After an incredible two weeks in South Korea where I witnessed the very best in international track and field fight for gold, silver and bronze, in what was most definitely the best live sporting event I have ever attended, I treated myself to the most spectacular comedown imaginable. Yes, one day I was sitting track side for Sally Pearson’s wonderful gold medal winning performance for Australia in the hurdles, and sneaking into press conferences, putting questions to Usain Bolt et all, a few days later I was a member of the Australian agricultural community.
As I have explained in an earlier blog, in order to get a second year working holiday visa, a working holiday visa holder must complete 88 days of specified work (construction, forestry, farming , fruit picking, mining etc) in a regional area (anywhere outside of Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane and Gold Coast). Back in July I completed 12 of these days, meaning that another 76 would be required by the time my first visa expires in order for a second year visa to be granted.
With construction being a no-go for me due to health reasons, the two main avenues available to me were paid fruit picking work, while living in a working hostel, or volunteer farm work under the WWOOF or HelpX scheme, where payment is zero dollars an hour, but accommodation and food is provided for free. I have heard nothing but horrific stories about fruit picking, and the unreliability of obtaining work, so with my motivation being to secure the rest of my 88 days as quickly as possible, rather than earning money, I chose the volunteer route.
So within hours of landing back into Melbourne airport after a long haul flight from Seoul, I arrived into Broadford, a tiny town one hour north of Melbourne, to begin work on a small hobby farm. To begin with, it wasn’t too bad. I had an unlimited supply of Internet, which is a rarity in the countryside it seems, and I could go back to Melbourne easily when needed, as I was just a short train ride away.
The work was quite varied. The main job was to dig trenches underneath various gates so that electric fencing could be installed. While the constant digging wasn’t easy on the body, it was the type of job I expected to be doing. However, I was given numerous other tasks that made me feel more like a slave rather than a helper. I had to feed and look after their pet horses, feed their dogs, cook them dinner occasionally, and worst of all, clean the gutters. While it felt like I was being a bit used, I wouldn’t have minded so much, had appreciation been shown for the labour I undertook.
The couple I stayed with consisted of an English man and a Finnish woman. While he was a very pleasant person to be around, nothing could be further from the truth with regards his other half. I found her to be the most condescending, belittling, rude, lazy and obnoxious of people, one who never made me feel like I was welcome, who never showed any thanks for the work I did, and indeed didn’t even bother to say goodbye to me when I left. There are too many examples of why I disliked her so much, but one particular occasion sticks out above the others. One evening, they had visitors over for dinner, and I was eating with them, as I did every evening. She proceeded to offer everybody on the table an alcoholic beverage, except for my good self, the one who had been cleaning her gutters, and indeed cooked her lunch on my first day working for her (usually it is supposed to be the other way around!!), despite being in a jet lagged state. After 17 days I was glad to leave, and she has proudly put herself up there into the top 2-3 worst people I have met since leaving Ireland in September 2010.
So, three different farms, and just 29 days of work signed off. It honestly felt like I was destined to engage in farm hopping for the remainder of my 88 days. But as luck would have it, I found a family who owned a sheep farm out in Glenrowan that were looking for somebody to work for two months. Absolutely perfect as far as I was confirmed, and after a few phone interviews I left Broadford, and headed for Glenrowan, a tiny township, 2 hours north of Melbourne, famous for Ned Kelly’s last stand (more about that later).
I was very much thrown in at the deep end, and on my first morning of work, I had to assist in the marking of about 300 lambs, a process that these dumb animals certainly do not enjoy. While it is for their own long term good, the sight of 300 tails being chopped off certainly wasn’t something that I particularly enjoyed. I can now, ever so slightly, see why some people go vegetarian. Not me though, I love my red meat!
