I arrived at Darwin airport at about 1 o’clock in the evening and I decided to stay there for the night so I could check-in my hostel without having to pay for an extra night. I actually thought time would go slow and that I’ll get tired in the airport, but I watched 3 American Pie movies and before I knew it the sun was rising and it was time for me to find my shuttle bus to my hostel . I jumped on the bus and I was actually the only person on the whole bus so I sat on the front seat and had a talk to the driver. I was told that my hostel was the worst in town and I shouldn’t expect much of it, but I kind of knew that when I booked so I was prepared for the worst (I wanted to save some money on accommodation and it was the cheapest in Darwin). I got to the hostel and the guys there were very friendly, so it kind of made up for the dirtiness. Rooms actually weren’t too bad; we had free air-conditioning (maybe it’s standard in all north Australian hostels) but I really enjoyed it! After a little morning nap to regain some power after my long night I decided to check out Darwin. It was extremely humid so after the first 4 minutes I was already covered in sweat, but so was everybody else so I guess it didn’t really matter xD.  I got to see the whole central part of Darwin and the walk took about 4 hours total; good stuff. After seeing Darwin and doing some food shopping I made some dinner back at the hostel. After diner I booked a 1 day tour going to Litchfield, plus some crocodile watching on the way there.

So this was basically my first day here in Darwin, now I’m lying here in my bed typing this post and looking forward to my Litchfield tour tomorrow . I’m sure it’s gonna be great, I’ve got it mapped out so that I’ll see the crocodiles tomorrow and then the day after tomorrow I’ll get put in a cage and swim with them, so it’s going to be epic adrenaline the next 2 days; can’t wait .

Well that was all for now folks, I’ll update you on my tour tomorrow if I get the time when I get home .

Until then take care

The past days I’ve been spending a lot of money going out, but more important, buying my travels up the east coast! No more being too stingy to go on travels, they are all paid for now and I got them an amazing price! I’ve been bargaining the price with 4 different backpacker travel companies the past 2 days and I’m more than satisfied with my accomplishment! At the end of my “but I can get it cheaper at your competitor’s company” rampage, I bought my travels up the east coast through Wicket Travel and I took me a whole 3 hours to conclude the bargain ! I got an initial price of freaking 2789$, and to not make this story too long I’ll give you what I got and for how much straight away , so here it goes :

2 day/2 night Surf camp with Ripcurl near Sydney
3 day canoe tour with Gagaju near Noosa
3 day/2 night Fraser Island with self-drive
2 day/2 night Whitsundays tour
2 day free nights + complimentary stuff and full moon party (on right time) on Magnetic Island
Skydive on Mission Beach with own professional camera man and action camera
1 day reef cruise with 1 intro dive in Cairns

Huge discounts to hostels up the coast including: Main Beach Backpackers, Base Backpackers, Cheers Backpackers, Halse Lodge, Beaches Accommodation Airlie Beach, Absolute Backpackers Mission Beach.

Furthermore I scored a Sydney-Cairns hop-on hop-off pass with Greyhound

All these goodies went from a price of 2789$ all the way down to only 1700$, totally insane ! So if you are planning of doing these travels yourself be sure to bargain as much as you can, because it might save you more than 1000$ just like mine .

Well apart from my insane bargain and some partying not much else has happened during my Brisbane stay.

Next stop will be Darwin, and up there some folks will place me in a cage which will then be submerged into a pool filled with humongous salt water crocodiles; it’s gonna be crazy so stay tuned!

Take care folks,
see ya

I will be leaving my house here in Dalby in 2 days, with destination Brisbane. I will properly stay about 1 week in Brisbane, after that I’ll head up to Darwin for an extreme adventure which I won’t tell about now; you’ll have to wait for my next post hehe.

Well, that was all for now folks, just wanted to notify you about my second year visa grant.
Talk soon

Not long time since my last post a guy left our small maintenance team; we had some good parties together so it was a little sad that he left. The funny thing was that on his last week he really didn’t give a s***, so he was driving around (well, drifting most of the time) like a maniac, so funny to see. Unfortunately I was working with him on his final 2 days, and it really was a pain in the a** cuz I was the only person working, (he was mainly playing with the pigs ). Well, after he left the maintenance team was in low numbers, and it wasn’t only in the maintenance team where people left! The heat was starting to get intense so that might have caused it; I was certainly starting to struggle more during mid-day, and drinking heaps more than normal (in the end not even a 1.5l bottle of water seemed to be enough). Another thing why all that people might have left was that many guys were talking s*** about Tong Park, so that might as well have started that chain reaction; I mean, we went from about 50 people to around 25, it was mental!

