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Sorry we're only just getting in touch!! The last few weeks have been a bit hectic down under!!
We arrived in Sydney 31st July to freezing cold weather!! We spent one night here and then flew straight up to Cairns the following day. We didn't see much of Sydney as we will be heading back there at some point over the next couple of months.
We had planned to look for work in Cairns and set up camp here for a couple of months while the weather warms up and for us to earn some cold hard cash!! Again donations much appreciated!! ha ha!! Job hunting kind of went out the window as we were staying at a hostel called Gilligan's where its just impossible to have a night in!! So after a week of partying and half-hearted job hunting we saw an advert in the Cairns Post local paper for a live-in job working in a hotel/bar. We gave the owner a call not really knowing where Karumba was only to be told it was 8hrs west of Cairns!! In the outback - middle of nowhere!! We made the phonecall Tuesday afternoon and by 6am the next day we were on the bus to karumba! A 12hr journey through the bush!! The job sounded too good to turn down as we were offered cheap accommodation and plenty of hours so we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to get some money up together as there would be nothing to spend our money on!
We are now 2 weeks into our stay in Karumba and this has been our first morning off since we arrived. There isn't much here as the population is only 600 - mostly fishermen! There is a ratio of 50 men to 1 woman here! Shame they are all old, perverted and stink of fish!! Karumba is on the Gulf of Carpentaria which is a famous fishing spot for Barramundi, prawns and huugggeee salt crocs! Steve Irwin used to come here to catch his crocs according to Austalian Reader's Digest!! Its really picturesque here as we are situated on the mouth of the river which looks so tempting to swim in but unfortunately its a no go area!
There isn't really much going on here other than the fishing or drinking so the bar that we are both working in gets very busy with people drinking their lives away! One guy has been 'on the piss since 1972'!! His words not ours!! It took a bit of getting used to working behind the bar as all the beers are different here and they all drink out of 'pots' and 'schooners'. Its like the adverts for Castlemaine 4X!! The accents are also really strong here, there are many guys that we just simply nod at as we haven't got a clue what they are jabbering on about! We get called 'mate' quite a lot and they do really call girls 'sheila's'!!!
We arrived here on the Wednesday night and on the Saturday it was the Karumba School Fete which is the biggest night in Karumba apparently!! A band flew in from Cairns and the fete went on til past 1am. We missed the day time events as we were working but we did manage to catch the toad racing before the party began!! It was a good laugh - mainly at other peoples expense!! Its definitely going to be an experience staying here!
We're planning on staying here until end of Sept and then heading back to Cairns to spend our riches! We'll probably do another update just as we're leaving here or probably when we get to Cairns as we're planning on visiting the reef and travelling north up to Cape Tribulation.
We've got a few pics to post but we'll make sure that we take some more before we leave.
We hope you are all well.. sorry if we aren't in touch over the next couple of weeks. We can't get mobile signal out here in the bush!
Lots of love us xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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