The family consisted of a married couple, and four children, ages 7, 5, 4 and 1. The first week I was made to feel very welcome and I was invited to eat with them most days. In addition they did so much with regards getting me settled. They provided me with my own private cottage, about 200 metres from their own house. Within this accommodation I had a kitchen, TV, DVD player, along with plenty of DVD’s and CD’s. Most importantly they provided me with a Telstra mobile broadband Internet stick, which I could recharge myself at my own convenience, allowing me to stay in touch with the outside world. I would also provide them with a shopping list every week and there were no restrictions on what I could request, and I had an unlimited supply of beer, for whenever I wanted to crack open a nice cold one after a hard day’s work. In addition they very kindly offered to drop me off at, and pick me up from, the train station every weekend, so that I could go back to Melbourne whenever I wished, a kind gesture that I very much appreciated.
However, once the initial pleasantries were performed, they made very little effort to include me in their daily life. It wasn’t like I was expecting to be eating dinner with them every night or anything, but an invitation to join them for some food and a beer once a week would have been nice. The reality was that they didn’t seem comfortable with the idea of having a stranger getting in the way of their living habits. This is of course understandable, given the fact I was the first helper they ever had, but it certainly made me feel extremely isolated, and was really just treated as a worker, and nothing else, which isn’t the whole idea of the WWOOF and HelpX scheme.
To say that I was very bored and lonely in the evenings would be an understatement. There was quite literally nothing to do, nobody to talk to, and the nearest town, Glenrowan, has a population of approximately 900, and is one of the most boring places I have set foot in, and indeed, probably would no longer exist, if it wasn’t for a complete mad man taking on the entire police force in that very town in 1880, wearing a dustbin on his head throughout. I have travelled extensively around South America as a solo traveller, and am very comfortable in my own company, and have endured many a 24 hour bus journey with nothing but a book and the Latin American landscape to accompany me, but this experience of solitude was a step too far. I simply could not recommend a single person to do what I did for 2 months. A couple of weeks are fine perhaps for a break, but nothing longer. The whole setup is something which would be ideal for couples, but awfully monotonous for a solo helper.
The work I did throughout my two months in Glenrowan was quite varied, consisting of various sheep related tasks, fixing and re-wiring fences, digging trenches, knocking cement off bricks, along with a lot of gardening tasks, which usually involved digging, digging, raking, and some more digging. Every now and again, I would help out at the host family’s friend’s vineyard, close to the town of Wangaratta, and would assist in maintaining the vines. Occasionally, as always, I was given completely pointless tasks, that any city dweller would deem to be a complete waste of time. The worst of these was painting the wool shed. This job took a total of 2 days, and for what? So that the sheep can admire the gentle brushstrokes while the wool is being ripped off their bodies? Besides the sheep and the shearers, not a single soul will ever set foot in that wooden building. There really is nothing worse than doing a task that you consider to have zero purpose whatsoever.
I can honestly say I have learned a lot of valuable life skills, and the experience is something I will very much value as I get older. However, the constant manual labour took a dreadful toll on my body. I developed tendonitis in my hands, a stiff back, a sore groin, and tightness in the hip area. My core strength wasn’t up to the level needed to undertake such long term constant physical labour, and with about 3-4 weeks to go my body broke down, and several trips to the physio were required, resulting in close to 300 dollars in fees paid. My insurance company back in Ireland will be getting a nice Christmas present off me that’s for sure!
In addition to fighting through this discomfort, I also had to contend with soaring temperatures, consistently in the high 20’s to mid 30’s. Words cannot describe how difficult it is for somebody from Ireland to cope with undertaking such physical exertion in such uncomfortable conditions. My mind kept going back to that infamous football match at the 1994 FIFA World Cup in Orlando between Ireland and Mexico, where half the Irish team were barely able to jog in what was close to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. At least I had regular access to water, unlike the players that day!