I’d say that I started counting my days that I had done not long after I made my last post, but I have to confess that days started going even slower after that. I had made this countdown manager in Excel, measuring days worked, percentage done, days left and working weeks left; it was so good to come home in the end of a hard/long day and tick one more day in the system and see the days drop, felt so good every time .

My last week I was mainly painting a “house” inside, that was meant to be for accommodation on the farm further on. Days were going extremely slow that last week, properly because I found a display of a digital watch in the scrapyard and used it to keep track of time, but of cause the down side was that I kept looking at it every 5 minutes :S. Well in that same week heaps of people left and the farm was in serious need of new workers. A few people arrived 2 days before I left, and I helped sorting them out, but at that time I had developed a negative attitude towards Tong Park (due to various things), so I basically told them about all the stuff that didn’t work, how people were treated and so on (note: the 2 guys left Tong Park not long after myself).

The last hour at Tong Park was just horrible, never has time passed so slow in my life, all the time I was just thinking about all the travels that were lying in front of me and how awesome it was going to be. When we were told it was enough for the day I jumped in the car with my mate and we rushed up to the main office in car, it just felt great knowing that my days at Tong Park were all over now, and from now on it was all fun! Once I reached the main office I got my papers that I had to send to the immigration office for my second visa and after that I jumped on the bus and went home; it felt f***ing good knowing that I never had to put my foot there anymore!

Now I’m just sitting here in front of the TV with a beer writing this post and thinking how great it’s all gonna be !

Well, that was all for now, I’ll inform you again once I get my second year visa, until then, take care folks!

Well some time has passed since my boss had the accident, and news is that he is going to make it! He might have problems doing different activities but he’s gonna make it, and that’s the important!!

I’ve certainly been a lot around on the farm doing different stuff, it seems like the general manager (who is my new boss now) has got a little more control over what he can get us to do (only a little though xD). We have been driving a little more than usual because we’ve been doing manly jobs that required shorter time to finish. Another change (on the past week that is) is that we have been ordered to go single on most of the jobs, reason being the manager thinks we will work faster that way. In my opinion it might be the opposite many of the times, especially when it comes to moving heavy objects or other two-man jobs like putting ventilation fans in!

It has definably got warmer at the farm; it’s just great weather at the moment. During these last 3 nights I’ve actually had my electric blanket turned completely off, it’s great (I’m just thinking back on my first freezing nights right now)! Oh another clear indicator that spring has finally arrived is that we have seen a lot of snakes recently (some really nasty ones),  and returning to the new “one-man” policy, that is another reason why I think we should work in pairs; example: I’m down at China Town (the scrap yard) browsing through some metal scraps, all of a sudden I remove a layer of metal and under is a brown snake (very poisonous) that strikes and bites me, many of the cars don’t have the two-way (similar to walkie-talkie) so I have to drive all the way up to the main office, and they’ll call a helicopter that can fly me to Brisbane, and in the meantime I might as well be dead!… and yes, they don’t have antivenom at the farm strange enough!

Ah just another thing before finishing; remember how I said that people looked a little down at me because I wasn’t so fast, well, it’s more or less over now, I’m working at a good pace and everything seems to be fine, even the Asian guy is being less an asshole now.

Well, that might be it from now; I really don’t want to go into details with what we are doing at the farm because it’s really boring stuff, so let’s just stop it here without making it any longer xD.

Till next time; have a good one

I pray for my life that he will make it; he is a strong person with heaps of “go-power” so why shouldn’t he!!

