Theodore

After two months in Middlemount where we worked at the pub, we moved on to Yeppoon. We stayed at a campground for almost two weeks and enjoyed life with a pool and lots of free time. The 26th of January was our first Australia Day! This was supposed to be one of the biggest events of the year in Yeppoon with a full day beach party. Strangely enough, the party was not on the beach… There was however a market and live music. It was not quite as big as we had thought, so after a couple of hours strolling the market and soaking up the atmosphere we returned to the campground and had a couple of beers with our fellow campers. When the evening came we went back to the city centre as this day (as most public holidays here) is mostly celebrated by drinking and partying. We went to a bar where we met Jenny, an Australian teacher who told Will(em) that there is a desperate need for more primary school teacher. She offered to help us figure out what is needed for him to be able to teach in Australia, so we met up with her a couple of days later. She was amazingly helpful and made calls and showed us what qualifications and what kind of paperwork was needed. The friendliness of Australians keep surprising us! It is however quite a hassle to get everything, so we put the thought of Will working as a supply teacher on hold until we get a bit more time to figure things out. Because already on our second day in Yeppoon we received a call from Mitch, a cotton farmer in Theodore who needed help during the harvest. Since working in 40 degrees (but aircon)  in Middlemount was not extreme enough for us apparently, we accepted! So we had a nice job lined up! The work meant 10-12 hour days a couple of weeks straight, which was perfect for us, trying to save as much money as possible before we start our next adventure road tripping the east coast properly! 

So we are currently in Theodore, a small town with nothing except for a couple of small shops and a very busy bottleshop. Our work consists of building cotton modules with module builders. Big machines who just push the cotton down into a big rectangular shape (about 19.000 kg of cotton in one module!) until it is tight enough to be taken out of the machine, at which point you start all over again. When we first got an introduction of the work we were going to do, we were all thinking about how easy it would be to fall off the module builder (3m high). Will was the one being able to prove that to us when on his second day he managed to trip and fall off. He luckily was hardly injured though, just some cuts and bruises but nothing serious, and he just kept on working, as the tough guy that he is. The work is moderately physical, a lot of the time the machine does the hard work for you. But for every load of cotton being thrown into your builder, you have to balance on top of the builder and tell the buggy driver exactly where you want your load to make it as even as possible. The last loads are always the one who give the most work since you have to make sure as little as possible falls out of the builder. This means you have to push (by hand) quite a lot of cotton into the right place while the buggy unloads. The more cotton falls off - the more you have to pick up by hand. Every time either one of the pickers or the buggy’s break, it means we get to work at a slower pace. So we are sometimes very grateful for the fact that the machines are quite old and there yet has to be a day where nothing broke down. We do this work in about 40 degrees with a burning sun, on hot steel machines with warm cotton. We drink about 5-10 liters of water per day per person to compromise for this. It’s hard work but I love doing it. I’m always so dirty when we’re done, the beer has never tasted better and I’ve never slept better! We are constantly bruised, full of cuts and every morning we get to wake up with a sore body. It’s a great opportunity to get fit again after enjoying the pub food and drinks a bit too much for the last two months though. 

On Tuesday we got to experience what rain means around here. In about 2 hours there was enough rain for us not to be able to work for 3 days (with full sun) because the cotton had to be dry. Even though we enjoyed being able to recover for a bit, three days inside a hotel room (because it’s the only place with a comfy temperature) was just a bit too much and now we are anxiously following the weather forecast hoping it will not rain again. On the bright side: we definitely got confirmed we fixed the leak in Oscar!

We are now going towards the end of our work here and are already looking for a new job on other cottonfarms. It’s a good way to earn money in a short amount of time and the longer we do it, the easier it seems to get. Of course, after a certain amount of days where we worked more than twelve hours a day without a break we are having trouble getting through the day without getting totally exhausted, but we do really notice the improvement in our muscles and being used to the temperatures. To give a better idea of what we do ( I don’t think you can comprehend without seeing it) I found some time during work to take the go pro with me. That video Will come as soon as i've found a spot with enough wifi to upload it.

