Hello everyone, I hope you are all well, it’s been quite a while since my previous update and so much has happened.

When I last left you I was in Margaret River, we spent a thoroughly enjoyable week there with Debbie, thank you so much for your wonderful hospitality. I suspect that she checked that she had both daughters still when we left as they are adorable and we wanted to take them with us. We continued our journey north, and headed to Safety Bay, just south of Perth where we were going to stay with some family friends of Lisa’s. We arrived slightly later than anticipated as one of Arthurs tyres blew. We were happily driving along when we noticed there was alot of vibrating occurring, and then it went. Two very kind men stopped and changed it for us and I am now fully capable of changing a tyre, something maybe I should have learnt before now, and I also know that vibration generally means something is about to go wrong. We finally arrived and spent a great week with Mark and Leonie, who once again really couldn’t have been kinder, taking us on day trips and being our personal tour guides, and the home comforts were very welcome, it made a novel change not to be sweating for the full 24 hours of the day, how it’s a shame Arthur lacks air con. We then spent a night in Fremantle, where a cracking night was had drinking drambuie (really don’t ask, it wouldn’t be my normal tipple of choice), with what would seem to be half of the campsite we were staying in. The following day we headed to Perth, a city I really liked, unfortunately we couldn’t have picked a worse time to visit. I don’t know if you saw on the news, reports of the horrendous storms they endured, well, Lisa and I were knee deep in water, wading through it feeling utterly miserable. It had been a beautiful day, then at about 4pm we got the bus into town to meet Emily (uni Laura’s friend from home) for a drink in a bar she had ironically selected because of its lovely outdoor area. We got off the bus and it was a bit dull, then the heavens opened and within minutes we were a pair of drowned rats, and I was wearing a strapless dress which I was having difficulty keeping up due to the weight of the now drenched material. Plans cancelled, we then waited at the bus stop for 2 hours trying to get back to the campsite. There have been highs and lows on this trip, this was definitely a low. I had been aware that it is possible to extend the visa for another year by doing 3 months agricultural work, however I thought I was unable to do this as 30 is the cut off age, however it transpires that if I do the work and get my application in before my 31st birthday in August I can get the second year. It would be foolish not to do it as I wouldn’t get this opportunity again, and it really doesn’t take much persuasion for me to extend this holiday of mine. With that in mind agricultural work was the next plan of action. I am here on a working holiday visa, so far I have fully put the holiday part of this to good use, and the time had come to put the working part into practise. The best place was too head to Carnarvon and see if I could do some banana picking and it was on our route. On the way we stopped off to see the pinnacles, these are rock formations that have come through the sand over thousands of years, there were hundreds of them. We went for a 1.5km walk through them, then the 4km desert drive, they really were worth seeing, but Lisa was feeling slightly exasperated by the 100’s of photos I was taking of these. We stayed that night in Cervantes and saw the most beautiful sunset.

Another stop off on our way to Carnarvon was a resort called Monkey Mia, this really was an oasis in the desert, we left the red sand behind us and it was replaced with bright white sand , and the most beautiful blue sea. Lisa bought herself a snorkel and went missing for a few hours. It’s very lucky she came back as she got bitten on the toe by an extremely ferocious fish the size of a shark by all accounts, I do believe there was a slight bit of exaggeration! I, in the meantime, did my Sammy the sea lion impersonation on the beach, very relaxing. There were some rather amusing emus, who took great delight in demolishing a loaf of bread our neighbours had left on their table, they looked awfully sneaky whilst doing this. We got up early in the morning and headed to the beach for 7.30am to watch the dolphins being fed.

