QLD to Melbourne

Hello people.

Long time, no post.

Sorry about that.

I did manage to write a blog a few months ago but my laptop died and i lost it. bumma.

I just read the last post from when we were in Rainbow Beach, QLD.

We had finished touring the Sunshine Coast and discovered that our mango work, which we were really depending on, had fallen through. 

This turned in to a really stressful time. 

In a strange place, running out of money fast and not really sure where we were going or why.

After a few deep breaths, we thought back to last time we were in this situaution, in Surfers.

What did we do?

Just ring ring people, relentlessly.

Farmers, recruitment agencies, anyone.

Just keep asking until you get a lead and let fate take its course.

After a stressful couple of days we found some work and things worked out better than we could imagine.

We lined up some work on a stonefruit orchard in a place called Bangalow, NSW.

So we hit the road and crossed the border with renewed hope and energy.

After driving about 400 kms we started looking through our Camps book for van parks near our new work.

We realized that Byron Bay was just up the road from the orchard. WOW

A few months earlier we spent a couple of hours in Byron and fallen in love with the place.

We said at the time, we have to come back to this spot.

But we never imagined that we could live and work in such a special place.

Now, here we were. Without even trying we were doing just that!

For the next 2 months we lived in the centre of Byron Bay and worked amongst the most beautiful scenery we have ever seen.

Byron Bay - Glen Villa Resort - 55 nights - 29th Oct - 21st Dec 2011

This is easily our favourite area in Australia so far. For so many reasons-

The scenery is lush green everywhere.

The locals are friendly and down to earth.

Tourists are party animals.

Shops are arty and intersting.

Ocean is warm and everyone is listening to reggae.

The best Pizza Bar ever.

After settling in to the van park for a couple of days, we set off for our first day of work on the orchard.

We were picking peaches and nectarines.

With a big fruit sack hanging off the front of us, we had to hike around a massive orchard which was at the bottom of a steep and very humid valley.

Filling our sacks till they were full (easily 20kgs), empty them in to the tractor and then start again.

It was hard work and a real test of fitness.

This would be the start of a year long workout on various fruit farms.

Our co workers were very friendly and interesting.

Our boss was a true blue aussie farmer, there was a maori girl (kirsty),an aussie hippy (maddy) , two Taiwanese boys (Curtis and Ray) who we helped to learn English and a couple of old aussie blokes. We have worked with a lot of old men who should be retired, but, for various reasons, they cant afford to retire and are stuck laboring on farms. These men have inspired me to get my shit together (one day) and not end up in that situation.

We were enjoying work. Getting paid per hour and getting fitter everyday.

Until thing went a bit pear shaped for me.

I had a little sore on my stomach. I thought it was a spider bite.

The next day there was two little bites.

The next day I had a band of agonizing blisters from my bellybutton around to my spine.

I had shingles!

Shingles is when the chicken pox virus comes back for a second hit in adults.

Agony!

I had a few days off work, got some medicine and spent the rest of the week out of it on Forte.

It healed up pretty quick and I got back to work.

A couple of weeks later, the price of peaches fell through the floor and it was going to be cheaper for the farmer to leave the fruit on the trees to rot. Work was over. Crazy!

This was very frustrating.

We started making plans to head south to Victoria for some more fruit work but were hesitant to leave this beautiful location.

On the day we planned to leave, we jumped in the car for a day trip to Nimbin instead.

Nimbin is the craziest place. You can't walk 5 meters down the road without being offered some form of drug for sale.

Everyone is watching you, waiting to sell you something.

The streets are filled with police survelillence cameras too. But there is obviously an agreement that as long as deals are done off the main strip, the drug trade will be tolerated. 

Very Strange. We befriended an old lady who we named Nanna Nimbin. She baked delicious cookies.

After our adventurous day trip, we took some deep breaths and reconsidered our situation.

We decided we weren’t finished with this beautiful part of the world.

We would stay in Byron and pursue some work on the local Blueberry Field.

This happened quite easily and for the next few weeks we were picking berries as fast as we could. Only $10 per 2 kg bucket.

Our workout continued as we hiked across this massive farm in the subtropical summer.

The place was full of European backpackers. So many interesting people. 

We made friends with a lovely Italian couple (Moreno and Guilia.)

Their Wicked van couldn't make it along the rough track to the centre of the farm so we would give them a lift in the Patrol. In return they would invite us in to their van at the end of the day to listen to reggae and learn/ laugh at each others strange language.

Northern NSW is like a world of its own. So different from anywhere else.

A couple of memorable characters were Love All and Patricia Braggs.

Love All was an older man who walked the streets daily, wearing full rainbow coloured outfits. He would just wonder around, hugging people and praying at cars as they drove past. Generally spreading the love. One day he approached Terri, did a little prayer and told her that she will have seven children!

We ended up having a random lunch with Patricia Braggs at the markets one day. She is an older lady straight off the beaches of Miami, Florida. All flowers and colours like one of the Golden Girls.

