World's Worst Traveler

As is currently my top priority, I have kept myself occupied lately primarily with stress, mostly from over-thinking many things, under-thinking a few very important things, and planting strawberries.

I had started thinking about when I would be coming home more or less right after my ordeal with the carnival. I knew I would need to be around at least awhile longer to see some stuff and make a little money, but felt I needed to look into tickets well ahead of time to not have to pay $13,785 (plus extra for baggage) to get across the Pacific. I held off looking seriously until a few days into planting, and wound up buying one from Brisbane to San Francisco with Air New Zealand, with whom I had found a seemingly reasonable fare. Departure was for June 1st because I would like to attend Lauren Vogl and Eugene Burke's wedding on the 10th. About two days later, in the height of the day's back pain in the strawberry fields, I realized that maybe having to find yet another job, with no guarantee that it'd be any better than planting or carnying, wasn't exactly what I wanted. Maybe it wasn't worth it to wait around until June, and I should just finish up on the Sunny Coast, see whatever I could for a few weeks, then leave in early May.

I looked into changing or canceling the ticket however, and found this to not really be an option because of a steep cancellation surcharge and the very expected automated telephone maze that Air New Zealand makes customers go through if they haven't upgraded to their Super Flexi Gold First-Class Maxi Favorite-Customer-Ever status, which I had not, cause I'm 23 and a homeless bum. Several other discoveries made the ticket purchase into more and more of a mistake: I found a fare to Phoenix in early May for the same price as the one I had already bought, and then received an email from Qantas about even cheaper tickets. The very bitter cherry on top came when I looked at my itinerary and realized I had unwittingly bought a ticket with yet another long layover in Auckland, this time overnight. I don't really have words for how astonishingly, frighteningly angry I am with my travel agent. And somebody says I'm smart enough to be a mechanical engineer?

My only explanation for these shenanigans is that at some point in the past I had found a cheap ticket for some destination, waited on it, and missed out. Since then, I have apparently become the world's most compulsive airline customer, barely bothering to think through the situation lest I miss out on something or have to pay $45 extra to not sleep in an airport lobby. The last couple months are seeming to be defined more by my blunders than anything else.

Sore Backs and Tidbits

First off, an update on the strawberries. We've put in several “days” so far, but this does not exactly mean full eight-hour days. Planting usually starts at 6 or 6:30 am, and will go anywhere from mid-morning til late afternoon depending on how many plants are available. Each farm has a pile of “runner” plants, as the seed stock are called, when the crews of between twenty-five and thirty-five people show up; these piles are usually from 20,000 to 50,000 plants, but can be up to 80,000. The whole crew of close to forty is due to put in 120,000 tomorrow. Pay is per thousand runners planted by each group, and three people can typically plant between one and two thousand an hour, give or take. One morning about 35 people put in 23,000 in an hour.

The fields have rows covered in plastic and holes are punched in the plastic where the plants go. Groups of three or four take turns dropping plants along their row and planting. Planting requires a lot of time spent bent over, which gets old quickly. It gets warm, but nowhere near as oppressively hot as our days in Emerald. Even the fastest groups don't make a lot of money, but at least it pays the bills.

This really has turned out to be rather tough work, especially for the low pay. It isn't difficult to get it right, but bending over all day and rushing to keep up can be strenuous. Some of these kids work like they're training for the Strawberry Planting event in the Olympics.

As this sort of work is very seasonal, doesn't require much skill, and is hardly something Australians would suffer themselves to be caught doing, all the planters are backpackers. I noticed just how diverse the crews were when I listened to chatter in Japanese, French, German, I think Mandarin, Danish, Italian, and English with Irish, Northern Irish, American, Aussie (the bosses), and British accents. Quite multinational. Most everybody has at least a little bit of a sense of humor and is pretty friendly, and there's a bit of camaraderie among backpackers, something we haven't gotten to experience at our other jobs. They say that not many Americans plant strawberries, and Larry and I are the only ones in this bunch. I get a kick out of the fact that we wear our big cowboy hats to the strawberry fields, especially since we're in our shorts and bare feet. One of the bosses calls Larry “Tex”. All that should paint quite a mental picture, eh? Editor's Note: Though I forgot about it while writing this post, also add Larry and I singing 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' to the mental imagery painted above. We felt it was a fitting song for hot afternoons spent doing menial, low-pay field work.

