OK, so when people in Australia talk about Pubs they are not the same as a pub back home as we know it. In the city a pub looks like a restaurant and in the outback.....they look like the place where I'm about to get stabbed and buried never to be seen again!
So back in November me and Maxine had the chance to go to this pub, we would work 20hours a week inn exchange for food and accommodation, any hours worked after this would be paid for. However, evidently, we didn't go and decided to waste our money on booze, food, bungee jumps and cuddling cute Koalas instead...a much better option if you ask me!
However mid-way through January, when I was in Bundy, I decided to take this offer up. So my last night in Bundy with Sarah and James was spent stuffing ourselves with Chinese, taking about 5 hours to pack and then watching James chase the train the whole way down the platform...that crazy loon!
The train ride was lush, I had a seat at the front of the carriage all by itself. I had a TV, a desk, a power socket, ample leg room and my trusty red pillow. I spent the night alternating between movies and sleeping. The journey in itself was a loooong one, I left Bundy at 10pm at night and didn't arrive at my destination until 4pm the next day.
So I was picked up and taken to the pub. Here I met my boss and my new roommate Sophie. It was a good start to pub life, we had Lasagne for dinner and then we went over to the boys house with a bottle of Bundy rum for a night of drinking. And drink we did. Turns out the boys make their own alcohol, so we had home brewed beer, rum and I think some other stuff as well. The night is a little hazy!
And that's when pub life started to go down hill. Turns out the owner was bat-shit crazy and only got worse as the fortnight went on. She was clever enough to make sure you only worked 22 hours or so a week, so really you only got paid for 2 hours work...bitch. Anyways I don't really want to talk about her because she pisses me off! I have never until her, has a boss who I don't get on with. One night she even tried to teach me how to scoop ice cream...really bitch?! I just walked out of the kitchen, wrong but really?!?!?!
Anyways apart from her I actually had fun at the pub. During my first week there Sophie's friend Lilli came to stay, they went out a couple of nights by themselves to the boys house because I had to work but then we had a few nights with all 3 of us. Cheese and wine night was a personal favourite, we each consumed a different bottle of wine, white, rose and red and then ate our body weight in cheese, brownies, sweets, crisps and crackers whilst watching girly films. A few more nights out at the boys and consuming a lot of Bundy rum!
The pub was on the site of natural hot springs, which meant we got to use them whenever we wanted. We went swimming in the large outdoor pool then spent time swapping between each of the 3 heat pools. The middle heat pool, then the hottest one and the freezing one. We jumped in and out of the hot and cold pools which was lovely to relax in. Reading a book by myself whilst moving from pool to pool was pure heaven.
So the pub was actually in the middle of nowhere. You drive over the top of a hill and look down onto the pub. The pub was on a crossroad with only about 5 other houses down the road near it and the nearest Woolworth's was an hours drive away. The nearest big town was a 2 hour drive...yep 2 freaking hours! It literally was in the middle of nowhere!
One of the rare days off that me and Sophie had together was a beautiful sunny day that we spent at Milla Milla falls. This was the waterfall I had visited a few months before when doing the Cape Tribulation tour. This time round it was a lovely sunny day and the falls were full and pouring down. So we sunbathed, read, listened to music, ate homemade sausage rolls and swam through the falls.
On another night me and the girls made a Mexican extravaganza at the boys house. We had fajitas, re-fried beans, homemade guacamole (which was amazing!) and cheesy nachos. It was beautiful! And a lot more rum was drunk!! During the day we swam and laid around a beautiful lake in the blazing sun....that was the last I saw my sun tan!
any way one of my favourite nights was actually the last night at the boys house. A few days before they had shot a cow....yep that's right, shot a cow. So anyways the boys marinated cow steaks in a red wine and garlic jus. They then barbecued them and i ate 4....yep 4 steaks. As well as potatoes, and then lots of cheese! The steaks were amazing!! Freshly shot cow is lush! There were 2 fresh coconuts on the side of the porch which the boys thought would be ideal to drill through and make cocktails with, and they weren't half wrong. We mixed fresh coconut, lemonade and Bundy with a splash of vodka, outback cocktails!