Well it wasn’t long time since my real boss had returned from Bali, so work was at a normal rate again. I was down working with my good Aussie friend on a project that the other boss had given us some days before; we were basically flooring a room and putting small pens in there for the pigs to give birth in. We were given a small drill with a drill-bit that had served its time ages ago; so as you could imagine the work was going very slow! Dylan (my friend) drilled for quirt some time but it was very had because you had to constantly have heaps of pressure on the drill to enable it to drill; so after some time we went for a switch. I got the warm drill in my hand and I started drilling, after less than 20 seconds the drill exploded (with a big blue spark/flame) in my hand and I start feeling pain in my right leg that had been on the side of the drill (I was drilling from a crouched position to be able to put more pressure on the drill). I drop the drill and look at my leg; what I see is a big black circle on the overalls. I therefor take them off to have a look at my leg, and on there is another black circle, I limped to a water hose and started cleaning the scar. The black circle washes away and it left a much smaller round scar on about 3cm in diameter and a much bigger 20 diameter of skin without any hair on at all. Dylan and I agreed that I was ready to work again because I didn’t have to put that much pressure on the leg anyway. We try out the drill again to see if it works but its stone-dead! So we go up to the main office where the general farm manager and my boss are; they both have a look at the drill and confirm it’s dead! After they have a look at my leg but I say it’s not that serious (it didn’t look very serious either after I washed it). Then the general farm manager gives us the fault for breaking the drill on purpose so we couldn’t work more (we had been complaining about the work that same day due to the very bad drill bit), anyway what can we say, it’s obvious that the drill exploded due to extensive use! After that I did an incident report just to be sure in case the scar was infected and needed special attention; and that’s more or less the end of that story.

There has now passed 4 days since the accident and it’s coming along all fine, no problem at all, though it still looks a bit strange having that huge bit of my leg missing hair .

Well that was all for now guys, I’ll keep you updated if something important happens!

See ya

After that it was the semi-finals with Levi Sherwood vs. Mike Mason & Dany Torres vs. Josh Sheehan. Levi Sherwood won to Mike Mason, he was freaking superior; that kid really has some skills, unfortunately he has been out of almost every race this year due to injury; I’m looking forward to seeing him next year! After it was Dany Torres vs. Josh Sheehan, and a thing I really like about Dany is that despite being in a certain winning position he still puts on a perfect show for the audience; but today I saw a different Dany, on his run he took it very easy (even doing a dead sailor or two :S); so he has lost a little respect from me for that one. Josh on the other hand totally nailed it in front of the crowd, he even pulled off a double backflip Travis Pastrana style, f***ing insane!

After that was the final, Levi Sherwood against Josh Sheehan; or better, the Kiwi (New Zealander) against the Australian. Both did a great run, but Josh was just a notch better pulling off his double backflip once again and totally nailing it in front of his home crowd!

I would still say that Dany deserved to win the Red Bull X-Fighters 2011 (just as he did) due to his great dedication in his past races, good onya Dany Torres!

Such a great competition, I’m feeling really sorry right now for not being there :S!

Here you have the Red Bull X-Fighters 2011 final results:

1. Dany Torres 390
2. Nate Adams 370
3. Andrè Villa 270
4. Josh Sheehan 230
5. Blake Williams 215
6. Eigo Sato 190
7. Levi Sherwood 180
8. Robbie Maddison 160
9. Adam Jones 160
10. Maikel Melero 145

During the race I was drinking some cans of Red Bull, but half way in I decided to spice them up a little with some Jägermaister. Now I’ve put some music on the stereo and having a great after party, feeling a little tipsy with all that Jägermaister I’ve had hehe.

Well, that was all for now folks, see you next time & have a good one ;P

The Red Bull X-Fighters final 2011 will be held in Sydney this year (for the first time in history of men), and it’s going to be intense I’ll assure you that! When I got the news about the finals being held in Australia while I were down there I immediately began thinking on how awesome it could be to go. Some months after I started working at the piggery and I knew that it would be more difficult getting back to Sydney for the event. I really wanted to go even though it would cost me more than 350$ only to go there and get back, but my work leave and visa expiry prevented me to go there, so I’ll be watching it on the couch unfortunately .

It’s going to be a very close race for Nate Adams and Dany Torres, they are both likely to win the Red Bull X-Fighters championship!

Well, enough talk; let’s get to the important stuff! Underneath you have the link to see the whole thing LIVE! That saved you some time trying to Google it didn’t it?

 *Red Bull X-Fighters Live*
(Event Ended)

Let the best man win!

Well about a month and a half ago the Dutch dude was beginning to annoy everybody about that he only had 2 weeks left on Tong Park, and so it went on for 2 weeks, and as you could imagine, and it was extremely annoying; he even stayed another 5 days after he finished the work just to annoy us a little more !