At this point in the trip, I thought it'd be appropriate to throw in a few scattered tidbits:

Australia is very expensive. Minimum wage may seem high, but the cost of living is roughly double what we would pay in Montana. Prices drop a bit as you get away from the big cities and anywhere near a coal mine, where money is a'plentiful. A pint could be had in Brisbane for $10. A beer out in the hinterlands is worth maybe $6, depending on happy hours. Oh how I long for thee, Molly Brown.

I've seen a few kangaroos, lots of kookaburras, bugs, and spiders, one deadly snake, a couple harmless snakes, geckos, and little lizards. I'm still looking for platypi, koalas, and echidnas. I hear there are penguins down near Melbourne in the winter, and I would like to see a Tasmanian Tiger.

Australian rules football is really just loosely contained mayhem. Cricket is without a doubt the most boring and confusing sport ever. I mean really, are the mattresses they strap to their legs necessary? Does a match need to last up to five days?

In general, grammar is terrible in Australia, and some might say that bad grammar is a pet peeve of mine. For example, nouns are often used as adjectives, and the term “drink-driving” is used instead of “drunk-driving”. That just doesn't sound right.

I've gotten back into drinking way too much tea. I'm probably up to three or four cups a day at least.

Apart from the Ihles, I met a girl from Tennessee in Newcastle and we overheard a girl in Tamworth who might have been American. Other than that, we've seen no Americans since we got here.

Despite this, neither Larry nor I have even a hint of an accent. I might use a local phrase once in a great while, but I can't even attempt an accent without sounding ridiculous.

Strawberries

As it turns out, Larry and I are most definitely not meant to be carnies. Both of us arrived in Tamworth on Monday the 21^st, Larry at 3am via bus from Brisbane and myself at about 10:30 via train. Poor Larry had to hang out at a McDonalds and wander around town all night. We met up in the park where the carnival was to be, and the crews were already setting up. Right away we began helping them assemble one of their rides, and right away our apprehension for the situation began to rise. The rest of the carnies were, to say the least, pretty rough, which shouldn't be a surprise. But the whole mess was pretty disorganized, with only a few people knowing what to do. These few people would demand various tasks to be done, but not really give any instruction. When workers got confused, they were regularly shouted at for not knowing what they were doing. This was infuriating. The crew also worked until it was so dark that we couldn't see what to do and something broke. Larry and I had agreed before we started that we would not be OK with working around anyone on hard drugs; more than a few on the crew had obviously seen some of the harder stuff.

We were told to put our stuff in a camper truck that was in the park. This truck was driven to a caravan park at the end of the day. This park had showers and other amenities, but the camper itself was the worst living situation I had ever slept in. Take all the worst parts from the anti-meth commercials from a couple years ago, and you have a pretty good idea of what the inside of that truck was like. It had been on the road for 40-some years, and many terrible things can be done by carnies in a camper in that kind of time. As if we needed to be told that they were dodgy, the other carnie staying in the truck advised us to get some sheets whenever we could, because the mattresses were, uh, a little used. I'd have slept elsewhere if I hadn't had my sleeping bag. Both of us had nightmares involving hypodermic needles that night. This harrowing experience was the solid deal-breaker for our carnival experience. We told the boss the next morning that we'd be moving on, were paid for helping out the previous day, and found our way to a YHA hostel a few blocks away.

The following couple of days caused me a significant amount of stress. Though we were sleeping in a safer place that was, as far as we knew, free from hepatitis and methamphetamine, Larry and I still had to figure out what we were going to do for jobs. I wasn't broke or anything, and Larry was doing better than I was, but I still tend to wring my hands and think way too hard in such times. One or two options arose and fell away again. We talked to five job agencies and there was a possibility of getting work at a lamb factory or chicken farm, but these places wanted longer-term commitments and generally required the workers to have a vehicle, which we don't have yet, if we ever get one at this point. After spending a day searching online classifieds for casual job openings, generally in harvesting of some kind, we narrowed it down to either apple harvesting in southeast Queensland or strawberry planting on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. Apple harvesting would have meant living in tents in a campground, then catching rides to and from work with other pickers. The strawberry planting had more formal living arrangements, but workers are charged rent. After spending way too much time thinking and debating with ourselves and each other, we went with the strawberries. There's no way we could know which one was the right or wrong choice, so we just chose one.

At 1:45am on the morning of the 25^th, we got on a bus headed for Brisbane. We got into Brisbane at about 10, and had to drop off some stuff at the Ihles' before heading up the coast. We rode the city train an hour north and were met by the woman we would be working for. We are living in a house with an Northern Irish couple and the young woman who owns the house.