So anyways apart from me only lasting 2 weeks because of the bat shit crazy owner I actually had a good time. Lots of good food, alcohol, good company with the girls and boys, jumping in fresh lakes, springs, swimming in the stream at the bottom of our house, having a room of my own, drinking wine, beer and being in the middle of nowhere! This was also the place where I started watching Modern Family and watched almost all of How I met Your Mother....there was also hardly any signal. You had to balance your phone on the porch ledge and not move it. It was like being in a detox programme and I decided I can't live without technology!
Also the locals at the pub are a little different to what you would normally find in Australia. They are nice people but they have lived all their lives in a outback bubble. They talked about cows like I knew what they were on about. And they had no idea about musicals....can you imagine a world where no-one knows about Les Miserables or Mamma Mia....I can and I lived there. That was not pleasant.
So anyways after 2 weeks I left the pub. It was incredibly spontaneous for me. Anyone who knows me will know that I don't just get up and go. However on this occasion I did, I booked a flight Tuesday night and flew out from Cairns to Melbourne on Wednesday morning. Dad would have a heart attack doing that! So case packed, ticket in hand and hostel waiting I left for the next adventure in Melbourne.
Love Me
xx
27 Apr 2013
21 Apr 2013
Bundaberg
So after a drunken and messy New Year and travelling and spending money for 3 months, it was time to get back to reality and work. So me Sarah and James headed off for a farm just north of Brisbane. The hostel we were staying at was ominously called Cellblock. It's a themed hostel from an old police station and jail block. When we arrived everyone was in bed ready to work the next day, so naturally me and Sarah drank a free drink and talked to the few who were up trying to scope the place out. What we heard was not good news at all. We had been promised work on a tomato farm when we arrived and when James was to join us a few days later he was to be on watermelons. However that first night we found out that tomatoes had finished the week before and the lads that were on watermelons were getting 3 hours a day twice a week. Not very reassuring.
However the next day we decided it was time to explore Bundy. First on the agenda was new underwear for me. Being clever I'd been using my cool bag as an extension of my suitcase and had packed all my clean undies in there. However someone else picked it up off of the bus the night before. Leaving me underwear-less! Thank God for bikini bottoms! We were expecting Bundy to be some derelict little town where the best shop was Woolworth's! So me and Sarah were pleasantly surprised to find a shopping mall! With a K-Mart, Supre, Factorie, Coles, Woolies and much more besides. So underwear was bought and then it was food time. One of my favourite things about Bundy was the three of us cooking every night. Except for eat out nights!
Tuesday nights were cheap pizza night, a $5 pizza....yum! Pizza Hut pizza on a Tuesday night was a delight. By the end of Tuesday night there were pizza boxes everywhere!! Saturday was steak Saturday. I have never eaten as much steak as I have here, probably because half of Queensland is populated by cows! $6 for steak, chips, salad and sauce. Bloody bargain! And Bundy is where I started eating my meat pink instead of blackened to within an inch of its life. Another bargain about Bundy was Thursday cinema bargains. The cinema was around the corner from the hostel and only showed 2 films on rotation a week. So for $6 we could go see a film each week, compared to the $20 a usual Ozzie cinema costs! Needless to say all three of these were exploited on a weekly basis!