Fraser Island

Hey guys,
Back on the blog again after a forced break due to a broken laptop! We've upgraded to a macbook and I'll try to post about the past weeks as I remember them. I will start where we left of, working on one of the most special places in Australia, Fraser!

Our job consisted of cleaning enormous houses, this means that our days on this small paradise on earth were spent scrubbing toilets and covered in sweat and cleaning products. As Willem once put it: Somedays, when I am with my face above another shitstained toilet I think to myself: is this the great Ozzie-adventure? Nonetheless, we can't really complain. We usually did two houses a day which took two hours each. We put on our cleaning playlist on Spotify and dance around with the vacuum cleaner until we were done for the day (around 1 pm), put on our swimwear and go chill in the pool/spa  until we got hungry or were tired of throwing Phoenix (the 5 year old son of our bosses) around. We've worked up a nice tan from chilling by the pool everyday and got a lot wiser from watching quizes and 'deadly 60' on TV every night. We were forced to a better lifestyle as well with less alcohol (too expensive) and doing a 30-day-sixpack workout routine daily. Unfortunately we didn't get a sixpack so we quit after 30 days (okay, 29).

We did actually treat ourselves to a night to the bar one day and met a couple who we played pool with. They invited us to come camp with them since we had a few days off, which we gladly accepted! Finally we had the opportunity to see some more of the island and talk to other people! They took us to the famous lake Mckenzie, a beautiful clear lake with the whitest sand you've ever seen. It was a two hour bumpy ride over the sand which made me very nauseous, but that was quickly sorted with a few glasses of wine. The guy told us about his work in the mines in Middlemount, a small mining village in (north) Queensland and that the local pub over there hires a lot of backpackers. He told us he was quite sure that they would have a job for us if we gave them a call, which we made a mental note of in case we'd ever be crazy enough to want to work in 40+ degrees.

Lake Mckenzie

After about 5 weeks on the Island and only been to lake Wabby and Lake Mckenzie, we were starting to worry that we might not see much more of Fraser and leaving the island without having caught a single fish. Luckily our bosses saw that we were getting desperate and intervened, they taught us how to fish (we both caught the tiniest fish possible) and took us out to experience Eli Creek. Eli Creek is a creek streaming from somewhere in the middle of the island out to sea. It is crystal clear water (when thirsty just open your mouth) which runs through the most beautiful rainforest. It was indescribable relaxing and wonderful to float through, we both agreed that this was way more special than Lake McKenzie. It is hard to explain, so I'll add a video to give an impression.
















During the last two weeks on Fraser, our search for a new job took a lot of time and effort. (Yeah, the guy who promised us as job in Vacy was trying really hard not to be contacted by us, so we gave up on that.) After a while we decided to give the manager of the pub in Middlemount a call, and sure enough, without even asking for our resumes, she asked us when we would like to start! Fantastic! We finally had a new opportunity to save some money. The job would consist of working behind the bar, in a bottleshop, in the kitchen and some cleaning (thank god for airco). Getting all ready to drive straight up to Middlemount, Willems sister suddenly asked if we wanted to join her and her boyfriend on their vacation in New Zealand. I was convinced that it was not possible, since we were supposed to start work around that time and we didn't have much money, but Willem didn't want to give in that easily and we asked the manager of the pub if we might be able to start three weeks later. To my big surprise this was not a problem and we could not believe our luck! Our next adventure would suddenly be in another country!

SS Maheno

Cap'n Will

Sunsets on the beach

Sunrise

Roadtrip to Vacy... or not?

One of many beautiful views from the road trip

Whoohoo, the time had come for our first serious road trip! Before we could depart we had to make sure that our van was roadworthy so we brought it to a mechanic that was recommended by our very nice but also very talkative Airbnb hostess. She would recommend us about literally everything that we could do in the region, completely ignoring the fact that we were about to leave.. Anyways, Oscar had some minor issues that needed taken care of and we were very lucky to get it all done in a couple of hours. After all, we needed to get to our new job as soon as possible!