Strawberry planting does not require a great amount of skill. Teams of three or four are given a bag of four hundred seed plants and planting knives, and set to putting the plants in the ground. The bosses get a bit fussy about getting depth right and having the plants standing. The fields are either muddy or have standing water in the rows, so workers are usually in their bare feet. We were warned that this was extremely difficult physical labor, and a lot of time is spent stooped over, but we felt fine after our first afternoon, which was supposed to be the worst. Many workers wore gloves and still got blisters, but our hands weren't even sore at the end of the day, so my hands and Larry's hands are apparently harder than the average backpacker's.

I believe it has to do with scheduling more than anything else, but planters are often only needed for half-days, so there's a lot of down time. Larry and I would both rather be set to it and kept busy than having so much free time, especially since the pay is by how many plants you put in the ground, but this was one of the few options for work during late-March and April, so at least we have jobs.

Some might wonder why we are bothering with menial work like fruit planting and harvesting. As it turns out, looking for more serious work, such as engineering for me and fire fighting for Larry, may not be in the cards. A few days after Bechtel turned me down, I found out the most likely reason they wouldn't take me on: I would need to be sponsored to do that sort of work, but sponsorship costs the employer $22,000. If even an American company that desperately needs fresh engineers isn't willing to sponsor me, then it is highly doubtful that any other companies here will. As for fire-fighting, those sorts of jobs are highly competitive and require a great deal of certification, which Larry could probably get if he went after it, but the rigamarole may not be worth it, especially since it would take a long time and he is only planning on spending a year in Australia. Thus, we are sticking to casual work for the moment.

Armidale

I arrived in Armidale, New South Wales on the evening of the 16th and was picked up by Sue Muir, a friend of Doug Holly and Jane Horton of Helena. She gave me a place to stay for as long as I wished to stay in town.

Armidale, NSW is in a region called New England. It is so called because it experiences four distinct seasons during the year, and the hilliness of the region imparts scenery similar to the British countryside. Some of these hills really are like small mountains. I don't think I have ever been more pleased to see little mountains and dry grass, as they both reminded me of Montana.

The first full day I was in Armidale was St Paddy's day. I asked the tourist info office and a music shop if they knew where I could find some music. Both places weren't very sure, but suspected that a couple of the town's pubs might have something. It was only about 10am, so none of the pubs were open yet. Sadly, I didn't go looking for music anyway. Sue would have given me a ride into town at the beginning of the night, I would have had to walk an hour in the rain to get back afterwards. This didn't seem like a worthwhile bet since I had no certainty of a session anyway. I'm a pansy, I know.

I spent Friday wandering around town, seeing its small heritage museum. Saturday was their Fall Festival and parade. I went on a heritage tour before the festival and learned more history of the area than I will ever possibly remember. On Sunday, Sue, her three kids, and I drove to her brother's place, two hours away near a town called Bingara. Their parents had run Herefords on the 4500 acre property, but now Sue's brother runs Wagyu cattle. It was interesting to see how a smaller outfit is run in Australia, or even to see a smaller operation at all.

I am especially grateful to Sue for opening up her house to me, and to Doug and Jane for sharing their connection. This is a very small world.

I've finally gotten around to putting up pictures. Anyone who is on Facebook can find me and see them on my page, or you can go to natecoxmt.shutterfly.com, which was the same site I posted my Ireland pics on.

I will meet Larry in a town called Tamworth tomorrow. He and I had considered getting on with a cotton harvesting crew, but neither of us cared to work twelve-hour days for two months without a day off, so we considered our other options. I would be stunned if anyone guessed it, but Larry and I are set to be...carnies. We had met a girl on a train on the way to Emerald who had mentioned a friend who worked for a carnival. This person had gotten to see a lot of Australia this way, so we were intrigued. We were told we will have accommodation of some kind. We can go to the next town after Tamworth if we want, or we can go our own way if it doesn't work out. I feel a few good stories coming on...

Newcastle

Before I left Brisbane, I got my half-broken tooth looked at by a dentist. It apparently wasn't in danger of decay so it didn't need to be rebuilt or pulled, so the broken part was ground smooth and I was sent on my way.