She is the daughter of the man who created the first health food stores in America. She now runs the empire and is nutritionist to the stars. She had paper work to back it up. Signed photographs from Katy Perry and Clint Eastwood and everyone else in Hollywood. Look for her apple cider in your local store!

At the end of the markets all the locals gather around and form a massive drum circle. They all bring their own drums and other weird instruments and bang away for hours. Dancing, laughing, rolling around in the dirt and having full on spiritual experiences. All the tourists gather around and join in.

I've never seen anything like it.

We could hear all this from our van. If it wasn't a drum circle, it was a reggae band or a guitar playing off in the distance. We felt lucky to living in the middle of such a vibrant place.

This was the most exciting time of our travels. After living in the van for a year, we felt like alternative citizens and now we were living in a town full of like minded people. We really felt like we belonged.

But, as summer started peaking, the rain became continuous.

You cant pick berries in the rain so this was not a good thing.

Byron gets expensive when school holidays start so it really was time think about moving on. Reluctantly

It was time to hit the road again. Destination – Sydney for  Xmas and NYE.

 Gumma Reserve - Macksville - 1 night - 22nd Dec 2011

Over 300kms south of Byron. Gumma is a big grassy patch on the side of Warrell creek. Flushing toilets and cold showers. Perfect for a one night stop over. It was meant to be $10 but nobody approached us so we stayed for free!

St Ives Campground - Sydney - 11 nights - 23rd Dec 2011 - 2nd Jan 2012

This place was a lucky find. Being Sydney and NYE, all van parks were full or charging $60+ per night. We kind of stumbled upon this place and it was perfect. Only 30 minutes drive to the city, on the edge of Ku-ring-gai national park, close to a main road full of public transport, only $15 per night, power, water and hot showers and the place was deserted. Score! So we had Christmas amongst the gum trees with the possums. It was also our first sober Christmas in a long time too (we had stopped drinking when we arrived in Byron and were still on a roll) Terri cooked an absolute feast as usual, so we gave ourselves food comas instead.

We visited all the touristy Sydney landmarks and spent NYE in Darling Harbour. I don’t have a problem with multi cultural Australia but this was ridiculous. There were tens of thousands of people crammed in to the Harbour and I'm pretty sure Terri and I were the only white skinned people there. Full of Asians and Indians. It really was a game of spot the Aussie.

So we had our first sober NYE in a long time and then spent the next few days trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. The festive season was over and it was back to reality. The reality was, once again, we were in a strange place with no money and no jobs. But as usual, we soldiered on. Stressing our asses off, but soldiering on.

Wingello State Forest - 1 night - 3rd Jan 2012

Our last night in Sydney was very hot and sleepless but we had to make a move because the ranger was coming back from his holidays and we owed him money. So we hitched the van and drove out of the city through busy morning traffic. We were heading down the Hume hwy in the general direction of Victoria but after a couple of hours it was obvious that we were too tired to be driving.

This site was in our trusty Camps 5 book. A free camp in the middle of a pine forest. No facilities here except for a long drop which was particularly unsmelly.

It was easily 40c that day and closer to 60c inside the van. We spent our day lying outside on blankets, following the shade cast by the huge pine trees. We should have been catching up on sleep but it was so hot and there was an inconsiderate bastard who ran his noisy generator all day long. We spent our time researching fruit picking jobs in Victoria. Our options were – go to Shepparton, a hot and dry country town which is full of fruit and vege opportunities or go further south to cooler Yarra Valley (near Melbourne) and try our luck on the vineyards.

The van was radiating heat that night but we did get some sleep.

Albury Tourist Park - 1 night - 4th Jan 

Keen to get things moving, cover some ground and get to where the work is. We drove over 400kms to the NSW/Vic border.

Come to Albury Tourist Park!!! Right next to a noisy intersection of highways! If that doesn't tickle your fancy, how about an airport runway right behind the park! Your sure to love the dog park next door!  Full of barking, shitting dogs. How about some scary locals peering around corners and some smelly old toilets. Only $35 per night!

Another hot night. We got up early and were out of there!

Pine Hill Caravan Park - Yarra Valley VIC -  233 nights - 5th Jan - 24th August

We weren't getting a good vibe from our travels through inland NSW/Vic and it was so hot and dry. Terri's cousin, Cass, was living in the Melbourne and Uncle Bob, Aunty Rob and cousin Jack were holidaying in nearby Geelong. It would be a good chance to catch up with family. We were craving some familiarity after living amongst foreign people for so long. And, we had a connection for getting work on some vineyards.  So we took a gamble and drove another 300kms to Yarra Valley near Melbourne.

Everything was looking up. The valley was picturesque.

It was refreshing to catch up with family and see their eyes light up when we told them of the adventures we had been having. It helped us forget about our stresses and realize what we had accomplished over the past year.

We were feeling hopeful again. We were living near our favourite city and it felt like home, we were making new friends, seeing new sights and we had lined up work on the vineyards. Melbourne was feeling good!

Things weren't peachy for too long though. 2012 ended up being one of the hardest yet valuable years ever.

