We said bye bye to the Bananas and miss you to the mango's and after a few days helping Trina (the farm owner) at her house with all sorts of jobs - from weeding her garden in the boiling heat, to washing her dogs, to packing (and eating) choc coated bananas, we headed up the coast to the trickily named Mooloolaba (think Tallulah-ba with an M). We stayed at a working hostel there, lured with the promise of strawberry planting work for 7 to 10 days. Unfortunately, what they failed to tell us was that these days of planting would be spread out over 3 weeks - all the while we would have to pay rent to the hostel, very cheeky!

The work didn't start right away and we had a fair few days off in between the planting, so we got the chance to have a proper look around. Mooloolaba was a lovely place right on the coast with a beautiful beach and a great way of life. We would head down to the sea early in the morning and would pass joggers, surfers and swimmers getting ready for their days and people meeting for breakfast and coffee in the pretty beachfront cafes. We got the chance to learn to surf as we met a friendly Belgium couple called Bart and Inka and Bart was happy to teach us. It's a pretty tricky skill, but learning was great fun! The hostel had free surf boards and body boards so we would take something with us most days to have fun in the waves. The hostel also provided free breakfast every morning (unless we were working as we left before the breakfast lady woke up). We met a couple of nice girls at the hostel, Emilie from Switzerland and Sophia from Germany and spent most of our beach days and evenings with them. A few other good eggs at the hostel were funny Joe, friendly Clark and slightly unhinged Vincent (who was a great believer in the Illuminati and told Marie off for saying maybe as there is no such thing as maybe!!)

We ended up doing a grand total of 4 days of strawberry planting spread out over a week and a half, but considering the type of work we were doing that was plenty for us! On a full day we would leave the hostel in the bus at around 6am, work until about 10am, come back to the hostel for a 4 hour lunch break in the hottest part of the day, then head back to the farm in the afternoon to work from 2:30pm until 6pm. Strawberry planting is exactly what it says on the tin, we thought it sounded simple enough, how wrong we were! It turns out that strawberries live quite low to the ground so in order to plant them a 90 degree angle is required...cue aching backs. We were given planting tools - a flat metal doohickey that looked a bit like a pallet knife - and taken to buy gardening gloves - $1 gloves may seem like a bargain at the time, but with hindsight maybe we should have forked out a little more to protect our poor hands...cue thumb blisters. Also, it was paid on a contract rate, so depended on how fast we were at planting the little blighters...cue dissapointed faces on payday! There was a bit of a science in planting the perfect strawberry plant, too deep and it would die, too shallow and it would also die, by the end of it we just wanted to die. So after those few days and a few extra dollars in our account we called it day.

Our final night at the hostel was a great send off. We made a tasty dinner with Emilie and Sophia, played a round of goon pong (define goon; a box of cheap wine), climbed a tree and tried out line dancing. After a chilled out morning we headed to catch our coach further up the coast and were waved off by Emilie, Sophia and Clark. The coach took around 6 hours over hilly roads and past some nice looking beach towns, but we were finally abandoned at Hervey Bay transit centre. After a quick taxi ride we made it to the Mango Tourist Hostel and met a strange fellow who lived in a boat in the garden and seemed to own the place. An English couple arrived at the same time as us and hadn't been in Australia for too long, this was pretty obvious when Andy ran out of their room telling the strange boat man there was a geko on the ceiling. The strange boat man then went on to tell them that the geko was the least of their problems in Australia and listed all sorts of bugs and animals that could cause you pain and/or death - the look on their faces was priceless - having gone a bit too far with the horror stories the boat man reassured them that in Australia they have a high number of children who manage to make it all the way to adulthood! Hervey Bay seemed to be a pretty quiet place, although we were staying on the outskirts. The beach was nice and as it was Easter weekend there was a nice seafront market. We celebrated Easter with chocolate Koalas and a trip to the Lennon Brothers circus with the English couple. The circus had lions, lamas, camels and a monkey riding a horse, what more could we want in life! We only stayed in Hervey Bay for a couple of days, then we were back on the coach for a looong 13 hour coach ride to Bowen.

We arrived in Bowen to beautiful sunshine and a warm welcome from Kellie Humble. (We signed up to a site called helpx while in Mooloolaba, it's where you can find hosts who provide free food and accommodation in exchange for a few hours work each day usually on farms or in hostels and we found the Humble family). They live on a cattle farm in Bowen and have cows, horses, dogs, cats and 4 young children so the house is always full of life. The children are really sweet and generally covered in chocolate - probably as it's just been Easter. The work so far has just involved cleaning and washing - no small task with a family of 6. There's a lovely pool that we cool off in after a mornings work and they've said that we'll be able to ride the horses and go fishing too. Also, Kellie will help us find paid work in the area - so as the accommodation and food is all paid for that will just be some extra dollars to go straight in our pockets, perfect!

We've just finished a day filled with clothes washing and clearing up dead flies, who's jealous?! But then all was forgotten after a dip in the pool in the sunshine and a large mug of milo - definitely reccommended!

We shall keep you updated on our adventures on the Humble's farm, so until next time, you stay classy San Diego.