Well, about the same time that the Dutch guy officially left another guy came to stay with us. He was from Belgium and let’s just say it, he was a little on the soft side (if you know what I mean). I think he was expecting it to be all flowers ‘n sunshine, and not that hard work! I told him a little about how it was and not to expect to “have an easy one” as they say in Australia, but after some time I gave up because he kept telling me that he knew it and I shouldn’t worry for him; I thought to myself, “I think he won’t last the week out”! I don’t want to be mean by saying this but I was in the only share room in the house (the 2 others were private) and he had to stay with me, and I knew that would lead to jokes on me at work unfortunately. Well on with the story; after Thomas (the new dudes’) day at work he was ready to quit and I went a little like “I told ya”. Well I told him to continue if he really wanted his second visa, because face it, that’s why we’re here in the first place. So Thomas worked some more days, and every day he came home he was complaining about how hard his life was; it got a little too much in the end, but I kept quirt! I have to say, Thomas wasn’t the brightest person ever (really hope he’ll never find this post, or else I have to explain myself xD), well, let’s just say that people began joking about him at work making the whole thing a little more hard for him. Then not long after word got out that we were sleeping in the same room, and of cause from there it was all jokes on me, but I knew it would come eventually, and it didn’t bother me much.

About 2 weeks after Thomas’ arrival one of the Burmese guys moved out and over to another house filled with friends of his. So I was ready to move into a private room without having to share with Thomas anymore. Well here comes the funny part, we came home and all went to our separate rooms, I was packing some stuff so I could move into the other room, then just before moving it all I just wanted to check that the room was clean so I could walk straight in with my stuff without falling over stuff. I open the door and look at the floor for stuff, “all good”, then I look up and I get a huge shock, a black dude is standing in the room, there is little a moment of silence then I go “WTF?!?” not knowing if here was there to rob us or if he was a new house mate. Well, after he presents himself, so he was obviously there to work and not to rob us LOL. Well he actually turns out to be a very cool dude, I still have to check him more out to stabilise if he can be a very cool friend .

Just a little extra update on what’s going on (not talking about roomies). It’s finally getting a little warmer during night and day, and it feels good; I’m still having my electric blanket on full every night, but maybe in 2 weeks or so it might even be time to turn it a step down . Another thing that’s a clear sign that spring is arriving is that we can finally see in the morning while we are waiting for the bus, it’s great, can’t wait till it gets hot!

What else has happened… ah right, my boss went away for a 2 weeks to Bali, and the general farm boss was in charge of us. Well, he wasn’t very good prioritising things and sorting out what we should do, so we spend a lot of time just driving around looking for different stuff that had gone missing; so we all took it as a relaxing 2 weeks xD.

I have also been partying a little with friends from work, had some crazy times. One thing I have to say is that these “redneck” parties are totally different from the ones I usually attend LOL, well, it’s all part of my Australian adventure I guess .

Well, that’s about it for now, I’ll properly update you again in 2-3 weeks or so.

Until then, take care folks!

My house is a one floor house, 1 kitchen, one bathroom, 1 living room and 3 bed rooms (2 private and 1 share; I’m in the share one unfortunately). Our kitchen is not bad at all, we have organised it so we each have our own shelf, and it’s really good to have your own space (compared to hostels).

The living room is equipped with a fairly big sized TV, and one of the Asian guys have bought a cheap “wanna-be” sound system, but even though it’s cheap it still does the job ; I’d say that I spend most my time (when I’m not sleeping) in the living room, it’s just a great place to chill with a beer or two after work .

The bathroom is divided (typically Australian), so you have the toilet in one room and the shower in another.

Then we have my room. Well, it’s nice too, I can’t complain, I really expected much worse before coming to Dalby, so I’m really happy that it turned out good! I have been in 2 other houses, and I have to say they are much worse than this one and half of them are even paying more rent, so I’m grateful for that I’m staying in this house!

Well, don’t think there is much more to tell, so I’ll just end it here.

Hope you enjoyed my little Dalby house introduction post xD

See ya folks

The Monday after my first week I started working in the big sheaths; the job sounded simple, tearing old single-pig boxes down and setting up new large 20 pig pens. It definitely took a week or 2 getting completely into it; but once you’re organised in the group things go fast, I just have to think a little more for myself and ask much less (it’s really the complete opposite from my old “monkey job” back in Sydney). Now my next aim is to get a little faster; I know all the people I work with have worked much longer than me, but still, I’ve been working at the farm a month now, shouldn’t be that hard getting a little faster, even for a lazy person like myself xD! Well I really didn’t know if saying this but well, here it goes. I have to admit that work is not too good the past week, cuz there’s this Asian dude I work with, and he really is a pain in the ass, he knows I’m the slowest and he does everything to let me know so that really sucks; well, I have wide shoulders so a little offence here and there don’t make me flick, but it’s still very annoying, because it really makes me feel like shit at the end of the day!

