Maggie’s Farm
After mum left I spent a week in Byron Bay, it was pretty stormy for the first few days and the waves were huge. There were a handful of surfers who were mad enough to go out in the sea. It was good entertainment to watch them but I heard that at least a couple of people had been badly injured. It was almost enough to put me off attempting to learn to surf but after a few days the waves calmed down. Learning to surf was great, mostly because it is a lot easier than i had imagined so I was able to ride my first wave all the way to the shore. It’s really hard work though, getting back out past the waves each time but very good fun. Our instructor, Gaz was satisfyingly stereotypical ageing surfer, long sun bleached hair, covered in scars from surf accidents and ridiculously happy and relaxed.
I spent a day in Nimbin – a previously deserted dairy town where some ‘aquarius’ festival was held in the 70’s. Many people decided to stay and it has become and odd mixture of old hippies and the local aboriginal people. there is a bit of a drug culture – australia’s answer to amsterdam in some ways. The museum was a strange mixture of hippy and local aboriginal messages and art. In many ways the two are very similar in their fundamental respect for nature.
It was now that I foolishly checked my bank account. It was time to either go home or get a job.
Hussein (my boss) is like a watermelon: tough and inscrutible on the outside, soft and sweet inside. He barks his orders at us in short bursts of broken english. Then comes back later to quietly check we are happy and then walks off singing to himself in Iraqi. 
Working was a strange sensation, I won’t deny. I worked for just one week, picking grape tomatoes and I think I averaged an hourly rate of around 3 pounds. But it was interesting to be the only british person there. The majority seem to be German, Korean, some French, Canadian, Japanese, one Rwandan, one tiny Chilean man and me. Working in the fields at 38degrees was not something i thought would bring me much in the way of pleasure at all yet I was wrong. I think being ready for work at 5.15am and sweating it out in the mud brings people together, bonds us in some way. One of my favourite nights was learning to make sushi which ended up in a type of small street party in the caravan park with almost everyone involved in some way.
After that I went inland from Rockhampton and stayed on a farm for 3 days. I did a lot of horse riding. From my previous 2 experiences where i have been given a crazy horse (the first attacked all the other horses and the next was scared of water) I was hopeful that this time I’d have a nice safe reasonable horse. Needless to say, I was wrong. “Brandy’ was the ugliest horse I had ever seen and I was warned ‘she’s a bit over-excitable so see how you do. If she’s too much we’ll swap with the trek-leader’. Thanks. She was over-excitable but she was also one of the fastest horses i have ever ridden and almost impossible to stop. But i stuck with her, or more like managed not to fall off. It was a good challenge and no one got hurt!
On the farm we also learnt how to ride a motor bike and each evening we took them across the farm to watch sunset from a hill. It was good fun getting dusty and tired.
So after the farce that was tomato picking i thought i’d try further up the coast, Tully the banana capital of australia. But a day before i was due to leave, Cyclone Larry hit and wiped out almost every single banana tree in northern queensland. So I waited for the roads to clear and headed for cairns, stopping at mission beach on the way. There was just one backpackers operating after the storm, no electricity or drinking water. Quite interestingly ‘post-apocalyptic’.
North of Cairns is Mossman gorge. It was beautiful and so hot that it was actually steamy. I was attacked my mosquitoes. and I saw a family of wild boar. But they wouldn’t stand still long enough for a photo, thoughtless gits.
So, tomorrow i fly to singapore and head up into thailand to meet my sister and her boyfriend. I will be sad to leave australia but i am ready for new adventures.
‘… with every step i take, I make a new friend…‘ just call me the littlest hobo (although granted, I am neither little nor a hobo…)
Tags: Travel
wanderingdeb
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