Trucker at work

After a nice 4 hour drive we arrived at free campsite Rollingstone with next to it the Rolling Stone creek. We had not even stepped out of our van before we met a local fisherman who welcomed us with beers and food. We joined him at his table and after a nice evening with lots of crazy stories, he promised to take Willem fishing the next morning. However, when Willem got up at six am, the bloke was already gone. The people you meet while travelling are somewhat peculiar sometimes, but that is part of the fun. There were no showers at the campsite so we went for a swim in the morning at the creek. Not only did we freshen up, there were also fish in there that nibble on your feet and eat your dead skin. Normally you pay money for that in a spa or something, but here you can get stuff like that for free! While trying to take a good picture of us at the creek, I suddenly spotted my first real and alive snake in the wild! It was a small one, but dark (black-brownish). So apparently it was either a dangerous one, or a very dangerous one.

Tarzan

Rollingstone Creek

The fish ate Willem's legs

After Rollingstone we drove to Airlie Beach. which is the starting point of many cruises to the Whitsundays. Unfortunately we were in a bit of a hurry to get down to Vacy in time, so we decided to not do a tour at this point, but come back later this year and do it when we have more time. Besides, we had just snorkeled the great barrier reef, so we figured that we might not be as appreciative of the beauty of the Whitsundays right now, so better to leave a bit more time in between all . Instead we went SUP-ping and kayaking, to do something else. Unfortunately we were not allowed to go too far from the beach, so we actually didn’t see that much of the environment, but we did see a turtle! Only for two seconds before she was gone again, but we did see her! It was a cloudy and even a little bit of a rainy day, we were getting a little bit frustrated at each other and some people even fell in the water... After a ‘healthy discussion ‘ I went to buy some new clothes to get back in the proper mood and after we found a cheap bar, for ozzie standards that is, we were fully back on track! During some pool games we met up with another couple and ended up drinking with them the rest of the night. In the end it was another great day and a difficult start up the next morning!

Special views from the car

The next evening we arrived on another free camping spot, outside a tavern. We had to drink some beers there to be allowed to sleep there for the night. We met up with a group of local truckers and had a few good laughs with them while I turned 24. Lots of free beer for me and a hangover the next day was a good start of my quarterlife-crisis. For my birthday I got balloons all over Oscar, a party-hat and the promise of whale watching in Hervey Bay! The balloons only lasted about 5 minutes once we started driving, but the whale watching was truly amazing! We saw around 20 to 30 whales. They were playing, diving out of the water and one could see the mother teaching the calfs how to jump. It was such an exciting and beautiful experience, we were super happy!

Willem swimming

Party bus!

Sleepy birthday queen

The next day we were just about ready to proceed our journey to Vacy when we got an unexpected phone call from our boss... he had to let us know that due to some unfortunate circumstances he could not provide us with a job for now. Our whole plan was suddenly down the drain. We had driven 1500 km and spent money on petrol, tours and activities knowing we would soon be earning some money back. We had to go to plan B.. only thing is, we didn’t have one.

We were in Hervey Bay at that point and decided to stay put until we had a new plan, since we were staying there quite cheap and immediately needed to start thinking about our money not knowing when we would get another possibility for a job. We might be going to Vacy a couple of weeks later but this is all dependent on certain things we do not know, yet,

Hervey Bay

Baywatch

Anyway, since we were stressing out a bit, we decided to look around for new jobs, and lucky as we are, we found a new job within a day! We got hired for a job as housekeepers on Fraser Island, which  is the largest sand island in the world, on the world heritage list and truly a small paradise on earth. So, for the coming six to seven weeks, we are housekeepers for Fraser Island beach houses, which means cleaning for about two to three hours every day (some days off, some days more hours, but all very doable). We get to live in a big apartment with almost all comforts you can wish for (except wifi) and a small salary. The island has only one convenience store which is way too expensive, so we actually had to bring as much food and other things we might need the coming 6 weeks as we could, and hope to survive on that. It is quite hard to shop for that, especially since we could not bring Oscar with us. To be able to drive around the island you need to have a 4x4 and even then a lot of people get stuck in the sand. So we figured we are going to walk or try to get lifts from our bosses whenever we wanted to see some of the other parts of the island. For now we bought fishing rods and a guitar to keep ourselves busy during our free time. Hoping to force ourselves to learn new things...The fishing is frustrating, we keep feeding the fishes with bait but they don’t actually stay on the hook, so instead of actually catching dinner, we give them dinner.