On the same Monday that I started working with the other maintenance guys I went straight to the biggest supermarket in town to buy myself an electric blanket, and I got to say, it really helped a lot; as I said in the last post it got a little warmer after the first night, but still horrible; with the electric blanket those days were over; you can’t imagine how much I enjoyed that first night with the blanket, at last a good night’s sleep after a horrible freezing week!

Another good gadget I’ve bought recently was an internet stick; now I can get on the internet and check up on all the things I want when I have the time. With my provider I could choose from 2 different plans, one where you pay per megabyte, and another one where you pay 3$ and you get the whole day with unlimited navigation; I’m on the last of those two plans, and I’m only using it in the week-end when I have got time off (and nothing else to do), it’s extreme good value this way, so glad I bought it !

Well, talking about work again; me and my team have finally finished with our converting pig pens job, and it sure feels good doing different stuff again! So what is different stuff? Well I’ll just go short over some of the stuff we have been doing recently without going into details. Well, we have been driving stuff around, fixing water pipes, changing nipples (I know it sounds crazy, but I can assure you it isn’t), concreting, repairing feed trays and putting in feed pipes; that should be it for the past days.

Well without making it much longer I’d just end it here, because that is more or less everything that has happened at work LOL.

Stay safe my friends; I’ll properly come up with a new update in a month or so, take care

p.s. That was shorter than my last post, good on me hehe

Well, I arrived at Dalby (which is situated around 250km from Brisbane) on a Monday evening. I got off the bus and waited at Hungry Jack’s as instructed; after about 30 minutes a car pulled up and I got to meet the woman that was going to “install” me in my new Dalby house. I was told that the farm was about 45km from Dalby, and that it was below zero in average many of the nights. Well, arriving at the house I got introduced to my new house-mates; 2 Burmese dudes and a Dutch guy.  The 2 Burmese guys didn’t talk much English at all so after some tries I started talking to the Dutch guy. He was a very “closed” person so I really had problems starting a conversation with him; I started asking questions but they were all meet with a “no-answer answer”; let me just give you some examples. Me: “So how is it working at Tong Park?” him: “Well, it’s a work…what is there to say (then all silence)”, me: “So for how many hours are we working?” him “It depends”, me: “What about the pay then, it’s 18.50$ per hour right?” him “It depends, some gets paid more”, me: “So do you get paid 18.50$ per hour or what?” him “yeah, something like that”, me: “So when do we get up in the morning?” him” Well, really depends if you are a morning person or not”, me “Well, how long a drive is it in the morning to the farm then?” him “I don’t really know”, me: “Well, approximately, you know, is it like a 2 minutes’ drive or rather like a 2 hour drive?” him: “Nah, it isn’t 2 hours”; and so on. I could see that the conversation wasn’t getting anywhere so I just went, “well, guess I’m better off just finding out by myself, isn’t that right?”, it was (obviously) meet with silence; so instead of talking I just went onto watching TV; Bear Grylls was on, and he was trying to get warm with some fire in a cave, and that really got me feeling that it was beginning to get cold. At around 9 o’clock it was starting to get very cold, and my house mates were starting to go to bed, so I thought I’d do the same. There was nothing on my bed (linen, pillow, and so on) so all I had my lightweight summer sleeping bag! Some hours after the light got turned off I still weren’t fallen asleep, it had got super-cold and I was totally rolled together, all shivering, trying to get warm, but my summer sleeping bag was definitely not gonna help me on that one! I think that I didn’t sleep more than one hour that whole night, it really was my coldest night ever in my entire life; you could see the condense when I was breathing, so I’m sure it was around zero degrees in the house!! I kept thinking about Bear Grylls tips on how to get warm and how a fire would do wonders in this situation, but then again, turning on a fire in the house would properly be a bad idea.

