Piggery Life

So, following on from where we left off on the last blog post, the Apple picking didn't last long... 3 days actually. It definitely wasn't something we were cut out for, and unfortunately at the pace we were picking it worked out to be barely $8 an hour which is no where near enough to live on out here.  They had a free 'campsite' provided for the staff which was great until we turned up after our first day. There was no drinking water, one shower and one toilet and they were probably the worst we've seen since travelling. And this was in Orange, the place where it gets to 1 degree at night... Not good in a tent. We realised it wasn't for us and just wasn't working out.

Our first 2 bins picked

We moved on to an area called Griffith, where we had been told was big for agriculture. We spent about a week here, applying for numerous jobs, when we suddenly got a phone call from a farm hand job we had applied for. It was only a couple of weeks work but it sounded perfect.

When we got there we couldn't have been happier. It was a small family run farm, good hourly rate, we could work as many days and hours as we wanted, we got to stay in a nice little cottage on their farm, and to top it off they were the nicest of people. Our main job was driving around the paddocks and cutting down burr weeds, which were basically big thorny bushes covered in sticky buds. Even in leather gloves the splinters were unbelievable but it was still the best job yet. We would do that in the morning then in the afternoon he would give us different jobs which ranged from clearing the vegetable patches, to cutting down trees, to clearing out sheds. It was perfect but unfortunately we only had 2 weeks work before the owners were going on holiday.

A regular sight

The next couple of weeks consisted of nothing but moving from campsite to campsite, applying for jobs. It was very boring but we got to see some interesting things, including getting up and close and personal with a family of Kangaroos. We were sat around one afternoon with barely anyone around, just reading and playing on our phones when we suddenly started to hear grunts nearby. They were getting closer and closer and before we knew it about 6 kangaroos jumped out of the trees right in front of our camp. I wish we got it on camera to show how close they really were but unfortunately they're a lot bigger than you think up close and so I was pretty much frozen to the spot!

Another place we went to we did a long walk right up to the top of this huge hill. We sat up at the top for awhile then just as we starting heading back down we suddenly noticed piles of rocks.We'd seen this at the top of another hill that we'd climbed but were still non the wiser as to what they signified or who put them there. For all we know they could have made by tourists but it's a lot more exciting to think they were made some aboriginal people thousands of years ago.

Days passed by and we were literally at the point of applying for anything, anywhere in Australia, which when you consider the size, is like being based in the uk and applying for jobs on the other side of Europe. Luckily just as we were coming to terms with the fact that we may not be able to get a second year visa, we got a job... Yay!!!

It was a 7 hour drive south down to the state of Victoria, just north of Melbourne, and the job was on a piggery. We got a house to stay in which was just 10 minutes to the farm, which we shared with one other backpacker.

Surprisingly, having now finished the 3 months we needed, I'll actually be quite sad to leave. We couldn't have hoped for a better group of people to work with. Once we got used to the fact that we were going to end up with poo on us almost every day and no matter how many times we would wash our hair, it would still smell, the job was just a job. Even doing what seemed the most horrible and disgusting of tasks when we first started soon became the norm. I can't say we'll ever want to work on a farm again or probably even look at another pig, but it's been an experience to remember.

Endless free pork!

:)