We arrived in Carnarvon, however the banana picking would not be beginning for another month, and as there was not really any other working opportunities we only stayed for a couple of days. In hindsight I am pleased about this after hearing some rather horrific stories from other people about banana picking, it’s really not for classy birds. Deciding to head onwards and upwards, Broome was the next destination, via Exmouth and Cape Grange National Park. It was now the Easter holidays and we had learnt from previous experience that the price of campsites double in the holidays, so we took our time and stayed in the free rest areas, they wouldn’t really score very high on the comfort/facilities rating, but it was somewhere to rest our heads. By this stage the flies were becoming unbearable, and I was sat in one of these rest areas with a net over my head, doing my tapestry, drinking wine and generally looking ridiculous when a number of fellow travellers turned up. I enquired with Lisa as to whether I ever embarrass her, to which she replied with an awkward laugh, I think its official, I am an embarrassment to Lisa. I received a phone call from my family on Easter Sunday which I always enjoy, however I really didn’t see the need for them to rub in the fact quite so much that they were enjoying a lovely chilled glass of prosecute whilst they were waiting for their roast lamb and crispy roast potatoes to cook. Despite my can of stag chilli being tasty, there really was no comparison, so thank you family for causing me to go to bed salivating!

When we arrived in Broome, I had such high hopes for this place. I had begun to feel slightly anxious as I was running out of time to do my visa work, and the old funds were seriously dwindling, so I decided not to leave Broome until both of these issues had been rectified, we therefore put down roots, and luckily struck gold.

There appeared to be far more jobbing opportunities in Broome than anywhere else we had visited, and an afternoons job hunting we saw an advertisement for the Mango Place. We phoned up and the following day we had moved in. It is a farm run by a couple, Julie and Geoff and I really can’t emphasise how lovely they are. I think of them as my Australian parents, a customer even asked me the other day if I was Julie’s daughter, hmm, I really do wonder how happy she was with that association. Attached to the farm is a shop which sells homemade jams and chutneys, homemade soaps, wine and other gifts, there is also a small restaurant where light lunches are served and on Fridays and Sundays wood fired pizzas. We really enjoyed it here and likened it to the big brother house. There were approximately 10 of us all travelling, all slightly crazy of varying degrees living together in our tents with no phone signal, but I’m hoping without the addition of secret cameras. We found our niches there, Lisa creating a wonderful vegetable patch and myself being co founder of the cooking club. There was a French brother and sister staying when we arrived called Caroline and Marc, and a couple of days later a Japanese girl called Mika came, really lovely girl but as I soon discovered had quite a phobia of ants. I was in the shower one day when I heard some very dramatic screaming, alarmed I discovered it was coming from Mika and the cause was numerous ants in her tent, she had unfortunately left half a kitchen of food in her tent which I don’t think would have deterred them. Anyway, it was Caroline and myself who founded the cooking club, we were the 2 chiefs, and Mika was our apprentice and we had the laborious task of getting Mika through her diplomas in order for her to reach our level and attain the ultimate award of the green spoon. When I say laborious, although she has improved dramatically now, initially we did have to discipline Mika a fair bit, for example the day she broke the blender, and another time when she neglected to ask permission to go to the toilet, and on one quite serious occasion she disappeared when there were 4kg of potatoes that needed peeling! Anyway, despite this the 2 chiefs felt that it was time for her to take her first diploma, and if successful be awarded the orange spoon, so after she had learnt a few recipes, Caroline and myself compiled a test for her to complete, which I am pleased to report that Mika passed. Then tragedy was to hit the cooking club, like all big brother houses there are evictions and the people to leave were Caroline and Marc as they were continuing their journey onto Darwin. Might I add it was a further loss, as they proved to be excellent drinking companions for myself and Lisa of an evening. So the cooking club was down to just 2 and I had the sole responsibility of managing Mika, maybe banana picking wouldn’t have been so bad after all. I have learnt alot at the Mango Place. I now know how to make chutney and jam, cheesecake and potent liquer cake for the shop, and have cooked a number of staff meals, and one day when I found myself sewing up a rip in the tent, it dawned on me that I was going to emerge from the big brother house a perfect 1950’s housewife.

It gets dark at about 6pm here in WA, so of an evening we amuse ourselves by having a tipple, we have had a few birthday parties, one which included the karaoke machine. Initially we all rather awkwardly had a go, after a bit more wine myself and Steven, (one half of an English couple Steven and Nicola who are lovely and very amusing) were fighting over the microphone, funnily enough they haven’t brought it out since.