Well my Dutch roommate got up at around 4:30am, and I (of cause) was already awake so I just followed. After some breakfast we caught the bus out to the farm situated about 1km from a tiny village called Warra. After about 50 minutes we arrived at the farm, and we started going towards a smaller (on-farm) bus, then I was (finally) helped by the Dutch guy who told that I was due to wait at the main office instead of following the group, and so I did. The office wasn’t opened yet so I had to wait outside for about an hour, and it was still freezing (my body was still in dead cold after the long night). Well after the office folks arrived I got in and began signing papers, I think I must have put my signature around 50 different places, it was insane (had to sign that I understood every single rule separately); I’m pretty sure an hour or so passed by just doing that. I was put on the farm maintenance team, so most common duties would include moving stuff, building stuff and tearing stuff down.

Well after my introduction it was time to work, I was given a car that I had to connect to a trailer and then take it to another station. After finding the station I had to reverse the car with the trailer through a small gate, thing was I’d never before backed up a trailer in my life, and just to make it worse it was even my first time driving a car with the steering wheel in the right side. So as you can imagine I struggled a little getting that trailer through the stupid gate. It took me about 5 tries till I got it right, but I was still kind of satisfied about my effort being the first time doing it ever! After I had to manually load old pig feeding trays to the trailer and then finally drive them down to the scrapyard (also called China Town xD). That continued on for the whole day. When I got home I went straight to bed without having dinner, because that first day loading pig trays really tired me out, to not talk about that silly hour of sleep I had the night before. That night it wasn’t as cold as the first, so I managed to get more sleep compared to my first night, even though it was still super cold.

The following days were pretty much the same as my first day, well without the signature stuff though . I’ve been told that I have to begin working in one of the stables with the other maintenance guys (so far I’ve been working alone); kind of liked my little caring around job, it’s not that bad once you get used to it.  I hope my new building pig pens job will be quirt good as well when I start again on Monday; there is nothing else to do than to hope for the best!

Well that was all for now guys, I will post again in a month or so when I’m 100% into my new job (hopefully).

Until then take care folks!

Well I started out at the hostel where I normally sleep during my stays in Sydney. Only one day after I arrived I got called up by a Dutch guy that I met down in Melbourne and he told me that he was coming up to Sydney in some hours and could see from my Facebook that I was there too; so we decided to meet up the same day. When we met up he told me about this hostel he was staying in that was cheaper than mine if I booked in for a week. After about 4 days I moved away from my hostel in the CBD and went in the hostel in Kings Cross that he told me about.

Apparently this hostel was owned by a Dutch guy who did a lot advertising back in the Nederlands, and because of that the hostel was filled up with only Dutch people (I think around 95% of all people in the hostel were Dutch). It was very hard to get a talk going because they were always sitting in groups just talking Dutch with their travel mates. Well after some weeks I made friends with an English guy (Jack) and a Dutch guy from Limburg (Ferd, a.k.a. Freddy); apparently the Dutch say that Limburg should belong to Belgium, so Freddy weren’t as Dutch as the rest in the hostel which for me was good. There weren’t free wi-fi in the hostel but about 200 meters from it they had a facility with internet that could be used by all the people that came down with a group called Wooduck (I think that all the Dutchies in the hostel were Wooduck members). Anyway there were so many people coming in the building everyday so they didn’t control who was member and who wasn’t, so I spent heaps of time in there trying to find work.

After some days I got offered work from this guy I asked in the hostel. The work was very simple, just setting up and putting down stands for various exhibitions around Sydney (me and my friends called it the monkey job xD). After some days even Jack and Freddy were working there, it was so neat to work among close friends of yours, made the whole work experience much more fun. There wasn’t work every day, so the days we had off we spend chilling in our room at day and going out at night (yep, we were in the same room). About a month and a half passed by like that and then I got asked by one of the persons in the reception if I wanted to become a night manager and get free accommodation in change. At that moment there weren’t that much work going on with the exhibition firm, so I agreed to it.

Being a night manager I had to be in the reception from 8PM to 11:30PM and take any bookings or check ins that might come. Meanwhile I also had to check that people weren’t getting too noisy in the hostel or were doing something they shouldn’t do. At about 10:30OPM I had to clean the kitchen and take out the trash, plus prepare for the free food for the day after. After closing down the reception and hostel I had to redirect the hostel telephone to my cell phone so people could call during the night for assistance. On some nights you didn’t get called up at all, but other times you could be unlucky and get something like 4 calls from different people that couldn’t remember the code to the outside hostel door, that really sucked especially if you had to work for the exhibition company the day after :S. Furthermore you had to open everything up before 7AM and after that your shift was over. I was working every second day (changing with another night manager) so sometimes when I had to work for the exhibition company me and the other night manager just swapped days. But after 2 weeks the other night manager decided to work at the exhibition company too, and it therefore got impossible to do both works properly, so I had to say no to the exhibition company every time I had an overlapping night manager shift.