The whales are also visible from Fraser Island, as well as dingo’s, sea-eagles and it is the place with the most different species of venomous snakes in Australia. It also has loads of funnel-spiders (deadly) and probably just about anything that tries to kill you in Australia. We have both been waking up at night, dreaming about snakes biting and trying to kill us, so subconsciously we are aware . But until so far we actually feel kind of safe and walk around barefoot everywhere.

The view from just about anywhere on Fraser

Hiking on Fraser island. The sticks we carry around in case of aggressive dingo's.

Lake Wabby @ Fraser

We still feel the urge to pet them

Rainforest, great barrier reef & work!

It's been quite a week for us! The camping managers came back and we had a lovely couple of last days at Etteleah Park. We drank some wine, played some pool where I turned out to be a better player then Willem of course, and decided that it was time to move on. We were waiting for a call from a guy who worked at a resort nearby who was finishing his last week of work. We figured we might be able to take over for him. But while we waited we decided to take the Captain cook highway (supposed to be one of the most beautiful  roads in Australia)  and go to Cape Tribulation. It is a place where the rainforest meets the great barrier reef, and only three hours away from where we were. So we took Oscar on his next big challenge and drove on the worst speedbumps in the world. These speedbumps are huge, you hardly see them coming and they have stones all over them so that it is the worst idea ever to go faster then 10 km/h on them. The speedbumps are there because of the many cassowarys that supposedly walk through the rainforest and over the road. They are a large birdspecies that are closely related to dinosaurs or something, anyway, they look really funny and we really wanted to see one! So I dragged Willem on loads of hikes through the forrest but although we stumbled across warning signs and cassowary poop every ten metres, the stupid birds never revealed themselves. We did see and hear (! it sounded like a huge dinosaur according to me, and according to Willem like a car) a wild swine with babyswines! Besides the warning signs for cassowarys there are a lot of places where you are warned not to swim or walk to close to the sea because it apparantly is crowded by crocs. We looked for them and of course, nowhere to be found... We gave up and went to a wildlife experience instead in Port douglas on the way back where we found out that both the stupid birds and the crocs actually do excist, you just got to pay to see them. We did a boat tour in cape tribulation as well where we actually saw wild huge crocs as well, so that was pretty cool!

On our way back we also drove past the resort where we hoped to get work, but it was a luxurious five star resort, so we already felt like we didn't really fit in. I decided to post an ad on Gumtree and suddenly we got several job offers! This lead us to a guy living on a farm in New South Wales, near Vacy where he needed two people to both help out with the kids and on the farm. It is a cattle farm with lots of horses and they seemed like a great family, so we decided to trust on our gut and go for it! That means that we have a 3000 km roadtrip ahead of us, but it is for my (our?) dreamjob! Riding horses, working with animals...Sometimes I can't believe that everything I dreamed of doing over here actually is coming true. They also have labrador puppies so that itself will probably be worth the trip alone if the job would be dissapointing. We are having Oscar checked out on monday morning, and provided that everything is okay with him, we are starting our trip and hope to be arriving at our destination about 7-10 days later.

Before we left Cairns we had one more thing on our to do list: to see the Great Barrier Reef! We booked a tour and went with our go pro and lots of suncream. We had snorkled in Thailand before so we kind of figured we had seen similar things, but it was definately worth the trip! The water was crystal clear and we saw a lot of beautiful coral and huge fishes. We were unlucky with our second stop though, because it was supposed to be a spot with a lot of turtles and sharks, but apparently cool animals avoid us when we are looking for them and we didn't see any. We did see dolphins though! So that was a pretty huge bonus.

Right now we are planning our roadtrip down the eastcoast, lot's to see and do there so a week is never enough, but with our farmwork we get our 88 days of farmwork done, which means we are eligable for a second year visa...

Willem wanted to cycle through the rainforest. NOT a good idea if you are wondering. This bridge was basically the only thing you could actually sit on your bike instead of carrying it. But hey, who else can say they rode their bike through the rainforest?

