Blueberry Picking

I headed north from Sydney, along the Pacific Highway up the East Coast. I stayed in Port Maquerie for a few days with a great friend from uni, Toya. She is a doctor in the ER and now works out here because the conditions are so much better then in England. She has a beautiful apartment less than a minutes walk from the harbour that she shares with 2 other doctors. Toya and her friends indulged me in a life of luxury, with my own room and big double bed, a jet ferry ride where we saw dolphins up close,  movies on tap (including the new Bond film which was mostly emotionless and bland), copious amounts of tea and incredible bunches, and Toya's delicious pak choi soup!

And then I travelled onwards to Coffs Harbour. Staying at the Hoey Moey on the beach,  I walked straight into a job on day 1 as a blueberry picker at Ravinder and Davinder's farm in Bonville. It's a pretty simple job - you pick the berries off the bush and put them in your bucket, and then you do the same thing again and again and again, and if there's time you do it again! It is hot, backbreaking work in serious heat. It is generally +30° and is usually 32-34 by 8 or 9 am. I start at 6am and go until 2 or 3:30 in the afternoon. Today it got up to 38°C which was pretty horrendous, but we have had days up in the 40s. Sometimes you can get a good line of bushes where all of the fruit hangs in bunches on the outside; then you can do 10 or 11 buckets - once I even got 15, but usually all the berries like to hide right in the middle so you have to stick your whole upper body into the bush. You get scratched and cut and I've lost count of the amount of splinters I have.

A word to the wise! ALWAYS WASH YOUR FRUIT!! We like to sweat all over it!

Things I Have Learned As A Blueberry Picker
1) It is hard work!!
2) It pays REALLY badly!!
3) The best moment ever is when you go to pick one berry,  move the leaves and see there is a whole bunch of big juicy ones!
4) The worst is when you bend down and the top layer of berries fall out of your bucket.
5) Correction, the worst is when a full bucket randomly decides to tip itself over.
6) Berries often hang in pairs, and after a while it does start to feel like you are just pulling multiple tree testicals...

7) There's a lot of time to actually listen to the lyrics in your music. Some songs really mean completely different things that you always thought. And some are really profound. 'The wisdom's in the trees not the glass windows' is rather apt when you have your face in a tree!

8) French rap is very bizarre.

9) Almost as bizarre as German musicals.

10) Blueberry wars are the best way to get through the day.

11) Blueberry juice stains skin for a long time.

12) The best thing to do to cool off after work is dive straight into the ocean.

Today was pretty cool. On the journey home, our boss and bus driver stopped off to buy us a 48 crate of beer! Beer on the beach before diving head first into the waves - not such a bad way to live.

Sydney

Sydney is an interesting city. In ways it is very similar to London, or any other big city, with masses of people, endless streets and sprawling suburbs. There are lots of beautiful areas; the Botanic Gardens, Circular Quay, Darling Harbour, The Rocks. And then there are the streets with the same shops and eateries repeated every 500meters. Hungry Jacks, Lorna Jane, Pie Face, JB HiFi, 7/11. There is shopping centre after shopping centre, no less than 8 on the street I lived on - although to be fair it is quite a long street. And with everything built in blocks, with long straight roads crossing long straight roads, it's far too easy to walk in the wrong direction! I have wasted many hours walking the wrong way on the right street!

I spent a long time searching for work in the city, getting stressed looking for somewhere to live and some way to pay for the expensive cost of living in Sydney. I was getting tired and grouchy with living out of my backpack in a noisy hostel where every night was disturbed by some rowdy roommate or other stumbling in at silly oclock. 

I felt trapped.

Until eventually I realised I didn't have to stay. Yes, my friends were staying, but that didn't mean I had to. As much as I liked being with them, this was my trip, and it was up to me to make the most of it. I didn't come to Australia to live in a city and work in an office just like I did back in England. 

It was time to move on. 

So I started making plans as we moved into a suburb of Sydney called Drummoyne. I worked for a wine festival, Vino Paradiso, in The Rocks, a hip area down by the water that is full with cool bars, restaurants and local markets. And I spent my days doing all the tours and trips that were included in my 2 week introduction to Australia package. I visited Hunter Valley and the Blue Mountains. I had a day surfing at Umima beach in Woy Woy. That was a beginner surf day, and because I knew what I was doing, I spent the whole day on the water with my own personal coach. I also went to Tarronga Zoo, and Sydney Aquarium where they have 2 of only 5 dugongs who live in captivity. I'm usually against creatures in cages, especially when they are as big as dugongs, but these 2 have been rescued from the wild and after release attempts it was deemed they would not survive alone. So I indulged in their beauty, and even got a high 5 from Wuru.

The problem was, I fell in love with life in Drummoyne. We lived in Bayside, an old conference centre, that was gradually being converted into accomodation. The rooms still had an office desk and filing cabinets to store our things. The media room had a big tv at the end of the huge board room table. It was a quiet, homely place, and felt a lot like living in halls at uni. I was sharing a room with Cara, David and Marcus from our original 6, and there were a lot of other couples and individuals. People would be working but we would hang out in the kitchen in the evenings, cooking and eating and drinking together.