Given I was working on a sheep farm, it would be wrong of me not to dedicate a paragraph to what is without doubt the dumbest animal on earth, the sheep. They are quite unbelievable. Just when I think that their idiocy has reached its limit, they find astonishingly stupid new ways to injure and kill themselves. The level of self-destructive behaviour they undertake knows no boundaries. Watching them trying to jump through (yes, through, not over!) a fence in a pitiful attempt to escape is quite an entertaining sight. They don’t seem to use whatever intelligence they possess, and will just follow the rest of their brain-dead buddies, and run away from anything that comes anywhere close to them. While chopping off their tails may be seen by some people as animal cruelty, it is 100% necessary, as these animals are far too stupid to not crap all over their tails. Without this human intervention these helpless creatures would suffer from widespread fly-strike, which is one of the grossest things one can ever witness.
Another creature that I had to deal with on a few occasions was the spider. Everybody I’m sure is aware of how dangerous some of these insects can be down in Australia, particularly the Red Back and Funnel Web, both of which have the potential to cause a massive coronary breakdown with just one bite. Even though many of the spiders are harmless (albeit large and ugly) it is best to assume that they are all venomous, as the chances are you won’t be able to identify a spider’s exact breed, unless you are quite knowledgeable in this area. On three occasions I came in contact with a large spider, assumed, but not confirmed, to be a huntsman:
1) One evening, after a long day of work, upon entering my cottage, I noticed a hideous creature sitting on the door. I turned around very briefly to pick up something to bash it away with, only for it to have disappeared into the house, nowhere to be seen. It is a little unnerving knowing that such a thing was creeping around the house somewhere. But I came to terms with it and forgot about this eight-legged beast pretty quickly.
2) A few weeks later, I went to put on a pair of shoes that I had not worn for a while.
3) Just when I thought it couldn't get any more ridiculous, the following happened. In the car, on the way to the Buckland Valley to go camping with the family who own the vineyard, I noticed a fairly stocky looking spider crawling up the back of my thigh. Unconfirmed whether it was venomous or not, but obviously I jumped for my life and demanded that the car be stopped immediately. This led to the three kids in the backseat, whose ages range from 3 to 8, going into a state of uncontrollable laughter, and I was the butt of all jokes for the rest of the weekend. "James is scared of spiders, nah nah nah nah nah". I think I'd have rather had the spider bite to be honest!
The spider does however serve one useful purpose, and that is to kill those awful flies that will just never leave you in peace. Rural Australia is full of them, and unlike the ones in Ireland, the Australian version of these useless creatures will not bugger off no matter how hard you try to get rid of them. They are relentless. They are persistent. They are on a mission to piss you off, and there is nothing you can do to stop them!
The final chapter in this tale goes to the infamous Ned Kelly, an Irish Australian bush ranger, considered by many Australians to be a folk hero and a symbol of Irish-Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class. While this is certainly true, there can be no denying that the man was a criminal, a cold-blooded cop killer, and the way he is hailed in the township of Glenrowan is completely over-the-top. Reading about his life in the museums you would swear that this man was Mother Theresa of Calcutta! Glenrowan was of course, the site of the famous shoot-out between the Kelly Gang and the police back in 1880, and considering that such a significant moment in Australian history took place here you would expect quite a lot of interesting tourist sites. But the reality is that Glenrowan has made an absolute hames of it, and the town is not cashing in on the Ned Kelly story to the degree you would expect. There is a rather large Ned Kelly statue, one adequate museum, good enough to kill one hour, a second museum which is appalling at best, an embarrassing cheaply made animated reconstruction of the Siege of Glenrowan story, which the delusional gentleman at the cashier compared to Disneyland, and then a few random sites around the town, including the actual site of the Ann Jones Hotel where the shootout occurred. All that exists on this site now is an unused field, and a small sign to indicate that a historic event took place here. I dedicated three hours to immersing myself in the Ned Kelly story, and by the end I was running out of things to do.
So I have come to the end of my 3 months of regional work. While I learned a lot, being honest, I did not enjoy my time in rural Australia. But the whole ordeal was a means to an end, and last Wednesday my second year visa was granted, allowing me to live in Australia until at least December 2012. Now I am back in Melbourne, and am in the middle of the tedious process of starting all over again, and trying to get re-settled into the city. Notwithstanding the farm labour, 2011 has been an awesome year. Here’s to an even better 2012.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