I flew to Newcastle on Saturday the 12th. It was an easy, seventy minute flight, but I soon found that buses don't run on the weekends from the airport into the city, which was twenty miles away. After a $54 taxi ride, I got to the Cambridge Hostel, where I had booked two nights. It was above a bar with a band playing, so it was quite loud and rowdy. I didn't find many people upstairs when I dropped off my stuff, so I wandered around for about an hour, listened to the so-so punk band, and called it a night. I thought I would have one other person in my room for the night, but was awoken at 4am by three drunk guys and a girl who said the room had been overbooked and that I had to get out. I told them I had as much right to the room as they did, but arguing with them was useless. I grudgingly gathered my stuff and moved to the lounge.

The receptionist was around at 7:30 and asked if I was checking out. I told her the situation, and another hostel employee, the receptionist, and I woke up the Aussies in my room. The girl was with one of the guys and the fourth bed hadn't even been touched. When asked why I had been kicked out, they of course had no good answer. They paid me for the room after some arguing, and went on their way. Unfortunately I had booked two nights at this loud, not very clean establishment, so I had to stay Sunday night as well.

I spent Sunday by having a look around the town. I rode the bus to the less sketchy part of town, got some coffee, people-watched, and admired the Tasman Sea at the beach. I also found a YHA hostel one block from the beach, and booked a room for Monday night. The help there agreed that the Cambridge was generally to be avoided.

I had read online that Newcastle has a weekly session on Sunday nights at one of its pubs. I made a trip to this pub, but found that either they weren't having the session anymore or weren't that week because of St Paddy's. Either way, I wound up watching movies at the Cambridge on my favorite couch all evening. There were a handful of English and Irish there, whose company I rather enjoyed. I even got to sleep the entire night in a bed I had paid for.

I didn't wait very long in the morning to get out of the Cambridge and over to the YHA, which was much more welcoming. The place was cleaner and had a more legitimate feel to it. Most of the people there though, weren't terribly friendly. The Japanese guy and the creepy Swedish guy in my room were willing to chat a little, but almost everyone else, save for one girl from Tennessee, would hardly say 'hello' if you greeted them, much less carry on a conversation. I found this true of many people in Newcastle, whether they were travelers or locals, and didn't particularly care for it.

I spent most of Monday on the beach, even attempting body surfing. It was a very pleasant, warm day with a touch of a breeze. The air in Newcastle was a bit drier than up north, a much needed change from the humidity of Queensland. The weather turned gray later in the day, so I wandered down Darby Street to see the shops and cafes. The evening was once again spent watching movies.

On the train ride from Ferny Grove to the airport in Brisbane, I got a call from Sue Muir, a friend of Doug Holly and Jane Horton. Sue lives in Armidale, in between Brisbane and Newcastle. She had offered me a place to stay if I were so inclined, and after my first rough night, I called her back Sunday to ask if Tuesday would work. I had planned on taking the train to Armidale that day, but the train had been replaced with a bus service, which was full on Tuesday morning when I attempted to buy a ticket. This meant another lovely day in Newcastle. I had already walked about two miles that morning to get some pictures of the beach, and now had to walk another mile and a half or so to get to the nearest hostel, carrying all sixty pounds of my stuff. Thankfully and luckily, they had plenty of beds left. The place was a little on the rustic side, but was nowhere near as dodgy as the Cambridge. I was in a rather foul mood because of how dumb I felt for not looking into tickets to Armidale sooner, but at least I wasn't going to be homeless for a night. I looked around that side of town a bit more, but mostly watched TV and read all day and evening. I had coffee with a girl from Taiwan in the morning, then got a ride to the station and was on my way north.

I seem to be failing at learning many basic travel lessons, such as carrying too much stuff in a not very comfortable bag, and not planning things well. I can't ever seem to relax and just go with the flow either, and I'm always worrying. I am only reaffirming my statement from some time ago that I am the absolute worst traveler ever. Maybe this backpacking thing isn't my deal.

My logistical incompetencies aside, I did have some splendid beach time. I sat in the sand for quite awhile Monday, watching the foam and water, and the people happily being smashed by the waves. I realized that that was the farthest from home I had ever been, was there for no reason at all, and I was completely by myself. And it was pretty great, except for the sand in my shorts.

"No Thank You" again

I returned to Brisbane on March 6 to look into an interview with Bechtel. This trip was a bit of an adventure. Mick, the son of the people I worked for, and actually the person I had spoken to over the phone about going to the station in the first place, needed to be in Rockhampton that morning, so we left at 5. To get out of the place, four creeks had to be crossed. The recent rains had brought all of them up, and the highest one came up to the headlights of the Toyota Land Cruiser. That one was also the fastest, and I rode in the box of the truck for it, in case we got swept away. A true Australian experience, indeed. This was the exact reason many Aussie 4x4s have snorkels, and I was glad for it. What made this even more interesting is that another guy tried to get out thirty minutes later with another Land Cruiser, and turned around because the creeks had risen even more. If we hadn't left at 5am, we'd have been flooded in.