A month passed by like that, and as you might imagine I didn’t have much free time on my hands that entire month, only working, eating and sleeping. During that same month some dramatic stuff happened! On the first week the guy that gave me the job had to quit because he had (without knowing it) had malaria for about a month. On the second week my friend Jack broke his wrist playing football and had to recover for a month before being able to do anything again. On the third week Freddy’s grandma died and he had to go back to the Netherlands for the funeral. On the fourth month with only me remaining I got quirt scared that something bad might happen to me but I was lucky, nothing happened, well, that’s not entirely true, I still quit my job in that same week. Thing was that I were promised work as a tree planter around 300km west from Sydney, but just as I was finding out on how to get there I got called up and told that they didn’t needed anyone anymore, so that really pissed me off as you can imagine.

On my second last week in Sydney there came some German girls in my room and being without work I went out a lot with them plus some other friends from the hostel, great fun, I already miss the great times. On one of the nights in the club I was talking to this group of people and one of the guys in that group had just returned from some farm work up in Queensland and he told me to try give them a call. The day after I gave them a call and fortunately they had a position available for me. So on my last week I was just getting sorted before my trip to the farm.

Now I’m here, just started working on the farm I really have to get used to it. I will post you in a week or so to let you know how it was. Guess that was all for now, all I can say is that I already miss the great nights out back in Sydney with my friends.

Well, that was all for now, talk soon!

I also saw Quest-a-con, which is a building housing all sorts of different of models that illustrate different stuff (LOL, I know that was a bad explanation). I’ll give you an example. In one place you could see how sound could move different stuff on different hertz. In another place they had gathered different eye illusions. In a third place they had facts and models showing different nature catastrophes (wow, I’ve said “different” insanely many times in a row now, gotta stop it :S). Well, I had a fun time in Quest-a-con, even though it’s mainly for a younger audience.

On Saturday night I got invited out by a Rugby dude that Pam & Keith knew. It was fun being out in Canberra, and it got me another perspective of the city, I really didn’t think Canberra had any good night life to it, but guess I was wrong there. The morning after my night out it was time for me to go home, but Keith asked me to stay some more days because he was behind schedule in his garden due to his influenza. So my 3 days in Canberra turned out to be almost week. One morning we went to this Italian car show that is held once a year in Canberra, it was great, heaps of Lamborghinis, Ferraris and old Alfas, just great.

Well, apart from the Italian car show we were working the rest of the time. We did a good job in the garden, and I really enjoyed my extra time in Canberra. Here is a picture of some Rosellas showering in Keith’s garden (they were there every day at lunch).

Well after my Canberra stay I went back to Sydney, and plans are to find some work and get some money before traveling again.

That was all for now folks, take care

That was all folks, on to post number 101 xD

Edit: well of cause I got the music track on the video muted on YouTube

Hi folks, here’s a little post about what I did my last 3 days in Sydney. Well, the days after my Blue Mountains trip I was planning to go visit my Australian friends Pam & Keith in Canberra. Pam & Keith were leaving Australia for half a year and they really wanted to see me again because it wasn’t sure that I’d still be in Australia by the time they came back. After arranging a time and date for my Canberra visit I only had one entire day left in Sydney. My best friend’s birthday was coming up soon, so on my last day in Sydney my project was to buy him an Australian gift and mail it to him. On the day of departure I had to catch the bus at 1 p.m. so I got up early to have good time to pack my huge backpack. The same day an old war ship was going to be sunken to create an artificial reef not far north of Sydney, and I really wanted to see it. It was planned to be sunken around 9:30 I think, and fortunately I could see it all live on TV, so that was great. Unfortunately the whole ship sinking process was delayed due to a group of dolphins swimming in the “exclusion zone”. So after a long time (I think the clock was around 11:30) the ship was finally sunk. It was quirt cool to see, even though it went faster than I expected. I had a look at the clock and realised that time had flown by at high-speed while I was watching, and that it was best that I went for the bus pick-up spot right away. I left my hostel around 12, so I had an hour till my bus arrived at the bus stop. Having a little spare time I went to the post office with the gift to my friend. When I arrived at the post office there was a huge queue, but I decided that it could be done because I still had 50 minutes left and the bus stop was only around 800 meters away. After I had paid for sending the package I looked at my watch and realised that I only had 8 minutes till my bus left, so I ran for it to be on the sure side, but I was unlucky at every intersection and had to wait for green every time, it pissed me off big time. In the end I arrived at the bus stop at 1:01 p.m. with my heart rate sky high, and after being told that I was late and that they had been waiting for me I got on the bus; luckily.