I started acroyoga with Will, an English guy and intrepid traveller. He learnt the techique in Bali, or Indonesia, or somewhere else in South East Asia, and we built on what he knew with youtube videos and a lot of practice and falling. 

Acroyoga involves 1 person lying on their back and using their hands and feet to manipulate another person into positions in the air. It's an incredible work out and really works your flexibility and core strength. I loved it. And I loved life in our strange little conference centre.

But I had made plans and needed to follow them through. So I caught my bus up to Port Macquerie and met up with my wonderful friend Toya from uni. She is working out here as a doctor in the Emergency Department, and has a beautiful appartment that looks out over the water. We went on a jet boat ride, saw dolphins from the water, climbed a mountain, visited a koala hospital, had many delicious brunches with her friends, and Toya cooked me her famous Thai Soup That she once made me in Plymouth - it was so good!!

Blue Mountains

The Blue Mountains are definitely up there in my most beautiful places list. I spent a day exploring them, but could have stayed for much longer!

On the way I stopped at Feathervale Wildlife Park and made some new friends. Kangeroos and wallabys roam freely, and they're curious little things. Especially if you have an icecream cone filled with food!

The Blue Mountains is a huge region of cliffs, waterfalls and endless eucalyptus forests. The oils in the eucalyptus leaves diffuse into the air which creates an ethereal blue haze across the sky.

One of the most popular landmarks is the Three Sisters. Its a huge rock formation with an Aboriginal legend. The story says that many years ago a magical witch doctor named Tyowan lived in the mountains. He had 3 daughters, Meehni, Wimlah and Gunnedoo, and he would leave them on the cliff when he went down into the valley to hunt. One day they were frightened by a giant centipede (because that happens) and one of the sisters threw a stone to scare it away. The stone fell down the cliff side and awoke the Bunyip, a monster who lived in the bottom of the valley. The Bunyip raced up to the sisters, but Tyowan turned them into rocks to protect them. The Bunyip then turned his anger on Tyowan and chased him throughout the mountains. At a dead end Tyowan turned himself into a lyre bird to hide in the cracks of the cliff face. But in the process he dropped his magic wand. To this day the lyre bird roams the mountains searching for the lost wand, unable to turn himself or his daughters back to their human form.

Hunter Valley

Hunter Valley is beautiful! It's real countryside, with sprawling vineyards covering the hills. And I was lucky enough to travel through the valley and stop and visit 3 of the many wineries. And all 3 provided a wine tasting session...

First up was McGuigan Wines. 

I got a tour of the factory and saw the presses and the huge fermenting barrels. The biggest one is 54,000 litres, which converts to 72,000 bottles!!

Drayton Family Wines was vineyard #2 And they provided 9 wines to taste - and not in a small measure either, it was almost half a glass. Wine gets me very drunk very quickly, so by this point I'm feeling substantially pissed!

A stop for lunch and then onwards to Wynwoods Estate.  By wine #23 we are all starting to get pretty rowdy.

Until the 2 hour bus journey back to Sydney, where everybody fell asleep. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the free flowing wine meant we made friends quickly and had lots of interesting conversation!!

 

 

# Hostel Life

Welcome to Wake Up

I've been living here for 3 weeks now.

Life in a hostel is a strange cross between living in a house and a hotel. You live in a dorm room with between 4 and 10 bunks, and the more people the cheaper it is, so Iv'e mostly been living with lots of people. Which is good, except people snore.
Or return from a night out at 3 in the morning, and stumble around drunk turning on every light, knocking things over and talking really loudly. You never really get a good night's sleep. Especially if you've got a creaky bunk without rails.



The hostel I've lived in for the longest is Wake Up, and in the basement is Sidebar, one of Sydney's most popular clubs. It's a great place with an awesome buzz. And it's great to be able to just get the lift upstairs and fall into bed - no long walk or taxi ride. But you can hear the bass line even from the 7th floor.


Meal time is always quite frustrating. Though the hostels have kitchens, they are always far too small for the ammount of people trying to use them. There are never enough pots or pans, plates or cutlery, so you end up waiting to use something - usually a hob. Though there are lots of stations and hobs, most don't work. And everyone is jostling for the same spaces. And then, of course, people don't clear up after themselves. If you've ever been to uni or lived in a flat with 4 or 5 people, imagine that times 100!!!

I have lived in Wake Up, in the Central Business District for 3 weeks, and that is far too long! This weekend I moved to a suburb called Drummoyne with 3 of my friends. It's a lot cheaper to live outside the city, and quieter too. We now live in Bayside Conference Centre. It used to be an office building, and is in the process of being converted. People only started living here about 2 weeks ago, and there is still a lot of fine tuning going on. But it's another good crowd with a mix of age ranges, nationalities and personalities. The 4 of us, Cara, David, Marcus and I are sharing a room - complete with office desk and filing cabinets. The media room still hosts the boardroom table! It's spacious and comfortable and quiet here. There are no bunks, instead we each have our own single bed, there's a clean kitchen and a bus stop and supermarket round the corner and a short walk to the harbour. Not too shabby at all.