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