Australia #3

Hi guys,

here comes the second email to the elite clique that receives my australia-mails.

I've been in Australia for just over 1 month now, and I can say, I have seen quite alot of stuff already. Let me go on, from where I stopped last time.

My hostdad, remember, he was in hospital, is back home since quite a while now, and he apparently has a burst appendix, which they will find out, when he returns to hospital in 2 weeks. Wish him luck for that.

Like I said, I went to Katherine in the North of Australia, to start my first job, where my cousine used to work. She told me, it was the best money, she earned in the time she traveled through Australia. It was my plan to stay there for 2 months, to earn some money, and then travel back to Brisbane maybe, or travel on towards the westcoast. Well, the plans changed fairly quickly. But let me start at the beginning of my travel.

I took the plane from Brisbane to Darwin on Wednesday 1st Feb in the evening, and arrived safely in Darwin at around 2 am. It was my plan to go seek an internet cafe, to hang out there for a few hours, whilst waiting for my Bus to Katherine, which was supposed to leave at around 7 am. But first I needed some food and a toilet. So I went and found a supermarket to get me a sandwich, and while eating it, a guy from the cleaning unit joined me, to have his 'lunchbreak'. While we were sitting there, talking about Darwin and my journey, I told him, that I needed to go to a toilet, and if he knew where I could find one. He said, he could let me into the toilet under the supermarket, which is supposed to be for the cleaning unit. I agreed and the 2 of us took the lift downstairs, where he let me in the locked toilet. So I took a piss, washed my hands like my mum taught me, and reorganized my clothes and hair, and finally went outside again, only to find that the cleaning unit guy had left. The first thing I remembered was, how he had to use a key to use the lift. I was starting to panic, that I couldn't get out. I approached the lifts and found that I can easily use them. Inside the lift I found heaps of buttons, and I couldn't tell which one was the right one, so I just went ahead and Hit 'G', for Ground Level. So my lift starts moving, and halts again. I open the doors, only to find myself in a dark corridor, which I had never seen before. I go back into the elevator, trying to go back to the toilet level, pushing buttons, without getting it to work. You can imagine how I was totally freaking out. Stuck in a dark corridor that looks like it could be the entrance to a 5-star Hotel. The only thing I could think of to do was to push the Emergency Button, because this obviously WAS an emergency. The woman who answered my call listened to my story, and finally told me, that she wouldn't believe me, and would call the police, because I was not supposed to be in that building, and that I was gonna be arrested.
RRRRRRRRRRRIGHT!
I was completely stunned. She was saying I would be arrested, because some cleaning unit guy let me into the toilets. So I finally convinced her, that it wasn't my fault, and she said, that I'd have to wait for the manager to arrive in the morning (at around 7am) and hung up on me. Can you believe it? So I went out of the elevator, and sat in that corridor for 45 minutes, until I heared some voices. I yelled for help, and gladly I saw a security guard walk by, and he let me out with some sort of keycard. Of course I had to explain the whole story again, back and forth, but after one and a half hour, I was finally out of that bloody building again.

So I did actually manage to catch my bus to Katherine, caught a bit of sleep on the way there, and finally arrived in Katherine at around 2 pm, and was stunned by the heat and humidity that really got me. My new boss on the farm I'd be working at picked me up, and showed me everything I had to do, before he got me to my youth hostel.
I registered there, got my key, went up to my dorm room, only to find my roommates smoking pot inside of the air con-ed room. This trip really did start great. I bought a few things before going to sleep, because I had to get up at 5 in the morning to start my farming work.
I get up at 5, get lunch ready, get picked up and driven to my work, thinking I will start my lemon picking job. I was wrong yet another time. I was put into the Chemical Spraying Group, which didn't really bother me, but after 4 days of doing the same chemical spraying shit, without any protection, I approached my boss, because we had always spoken about lemon picking in the emails. His response basically was 'I got these 10 Indonesian guys picking lemons on contract who cover the lemon picking by far, so I can't let you pick lemons until they are gone, which is in 2 months'. All I thought was 'fuck off'.
I had met a few germans in my new Youth Hostel I had changed to, after the first night, and they said, their work on a different citrus farm was rather easy, and I should prolly change over to their place. Which is what I did.

It goes on, don't worry.
The day I changed my working place, 2 Australian workers started there too, which were rather nice on the first day. The second day, they went to the boss, saying that the germans, which had been working there fine for 4 weeks, and I would be stealing gas, taking drugs all the time and be taking breaks without writing them into the timesheets. Sadly, the boss believed them, and thus, from the third day on he was taking his time checking our work, and he put the australians into a position to check us too, which made us quit after the third day.

So now I am back in Brisbane, after hesitating to Katherine, buying one of the last tickets back to Darwin, and waiting several hours at the airport there, to actually get a ticket for a flight back.

It's time to get a job again.
Oh, and happy Valentine's Day!

:)

I keep you all posted.
Cuddles and kisses to all the girls ;)

So long,
Franz