Broome is absolutely full of backpackers, and there is alot of competition for the much sought after jobs on the pearl boats here. Lisa and I left our CV’s with a company called Paspaley Pearls when we first arrived here, and after approximately 3 weeks we were lucky enough to be called for jobs. I was to be a domestic on the Marilynne, whilst Lisa was on a different boat called the Roebuck as a deckhand. Before we were given the jobs we had to go into town and have a medical, little did we know it involved giving a urine sample for drug testing, and I really wasn’t prepared. I arrived and my body wasn’t cooperating with what was being asked of it so the lady suggested I go away, drink some water and come back in 15 minutes. 1 litre of water later, 15 minutes and a tummy like a watermelon later, I still wasn’t ready, so she suggested we do the fitness exercises first and try again later. They were quite simple exercises, but with all that water swirling around it made them quite hard, and made me feel sick, fortunately I left passing the fitness and having given the sample which was all clear, so still had job prospects.
He first day I left for the boat I had mixed emotions, I was excited, dubious and rather nervous due to the fact that the office had warned me that my captain was notorious for being strict, and that I was not to take what he said to me to heart, and to be strong, excellent, I was in for 10 days of abuse with nowhere to escape within the confinements of the boat, so I resolved to absolutely work my butt off, not giving the captain any cause to complain. I am very happy to report that this paid off, I was not on the receiving end of any negative comments, Captain Ron was actually quite a nice man with whom I had some enjoyable chats with in the wheel house, whilst I was cleaning his k*** and dials, and he even gave me a pay rise. On the Marilynne there is myself, the cook who is also female and 13 rather rowdy men, 8 of whom are the divers, 2 dump divers, 1 deckhand, 1 engineer and the captain. As you can imagine the conversations are extremely crude and I won’t even begin to go into what they consist of, they are also very amusing. Each and every one of them are brilliant men, and for all their bravado they always ensure that I’m ok.

Everywhere I look nowadays there seems to be a man urinating off the side of the boat, and after the last dive each day, they all strip off their wetsuits to reveal some very fetching tiny pants, then pull them up their bums wedgy style, and prance around the deck exclaiming ‘Lydia, stop looking at my bottom!’, to which I rather candidly inform them that I have seen far better bottoms in far better pants. It would probably be helpful at this point to tell you what our boat actually does. We are the very first stage in the pearl process, our divers are drift divers, and 8 times a day they go down for between 40 – 60 minutes at a time. They each have a rope that is attached to the back of the boat, a small basket round their necks, and a larger basket attached halfway up the rope. As the boat everso slowly cruises along the water, they grab the oyster shells and put them in the baskets around their necks. Once these are full, they pull themselves up the rope, transferring the contents into the larger net bags, then lower themselves back down repeating the process until it is time to come up. As you can imagine, none of them would make good hand models bless them. The bags are pulled onto the boat, (this is where my vital work comes in, oh there’d be no pearls in this world without me). The Captain measures them to make sure they are not too big or small, the lads chip all of the dirt and other marine life attached to them off with a knife, then I place them into panels containing either 6 or 8 pockets. I then hose them down, discarding any with holes in caused by worms, and put a tag on each panel. I might add that this is a generally undignified task, as the panels are hip level and the pile can be over a meter in depth, so it involves me bending right over until my body is at a 90 degree angle and sprawling over them, bum in air. The 6 pocket panels which we used on the last trip, are significantly smaller, coming up to only my knee in height, and the piles are generally deeper due to there being more of them. Struggling to bend over them to tag them, my body aching, I could hear the lads sniggering behind me and could just imagine the crude jokes going on that I was the butt of (excuse the pun), I rose above it all but resolved to wear much longer shorts on the next trip. They are then loaded onto our smaller boat called ‘knockers’, where the 2 dump divers return them on a large rope to an allocated spot in the sea called the dump area. They will then undergo a couple of operations, where something is inserted inside, and turned and cleaned regularly. The shells that we have collected this season will be ready to open, with hopefully big beautiful pearls in them in 2 years time. I will think of them, and you never know, I may one day wear one of these pearls in my ears or around my neck, however, I am kind of over pearls at the moment, it is true what they say, it is diamonds that are a girls best friend. Just a small fact for you, which is probably general knowledge and I’m exposing my naitivity at not knowing, but mother of pearl is not actually the pearl within, it is the shell.