So I got lucky and got put on a farm straight away. Which meant getting straight into the swing of 9pm bedtimes and 5am wake-up calls. So on my second day in Bundy I was up, dressed and ready to work by 5.30am. We drove to the farm (4 of us in total) and I was introduced to the Farmer, Mick, and signed all the appropriate paper work to make sure I'd get paid. The off to work I went. My job was weeding a ginger field. This feild was so big that when I stood at the top I couldn't see the other end! My job was to go up and down the rows and picks all of the weeds out. ALL OF THEM! This could take any where from an hour or less, to (one day) taking 7 hours per row!! However it was easy work, we were left to our own devices in the field and I spent all day with my iPod in my ears. We worked from 6am to 9am and then went back to the farmers hut for a break. Then 9.30 to 12pm we worked, then had a break and then continued to work until 2.30pm. Then it was home time! This meant jumping in the shower with a nail brush to scrub my entire body!! The amount of times I looked and thought "Wow! I have a great tan!" Then realised I was just dirty. After scrubbing my body I got to jump into the swimming pool with Sarah and James, chill for a few hours, before walking up to Woolies to get dinner. Carbonara, Steak sandwiches, Thai curry.....mmm food!
All in all looking back on Bundy I have nothing but fond memories. Good company, good food, good nights and good pay. I saved a bomb the 2 weeks I was at Bundy! However due to a lot of circumstances I decided to move further up to the middle of nowhere, to a pub. Big mistake. More in my next post!
Love Me
xx
However the next day we decided it was time to explore Bundy. First on the agenda was new underwear for me. Being clever I'd been using my cool bag as an extension of my suitcase and had packed all my clean undies in there. However someone else picked it up off of the bus the night before. Leaving me underwear-less! Thank God for bikini bottoms! We were expecting Bundy to be some derelict little town where the best shop was Woolworth's! So me and Sarah were pleasantly surprised to find a shopping mall! With a K-Mart, Supre, Factorie, Coles, Woolies and much more besides. So underwear was bought and then it was food time. One of my favourite things about Bundy was the three of us cooking every night. Except for eat out nights!
Tuesday nights were cheap pizza night, a $5 pizza....yum! Pizza Hut pizza on a Tuesday night was a delight. By the end of Tuesday night there were pizza boxes everywhere!! Saturday was steak Saturday. I have never eaten as much steak as I have here, probably because half of Queensland is populated by cows! $6 for steak, chips, salad and sauce. Bloody bargain! And Bundy is where I started eating my meat pink instead of blackened to within an inch of its life. Another bargain about Bundy was Thursday cinema bargains. The cinema was around the corner from the hostel and only showed 2 films on rotation a week. So for $6 we could go see a film each week, compared to the $20 a usual Ozzie cinema costs! Needless to say all three of these were exploited on a weekly basis!
So I got lucky and got put on a farm straight away. Which meant getting straight into the swing of 9pm bedtimes and 5am wake-up calls. So on my second day in Bundy I was up, dressed and ready to work by 5.30am. We drove to the farm (4 of us in total) and I was introduced to the Farmer, Mick, and signed all the appropriate paper work to make sure I'd get paid. The off to work I went. My job was weeding a ginger field. This feild was so big that when I stood at the top I couldn't see the other end! My job was to go up and down the rows and picks all of the weeds out. ALL OF THEM! This could take any where from an hour or less, to (one day) taking 7 hours per row!! However it was easy work, we were left to our own devices in the field and I spent all day with my iPod in my ears. We worked from 6am to 9am and then went back to the farmers hut for a break. Then 9.30 to 12pm we worked, then had a break and then continued to work until 2.30pm. Then it was home time! This meant jumping in the shower with a nail brush to scrub my entire body!! The amount of times I looked and thought "Wow! I have a great tan!" Then realised I was just dirty. After scrubbing my body I got to jump into the swimming pool with Sarah and James, chill for a few hours, before walking up to Woolies to get dinner. Carbonara, Steak sandwiches, Thai curry.....mmm food!
All in all looking back on Bundy I have nothing but fond memories. Good company, good food, good nights and good pay. I saved a bomb the 2 weeks I was at Bundy! However due to a lot of circumstances I decided to move further up to the middle of nowhere, to a pub. Big mistake. More in my next post!
Love Me
xx
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