The extremely well-traveled Aussie and I chatted at length about a number of things on the four-hour drive to Rocky, such as Texans, hay, New Yorkers, cattle, the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin. I booked a flight online from Rocky to Brisbane, then wandered around the roughly Missoula-sized town for a couple hours, casually in search of a decent stockwhip, which I found at a saddlery pointed out by Mick. The flight was quick and easy, and I must say I was impressed by my first Qantas flight.

Once back in Brisbane, I found my way back to the Ihles', by train and on foot. The mile from the Ferny Grove train station to their house was a long one with my 55 lbs of stuff. My push on Bechtel for an interview began the next day, with a number of emails to various people. I made a trip to the office Wednesday afternoon, but found it mostly empty: the HR department was out all day for training. By then, they had received my resume from a variety of sources, so another visit on Thursday didn't seem like a worthwhile effort. I called Friday morning, attempting to reach at least one HR person, but could not. Shortly thereafter, I received an email from them, declining any offers for my services with their company. That beats sitting on my hands waiting for news I suppose. I think it's also fair to say my failure to gain employment with them wasn't from lack of trying. This was at least the third, possibly the fourth "No Thank You" letter from Bechtel in about two years, so I am now convinced I may just not be meant to be there.

So what now? Number One on my list is to get my tooth fixed. I have an appointment for Saturday the 12th, and hopefully it'll get handled without unnecessarily bother. Number Two on my list is to get out from underfoot of the Ihles. Even with a room and board arrangement agreed upon, I feel it'd be best to let them have their routines and family time without an extra guy hanging around.

Without anywhere else to be, I will be heading to the town of Newcastle in New South Wales for a few days, entirely for the sake of exploring. I would like to venture out of Queensland, yet don't want to tackle Sydney or Melbourne by myself. Newcastle has about 150,000 people, so it's not too big, and supposedly has an Irish session at one of its pubs. I'm also eager to meet a few people, since I haven't done much socializing even after being here for a month. Larry and I have a good chance of having a place to be in a week or so, but I won't write about that until it becomes a little more set in stone.

Climate

I'm just gonna get this out of the way: Australia is rather warm, anyway around it. Sunny, humid Brisbane rudely awakened Larry and I to this fact the instant we arrived. The hottest we've seen so far was 37C (just under 100F) with about 60% humidity about a week after we got here. That was supposedly one of the warmest days of the year for the area. It should also be remembered that we saw -20F wind chill right before we left Montana.

Since the metric system is used in Oz like everywhere else except America, we've gotten used to using the Celsius scale for temperatures instead of Fahrenheit. We've adjusted to the SI system by taking note of what various temperatures feel like. For example:

25C = Better put on some sunscreen

30C = So this is why Aussies are willing to pay $10 for a cold beer

32C = You remember what -20 wind chill was like? I don't. It must have been great

35C = Oh dear God

37C = My brain is cooking from the inside out

Emerald was a different experience. Because it was a couple hundred miles inland, it could go from dry to humid fairly quickly and often depending on the weather. When it was dry, temps could be considerably higher, yet not feel as if you are draped in hot, wet towels. If a storm rolled in, it got quite muggy. We spent an afternoon cutting some trees to use for brace posts, and due to the cloudy skies and stillness, it was downright steamy.

I have never sweated more in my life than I did out at the stations. I believe temps were into the upper thirties Celsius (close to 100F), and you exert yourself a bit pounding steel posts, tamping wood posts, or holding legs in front of a branding fire, all in full sun. I may as well have been totally submerged. I had never before soaked through a set of Carhartts and a pair of boots. Startling AND disgusting, I know.

Having been through this hellfire, just about anything below 100F at least sounds comfortable. I can't speak for Larry at the moment, but I only sweat most of the time now instead of all the time.

All this sun exposure no doubt raises the question about sun protection. Queensland allegedly has a less-healthy ozone layer than most other parts of the world, so the harsh sunshine is particularly damaging. One of the first items we bought upon arrival was sunscreen, which we have used liberally and dutifully. Even with sunscreen, we always wore long-sleeved shirts and long pants while working, along with wide-brimmed hats. And of course, we wouldn't forget our imfamous Solar Shields.