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May 22nd - 31st. Tully.
- A giant gumboot and nothing else in the wettest place in Australia.
And so we headed two and a half hours south of Cairns in search of work, really a miniscule distance held up against the country as a whole. Between sleep and struggling to take a pill Liz got overly excited after seeing a 'kangeroo' out of the window, she's since admitted that it was really a closeup rabbit but oddly her excitment at this doesn't seem to have decreased. I guess it would be nice to be so easily pleased. We easily found the hostel, The Savoy, and checked in to our OK if a bit run-down and rule obsessed (posters detailing what you can't do are plastered all over the walls...and cruely involve having any alcohol on premesis!) temporary home. And thus one of the most boring weeks of our young lives did begin...
The basic problem with Tully is that there is absolutly nothing to do. Actually thats a lie, there's the giant gumboot. This is one of many 'big things' scattered throughout Australia and, in case you haven't worked this out already, is a giant model of a boot. As if that wasn't enough you can climb up a spiral staircase inside it and marvel at the view of...well, unremarkable streets, from the not really that high up top. It filled a few minutes and was as good an excuse as any for some photos but it wasn't really enough to dedicate our lives to, even it it did reveal to us the fact that Tully is the 'wettest place in Australia' with what I felt to be misplaced pride. As we sat around mostly watching the seconds slowly trickle by the joke of 'I know what we can do...go to the boot!' did most certainly not get old the first time I said it. That didn't stop me repeating it again and again...there wasn't anything better to do after all.
But wait! We're not here to mope around, we're here to find some work! Now the system in most working hostels works like so, there's a list drawn up of everybody looking for work in the hostel ordered by who showed up when and then local farmers ring the hostel looking for workers, fairly enough those who've been there the longest get such work first. However this year the farmers of Tully have rebelled against this far too logical and sensible system and instead drawn inspiration from depression era America to create an alternative. At 5.30AM Monday to Friday those in want of work assemble outside the post office and as buses and vans arrive to pick up those already in work you approach each individual farmer and ask if there's any work today. As if there is a job this means the first person to ask will get it this leads to a manic scene as hordes of jobless people run at each approaching vehicle...until time and the week drags on and people become increasingly dispondant. Across the week that we joined this happy routine we didn't see a single person get a job and to be totally honest the whole song and dance ofgetting ready for work, making a lunch etc...each morning only to return to the hostel at 7AM with the dour shaking heads of farmers in our memories quickly became depressing...by the weekend we'd decided to give up.
We still needed to do something with our lives however...thankfully this turned out to be easier than expected. Midweek when it looked like things wouldn't be panning out too well work wise we'd sent out a small batch of emails to WWOOF hosts in the area that we liked the sound of and, in sharp contrast to the previous weeks experience in Cairns, not one but TWO bothered to respond, both saying they'd be happy to have us. We sorted it so that we'd be heading to the first one, a bee business in Ingham two hours south, on Friday 4th June, to definatly spend one week and hopefully two before moving on to the second, a large farm back in the Tully area, on Sunday June 21st. This plan made me happy...we were leaving Tully! The Friday couldn't come quickly enough...
However Monday evening came sooner. The hostel owener came over to where we were both sitting and droped the news that the unthinkable had happened and I'd gotten a job, starting tomorrow, June 1st. I don't think me less than half-hearted responce was what she'd been expecting...I was looking forward to leaving this place before the week was out! After weighing up the options we decided I couldn't really afford to turn down work...but nor could Liz simply hang around doing nothing in the meantime. As such she would head down to the bee place on Friday by herself and I would stay here to work nearly three weeks (14 shifts) before meeting up again at the closeby Mission Beach on June 18th, which also just happened to be my birthday. After this we would return to the original plan and head up to the 2nd WWOOF place on the 21st, before heading back up to Cairns a week or two later around the start of July. It wasn't my favourite course of action...but it was unfortunatly the sensible one. I got a relativly early night and prepared myself for what I predicted would be the start of a fun packed three weeks of work...
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