Hard, because vineyard work is hard yakka and, for a few months, the work was not as consistent as we needed and we spent a lot of time basically living in poverty. 

Valuable, because we learnt a lot of life lessons. We learnt to appreciate the little things which we all take for granted. Having jobs, money, food, shelter and health are not basic rights, they are big privileges and life sucks without them!  This experience turned us in to very grateful people.

Our time in the vineyards was very interesting. We worked amongst heaps of foreign backpackers. There were a few regular aussie employees and they were real hard nuts to crack. Luckily, by this stage, Terri and I were very experienced in nut cracking! After a few tough months, we started to stand out from the masses of backpackers, our supervisor realized that we were nice people and hard workers and work picked up.

We were working in vineyards all over the Yarra Valley. Picking grapes, pruning vines, bottling wine, driving tractors and quad bikes, building new vineyards and dismantling old ones. We were doing everything! This was a real farm experience. Terri was constantly surprising and impressing old farmer men with her crazy, man like abilities. It was a real work out and we were fitter than ever.

As pruning season started, the work became very constant but winter was setting in. We spent our days working in rain, wind and hail. Some days it was so cold that the grass was frozen. It got so wet that grassy vineyards turned to muddy swamps. In our gum boots and rain coats, we spent our days hiking up and down steep hills which had turned in to muddy little rivers.

This was a hard winter and kind of broke our backs as far as life in a caravan was concerned. We would leave for work in the dark and get home to our damp van in the dark. Everything was muddy and it was a challenge to keep our work clothes clean and dry. Up till now we had viewed the inconveniences of life in the van as a fun challenge. But the constant wet was getting to us, the van was getting mouldy and Terri’s respiratory health was clearly deteriorating. We started to realize that this was the beginning of the end of life in a caravan. We were craving the conveniences of a regular house and the comforts of a regular job.

One thing that got us through these tough times was being able to visit cousin Cass in Melbourne. She was living in a beautiful house in trendy Northcote. We spent our weekends eating and drinking with our new Melbourne friends and enjoying a couple of nights sleeping in a real house.

We had (almost) literally gone 2 years without stepping foot inside a house. When we visited Cass’s, I would engrossed by the simplest little things. Sitting on a proper couch, a bookshelf full of books, walls and doors separating rooms, hot water taps and showers! Oh how I love non communal ablutions. I would stand in the shower feeling like a king, brushing my teeth without the sound and smell of old men doing poos.

It was August and the decision was made. It was time to park the van, quit our jobs, get in to Melbourne, find new jobs and live in a house. We were determined, but the idea of making this chain of events happen was overwhelming. But, once again, things fell in to place in ways that we wouldn't have imagined.

One advantage of living as povo, itinerant fruit pickers is that all living expenses are tax deductable. All rent, food and petrol is a deduction, so we got a relatively good tax return. More money than we had seen in a while and enough to break free from our situation. Around the same time, cousin Cass moved out of the Northcote house which we had fallen in love with. Her housemate was in desperate need of someone to share the rent. Hello Paul and Terri!

 9 Ellesmere St , Northcote - Melbourne - 25th August – present

It was happening! We quit our vineyard jobs, stored the van, moved in to the Northcote house and even squeezed in a visit back to Perth for  a few  weeks. We got back from Perth and spent a couple of weeks settling in to our new home. I basically just spent 2 weeks moving between the shower, the couch and the queen sized bed. I was in heaven.

Now it was time to start thinking and building up the courage to apply for regular city jobs. After a lot of umming and arring we decided we would bite the bullet and apply for jobs which we didn't love but were qualified to do. Hairdresser and AV Technician. We both emailed our resumes. Terri got a phone call within an hour, an interview the next day and a permanent position the day after that. I got 5 phone calls, 2 interviews and a full time position within a couple of days. We were totes in demand!

So life has changed. After 2 years of living in a caravan on the sides of rivers and in the middle of nowhere, we are now living in a freshly renovated house, walking distance to trains, trams and a trendy café strip on High St. 

After 2 years of working side by side on farms and never being more than 50 metres away from each other, Terri and I are now playing tag teams. She works during the days at a salon on fancy Lygon St, Carlton. And I work mostly nights at Grand Hyatt on swanky Collins St in the CBD.

It has been a shock and we are still adjusting to these changes in lifestyle. Terri cuts the hair of the rich and famous and I have been rubbing shoulders with the likes of 

Hugh Jackman, Ian Moss, Marcia Hynes, Jessica Mauboy, Vanessa Amorossi, Deputy PM of Malaysia and the fat guy from the old Price is Right. “Come on Down!”

It is now a few days away from Christmas and the roller coaster continues. Our tag team work arrangement is taking its toll, our new Melbourne friends are moving to the UK, cousins Cass and Mel are moving to Brisbane and the landlord has given us  till the end of Jan to move out of the Northcote house so the owner can over back in.

Its all happening!

What Next?

Dunno.

Merry Christmas!

Lots of Love

Paul and Terri