowed to put artwork on the prison walls as well as the prison chapel where there’s a waiting list to get married there – it’s a huge trend, but we turned down the offer of a brochure to take home.

We would have liked to stay longer in Perth/Fremantle (to be honest, we’d have liked to live there permanently) but it was a national holiday weekend as well as a beer festival and the caravan parks were booked out so we had to move on.  There were only a few things we wanted to do in the South West corner, the first being Busselton Jetty, the longest completely Wooden jetty in the world and we’ve got photos to prove it.  Next we visited a National Park near Pemberton where they have the Gloucester Tree. This is a 60m tall tree that they’ve built a hut at the top of, for watchmen to go up and keep an eye over the forests in case of bush fires.  There’s a kind of ladder going all the way to the top and Craig climbed up by himself.  Obviously since someone had to take photos, I couldn’t possibly go up with him and was truly devastated that I didn’t get to climb it… oh well!  Actually, it was quite shameful that I was really too chicken as there were 9 and 10 year old children bounding up and down like it was no more than a simple staircase.

Next we stopped over in Albany, and spent a few days just chilling out as with the National Holiday there wasn’t much going on, the Aussies aren’t fools who slog in the garden digging and planting and building away their bank holidays like we do, they go to the beach and chill out so everywhere was closed.  We had to wait until Tuesday to get any food shopping which meant we were forced to have a MacDonalds and a curry takeaway over the weekend.  Gutted.  Craig got to do some fishing from the jetty down at the harbour though and was thoroughly chuffed with himself because he caught at least twenty fish on his first day.  I went with him on the second day and at the first sight on fish-blood had declared myself a non-fishing fan.  My book turned out to be really good though.

Moving on from Albany we headed back inland quite a way to see Wave rock.  It’s huge, it’s stripey and it’s er, rock.  Not really worth the long drive but at least we can say we’ve been.  We also went out to see the rabbit proof fence (or State Barrier Fence), which got it’s nickname because of the rabbits it attempts to keep out of Western Australia.  Craig has seen the film about 3 Aboriginal girls who are taken from their families to a Government run school-house type place and escape, walking miles and miles along this rabbit-proof fence through the desert to be reunited with their parents.  Film sounds good, the fence is just a fence.  Do we sound bored?  Not really, but you’ve gotta remember that each place we go to takes at least a whole day’s driving (7am-4/5pm) and it’s hot and there’s literally NOTHING in between places, it’s vast and lonely so forgive us for being disappointed when we drive so far to see things and they’re just rocks and fences.

 Anyway, we had a really huge jaunt ahead of us and our last massive spate of driving across Australia and that was the journey across the Nullarbor.  Nullarbor is Latin and literally means No Trees.  And there aren’t.  No trees, no nothing.  It took us about 4 days from Albany to Port Augusta, we drove through plagues of locusts which Craig had to remove from the inside of the engine, they were plastered all over the radiator and stuck in the wheel arches.  It was truly disgusting.  From Port Augusta we made our way South passing briefly through Adelaide to a place called McLaren Vale.  We knew there was work here so we came to check it out and have now been here for about a week, picking grapes.  We have been into the city of Adelaide very briefly one day to look for other jobs because the grapes don’t exactly pay well, but we’re saving most of the sightseeing for when the Jontfam arrives. 

There really isn’t much left for us to do here on the mainland, we’ve already seen so much, all kinds of terrain, cities, outback, rural areas, small towns, every kind of museum you can hope for, beaches, forests, parks, rocks, so so much and yet we’re only half way through our time!  It’s been amazing so far and while we’re working the grapes we’re busy plotting trips to Tasmania, Kangaraoo Island and maybe, maybe New Zealand – but that’s pennnies permitting. 

Sorry there won’t be much for us to tell for the next few weeks, although we can probably tell you lots of funny stories about grape picking and more amusingly, grape pickers (we’ve met some real characters) but do keep checking the blog and please leave us some comments!

 Love to all, missing you bunches (no pun intended)

 Sam & Craig

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