I shall tell you about my average day, correction, my every day, it really is like Groundhog Day on the Marilynne. The ship bell goes off at 5am, I bleary eyed have my morning coffee, before starting my domestic duties, which involve hoovering and mopping all floors, cleaning the cabins and bathrooms, wiping all the walls, doing the laundry and cleaning the dashboard in the wheel house. This initially made me very nervous as there are lots of switches, and by mistake I pushed one labelled ‘anchor’, as always, I reacted well in the crisis, panicking, looking for the captain, visions running through my head of wiping out all 8 of the divers underwater in one go by dropping the anchor on them. Fortunately, no harm was done as it was only an anchor light switch, but Smurf, the engineer, did give me one of his small paint brushes to use in the future, just to be on the safe side. The first dive of the day is at 6am, and as previously mentioned there are 8 dives in total. Between cleaning I have to listen out for 3 beeps, then banging on the boat, which indicates a dive is over, at which point I must drop whatever I’m doing, go outside and perform my panelling duties, it is at these times that I get completely covered in sea scum, and incidentally, learnt very quickly to close my mouth, it really doesn’t taste good, and the lads try their best to traumatise me. It is not uncommon to have crabs, jellified things, octopus and various other things thrown at me. The other day one of the divers brought up an octopus, minus a head, although it was dead, it was still moving due to its nerve endings. I dutifully continued working, when I was scared half to death, as one of them found it hilarious too throw it at my leg, where its tentacles wrapped around it, and its suckers latched on, pulling it off was the worst part. It may sound like I’m bullied but they also bring me up some really beautiful shells to keep, I have quite a collection now. This running in and out carries on all day, until the final dive is completed at approximately 6pm, we enjoy a refreshing beer, some tasty dinner, I clean the mess room and collapse into bed at about 8pm, ready to do it all again the following day. The highlight of my day is just before going to bed. I go to the back of the boat and sit and watch a pod of 16 dolphins come and play for about 30 minutes. They dart around chasing fish and come right up to the boat where the light is shining onto the water. It really is in these 30 minutes every evening that I feel truly happy, and in awe of what is out there in this big world if you go discovering.

It is a physically laborious job, which is quite lucky as we eat 5 meals a day which consist of all manner of tasty treats, steak, lamb shanks, roast dinners and far too many cakes for my waistline, ironically, however very little seafood. With all this lifting and loading of panels into boats, I have developed a rather impressive set of guns which I do have to resist kissing, even Smurf said he wouldn’t mess with me and he’s a big man. Needless to say it is all going well, and the lads even said I am an honorary Australian because I am tough. We have just finished the 3rd trip, and due to go out on the 4th and final one in a couple of days, catching enough shell to meet our quota. It has been a fantastic and challenging experience, and coupled with my work at the Mango Place, I can’t think of a better way to complete my 3 months agricultural work, I will not deny however, that I am looking forward to being a lady of leisure again at the beginning of July, and carrying on the journey in Arthur. Julie and Geoff very kindly agreed to have me back on the farm on my days off, it was here, between my 2nd and 3rd swing that Mika taught me to do a proper massage, as she is a qualified masseuse, on these days we have reversed roles, and it will be reversed roles and it will be her testing me to see if I have practised enough and am up to standard. I am also trying my hand at a bit of craft work. On the boat I was given a tiny, very delicate and uniquely coloured starfish which I am trying to make into a necklace by encasing it in a resin. Watch this space, Tiffany’s may have some stiff competition coming their way.

I have slightly changed my travelling plans. Initially I was going to New Zealand for 6 weeks after Australia, then USA and Canada for 3 months before returning to Australia to complete my second year. Now, I have decided to still go to New Zealand, but to do my second year in Australia before heading to USA so that I will have plenty of money to play with in Las Vegas. I’m not sure yet what I will be doing in my second year, but it will involve working, buying a jeep and learning to kite surf.

I do believe that I have substantially bored you all now, so will bid my farewell until the next time.

Lots of love, Lydia.xxx