Not a bad place to have lunch

Looking for cassowarys

There he is! Notice the weird thing on it's head, real dinosaury

Didn't bring me any letters

Mad Emu, Happy Willem

Family picture

So we definitely want a pet-kangaroo

Hard ozzie-life

He wasn't impressed

Camping managers!

After our stay in Cairns we booked a week at a camping called Etteleah Park. It is run by a retired couple at a location about 45 minutes from Cairns. Oscar got his first real test, because apparently the camp site was up on quite a mountain and it was 30 minutes of driving steep hills and sharp turns. He did good though, and upon arrival we discovered that the camping was truly a paradise on earth, with a huge garden and loads of fruit trees which we are allowed to pick and eat as much as we want. In addition to that it has a beautiful pool who basically nobody else uses and two dogs to cuddle and play with. A campfire is lit at night and everybody sits around talking and drinking and sharing stories while it gets dark. But our luck didn't end there, because after the first night, the camping owners came to our van and wanted to have a talk with us. I was thinking we had done something wrong or whatever, but no, they needed to go out of town for a week and since we didn't have a job and were planning on staying here for a week or more, they figured we might be interested in a free stay + half of the income of the campsite in return for being camping managers for the week. Well, that was of course an offer we could not refuse. It basically means just being around in case guests show up, do some light cleaning, lighting the campfire and feeding the dogs. We loved being here anyways, only downside is we can not go hiking or whatever together during opening hours, but we are fine by the pool for now...

We used our last day of freedom to go see the tablelands and take the watefallcircuit. The waterfalls were amazing but the water was freezing. It took us a whole day and quite some kilometres (I think we made about 500) to see everything, but I guess that is something we will just have to get used to around here. 

We have kind of made up our minds that we will probably go for whatever farm work we can find after this, because we'd like to get our 88 days of farm work (so that we are eligable for a 2nd year visa) and save some money to travel further. So we are just applying for fruitpicking jobs around in Queensland, hoping we can find something nearby. 

For now we are very happy being camping managers at our own personal paradise!

You can view the pictures at a larger scale by clicking on them.

Resting during a hike

Our first campingspot!

Picking mandarins

Private pool

At a huge fig tree during our roadtrip

Milaa milaa Falls

Cool boy

On the road

Explaining to Willem how to take a good picture

The apprentice has succeeded

Cairns - the tropical paradise

Our first two weeks in Cairns are already over and we feel like we are finally settling a little bit in this city. Right now Cairns is the place to be for backpackers because of the nice weather compared to the rest of Australia. That means it is a wonderful place for a holiday, but it also means job-hunting becomes harder because of more competition. We are looking and responding to many different job opportunities, but no luck yet. Except for Willem, who has been giving two hours of football practice a week. That is of course not enough to be able to manage financially but luckily we are prepared for some weeks of unemployment. We have lived in an Airbnb for the last two weeks which has been great. We are living with two danish girls who are doing their internship here and that means some nice social nights on the porch. Since most airbnbs are full and hostels are crazy expensive in Cairns at this time of year, we decided to look into some alternatives. Our idea was to save money on accomodation by going camping, which led us to the newest member of the family: Oscar!

We are staying in Cairns for the moment because we might have some job opportunies coming up, we are just waiting for answers. If nothing appropriate comes our way, we will either relocate or do some fruit picking at a farm nearby Cairns. This is not our first choice, but there are a lot of fruit farms and jobs here, so it would be a good option.

For the rest: we have been hanging out by the lagoon, cycling around, working out, going on a hike, drinking goon (which is cheap wine ) because beer is too expensive and searching for jobs. We have also been to Fitzroy island to go snorkling, but unfortunately there was quite a lot of wind and waves, so the sight at the coral reefs was not great. No turtles or koalas spotted yet, but right when we talked about how Willem started to believe the kangaroos did not really excist, we saw a lot of them hopping around in the distance.

At Fitzroy Island

Chillspot at the lagoon (The lagoon is a swimming pool by the sea because the sea is too dangerous to swim in because of alligators...)

Right before we found a local brewery and had our first night out in the city and found out we could not afford this.

Willem on racing around Cairns

 

 Ready to work on the farm

Going camping for the next week, really excited to sleep in Oscar!