That was basically it for my Sydney stay; as you have read not much went on during my Sydney visit, but I’m sure that during my 4 days I’ll have here in Canberra there will happen a lot . So stay tuned for my next adventure!

Until next time folks.

After that we headed down a little path into the forest. We stopped almost every 3-4 minutes where Jason had something to explain about the area, and I got to say, he was really good at explaining every single thing in such detail and with such humour. At a point we arrived next to a tree and he started explaning. While he was talking I leaned against the tree but then Jason went “look out, there’s a funnel web in the tree” and I got to tell you, I’ve recon that I’ve never moved that fast away from something hehe. After that he began explaning about the funnel web and how dangerous it is. Well after the funnel web facts he showed us some natural colours from some rocks just next to the “funnel web tree”, neat stuff .

After about an hour (and heaps of photos) we arrived back at the parking lot where we had lunch. After our lunch we took to another place in the Blue Mountains where you can see the so called 3 Sisters (which is 3 rock formations close to each other). After lots of photos and a good long Aboriginal story about the 3 Sisters we continued down the mountain.

After around 1000 steps we were told to divide in 2 groups: the people that had enough stairs for the day and the people that wanted to further explore down the steps. I went on the further exploring team while Jason was following the other group back to the bus. It was great fun, we basically did what we wanted because nobody was around, so we climbed some rocks and trees around the giant park xD. After our walk we arrived at a “lift” that went all the way up to the top of the mountain where we had to get on the bus. The “lift” was a metal wagon driving on rails and pulled up the mountain with a wire. The seats in the wagon were tilted over 45 degrees and there was a metal “fence” for roof, so it was quirt a laugh getting in LOL. Jason had told that it was the steepest rail road in the world, so I expected the worst hehe. When it started it was very slow on the first 15 meters (where the rails were flexing to get the same angle as the mountain), and all the time I was like “fuck, it’s getting steeper and steeper, how much more can it go?” After reaching the same angle as the mountain the wagon violently increased speed and we were flying up the mountain, it was really f**king awesome, such a laugh. After 30 seconds we had reached the top and it was time to get in the bus and head back home after a long day out.

Blue Mountains really was a great/fun experience, I’m really looking forward to my next tour (wherever it may be)!

Well it was all for now folks, see you next time

Well, as I told in my last update I took Greyhound (the bus) to Sydney; with a journey around 11 hours. I got on the bus at the train/bus station in Melbourne at 9:00 p.m. and from there it was a long night ride all the way to Canberra where we had to make a stopover because some of the passengers were getting off there and because we had to change driver. I was trying to sleep on my way to Canberra, but I only managed to get around 20 minutes of sleep in all, so that really sucked as you can imagine (I’m a really bad sleeper on any form of transportation). Well, after our stop in Canberra at around 4 a.m. the direction was Sydney. We went through a beautiful mountain area during our trip to Sydney, and it was awesome watching the early morning sun go up between the mountains. We arrived in Sydney at 8 p.m. and I only managed to get a total of 1 hour sleep during my journey, so I was really tired when I arrived, but I decided to stay awake all day today and just go earlier to bed.

Now I’m in my bed and I just booked the Blue Mountains Tour that I won in Melbourne for tomorrow. The weather is going to change to rain in 2 days, so I really want to do the trip now instead of having to wait for the rain to clear. I’m really looking forward for my tour, and I’m sure it will be awesome. Well I better get a decent amount of sleep so I can be fully charged for tomorrow, I’m sure there will be a lot of walking involved.

I’ll post how it was as soon I get the change after my trip. Talk soon!

That was all for now, next time I’ll update you on my short Sydney stay.

See ya.